Note 22 — Chapter V · THE CAROLINGIANS AND THE TENTH CENTURY

Cathemerinon v and in the preface to Book I Contra Symmachum. The meter is – – – ⏑ ⏑ – – ⏑ ⏑ – ⏑ ⏑. Compare the first ode of Horace. So Paulus Albarus in an acrostic poem on St. Eulogius, Almi nunc revehit festa polifera (MGH, ibid., III. 139). Boethius uses the measure with a shorter alternate line (III, metrum viii); and it is otherwise varied, by a shorter line at the end of the stanza, in the eighth-century hymn Sanctorum meritis inclyta gaudia (Britt, 159), and in the ninth-century hymn Festum nunc celebre magnaque gaudia (MGH, ibid. II. 249). All these hymns are exceptionally correct in quantities; and the measure, unusual in hymns, may well have been composed metrically.