Grammatici Latini, VI. Scriptores artis metricae. Marius Victorinus, Maximus Victorinus, Caesius Bassus etc., ex recensione H. Keilii, Hildesheim 1961, 637, 18-638, 21 (reprografischer Nachdruck der Ausgabe Leipzig 1874)

The codex of Sankt-Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek 876 (S) is the unique witness for the texts edited by Keil in the Fragmenta Sangallensia (for a description of the manuscript and its contents see Holtz 1981, De Paolis 2003, Romanini 2007). It was probably copied in St. Gall at the end of the 8th century or the beginning of the 9th; it is the result of the union of several contemporary grammatical collections, or fragments thereof, which occurred in the same St Gall scriptorium in the first years of the ninth century (Holtz 1981, 365). Holtz distinguished four groups of texts: the first, second, and fourth contain all the works of Donatus or writings connected to them, while the third (pp. 129-284) is a collection of more and less ancient texts on prosody and metre, from Mallius Theodorus to Bede.

   Between this fragment de scansione heroici versus and the fragment de iambico trimetro is inserted the Fragmentum Berolinense de speciebus hexametri heroici, though it is mutilated at the end. In GL VI 634, 10-636, 23 it is edited by Keil using the Berlin codex, Staatsbibl. Preussicher Kulturbesitz, Diez B. Sant. 66 (see on the site). The fragment on the scansion of heroic verse addresses hexameter and pentameter. Its discussion of hexameter treats internal composition and the permitted feet (dactyls, spondees, trochees), their possible positions and the caesurae (penthemimeral, hephthemimeral, third trochaic, fourth trochaic, bucolic); it draws examples from Vergil (Aen. II 68 for spondaic hexameter; IX 503 for dactylic; Buc. 2, 24 for hexameter formed from spondees with a dactyl in the fifth foot). The last section of the text is dedicated to the scansion of pentameter; it is shorter, and concludes with a couplet from Ovid, Amor. I 2, 39-40. There are numerous similarities to [Sergii] Explanationes in artes Donati, GL IV 523, 3-17: the St Gall fragment contains the same examples and the same organisation, although its treatment is less extensive. It also attests the same etymological connection between the words ‘dactyl’ and ‘finger’ (δάκτυλος), explaining the meter’s name through the phalanges of a finger: the first is long and the other two are short. This etymological link is also attested in the Greek sources as Arist. Quint. Mus. I 15, 14-15. In one case, the fragment’s technical vocabulary distinguishes it from the rest of the metric tradition and associates it with [Sergius]: hexameter with a spondee in the fifth foot is called spondiadeus. We do not have information on the fragment’s author. [M. Callipo tr. C. Belanger]