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From the prologue of Francesca Caccini's La Liberazione di Ruggiero:

Meco venite, e con sonore voci, / Numi dell'acque, reverite in pace, / Chi vinse in guerra il Moscovita e'l Trace, / E servirese i Tartari feroci.

Is "servirese" an archaic conjugation of "servire"? (Passato remoto forse?) It doesn't make grammatical sense as an infinitive + reflexive pronoun, and furthermore it is set musically so that the 3rd syllable is stressed.

Charo
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DallaLiyly
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1 Answers1

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I believe there is a missing space and the correct phrase is servi rese, that is, “enslaved”; literally, servi rese = rese servi = “made slaves” (the inversion is usual in poetry).

DaG
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    Ah brilliant, that has to be it! It's hyphenated together in the score but this answer makes much more sense, thank you! – DallaLiyly Oct 21 '15 at 00:01