synchysis

• "I run and shoot, quickly and accurately."
• "Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear" – Alexander Pope, "Epistle II. To a Lady" (1743)
• "When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep,

:Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep" – Alexander Pope, Essay on Man.

:: (That is, "When earthquakes swallow towns to one grave, or when tempests sweep whole nations to the deep".)

This poetry form was a favorite with Latin poets. It is described by the website Silva Rhetoricae as "Hyperbaton or anastrophe taken to an obscuring extreme, either accidentally or purposefully."Silva Rhetoricae, rhetoric.byu.edu It is doubtful, however, whether it could be correct to describe effects in Latin poetry, which was very carefully written, as accidental.{{citation needed|reason=This statement is not found in Silva Rhetoricae. It appears to be the opinion of a Wikipedia editor.|date=June 2022}}

Synchysis may be opposed to chiasmus, which is a phrase in the form A-B-B-A, either in the same line or in two consecutive lines.{{clarify | reason = This is confusing, since normal chiasmus is not scattered, but has normal syntax, of a prescribed shape, yet a "chiastic" golden line (a form of synchysis) is mentioned in the next paragraph. So how is synchysis opposed to chiasmus? By ABBA vs ABAB or by scattered vs non-scattered?|date=June 2022}}{{citation needed|date=June 2022}}

A line of Latin verse in the form adjective A - adjective B - verb - noun A - noun B, with the verb in the center (or a corresponding chiastic line, again with the verb in the center), is known as a golden line. A highly common occurrence in Virgil's Aeneid,Pharr, Grammatical Appendix an example is aurea purpuream subnectit fibula vestem, "a golden clasp bound her purple cloak" (Virgil, Aeneid 4.139). Usually, synchysis is formed through the adjective A - adjective B - noun A - noun B structure, but it can also exist as adjective-noun-adjective-noun.{{cite web|last=Alford|first=L.D.|title=Rising Action – Figures of Speech, Synchysis|date=10 November 2012 |url=http://novelscene.wordpress.com/2012/11/10/rising-action-figures-of-speech-synchysis/|accessdate=22 October 2013}}

Today, it is mainly found in poetry,{{cite web|title=Synchyses|url=http://changingminds.org/techniques/language/figures_speech/synchysis.htm|publisher=Changing Minds|accessdate=22 October 2013}} where poets use it to maintain metre or rhyme.{{cite book|last=Zimmerman|first=Brett|title=Edgar Allan Poe: Rhetoric and Style|year=2005|publisher=McGill-Queen's University Press|location=Montreal|isbn=0773528997|page=129|edition=[Online-Ausg.].}}

Catullus notably made use of synchysis in his poetry. Catullus 75 has this line:

:Huc est mens deducta tuā mea Lesbia culpa{{cite web|title=Catul. 75 |url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0003%3Apoem%3D75|publisher=Perseus Digital Library Project |accessdate=5 November 2014}}

Taking mea with Lesbia this line reads:

:To this point, (my) mind is reduced by your guilt, my Lesbia.

The correct way to translate the line, however, is to take it with the more distant mens, observing Catullus's synchysis:

:To this point, Lesbia, my mind is reduced by your guilt.

Another example comes from Horace (Odes I.35, lines 5ff.), part of a hymn to a goddess:

:te pauper ambit sollicitā prece

:ruris colonus, te dominam aequoris

::quicumque Tyrrhenā lacessit

:::Carpathium pelagus carinā.

The meaning is "thee, (the mistress) of the countryside, the poor farmer beseeches with anxious prayer, thee, the mistress of the ocean, whoever provokes the Carpathian sea in a Tyrrhenian boat (beseeches)", dominam being understood with ruris as well as aequoris. Often, through failure to spot the synchysis, ruris is taken with colonus, and the verse is incorrectly translated as "the poor farmer of the countryside".

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• Chiasmus
• Golden line

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Category:Poetic forms

Category:Word order

Category:Ambiguity

Category:Obfuscation

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