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[85] Indeed, since strict law allows a vowel to be long or short, as the case may be, when it stands alone, no less than when one or [p. 555] more consonants precede it, there can be no doubt, when it comes to the measuring of feet, that a short syllable, followed by another which is either long or short, but is preceded by two consonants, is lengthened, as for example in the phrase agrestem tenui musam.1

1 Ecl. i. 2. But Virgil wrote silvestrem.

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