Saturnian Verse, the name given by the Romans to that species of verse in which their oldest national poetry was composed. In the usage of the later poets and grammarians the phrase has two different significations. It is applied in a general way to denote the rude and unfixed measures of the ancient Latin ballad and song, and perhaps derived its name from being originally employed by the Latin husbandmen in their harvest-songs in honour of the god Saturn (q.v.). It is also applied to the measure used by Nævius, and a common opinion, sanctioned by Bentley, is that it was a Greek metre introduced by him into Italy. But most scholars now maintain that the measure of Nævius is of Italian (Hermann even thinks of Etruscan) origin, and that it merely improved on the primitive Saturnian verse. According to Hermann, the basis of the verse is contained in the following schema:
— — — — — | — — — — — which, as Macaulay points out, corresponds exactly to the nursery rhyme,
The quèen was in her pàrlour | èating brèad and hōney, and is frequently found in the Spanish poem of the Cid, the Nibelungenlied, and almost all specimens of early poetry; but in the treatment of it a wide and arbitrary freedom was taken by the old Roman poets, as is proved by the extant fragments of Nævius, Livius Andronicus, Ennius, and the old inscriptionary tables in the Capitol.