Brevis brevians

Brevis brevians, also known as iambic shortening or correptio iambica, 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 breves breviantes.

One common type is where a two-syllable word ends in a vowel which was originally long, for example volo, ibi, ego, nisi and so on. This type is also frequently found in classical Latin.

But brevis brevians also occurs in lines such as the following, in which the closed syllables hoc and om- are shortened, which would never occur in poetry of the classical period:

Quid hoc negōtī (e)st, quod omnēs hominēs fābulantur per viās? (tr7)

"What's this business that all the people are gossiping about in the streets?"

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.

Another controversy is whether iambic shortening is caused by word accent. In most (but perhaps not all) cases the shortened syllable is unstressed, and comparison can be made to English words such as monarchy, in which the second syllable is shortened after a stressed short first syllable, compared with heptarchy, in which both the first two syllables are long. Some scholars, however, who believe that the Latin accent was not a stress-accent, disagree with this view and point to some instances in which the shortened syllable appears to be accented.