[Janice D. Soderling]

Hear ye, hear ye, learnéd members.

Who can tell me how to pronounce Sardanapalus? Where do the accents go? I can't find it anywhere, not in my dictionaries or encyclopedias, and not on the net.

Although I think I know, I am only guessing. But I'm sure the classics scholars can tell me.

Signed
Hopeful Poet

[Maryann Corbett]

Here's a pronunciation from Infoplease:

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0843669.html

Now that I look at it carefully, it's not clear about the accents, is it? I was assuming primary stress on the third syllable and secondary stress on the first.

[John Whitworth]

In my opinion Byron must have pronounced it SarDANa - PAILus. I have looked at the first four times he uses it in his tragedy and that seems to be the pronunciation that best fits the metre. You must remember that the English tended to anglicize classical names and oten changed the stress - at least until before the war. My father pronounced Latin in what I thought was a very peculiar way. He said Caesar said VAYNEE VEDEE VEECHEE whereas I was told to say WEENY, WEEDY, WEAKY. This turns up as a joke in '1066 and All That'. We call the poet MARSHALL though the Romans said MAR-TI-AL. And of course we say SEE-ZAH where the Romans said, with the Germans, KAISER. God, how boring I get.

[Maryann Corbett]

I just did the same exercise that John did on the Byron, with the same result.

(I'm so glad somebody else here has enjoyed 1066 and All That!)

[Janice D. Soderling]

Maryann, many thanks. I have decided not to use it inside my poem, only the title. I'm thinking I am not the only one who is unsure.

Thanks, John, I did look at the Byron play, but still couldn't figure it out.

Rick, you busted me. I am working on an ekphrasis of that painting. I guess that wasn't hard to figure out.

Anyhoo, thanks for the feedback, I don't know what keywords you used Maryann, but I didn't try Yahoo with the keywords I had. I found a lot of sites, but none that showed the pronunciation. Thanks both for the info, and the idea to try Yahoo in future.

Janice a.k.a. Hopeful

[Rick Mullin]

Actually, I didn't assume that, Janice. But, fantastic! That is one of my favorite paintings. De la Croix took enormous crap for it from the authorities of the Salon. Did anyone bother Byron?

Sorry to have inadvertently outed you. But, of course, you copped to it yourself in the end.~,:^) Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading your poem.

And, you know, for pentameter purposes, you can go anywhere up to and including SAR / da / NAP / a / LUS, whatever classics to the contrary. It is one of those names/words where, bascially, you tell us (within reason) how it is pronounced by how you use it in the line. I bet that's what Byron did.

IMHO
Rick

[Rick Mullin]

Image removed so as not to flood psyche's prior to the debut of Janice's poem.
RM