Brevis brevians
Brevis brevians, also known as iambic shortening or , is a metrical feature of early Latin verse, especially Plautus and Terence, in which a pair of syllables which are theoretically short + long (u –) can be scanned as a pair of short syllables (u u). The plural is . One common type is where a two-syllable word ends in a vowel which was originally long, for example and so on. This type is also frequently found in classical Latin. For example: "I want to know whether you will or won't allow us to cook dinner here?" Another type, not found in classical Latin poetry, is where a closed syllable such as il- or ec- scans as a short syllable. This sometimes happens after a monosyllabic word, for example: "What did they just say to each other? Tell me!" It may also happen in the 2nd syllable of a 4-syllable word, for example: "He's preparing a more bitter winter for his old age" It is thought by many scholars that such shortenings reflect the actual pronunciation of colloquial Latin. Others, however, disagree and consider that the second type, where a closed syllable is shortened, is merely a metrical licence. Main types The main types of iambic shortening are as follows: (1) commonly used two-syllable words such as in which the final vowel is usually short even in classical Latin; (2) the first two syllables of phrases starting with a two-syllable word such as "go, please", "I want to know", "at the forum", "newly born"; (3) the first two syllables of longer words accented on the 3rd syllable, such as "pleasure" and "old age"; (4) the first two syllables of phrases starting from a monosyllable such as "what are you afraid of?", "what he is saying", "from the army", "angry with you"; (5) more rarely, and mainly in anapaestic metres, it can occur at the end of words of cretic rhythm (– u –) such as "to no one more" (this kind is known by some scholars as cretic shortening); (6) rarely it is found across word boundaries, as in "he will receive from no one". Shortening usually takes place in the context of a phrase. Thus the -ī of is usually long at the end of a sentence but it is usually shortened in the phrase "go, please". The name brevis brevians Shortening only takes place after a short syllable, hence the name , which is short for () () "a short syllable which shortens the syllable which follows". The term dates back to the 19th century, but it does not go back to antiquity, since no ancient grammarian or metrician discusses the phenomenon. The alternative name "iambic shortening" derives from the fact that sequences like or are metrically iambs (u –). Where it is found is frequent in the comedies of Plautus and Terence, and in the fragments of other poets of the 2nd century BC, but, except in words of the first type above, it is generally not