[28]
It
sometimes happens that the accent is altered by
the metre as in pecudes pictaeque volucres1; for I shall
read volucres with the acute on the middle syllable,
because, although that syllable is short by nature, it
is long by position: else the last two syllables
would form an iambus, which its position in the
hexameter does not allow.
1 Georg. iii. 243.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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