RES METRICA

W. R. HARDIE

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK

TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY

HUMPHREY MILFORD

PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY

1887

PREFACE /^^,^

I AM reluctant to trouble the reader with what is more
or less personal, but it seems necessary to explain how
this book came to exist. In the spring of 1912 I was
asked to review Schroder's Horazens Versmasse, fiir
Anfdnger erkldrt, and I did not find that it solved the
problem ; it was not a thing which, if translated, would
be helpful to 'beginners' in this country. In the summer
it occurred to me to try the experiment of writing an
account of Horace's lyric metres myself, and I wrote it,
merely as an experiment and without the slightest inten-
tion of publishing it. Shortly after this I learned from
Professor Lindsay that he was interested in getting
something done towards making metrical knowledge
more accessible to students ; what he had in mind was
finding somebody to translate Bickel's section on Metre
in Gercke and Norden's Einleittmg in die AltertJmms-
ivissenschaft. But Bickel's treatment, he agreed, was
not satisfactory for our purpose ; like Schroder's it was
too technical and too condensed for the ordinary reader.
I showed him my experimental account of Horace's
metres, and chiefly through his instigation and en-
couragement I wrote in the following summer accounts
of some of the more familiar metres such as the
Hexameter and Iambic Trimeter. These I now thought
of as chapters in a possible, though still hardly probable.

417894

vi PREFACE

book. The experiment which I made with most re-
luctance was that of writing a chapter on Greek lyric
verse but this also was done, in September 1913. The
conditions of teaching in this country are not like those
of Germany, and few teaching posts allow much tmie
for writing or research ; so it was only at rather long
intervals that I could take this metrical business in hand. ^^
I say this not in the least as regretting or resentmg the i
conditions, and not at all as an apology for the deficiencies \
of the book. I am not sure that with more time to give
to it I should have made it any better ; it might even
have been, for practical purposes and for the ordinary
reader, worse. Such as it is, it owes its existence largely
to Professor Lindsay's encouragement. For its defects
he is not responsible ; he removed some of them, and he
has contributed valuable advice and suggestions. He is
in no way responsible for what is said about Saturnian
verse in the chapter on ' Metre at Rome '. It was at one
time a part of the design that he should contribute a
chapter on the metre of the Roman Drama. But it now
seems best to refer the reader to his account of Plant me
metre in the Introduction to the larger edition of the
Captivi (Methuen and Co., 1900).

The method of the book will be thought unscientific,
but it seemed best to avoid any attempt at deductive,
exhaustive, and systematic exposition. To begin with
what is highly abstract and general-as with definitions
of Rhythm and Metre— is to run a risk of being involved
at once in what is disputable and speculative, or what
can scarcely be clear and significant to the reader until
he has already become familiar with numerous particular
facts. To avoid what is controversial, to remain on what

PREFACE vii

is fairly firm ground, has been one of the main objects
kept in view. Controversial matter has been segregated
as far as possible by relegation to an Excursus. It is
hoped that some general notions of rhythm and metre
will gradually become clearer to the reader as he pro-
ceeds, and a Glossary of metrical terms has been appended
in order to enable him to ascertain whether an idea which
he gathers from the text of the book was meant to
underlie it or not.

It has been a further aim to treat metre in a rather
more historical way than has sometimes been done, and
to keep it in closer contact with literary study and literary
interests. But a strictly historical method would have
been as difficult to carry out as a deductive and theoretical
method. The Chronological Table is intended to supply
the defects of the text in this matter of sequence in time
or consecutiveness.

A strictly deductive or a strictly historical method
would have made each chapter more dependent on what
receded it. It seemed desirable to make each chapter
thing which would be fairly intelligible if read separately.
jThis results in a certain amount of repetition, which would
e a fault in a work of literary art. In a text-book
tility may be allowed to prevail over artistic considera-
ions. The main business of the writer of a text-book
s to devise ways of putting things which will make them
:lear, forms of statement which are not misleading or
:omplicated or abstruse : the grouping of facts is also
Dart of his business, the arranging of them so that they
will support one another and their connexion will appear.
[t is not his business to devise new theories. But neither
:s it his business to accept theories, whatever their present

^iii PREFACE

vogue, without criticism. Even the writer of a text-book
must ake up some position, and he may perhaps usefully
n a Pi^face try to state briefly what he has been do.ng
when ^e has' Jot been occupied solely with what I have
defined as his main business.
1" regard to the history of the Hexameter and
especially of its caesura, the writer of this book disagrees
w'h som'e current methods and is inclined to dispute, or
. disable • as evidence, a good deal of recent stat.st.cs

In regard to Iambic and Trochaic Verse evdence ,s

offered-statistics, I think, too simple to be d.sputable-

?hat the peculiarly Roman line (with spondees >n wha

for a Greek were the wrong places) did not d.e out

gradually, but gained ground, from Ennius to Accms

^nd then was ejected by a reaction or new movement^

An outline of the history of metre at Rome has been

ftU^pted (pt. n, chap, ii) which is intended to^^ow

briefly what the Romans were trymg to do at d^eient

periods and what were the difficulties they had to

contend with.

The tragedies of Seneca have been kept m v.ew
as throwing light both on Horace's metrical ideas and
on Roman metrical practice of the imperial age.

As to Greek lyric verse, the writer is aware that he
will be regarded by Mr. White and others as Kpo--
6>. Kal iKK.aiXnvos, when he expresses doubts abou
£ quadrisyllabic structure of Aeolic verse and about
Choriambo-Ionic structure of the ' E-Pj"- J*'-
however, is quite deliberate, and, though it does not re
on complete knowledge of the evidence, it does no r
on complete ignorance of it either. In an Excursus (afte,|
chap, i of pt. 11) will be found an attempt to show tha

PREFACE ix

three passages which have been quoted as important do
not prove what they are supposed to prove (i.e. that the
Choriambo- Ionic arrangement is as old as the fifth cen-
tury B.C.). To revert to dactylic scansion and to suggest
that ' anacrusis ', though unsupported by tradition, is a
more useful idea than ' hypercatalexis ' is a proceeding
ikely to evoke the objection, ' So you think that modern
metricians may know more about Greek verse than the
Greeks did'; and to reply 'That is exactly what I do
think' will perhaps elicit still more severe condemnation,
if the holders of the now prevalent views condescend to
notice it at all. I have suggested a comparison with
Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomy, but this of course
may be disallowed. ' The Greeks ', it will be said, ' did
ot construct the stars ; they did construct their own
erse, and must have known what it was.' To this
JI should reply * Do we accept their grammar, or their
ritical treatment of texts?' They spoke their language
and wrote the texts, but is it not the case that the arts
of analysis and interpretation lagged far behind creation,
land were developed surprisingly late? Do we believe
uintilian when he says of the 'Historical Infinitive':
\ sttipere gaudio Graecus'. simul enim a.ud{tuY coepit' ; or
vhen he takes Virgil to have written * qui non risere
arentes ' in the sense of ' who have not smiled upon or
to a parent ' — a plural resumed by a singular /mnc in the
ut next line ? Is it a happy description of the shorter gen.
pi. in Latin {deum) to say that it is the ace. sing, used
est "or the gen. pi.? Do we think it, I do not say true, but
espossible, that Homer wrote /xera 8' ov g-(J)l jraTrjp Kie
i^^'^a/cpua Xetpcdv (the father in question being by this time
1^^'Jead — killed in an earlier book)? And what would Bentley

X PREFACE

have said of a critic who gravely discussed rccv kv tol9
ocpdaXfxoh napOei/cDu as a phrase for the pupil of the
eye {Koprj) — this not in a dithyramb, but in a plain prose
treatise — as the writer De Sublimit ate does ? Examples
like these could easily be multiplied. Why should the
Greek treatment of metre be supposed to be infallible ?
Besides, I am not at all sure that we know what the
Greek treatment really was in the sixth or fifth centuries.
Still less do we know what metre was before Sappho, or
in Indo-European times. Further, one might point out
that writers on English metre have again and again
assumed that poets wrote something that is not best
described as they themselves would have described it ;
e.g. that Milton did not really write a line of five iambi
in Paradise Lost. But I do not lay great stress on this
last argument ; I should lay more stress on it, if I had
more belief in the theories about English verse which
these writers have propounded. There is also the case
of French verse. How much agreement is there about
that, although metricians would have the advantage of
being able to interrogate contemporary poets who are
writing it? Greek verse was much more complicated
and varied : what is the probability that Hephaestion.
would be able to give a true account of lyric forms which
had for long ceased to be composed ?

* For these reasons it does not seem to me at all illegiti-
mate to inquire what is the best way of describing
verse-forms rather than what is the way supported by
tradition.

CONTENTS

PART I

THE SIMPLER AND MORE FAMILIAR FORMS

OF VERSE

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE HEROIC HEXAMETER:

(i) Origin and General Structure . . i

(ii) Subordinate Divisions .... 14

Excursus :

{a) Hexameters in the Lyric and Tragic

poets • . 26

{J}) Statistics relating to Virgil's verse . 27

IL THE COLLOCATION OF WORDS IN EPIC

VERSE (ELISION, HIATUS, ETC.) ..* 30

III. THE ELEGIAC COUPLET . ^. . 49

IV. ANAPAESTS 56

V. IAMBIC VERSE :

(i) The Iambic Trimeter and ' Senarius ' 68

Excursus :

(a) ' Choriambic substitution ' . . 86

[U) The Roman disregard for ' Porson's

Canon ' . . . . . . 87

xii CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

spondaic ' Senarius ' at Rome . 88

(d) The length of the first syllable in an

impure or heavy iambus . . 91

(ii) The Iambic Tetrameter Catalectic . 92

VI. THE SCAZON OR CHOLIAMBUS . . 98

VII. THE TROCHAIC TETRAMETER AND

'SEPTENARIUS' 103

VIII. HENDECASYLLABICS OR PHALAECEI 114

PART II

I. GREEK LYRIC VERSE :

(i) Archilochus, Alcman, and Sappho . 118

Excursus (a) 'Aeolic' Verse .... 136

(ii) Simple or Homogeneous Metres {fiovo-

etSfj) ....... 143

(iii) Pindar and the Dramatic Poets . . 165

Excursus (b) On the quadrisyllabic scansion of
' Dactylo-epitrite ' verse, on ' Iambic Syn-
copation', and on 'Ictus' . . . 177

II. THE HISTORY OF METRE AT ROME 196

III. LYRIC METRES OF HORACE . . 223

APPENDIX

(A) Glossary of some Metrical Terms . . 261

(B) Chronological Table 270

PART I

CHAPTER I

THE HEROIC HEXAMETER

I. Origin and General Structure

It is a singular fact about Greek literature that it begins
with poems of great power and splendour, which exercised
a vast influence in later times and in their greatest parts were
hardly, if ever, surpassed by the work of later poets. But of
course it is only for us that Greek literature begins in this
way. There is nothing extant that we can certainly or con-
vincingly describe as pre-Homeric. That much did exist is
certain. It has long been recognized that the Homeric poems
are not really very early or primitive, but the crown and
consummation of a long period of poetic effort and experiment.
This is no less clear in their form and versification, with which
we are here concerned, than in their diction and style and
contents. Hexameters are often spoken of as sung, and we
hear of a musical accompaniment, but it is probable that what
was really sung was a more primitive form of ballad in shorter
lines, such as conjecture or imagination can sometimes recon-
struct out of Homeric lines. Thus

rjpdfieOa /liya kvSo^,
e7ri<puofx,€u "EKTopa Slop

sounds like a primitive song of triumph, and

OLd eiTL oe^ia,

tM } > > V

OLO CTT apL(TT€pa

pcofLfjcrat PS)V

1887 P

tee

e. r *■
,c, r '

THE HEROIC

has the a.r of being an ancient tripudiun, ov threefold dance of
an armed warrior. The longer hexameter '"<!"=*««= ^;7;!;
tion from singing to recitation. Perhaps >t was the work
mainly of lonians. At all events it belongs to a d.alect whose
uncontracted forms lent themselves to dactyhc verse (M'^«"/'«'-
XaA^.«, lpl», &?yvpiow\ and, further, forms of words have
been adapted to dactylic verse by successive — '->^ (^'l
kUvaroliK6.i.a-:o,, with the first ^y"-Me lengthen d> Much
of the diction has been cast into shapes which readily n^ake up
a hexameter. There are a great many complete hnes that are
recurrent or conventional {kvkKikoI anxo', e.g. avrap ,wh
n6<rw, Kal iBnrvo, ii ^pov eVro), there are parts of hnes tha
recur in the same way, and various names or epithets for gods
and heroes lay to the poet's hand {Kvavoxairn^, ";;'«'^7«"'^'
&y,\dn ToiToyhua, kKarnfi^Xirao 6.vaKT0,). This stock-
in trade' seems to imply that at some time the minstrel
improvised his song, though constructions like the Jhad and
Odyssey are not the result of improvisation. Advance and
improvement were probably made in a half-conscious way by
the poet's sense of euphony and feeling for rhythm. Very
exact laws can be laid down for Homeric hexameters, but we
must beware of thinking that they resemble the principles or
methods of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid.

The verse itself, the 'Dactylic Hexameter , may be con-
structed theoretically as follows :-It belongs to^'^^t *^
Greeks called the yl.o. Uov in rhythn., the dactyl is a foo
which falls into two equal parts (-=--) and its length is that
of four short syllables or unit-times;. Constructmg the verse,
then, out of its elements, we start with

^^^•^ 1 ^vv./w 1 wu>-'W 1 ^v...^.^^ 1

X XP^.o. ,pSr», is a convenient term oiH.^'r,, ™\'^^;^X
which is made audible, in verse, by a normal short syllable. It may be
made audible in music by a short note, J^ ; or made percepfble by
. a movement of the body, as in dancing.

HEXAMETER 3

an indefinite string of groups of four short sounds. But the
perpendicular lines which we have drawn to separata them into
groups have no real existence. The groups are made perceptible
as groups by an ictus on the first of each (in dactylic verse —
anapaests belong to the same yivo<i^ but we are not now
considering them) :

\j \j \j ^ Ov>/v^w Ov>v_;w &C.

Next, the grouping can be made still more obvious by
putting a long for the first two shorts. This gives us an
indefinite string of ' dactyls ', and it must be cut into ' lengths '
to give us verse. ' Lengths cut off' is Aristotle's phrase {royLT]
pvOjjLov, TfirjToi). A hexameter is a 'length' of six fjiirpa,
feet or units, a tetrameter a ' length ' of four. But if these
lengths are to be perceived as separate groups, they must have
some sort of structure, the beginning or end must be made
perceptible. In the hexameter the end is made perceptible
by decreeing that the last foot shall ahvays be of two syllables.
But the effect of this closing cadence would be obscured unless
the preceding foot were the normal one. Therefore a hexa-
meter ends in a dactyl and spondee, or at all events in a dactyl
and a disyllabic foot. There is another possibility or alter-
native (it is found in Homer and was fancied in a later age by
Alexandrian poets and their imitators at Rome) — the last two
feet may consist of long syllables^ or the line may end in three
long syllables and a doubtful syllable {iKrj^oXov 'AttoXXcouo^j.
In this case the foi^rtk foot will usually be a dactyl.

This theoretic construction, the construction of a hexameter
i?i vacuo, leaves us with two problems to consider, a smaller
and a larger one.

The smaller question is about the nature of the last foot or
last two syllables of a line. Such effects as Virgil's

Turres et tecta Latinor'(-um)
ardua cernebant iuvenes

B 2

4 THE HEROIC

suggest that our statement ought to have been ' the end of the
group of six is marked by making the last foot a spondee'.
If so, in an ending like atiigii arva, the short syllable will be
a syllaba anceps in the sense that it can count as a long.
It is at the end of a line or group, not thrust up, as it were,
against a following syllable whose beginning ends it. A short
pause or silence completes the time, like a short rest in music,
the pause for which the Greek symbol was A ; so that the
last foot is — v^ A . That seems the most reasonable way of
contemplating the matter. The objection to it is that it does
not accord with ancient theory, and that there are a few
lines — but very few — which it does not explain. The last
foot was thought of by the ancients not as a dactyl which
combined its two short syllables into one long, but as a dactyl
which dropped its last syllable, — w (w). On this view the last
syllable is anceps in the sense that if actually long it may
count as short.

Against this ancient theory a reader of Virgil may raise the
objection : ' but there are lines which end with a real and
unmistakable spondee, for the last syllable is not the last
syllable of a word ; there is " elision " :

Turres et tecta Latinor(um)
ardua cernebant iuvenes.'

'And, again', he may proceed, 'are not lines which end in
almost equally unmistakable spondees (like primus ab oris)
far more numerous ? ' But elision at the end of a hexameter
is not certainly older than Callimachus.^ And it is chiefly in

^ "H/xtcru /xot ^vx^js CTt to weov, riynav 8' ovk 6i8'

€iT^ epos eiV 'Aidtjs Tjpnacre, nKrjv dcpaves.
It has been suggested that Ennius introduced this effect in Latin by
writing ' altisonum cael(um) ' at the end of a line. Ennius is credited
with inv iting monosyllabic forms cael and gau for caelum and gaudium,
on the analogy of Homer's Kpt and dw. Elision would not explain gau
so readily as it does caei. But it may be doubted whether Ennius ever

s ■

. HEXAMETER 5

Latin that spondees are in an overwhelming majority. In
Homer one line in five (or if we nowhere write a u e0eX>cu-
(TTLKov, one line in four) ends in a short vowel not closed by
a consonant (as in vfja, 'ArpuSao, edrjKe). In Ovid, Me^. vii,
the proportion is i in 12; in Virgil, ^^/. r in 14-3, Georg.
I in II, Aen. i. 1-500, i in 17-2. The Romans had a liking
for making a last syllable long when it could legitimately be
done, as is seen in Horace's Sapphics and Alcaics. So, perhaps,
the ancient theory of a trochaic ending is to some extent justified
by the history of the verse. The lines which the other theory
does not explain are chiefly these two in Virgil :

inseritur vero et fetu nucis arbutus horrid(a)
et steriles platani, {Georg. ii. 69.)

and

et spumas miscent argenti vivaque sulpur(a)
Idaeasque pices. i^Georg. iii. 449.)

But the text of neither passage is above suspicion. Much
earlier we find in an epigram of Simonides :

i) /xey' 'AOrjvaioLa-L (p6(ii>9 yeue$', tjulk 'ApicTTO-
yeiTcoy "I-mTapyov Krelve kol 'Ap/ioSto?.

But it is not safe to infer that either the hyperbaton or the
trochee belonged to recognized metrical practice. When
a proper name had to be put into a metrical inscription the
rigidity of metrical laws had to yield a little. There are
inscriptions extant in which metre has to submit to much
harsher treatment than this.

The second question is much more Important. In cutting

really wrote such lines at all. They may have been fictitious examples
of solecisms or eccentricities. We know (from Pompeius, 289. 10 k.)
that Lucilius not merely said that there were 100 kinds of solecism,
each with its own appropriate name, but actually described them : e. g.
Tmesis : 'as if we were to write', 'as if Ennius wrote "Massili—portabant
iuvenes ad litora— tanas." '

6 THE HEROIC

off a ' length ' of six dactyls we cut off what was too long,
what cannot really be delivered in one breath, without a pause
or break, as a single whole. Aristoxenus laid it down that for
feet of this y€U09 {T^Tpdcrrj/ioi or TeTpd\povoL Tro^ey, of the
yiuos 'l<tov) the maximum length of a phrase or kS>Xov is four
feet. This may or may not be an absolute and final law of
rhythm. But it seems sound, and at all events the hexameter
as we know it is not one continuous whole, but a whole made
up of two parts. Mere theory will not enable us to divide it.
Mere theory might suggest 2>-'c3i ^"<i give us a line like :

o) A LOS dSvenes (f>dTL, tis irore rds iroXv^pva-ov.

{Oed. Tyr. 151.)

This is part of a lyric system ^ it is not an epic line. We must
go back from theory to history and recall

rjpdfjLeda fiiya kvSos \ k7r€<pvofi€V "EKTOpa Slov.

To history, but not to accessible history. Pre-Homeric facts
and conditions, not now recoverable with certainty, and very
unlikely to be recovered by direct evidence, resulted in the
hexameter being a line which might be divided in one of
three ways. What is common to them is that they divide it
into unequal parts. That is the vital fact about a hexameter.
It is not 3 + 3, but 2-J + 3^, or (much less frequently, in
Homer) 3J+2-I, or, very frequently in Homer, 11 + 13*
(measured in short syllables).

(a) fXTjVLV deiSe, Bed, \ TlrjXrjtdSeco j4.)(^lXtjo9-

(b) Stoyei'es AaepridSr] | ttoXv [iriy^av 'Oovacrev.

TToXXd.

The two parts are not set down clumsily side by side, as were
the parts of the primitive ' Saturnian ' line in Italy. They are

^ II + 12 if we adopt the ancient theory, mentioned above, that the
last foot is trochaic.

HEXAMETER 7

linked together in a subtle way, by the fact that rhetorical
division or division in sense does not coincide with the middle
of the line. The elegiac pentameter, we may say, shows the
artistic and deliberate use of the method of juxtaposition from
which the Saturnian never emerged.

Of the three forms (a) and (c) prevail in Homer. In the
first TOO lines of the Iliad (c) occurs no fewer than 48 times,
(b) is certainly infrequent in Homer, though not so infrequent
as is sometimes supposed. Its occurrence was investigated by
Lehrs {JDe Aristarchi Studiis Homericis'^ ^ p. 394 f.), who found
that lines indubitably of the type (b) occur in the Iliad with
a frequency which varies in different books from i in 100 to
I in 50, while in the Odyssey they are less frequent still, from
about I in 100 to I in 200. This result may be true for
lines like

Sioyeues AaepTidSr}, TroXvfirj^av '08v(T<Tev,

which can?iot be anything but hephthemimeral. But (like
many recent statistics for Virgil) it is rather a curiosity of
enumeration than an important fact. It does not represent
the metrical art of the poet. A hephthemimeral effect is not
so rare as that. There are many lines in which there is no
doubt the end of a word at the penthemimeral or trochaic
division, but in which the hephthemimeral division is obviously
dominant and gives the line its character :

ArpuSrjs re, dva^ duSpcou, \ Kal Slo9 A^iXXev^ (II. i. 7)
vovcrov dva (TTparov cbpcre KaKrji/, \ oXeKouTO 8e Xaol (1. 10)
kKTrepaat TIptdfLoio ttoXlv, \ ev 8' 0LKa8' iKecrOai (1. 19)
7ral8a 8' ifiot Xva-aiTe (ptXr^v, ! rd 8^ diroLva 8i\e(T6aL (1. 20)
ajy €0ar', 'i8eL(T^v 8' 6 yipcou \ Kal eTreid^ro /xvOcp (1. 33)
fjLTj 8r] ovToos, dyaOos "Trep kdiv, \ OeoeiKeX' A)(^iXXev (1. 131)
o<Tcrov (pepT€p6s €l/jll (riOeu, \ arvyir) 8k Kal dXXos (1. 186).

Of hephthemimeral lines in this wider sense I find 9 in the
first 100 lines of the Iliad, and 10 in lines 101-200, or one

8 THE HEROIC

line in ten. (There are a few more lines which are doubtful,
in which the penthemimeral or trochaic division competes in
importance with the hephthemimeral.) If we do not proceed
in this way our figures will not do justice to the metrical skill
of Homer. His cadences will be much less varied. Lehrs
practically eliminates a quite recognizable and effective type
of line.

In Virgil (a) and (b) are very frequent, (a) is indeed
dominant in Latin hexameters generally. Ennius, Lucretius,
and Virgil agree in having this division in about 64 per cent.
of their lines, (c) is very rare in Virgil and later poets, much
rarer than is sometimes supposed. A line of the type (b) very
often has a word-ending in the middle of the second foot, that
is, a subordinate trihemimeral division :

Non comptae \ mansere comae | sed pectus anhelum.

This is natural ; for if a poet began his line with 'Italiam', it
would happen very often that the next two words went together :

* fato profugus'. Further, it was natural that the syllables
before (b) should very often be a word of iambic form, like

* comae '; so there would be the end of a word at (c), the
Homeric or trochaic division. But lines like :

et quorum pars magna fui. quis talia fando
or

accipe quae peragenda prius. latet arbore opaca

are not 'Homeric' in effect, for the reader's ear. The strongly
marked hephthemimeral pause throws the other pause into
the shade. In Homer, too, there are many lines like :

vovcrov ava arpaTov copcre KaKrjv, oXeKovTO Se Xaoi,

but it is not these lines that are characteristic of Homer. The
line {Aen. v. 140) :

baud mora, prosiluere suis, ferit aethera clamor
is not really like

litora deseruere, latet sub classibus aequor.

HEXAMETER 9

The second of these is 'Homeric', the first is not/ Lines of
the type ' non comptae mansere comae ' are said to number
1,020 in the Aeneid \ if they are to count as having ' trochaic '
division, it is obvious that the divergence between Homer and
Virgil is considerably lessened. But the Homeric effect is not
really found except in lines like :

laside Palinure, ferunt ipsa aequora classem.
fas omne est, Cytherea, meis te fidere regnis.
Anchisa generate, deum certissima proles.

The poet seems to have had a liking for the effect with a
vocative at the beginning of a speech. In Latin it meant
that accent and ictus coincided ('generate, Cytherea'). Lines
with unquestionable 'trochaic' division are more frequent in
Ennius than in later poets, and sometimes a special effect of
sound is intended :

labitur uncta carina, volat super impetus undas.

But even in Ennius they are not very frequent ; the proportion
in which they occur is about 8 per cent.

It was first suggested by Bergk, and Usener later in his
Altgriechischer Versbau endeavoured to base the view on various
kinds of evidence, that the Homeric hexameter grew out of
two shorter lines :

vr\a fikv ovv TrdfnrpcoToy
{f)€pv(r(To/jL€P eh d\a Slav

(neglect of the f at this point, it was argued, was a tradition
set up by the older form of the verse),

eiae 8e jx ua-ayayovcra
kirl dpoyov dpyvporjXov

^ But they are put in the same class by Norden {Aen. vi, Appen-
dix VII, p. 423), who regards both as having a 'weibliche Hauptcaesur',
writing the first

haud mora prosiluere || suis | ferit aethera clamor

lo THE HEROIC

(where hiatus can be similarly explained). In recent years
this contention has fallen into discredit, and it has been held
that the hexameter perhaps originated in several different
ways. There was the ' bucolic ' hexameter, it was urged,
with its marked division after the fourth foot :

eA/cero 5' €/c KoXeoio fieya ^i(p09, \ rjXde 8' 'AOrjvr).

Upon this it may be observed that separate lyric lines of
four and two dactyls would not necessarily by uniting produce
a hexameter. The line of four feet would not necessarily have
a pause or division so placed that a hexameter with its vital
and characteristic caesura would come into existence.^

But there are hexameters, both in Greek and Latin, which
do seem to have a marked pause or division exactly in the
middle of the line, after the third foot. It is desirable to
consider these before proceeding further. But neither these
nor other types of line can be considered profitably until
we have determined what the words ' caesura ' and ' pause '
are to mean.

A caesura is a cutting or severance (to/jltJ) between two
parts of a line, a division which does not coincide with the
end of a foot (for a division that does coincide with the end
of a foot it is convenient to use another word, diaeresis). It

^ It has been observed that certain lengthenings such as Trapa 5' dvfjp
and Kpovicuv, found in the sixth foot, are also found in the fourth. But
the fourth is almost the only foot where Kpovlcjv could be introduced,
barring the second, where it would not be very euphonious (it may be
an accident that no line beginning a) re Kpoviwi' oK^ov lniK\6jari ... is
found). The fourth foot, when it ends with the end of a word, shows
little tendency to take the form — v_y ; rather the opposite. Hermann
and Wernicke {lex Wernickiana) observed that the foot is either a dactyl
or ends with a naturally long vowel ; mere lengthening by position is
infrequent — ap.a 5' dXAos Xabs eiriaOdi is an exceptional line. In a few
lines, e.g. fi\oavpS>vis kcrecpdvojTO {II. xi. 36), liovv ^viv evpvfxeTojnov (x.
292), as in Ennius' s ponebdt ante salutem, an original long quantity of the
termination perhaps survives.

HEXAMETER ii

is often a * pause ', but it is not a pause of measurable or fixed
duration.^ It is not a metrical 'pause'; by that is meant an
interval of silence which can be measured in terms of the
duration of short syllables or y^pbvoi npc^Toi : e. g. when a
group of three dactyls is ' catalectic ' there is a pause at the
end which is St^povos or 8ia-7]fL09 (arboribusque com|ae ^).
It is a metrical division with which some sort of rhetorical
pause or pause in the sense usually coincides. If it is doubtful
where the metrical caesura occurs, the doubt must be set at
rest by the sense or the rhetoric. Thus in the line :

pascite ut ante boves, pueri ; submittite tauros,

if the punctuation is right which puts only a comma before
pueri and a semicolon after it, the caesura is after ' pueri ', it is
i<p$r)fj.t/jL€pi]9 (after the seventh half-foot, after 3^ feet), semi-
septenaria, not TrepdrjfjLi/iepTJ^, semiquinaria. There are some
lines (but not so very many) where a word placed like pueri
seems to have exactly the same sense-pause — a very slight
one — after it as before it :

Ascanius clari ; condet \ cognominis Albam

Cecropidae iussi — miserum — septena quotannis.

i^Aen, vi. 21.)

Here we must be content to say that the line has either or
both caesuras.

Lines which fall asunder or all but fall asunder in the
middle, owing to a pause or the end of a word at the end
of the third foot, are not very common. In //. xv. 18

• ^ Of /xe/z^'?7 OT^ T eKpefiod VYovev ek oe ttooollv

^ In practice its length depends on the dramatic instinct of the
reciter. In actually dramatic verse, iambic or trochaic, there must
sometimes be a pause much longer than a metrical ' pause' would be.

12 THE HEROIC

emendation is almost certainly necessary, though some editors
still retain eKpifico. The line should run :

77 ov fJ-e/jLj/rj 6t€ T€ Kpe/xoo vy^roOev}

In Od. iii. 34 no such remedy is possible :

OL S' coy ovu ^elvovs iSou, dOpooL -qXQov airavr^s.

Are we to say of this line ' bonus dormitavit Homerus ' ? It
is certainly on the very verge of the legitimate. Virgil, too,
comes near the verge in Aen. vii. 625 :

pars arduus altis
pulverulentus equis furit, omnes arma requirunt.

Here, as happens so often in Virgil where there is some strange
or curious effect, there is a reminiscence of Ennius. The
Homeric and the Virgilian line have this in common that
the third foot is a dactyl ; two short syllables precede the
break, stimulating the reader (Christ suggests) to rapid onward
movement. The division before iSov and fiirit is metrically
so important that it can be felt in spite of the longer rhetorical
pause after them." We need not hesitate much about saying
* dormitavit Ennius ', for Ennius did many things that cannot
be defended.

cui par imber et Ignis | spiritus et gravis terra
is not a good hexameter. In the line

spernitur orator bonus, horridus miles amatur,

^ L. Miiller mentions a similar correction required in Paulinus (21.
46) : ' quaeque suis proprie egerit hie in finibus edam ' (read gerit for
egerit).

2 Another Virgilian line with no very obvious caesura is Aen. xii. 144 :
magnanimi lovis ingratum ascendere cubile.
Terentianus Maurus and Servius thought that it had none at all, but it
is saved by the slight separation which was felt between the elements
of a compound word, ' in-gratum ', an effect required also to explain lines
of Lucretius ('quid enim im-mortalibus atque beatis') and Lucilius
(* Scipiadae magno im-probus obiciebat asellus ').

HEXAMETER

the disruption of the line may be meant to emphasize the
antithesis. Horace has a similar line [Epp. ii. 2. 75) :
hac rabiosa fugit canis, hac lutulenta ruit sus.

But the hexameter of Satire (or Epistle) is a different thing
from the Epic hexameter, and should be treated separately, as
a stream flowing in a channel of its own. Several Virgilian
lines have a monosyllabic conjunction after the two short
syllables, so that there is a possibility of a slight caesura on
either side of the middle point :

aut Ararim Parthus \ bibet | aut ; Germania Tigrim.

{Ed. i. 62.)

This is a euphonious line, very different in effect from what
was perhaps Ennius's worst one :

sparsis hastis longis campus splendet et horret.

With this we may further compare a Hne of Homer's which
has a good deal of coincidence between word and foot and
which did not escape criticism (//. i. 214) :

v^pio^ elveKa TrjoSe' av S' tcr^^o, iretOeo 8' rjfuu.

This line, too, is quite euphonious, and its structure might
be represented thus :

I NI Ml I

It has the ' trochaic ' caesura, characteristic of Homer, and also
the ' bucolic ' diaeresis after the fourth foot, both of them
well marked by a rhetorical pause.^

1 Ancient metricians recognize as a type of hexameter the line that
is divided in the middle, but think of it as having a comic effect. So
Terentianus (who, as he usually does, reproduces in his own verse the
effect he is speaking of) :

namque tome media est versu non apta severo . . .
ipse etenim sonus indicat, | esse hoc lusibus aptum
et ferme modus hie datur [ a plerisque Priapo.

14 THE HEROIC

n. Subordinate Divisions

A caesura is a severance or cutting which divides a line or
verse into two parts (phrases or KcoXa) : two parts, that is,
of which a Hne may legitimately consist. The three forms
of caesura which we have now considered are vital to the
existence of a hexameter. Any one of them may be fke
caesura of the line. The presence of any one of them prevents
the verse from falling asunder and ceasing to be a hexameter.

But a caesura of course incidentally divides a /oo/ also into
two parts, and in this sense there may be caesurae in many
places, not vital to the structure of the line. In irXdy^Brj
kirel TpoLT]9 the first foot is divided in the ratio 3 : i (the
'trochaic' caesura), and the second in the ratio 2 : 2. But it
is the caesura after Tpolrjs that divides the line into its
component parts.

Frequently there is a marked caesura, of this secondary or
subsidiary kind, in the second foot :

ovXo/jLeuTju, fj jxvpt' A-^aiols dXye eOrjKe.
Frequently also there is a marked diaeresis ('bucolic') after the
fourth foot (//. i. 247) :

ATpeiSrj^ S' iripOjOev kfirivLe. tolctl Se Niarcop.

A line might have either of these and yet be a very defective
hexameter : //. xix. 45, for example,

Kal fjLTju 01 Tore y eh dyoprju taav, ovv€k' ji)(^iXX€V9

seems just to escape disintegration, although it has a marked
bucolic diaeresis — it escapes by means of a slight caesura after
eh^ But in a great many lines — as in the two just quoted —

When it was ' given to Priapus ', however, it was not as a hexameter,
but as a combination of Gly conic and Pherecratean (in/ra, p. 176) :

et ferme modus hie datur

a plerisque Priapo.
^ Mr. J. W. White {The Verse of Greek Comedy, p. 152) discovers in
Aristophanes a Hne which has only bucoHc diaeresis: it is Pax iiii,

HEXAMETER 15

the strongest rhetorical pause in the line comes in the middle
of the second foot or after the fourth, while in some lines
there is a strong pause at both places. Such pauses may be
so conspicuous as to characterize a line and distinguish it from
other types. Yet these divisions are not on the same plane
metrically with the three caesurae first discussed ; for they
must be accompanied by one of these three caesurae.

The mere ending of a word at one or other of these two
places is not a fact of much importance. To be worth con-
sidering the division must be marked by a stronger rhetorical
pause than occurs at the end of neighbouring words. Thus in
eKTTepcraL IIpid/jLoio ttoXlu there is a caesura in the second
foot, but it attracts little attention and cannot be said to mark
off a section of the line. There is also a trochaic caesura in
the next foot, a caesura capable of being the vital caesura ; but
it is the more marked break offer ttoXlv that counts as the
caesura of the line (hephthemimeral). Similarly, in iXa>pia
T€V)(^€ Kvu€(rorL there is no bucolic diaeresis in any sense that
it is worth while to contemplate. To reckon as a bucolic
diaeresis any ending of a word at the end of the fourth foot
will give misleading results. Gleditsch {Metrik^ p. 119),
following Hartel, says that 60 per cent, of Homer's lines have
bucolic division, or 15,200 verses in all. This figure must be
arrived at by counting lines like eXcop^a T^vyjc kvv^(t<tlv or
'AyaioXs aXy^' eOrjKei/. On this principle, af(;/iie altae moenia

' where the enclitic precludes penthemimeral caesura '. But the vara avis
turns out to be only that common fowl, diprava lectio. The line is reported
to be given by the MSS. thus :

'If. ovdih irpoaSujaci fxoi tuv crirXay x^'cov ; Tp. ov yap oiov re — .
There is a syllable over, and it is clearly /ixot that must be deleted (so
Geldart and Hall, in the Oxford text). The line then runs :

ovSfls TTpoadwaei | raiv airXdyx^^^ 5
It has a penthemimeral caesura ; and, we may add, it would have to be
read with a slight caesura there even if fxoi were retained and twv
ejected. But (;iT\dyx^<"v vvithout the article is very unlikely.

i6 THE HEROIC

Ro7nae would be a bucolic ending in Latin, and CatuUus's
' Peleus and Thetis ' would be one of the most bucolic poems
in the Latin language (' Peliaco quondam prognatae | vertice
pinus ' !). Lines in Homer in which a bucolic diaeresis attracts
the reader's attention are not very frequent ; lines which have
any real claim to be ' bucolic ' are not more than half as
numerous as Hartel makes them. In Theocritus it is two
lines out of three in some poems, every second line in others,
and the term ' bucolic ' is justified. On Hartel's method no
clear distinction would be drawn between Homer * and Theo-
critus, and;, further, the difference between Theocritus and the
Eclogues would also be obscured. Virgil did not follow
Theocritus in this feature of his verse, and this was recognized

^ Apollonius has bucolic diaeresis much more frequently than Homer.
Mr. Mooney [Argon., Appendix, p. 415) says that it is found in 849 lines
out of the 1,362 of the first book. That is about 62 per cent. But, like
Hartel's figures for Homer, these figures are arrived at by including
lines which have no real bucolic effect for the reader's ear. In tne
first 200 lines of Book I there are 41 in which the bucolic diaeresis is
revealed by punctuation, i. e. there is at least a comma at the end of the
fourth foot. Fifty-seven more lines I am prepared to regard as ' bucolic ',
though sometimes rather doubtfully. This results in a total of 98, or
49*5 ps^ cent. In the first 100 lines of the Iliad I find six marked by
punctuation (I take the Clarendon Press text for Homer, Mr. Mooney's
for Apollonius), and 25 that can be called bucolic with some degree of
plausibility (a total amounting to about half Hartel's percentage). In
a line like

Xpv(yiioi^ l^erd Kwas ev^vyov i'jKaaav 'Apycu {Arg. 4)

I am unable to see a bucolic division. There are two groups of three
words each : the verb rjXaaav has the accusative kv^vyov 'Apyu after it,
and it is no more closely related to one of these two words than to the
other. The divisions or pause before and after ijXaarav are exactly equal,
and neither of them is so marked as the division after fcZas. Again, in

olojvovs T dk^yeiv -^5' e/xnvpa arjjMiT' idiaOai {Arg. 145)

I am still less inclined to recognize a bucolic division. ^5' e/xirvpa arjfxaT'
iS((T6ai is a coherent group of words, with extremely slight divisions
between them ; the adjective epiiTvpa must go very closely with crj/^ara.

HEXAMETER 17

by the ancients. Terentianus Maurus says that Theocritus
has the effect in abundance :

plurimus hoc pollet Siculae telluris alumnus,

but Virgil makes a sparing use of it :

noster rarus eo pastor Maro, sed tamen inquit
' die mihi, Damoeta, cuium pecus ? an Meliboei ? '

Atilius (c. 21) makes the same statement in prose: 'Theo-
critus hanc metri legem custodivit, Vergilius contempsit.' It
seems clear that some at least of the ancient critics counted as
bucolic only those lines in which there was a quite unmistakable
or conspicuous break after the fourth foot.^

The bucolic line, with a diaeresis and not a caesura as its
outstanding feature, stands by itself, and may almost be said to
have a more definite character of its own than any one other type.

^ There may be a comma at the end of the fourth foot without the
lines being therefore bucolic, e.g. :

sed tamen iste deus qui sit, da, Tityre, nobis.

This is a line with hephthemimeral caesura and the fifth foot slightly
detached from its surroundings.

Virgil was too careful and subtle an artist to fail to put into his
Pastorals some distinct suggestion of Theocritean rhythm. Bucolic
lines are much more frequent than in the Georgics or Aeneid. Lines
which any reader would feel to be bucolic come to about 10 per crnt.
In most of these the effect is marked by punctuation; lines in which
there is at least a comma after the fourth foot come to 83-^2 P^^ cent. In
the Georgics the lines of this stricter type come to 2I per cent. ; the
larger figure is 3-3^ per cent. In the Aeneid bucolic lines are i to
2 per cent. Other Pastorals show a figure approaching that of the
Eclogues : Culex about 7 per cent., Dirae about 7 per cent., Calpurnius's
Eclogues about 7 per cent, (stricter type 5 per cent.). But, curiously,
the Lydia and Moretitni have only one bucolic line each, in 80 and 124
lines respectively (in \.\\^ Lydia possibly two — there is another line which
may be bucolic). The Ciris resembles the Georgics. Later epic closely
resembles the Aeneid (Stat. Thebais i. i| per cent., 77?^^. ii. \\ per cent.,
Theb. vi. 1-250 and Aclu i. 1-250 i per cent., Val. Fl. Argon, i. 2.\ per
cent.).

1887 C

i8 THE HEROIC

It shows some little tendency to occur in definable places. It
is not unfrequent as the first line of a paragraph :

riTOL y C09 enrcou kut ap e^ero roicri o avecTTr]
MiuTcop . . .

and it was still more clearly suited to be a penultimate line
{Od. xi. 223-4) :

aXXa (pocoaSe Td\icrTa XiXaieo' \ ravra Se Trdvra
lad', 'iva Kal jjLeroTriaOe reij eiTrrjada yvvaiKL.

Compare in the same book of the Odyssey 11. 136-7^ 161-2,
202-3, 303-4, 340-1, 475-6. From epic poetry this effect
passed into the elegiac epigram : the penultimate line was
often a bucolic hexameter :

vvv 6" 6 ixkv elv dXt TTOv (peperaL veKvs, dvrl 8' eKetvov
ovvofia Kal Keveov arj/xa napep^ofJ-^Oa.

It is in Greek that this is found ; Martial shows no liking
for it.

It will have been observed that all the bucolic lines quoted
above have a dactyl in the fourth place. This is all but
universal, and it is easily understood. A spondee there (unless
itself preceded by another spondee) would mean a cadence
similar to that with which the whole line closes ; the separation
of the parts would be too great, the movement of the line too
much arrested or retarded. Homer admits the effect very
rarely (Od. x. 26) :

o^pa (pepoi uTJds re Kal avrovs' ov$' dp' e/ieXAez^.^

Christ, after explaining the principle and illustrating it by
//. vii. 212 :

fjL€i8i6cou pXacTvpola-L Trpoa-doTraG-f vepde Se TToacrLV

(where the strange form Trpoa-conaa-L seems to be due to
avoidance of a spondee), adds that ' a similar preference for

^ Lines of this type are not written by the Alexandrian poets or by
Nonnus.

HEXAMETER 19

the dactyl in the fourth foot is not provable in Roman poets '.
This is a mistake, if he is speaking of bucolic lines. Virgil's
bucolic lines almost always have a dactyl in the fourth foot
{Ed. iii. 15 is one of the very rare exceptions ^). The Romans
had a strong liking for lines of the type :

molli paullatim | flavescet campus arista.

But we have seen that to count these as bucolic would result
in inextricable confusion. If we count lines that are really
'bucolic', only one in thirteen has a spondee before the bucolic
diaeresis.^

The two divisions which we have now considered, the
• trihemimeral caesura and the bucolic diaeresis, are the most
important of the subordinate divisions. A marked pause nearer
the beginning of the line, or nearer the end, is less frequent
and less natural. In the hands of the Greeks the Epic
hexameter showed no tendency to be hypermetric : each line
has its cadence, its own close ; there are no effects like
Virgil's

turres et tecta Latinor|um
ardua cernebant iuvenes.

So a new sentence does not begin very near the end of the
line. Sophocles' verse (TV^^/^. 10 10):

Trdi/Tcou 'EXX-quoou dSLKcoraTot dvepes, ov9 Srj

is un-Homeric, and rare in Virgil (Ae?i. ii. 458) :

evado ad summi fastigia culminis, unde
tela manu miseri iactabant inrita Teucri.

The writers of the CiUex and the Aetna show a liking for
a very late division in the line :

1 The precise facts are : In the Eclogues^ out of 67 bucolic lines four
have a spondee in the fourth foot ; Georgics, 3 out of 59 ; Calpurnius,
3 out of 51 ; Culex, 3 out of 51 (Aen. vi.. 3 in 15).

2 This is based on a survey of over 9,000 lines in various poets.

C 2

20 THE HEROIC

et mortem vitare monet per acumina. namque {Ctdex 184)
et flammas et saeva quatit mihi verbera ; pone
Cerberus (219)

heu quid ab officio digressa est gratia, cum te
restitui superis (223)

(cf. Aetna 209, 216, 274, 514, 601).

Conversely, a division such as is marked by a full stop or
a colon seldom occurs very near the beginning of the line. It
is a rare and sometimes deliberate effect, as when Ovid ends
a sentence with the end of the first dactyl, at the turning-point
of the- story of Midas {Met. xi. 118):

vix spes ipse suas animo capit, aurea fingens
omnia, gaudenti mensas posuere ministri, etc.

Many minor variations and special effects are possible in
the hexameter, most of them readily intelligible to the careful
reader. One other question of some magnitude remains — the
extent to which the * trochaic ' division of a dactvl is admitted

In Homer this division is very frequent in the caesura, in
the vital caesura of the third foot. We have seen that this was
perhaps the result of the construction of the verse out of two
shorter lines. It is partly to this caesura that Homeric verse
owes its greater ease and rapidity of movement, as compared
with the verse of Virgil. Roman poets seldom have the
' trochaic ' caesura ; it may be that they were repelled by the
inevitable coincidence of accent and ictus which it involved :

O passi graviora | .

Nonnus, on the other hand, cultivated it to excess, some-
times having it in half a dozen consecutive lines. The
Homeric use of it gave facility and fluency to the verse ;
Nonnus's use of it justifies the term ' feminine ' sometimes
applied to it.

HEXAMETER 21

The ' trochaic ' division might occur in feet other than the
third, and in two or more consecutive feet. In the Hne :

avTLS I eireiTa \ ireSouSe \ kvXlvS^to Xdas dvatSris
it is admitted three times, to give a special effect. So also in :

TToXXa 8' dvavTa Karavra irdpavTci re 86)(fLLd r rjXOou,
and in Ennius's Hne :

labitur uncta carina per aequora cana celocis/

The Greek and the Latin hexameter differed in treatment
of it. In Latin there was coincidence of ictus with accent —
with an accent that was some sort of stress accent, not a
musical accent or accent of pitch as in Greek.

The Greek hexameter disliked a trochaic division in the
fourth foot {to 117} Kara rirapTov Tpo^alov). In the line last
quoted wdpavrd re should be read as a group of four
syllables. In //. ix. 394 :

IItj\€V9 Orju fjLOL eneiTa yvvaiKa yajiea-a-eTaL avros

Aristarchus's ye ixda-crerai is probably right and is adopted by
many editors. In Od. i. 390 :

Kal K^v TOVT eOeXoifiL \ Alos ye | SiSoutos dpea-dat,

the words A 16s ye SlSoutos go closely together, with extremely
slight pauses between them — a group of six syllables. //.
xxiii. 760 :

ay)(L fidX\ coy ot€ tls re yvvaiKos ev^couoio

seems to be a real instance, with trochaic division of the third
foot also. In //. vi. 2 :

TToXXd 8* dp' €u6a Kal euO' lOvae /J-d)(^r) neScoLO,

there is trochaic division in the fourth foot, but not also in

the third. This type of line is rare in Homer, and it is not

found in Apollonius (Mooney, Argon., Appendix, p. 415).

^ Horace, in his letter to the future emperor, Tiberius, has a strange
line of this type, without any obvious justification in the sense :

dignum mente domdque legentis honesta Neronis.

22 THE HEROIC

In Latin a trochaic division in the fourth foot is certainly
not very frequent, but it does not seem to be disliked in the
same degree. Ennius has a line — indefensible in structure —
which has this division unsupported by any regular caesura :

corde capessere. semita nulla | pedem stabilibat.
Virgil has the division in such lines as :

tanto, nate, magis contende tenacia vincla,
and with a similar division in the fifth foot also :

sedimus impulimusque ; ea lapsa repente ruinam
(where the sound imitates the sense). Ovid, Met. x. 95 :

et platanus genialis acerque coloribus impar

is the only instance, quoted from any good writer, of the
repetition of the effect in the third and fourth feet. The L^tin
hexameter also rejected a repetition of the effect in the second
and third foot. Ovid and Lucan are said to have no line in
which this occurs. It is found in pre- Augustan verse :

vos quoque signa | videtis | aquai dulcis alumnae,
cum clamore | paratis | inanes fundere voces.

(Cicero, Aratea.)

The close of the line was subject to various restrictions.
The heroic verse of the epic ran to its close with dignity and
completeness. All the lines of Homer are separate ; there is
no continuity of scansion from one line to the next. In
//. xiv. 265 evpvoTra Zrjv should no doubt be read, a mono-
syllabic accusative, not Zrjv with elision. Callimachus, in an
elegiac couplet^ ends a hexameter with ovk oT8\ and Roman
poets admitted this effect of hypermetron in epic verse, though
even with them it is not very frequent (see above, p. 4). On
the other hand, there are various points in which Homer shows
greater freedom than later poets. A double spondee is most

HEXAMETER 23

effective when a dactyl precedes, but Homer does not shrink
from :

KaKov coy SeLSLCTaeadaL
or

€^ SL(f)pov yovvd^eaOov.

He ends a line with kirl 8' aiy^iov Ki^fj rvpov, but later poets
were careful not to let the end of a word come at the end of
the fifth foot. It is probable, however, that some of the
endings in two spondaic words are not really Homer's, but
due to the intrusion of later contracted forms {Ar)T6os vlos
and 776a Slav coming to be written Ar)Tovs vlos and 7700 Slav.
Cf kK Sicppoo in one of the passages quoted). Similarly,
ArpeL'Sao (— ^ w — ^) would come to be written Arp^iSao.
Thus ' Homer ' gave more encouragement to the use of the
a-TTovSeLd^cdv than he himself perhaps intended. It was a
piece of literary affectation with Alexandrian poets ^ and their
Roman followers. Catullus has the ending in three consecutive
lines (Ixiv. 78 f.) :

electos iuvenes simul et decus innuptarum.

In Virgil it is more restricted, the ending rarely consisting of
a Latin word — as in magnum lovis incrementum in Ed. iv,
intervallo in Aen. v. 320 (after Lucretius) — more often of
a Greek proper name ; or a spondaic ending is used to make
the sound answer to the sense, as in :

aut leves ocreas lento ducunt argento.

After the Augustan age the aTrovSeid^cov went out of fashion.
Manilius and Lucan have it very rarely. It vanishes also from
late Greek epic : Nonnus does not admit it at all.

The Greek hexameter enjoyed great freedom in regard to
the last word of the line. It might be a word of any number

^ * Every eleventh line in Callimachus, every sixth in Aratus, is a
aiTovSud^uv,^ Gleditsch, Metrik, 2. 71.

24 THE HEROIC

of syllables from one up to seven (vneprjuopeovrcoy). In this,
as in some other things, Ennius seems to have made the
unsafe assumption that anything could be done in Latin that
was possible in Greek. He also has various endings, from
exoritur sol to sapietitipotenies. But Latin later shows a
strong preference for words of two, or three, syllables at the
end of the line.^ The result is that accent and ictus coincide
in the last two feet, and Latin also had a liking for lines in
which there was threefold coincidence :

incultisque rubens pendebit sentibus uva.

But whether this was the motive, or the only motive, for the
rule is not quite certain. x\ccent and ictus coincide in a word
like *frugiferentes' (with a secondary accent on the first syllable).
On the other hand, they were rather conspicuously separated
in an ending like 'pretium dederitis'. Whether it was deliberately

* When Virgil does admit an ending in a word of one syllable it is some-
times for a picturesque effect in sound ('praeruptus aquae mons', Aen. i.
105; ' procumbit humi bos', v. 481 ; 'ruit Oceano nox', ii. 250; 'ruunt-
que equites et odora canum vis*, iv. 132), more often it is a reminiscence of
Ennius or Lucretius (which does not exclude its being at the same time
a special sound-effect). Norden {Ae^i,. vi, Appendix IX, p. 428) collects
all the facts. Sometimes the monosyllable is an enclitic (' fides est, virum
quern'), or there are two monosyllables ('hac stat, et cum, et dum').
Sometimes the archaic rhythm is meant to have a solemn or impressive
effect (*deae mens, deum gens, et magnis dis' ; the last a known reminis-
cence of Ennius, as resiituis rem also is).

Endings in words of four or five syllables are mainly Greek, usually
consisting of Greek words (' hymenaei, Noemonaque Prytanimque, Ery-
manthi, Deidamia, Pirithoumque '). In the rare cases, where the word is
Latin, there is usually a Greek metrical effect (e.g. hiatus, m feniineo
ululatu) ; quadrtipedantum (^Aen. xi. 614) seems to stand alone in Virgil.
(Catullus has an extreme instance of Greek metrical devices with an
ending in a Greek word, in qua rex tempesiate novo | atichis hymenaeo.
So Virgil has gravidi'ts autiintno. This dispondac ending, with a word
of three long syllables, is of course to be classed with endings like
hymenaei. Latin has no strong preference for a tris^^llabic word of that
shape.)

HEXAMETER 25

intended or not, the result came about that the Latin hexa-
meter had its rhythm more obvious, and more clearly revealed
by accent, at the end of the line. In the earlier part of the
line, and especially in the middle of the line, divergence of
ictus and accent was the rule. In iambic verse the opposite
effect came about. In a Latin senarius there was divergence
very often at the beginning and end of a line, and coincidence
in the middle.

At the beginning of the line also there are differences
between the Greek and the Latin hexameter. Homer has
rather a liking, or at all events no dislike, for a spondee in
the first place. Sometimes it is even a spondee isolated by
a slight pause after it :

TOTe 8' ovTi SvvqcreaL dyv'uiievos Trep
\paL(TfjL€iu, evT au noXXot ktX.^ (//. i. 242.)

Latin preferred a dactylic beginning, and preferred it very
strongly when the first foot was separated from the rest of the
line by any kind of pause. This may be illustrated by one of
the most groundless conjectures ever made in the text of a
classical author, Bahrens's verbis in Stat. Silvae, v. 3. 161.
Statius there wrote of his father's prose version of Homer :

tu par adsuetus Homero
ferre iugum senosque pedes aequare solutis
versibus et numquam passu breviore relinqui.

Versibus is perfectly sound and perfectly clear : lines of
prose, lines released from metrical fetters. Solvere verba would
mean to break them up into separate syllables or letters. But
apart from that, Statius would never have begun a line with
the rhythm 'verbis, et . . .'. Latin has no dislike for a

^ It is notable, and it was noted b}' ancient critics, that this effect
resembles the '' Aeolic basis ' found in certain types of Aeolian lyric
verse.

26 THE HEROIC

slightly isolated dactyl, and even allows a full stop after a dactyl

(Ovid, Met. xi. ii8):

. . . aurea fingens

omnia, gaudenti mensas posuere ministri.

In Virgil almost the only instance in which two consonants
other than a mute and a liquid do not lengthen the syllable is
found in the line (^Aeti. xi. 309) :

ponite. spes sibi quisque, &c.

EXCURSUS

{a) On Hexameters in the Lyric and Tragic poets. Mention
has been made above of the line in Sophocles {O.T. 151), « At6s
ahviirh (pari-, which has no caesura. The corresponding line in
the antistrophe :

TrptoTi'i are KeKkon^vos, Bvyarep Ato?, n/x/3por' ^Addva

might be mistaken for an ordinary hexameter.

Hexameters in lyric and tragic poets are apparent rather than
real. They are lyric groups of 4 + 2 or 3 + 3 dactyls. Their nature
may be realized by reading carefully the dactylic aTacnuov in the
Phoenissae (783 f.), or the hexameters which occur in the first
choric passage of the Agame7nnon (104 f.), or in the Androjnache
(103-141), or the hexameters in Find. Pyth. ix and Nem. ix.
Differences are easily observed ; a few of the more important are
the following :

(i) In none of these passages is there a single example of the
'trochaic' caesura, so frequent in Homer. It is found once or
twice in some rather conversational hexameters in the Track.
and Philoct. of Sophocles {Track. 1014, 1037—2 lines in 15 : Phil.
839). In the Androm. 105-16 are elegiac lines, but not ordinary
elegiac verse. In Xenophanes and in Theognis the trochaic caesura
is at least as frequent as in Homer, but it does not occur here.
There are also more dactyls than in normal elegiac verse.

(2) Trochaic division in the fourth foot is not avoided: Pkoen.
786 ovK. eVt Ka\\ixopoi9 (rT€(f)dvoi(n \ vedvidos copas, 803 (antistr.)
HrjTTOTe Tov Onvdrco Trporedepra | \6xevp. loKaaras.

HEXAMETER 27

(3) In Pindar, Netn. ix, many of the lines betray themselves by
conspicuous lack of caesura : avh[)oha\iavr 'Epi^uXaj/, opKiov ws ore
TTKTTov. Horace's lyric hexameters in the Odes, as will be seen,
are unlike epic hexameters ; they do not, however, in any instance
lack caesura. The Pindaric lines consist of two * enoplii ', which
will be discussed later (pp. 177 f.).

Roman grammarians recognized a catalectic hexameter which
they call meiriim angeliciwi : it is ' celeritate nuntiis aptum '.
' Stesichorus invenit : unam enim syllabam detraxit hexametro,
et fecit tale :

optima Calliope miranda poematibus.'

A verse of this form was called XoipiXeiop or AicpiXiov by the Greeks.
But it was not a heroic hexameter catalectic. It was written by
Stesichorus (and verses like it have been written in English by
Swinburne) ; and it occurred occasionally in other poets. It was
a lyric verse of two KwXa, which assumed the appearance of a
hexameter if it had the hexameter's caesura, and if the third foot
was a spondee and not a trochee ; but it did not necessarily have
either of these things : it might be

devdoLs TTOTafioidXv \ avOeai t iiapLvols.

[b) On Statistics relating to Virgil's verse. The number 1,020
mentioned above, for lines in the Aeneid of the type :

non comptae mansere comae, sed pectus anhelum

(i. e. the type in which there is a word-ending in the middle of the
second and fourth feet, and also after the first short syllable of
a dactyl in the third foot) is given by Norden, as arrived at by
La Roche. From it he proposes to deduct 105 cases, in which
que precedes the trochaic break :

fataque fortunasque virum moresque manusque.

Such lines, he maintains, have really a penthemimeral caesura :

fataque fortunasjjque virum moresque manusque.

No doubt *que' was slightly detached in pronunciation from
'fortunas'; but surely this would be a slighter pause than that
which comes between two quite separate words, such as the pause
after 'que'. Even that pause does not seem to me to have a good
claim to be the chief caesura in the line. ' Virum ' is a genitive

28 THE HEROIC

going with ' fata ' and ' fortunas ', and the reader connects it with
them, though no doubt it belongs to 'mores' and 'manus' also
('fates and fortunes of the heroes, and [their] characters and
deeds'): so that this too would be a line with hephthemimeral
caesura. A recent article in the Classical Quarterly (April, 19 14)
by Mr.W. G. D. Butcher seems to follow Norden in classifying
as lines with trochaic caesura lines of the type *non comptae
mansere comae ' — ' sit mihi fas audita loqui, sit numine vestro '
is the example given, where the hephthemimeral caesura again
seems to me clearly the dominant one. The reasons given for the
procedure are unconvincing. ' Ancient writers differ as to whether
the trochaic or hephthemimeral caesura should take precedence. . . .
Perhaps the best argument in favour of the trochaic caesura is that
it is natural to accept the first available caesura in the verse. For
instance, in a line beginning

infandum, regina

we have no certainty that another caesura will follow, so that we
should naturally adopt the first caesura as the principal one, and
consider any other that may follow as subsidiary.' This seems
to me no argument at all. In a line like

et quorum pars magna fui. quis talia fando

a much more marked pause follows almost instantly. Why should
a caesura be held to be dominant merely because it comes a little
earlier in the line ?

Mr. Butcher gives 1,037 as the number of lines in the Aeneid,
which he calls 'normal trochaic' (i.e. lines like ' non comptae
mansere comae'). Of hephthemimeral lines he finds only 371.
But in the first 100 lines of the sixth book I find 20 (excluding
lines of the type ' non comptae mansere comae ', and excluding
some in which the hephthemimeral pause is at least equal to the
penthemimeral). The lines that I reckon as clearly hephthe-
mimeral are: 3, 4, 7, 9, 12, 13, 18, 20, 24, 40, 44, 52, 59, 72, y2>> ^7,
88, 98, 99, 100. If I am right about these, and if these 100 lines
are a fair sample of Virgil's verse, there should be about 2,000
hephthemimeral lines in the Aeneid ; and to these I would, of
course, add about 1,000 more, those of the type 'non comptae
mansere comae '. Thus about a third of the lines of the Aeneid

HEXAMETER 29

would be hephthemimeral, and about two-thirds penthemimeral.
'Trochaic' would be Mr. Butcher's 'abnormal trochaic' — 119,
But there are more than that, though not, I think, many more :
lines to be added are those like Norden's

litora deseruere, latet sub classibus aequor

(which would slightly reduce the total of 1,037 or 1,020 or whatever
it is).

For these reasons I regard both Norden's statistics and
^ Mr. Butcher's as unconvincing and unsatisfactory. If out of
9,878 lines in the Aeneid as many as 8,349 have penthemimeral
caesura, Virgil's verse could no longer be extolled for its variety
of cadence ; it would, on the contrary, be exceedingly monotonous.
And if there are 1,156 lines with trochaic caesura, it would be
perceptibly less unlike Homer's verse than it is. The counting,
it would seem, should be done over again. But would the result
be worth the labour ? Possibly ; but it might result only in putting
more accurately what can be roughly estimated by surveying a few
hundred lines. In the first 100 lines of book i I do not get a result
seriously different from that elicited from book vi : 22 hephthe-
mimeral lines (excluding ' non comptae mansere comae' — one of
these is 'posthabita coluisse Samo. ||hic illius arma': could any
caesura that is not the chief caesura justify the hiatus ?).

Holding this view, I ' disable ' or disqualify Mr. Butcher's con-
clusions about the authorship of Opuscula\ that the Culex was
written by Virgil is a conclusion that I am inclined to disagree
with in any case.

What is said above in general terms about Virgil is confirmed
by a survey of 1,000 lines of the Ae7ieid (viii.-ix. 269) : lines with
hephthemimeral division, 25-8 percent.; lines in which it is difficult
to decide between penthemimeral and hephthemimeral, but in
which penthemimeral is certainly not predominant, 5-8 per cent. ;
these two together, 31-6 per cent. ; trochaic division, i-8 per cent. ;
lines in which it is difficult to decide between trochaic and heph-
themimeral, 4*4 per cent. : total lines which are not penthemimeral,
37*8 per cent.

CHAPTER II

THE COLLOCATION OF WORDS IN EPIC VERSE,

ELISION, HIATUS, ETC

The structure of a particular line has been represented
above (p. 13) by a diagram in which the ^povoL or syllables
look like rectangular blocks of stone carefully fitted together.
In order to realize the nature of ancient verse, as compared
with the verse of English , or German or other modern
languages, it may be worth while to pursue this illustration
a little further. The words in Greek and Latin verse are rather
like rectangular pieces of marble built into a wall. They are
exactly measured ; ancient versification contemplates long and
short syllables which in length are in the ratio 2:1. The long
is twice the short, though in actual pronunciation it cannot have
been precisely so. The second syllable in ' volucres ' or woXv-
Tpo7ro9, when lengthened as it might be in formal and finished
verse, can hardly have been really equal to the first syllable of
(TKrjTTTpov. But for metre the syllables counted as equal. Further,
words in ancient verse seem to come more into contact than
words in the more or less accentual verse of a language like
English. They fill up more completely the spaces provided
for them by metre, and the end of a word is not unaffected by
the beginning of the word that follows it. We may roughly
represent this in a diagram as follows, drawing perpendicular
lines to mark off the (dactylic) time-spaces provided by
metre :

r 1

TtOV

6ev

,6e a,

e{j

rep

CI]

o?,

etn

Kat 7]f.

COLLOCATION OF WORDS IN EPIC VERSE 31

If we now take as an example of English verse, in its loosest
and most accentual form, Longfellow's line

This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the
hemlocks,

we must represent this in a very different way — how, exactly,
it is difficult to say. There must be quantitative spaces ; all
verse has quantity, it is not a series of momentary explosions
of sound. But in English a strong stress accent may be said
to usurp the place of quantity and to be confused with it. The
diagram may be something like this :

the

Ihc

Dines

and

Ihe

Here the dotted lines in the first two feet are meant to
indicate the effect of the English stress accent. In the first
foot the words ' is ' and ' the ' are about equally inconspicuous
to the ordinary English ear. But in ancient verse the con-
sonants sf^, whether within the same word or in separate
words, would mean a long syllable {Kparepos 6e6s). English
verse differs in many features from the verse of Greece and
Rome, and some of these it may be instructive to consider in
dealing with iambic verse. Forest may be said to be an
iambus, and some English writers have tried to use it so. But
the English accent really forbids its use as a disyllabic foot
of which the second syllable is the more important or con-
spicuous. The Latin accent of the classical period did not
prevent the metrical use of ' dabunt ' as an iambus, and it had
no power to make ' p^pulus ' a dactyl. What we are concerned
with at present is the comparative looseness with which English
words are set down side by side. What is normal in Greek
and Latin is rare in English. Elision : the definite article the

COLLOCATION OF WORDS

sometimes seems to suffer elision in verse, but hiatus is the
rule. Length by ' position ' :

and pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,

was beat with fist instead of a stick —

the effect is intentionally comic, and the words ' a stick ' are
normally qualified to form the last foot of a purely iambic
line, a stick.

In the opiis quadratum^ or ex saxo quad7'ato^ of ancient verse,
we have to consider three things: (i) 'length by 'position';
(2) elision (with its opposite aphaeresis, which is much less
common ; and with crasis, which is also comparatively infre-
quent) ; (3) the conditions under which hiatus is allowed.

I. The phrase 'length by position ', as it is now used, means
that a syllable is long owing to the ' position ' of the vowel
before two consonants.' Originally ' by position ' Qkcru was
contrasted with (pvaet in the sense of ' convention ', deliberate
or artificial agreement, avi'OrJKr} ; dea-ei fiaKpa meant ' long
by poetic convention '. It is more convenient to think of
' position ' in the other sense.

When a short vowel is followed by one consonant within
a word the consonant goes with the following syllable
{fid-Xd-Kos), and no lengthening can occur. ^ The consonant
at the end of a word goes with the vowel before it, and a
possibility of lengthening begins. But with only one consonant
lengthening is infrequent. With two, if they are a mute and
a liquid, it is frequent, but still optional. With two consonants
that are not a mute followed by a liquid lengthening is the
rule, and exceptions very few. So we can construct an
ascending scale of lengthened syllables, beginning with what
are licences and ending with what is all but compulsory.

(a) Lengthenings before one consonant within a word,
which have no justification except metrical convenience :
OLKoifiaTO'Sf aQdvaros, (XTroTriarja-L, Ze^vpir), avue^^e^, wdpe^dj,

IN EPIC VERSE 33

liiXavi, ifxaOov (written fxetXapi, e/xfxadoi^). Later poets
seldom ventured upon such changes except in the case of
proper names (Italia, Sidonius). These syllables are really
0€<T€i /xaKpai in the original sense of Oicrei, convention.

(d) Lengthening before one consonant, which is usually
at the end of a word, but sometimes in the next word,
yue/ooTrey dvOpodiroi. Here the condition is that the ictus
of the verse falls upon the syllable ; without it, lengthening
is rare, and special explanations have to be looked for {noWa
Xicrcro/xiyr], irvKva pcoyaXerju). With the consonant in the
next word, the first word is often 8e (coy (pdO\ 6 Se ro^ou,
II. XV. 478) or re (as in \(x)\aL re pvcrai re, //. ix.
503). Here the consonant is a liquid, as it is in Virgil's
reproduction of the effect, ' liminaque laurusque dei ', Ae?i. iii.
91, but other poets have it with other consonants (Accius,
' metallique caculaeque ' : Grattius and Ovid have it with />,
* taxique pinusque, Othrysque Pindusque ').

Many apparent lengthenings before one consonant in Homer
were accounted for when Bentley detected the original presence
of the Digamma. In other cases the lengthened vowel was
one that had once been long. But there are many cases to
which neither of these explanations is applicable. Very
frequently the lengthening is before a more or less marked
caesin-a^ and the ictus of the first foot had a similar effect
(eTrei 8r], rd irepl KaXd). Of Roman poets Ennius and Virgil
sometimes did what Homer had done, but other poets were
very sparing in their use of such things or, like Lucretius and
CatuUuS; avoided them altogether. When Horace wrote 'ne
quis humasse velTt Aiacem ' he was deliberately reproducing
an old quantity — it is a legal archaism in a king's interdict.
Virgil has simt before the penthemimeral caesura and a full
stop [AefL X. 433) :

tela manusque sinit. hinc Pallas instat et urget.

In a few passages he has a lengthening for which no such

1887 D

34 COLLOCATION OF WORDS

justification is easily discoverable and which must be set down
as Homeric or pseudo-Homeric licences : Aen. iv. 64 pectoribus
uihians, ix. 610 terga fatigamus hasta. Roman metricians (e.g.
Velius Longus, 52. 9 k., in the first century of our era) had
a theory that h might contribute to quantity by position. They
were following Greek writers who had before them lines like

7] okiyov 01 Trai8a koiKora yetvaro TvBevs.

But to give h this force was no part of the metrical practice
of classical poets: for them, ' auctus hymenaeo' or 'languentis
hyacinthi' did not differ from, or was no moie normal than,
'gravidus auctumno '. But the discussions of the grammarians
seem to have given rise to a belief that h ought to contribute
to quantity by position. It is the practice of the early
Christian poets (so that, e.g. a hexameter may begin with
vir Jminilis)^ while the * paganus pervicacissimus ' Claudian
avoids it.

{c) Lengthening before a mute and a liquid :
similis voliicri, mox vera volucris.

A mute and a liquid are easily pronounced together and both
can be put in the following syllable, ' volu-cri'. Here a limitation
at once comes into view. If one of the letters is in one word
and the other in another, this cannot be done, et i'ipa7n alone
is possible, not e-t?-ipa?n. So, too, in compounds: 'obrepo' and
iKpel are necessary, ' obrepo ' and eKpel are inadmissible.

But, while shortening is excluded in these cases, lengthening
freely takes place in Greek even when both consonants are in
a following word :

dpLTrpeTred Tpooea-aiv. 6(f)pd TrpoaB' dWoav.
(j)LXd (j)poi^icou. fiera irpodTOLorLV.

There are great differences in this matter between different
poets^ different dialects, and different periods of poetry. In
Homer and Hesiod lengthening is the rule, whether the two

IN EPIC VERSE 35

consonants are in the same word as the vowel or in the next
one : Kat re irpo o tov kv6r]aev : rd t kacrofi^va irpo r
kovTa: Shortening is infrequent, and usually has some special,
though it may be slight, justification {pv8\ yap ovSe ApvavTO^
vlb9 . . . , AcppoSiTT], proper names : T€L\€(n7rXfjra, irporpa-
iriadai, words otherwise excluded from dactylic verse. Add
//. xi. 69 roc Se Spdy/jLara : xv. 142 tSpvcre Op6ua>). The
reader of Homer would be surprised to meet with erpefLei/ or
with Tei)(€d Tpdocoy. Shortening occurs in Homer only when
the liquid is A or p, not with yLt or u.^

The opposite extreme is found in Attic comedy. Shortening
is invariable, except that /3X and yX sometimes lengthen the
syllable, and y/z, 8/j., yu, Sv regularly do.^ Tragedy admitted
lengthening, Trdrpos, viKpos. This ' correptio Attica ' belongs
to the history of iambic verse. In Roman comedy also and
in spoken Latin shortening was the rule. Lengthening belonged
to serious, finished, and formal verse; it came in with Ennius's
introduction of the hexameter, but compared with Homer the
Latin hexameter admits it very sparingly. Tejiebrae, latebrae,
pharetra are found, and a line may end with patres (Stat.
Silv. V. 3. 215), or libro {Georg. ii. 77). Here the ictus is on
the syllable lengthened. But this is not invariably the case
('iuvat integros accedere fontes', Lucr.). In a compound like
7iavifragus the / is always short, and when the two consonants
are in a separate word lengthening is rare^ and is usually a
direct and deliberate reminiscence of Homer {spiculaque cli-
peique, Aen. vn. 186). Endmgs like jnercenttir Atridae, Etruria
crevit, vioe7itd Troiae are common. In other metres also,

^ ndTpus, according to Ebeling, occurs about 120 times (and the dative
TTdTpi about 60 times), -narpos appeal's in //. vi. 479 (and nowhere else) ;

Kai TTore tis einrfaf ' vaTpos y ode ttoWov ajiHVOJV ',
but here there is evidence for the reading diroi.

2 Regularly in Latin also : Mr. Housman contends (and he is probably
right) that cycnus must be the spelling, not cygnits, if the first S3'llable is
to be short.

D 2

36 COLLOCATION OF WORDS

lengthening is very rare when the mute and liquid are
in the next word. Catullus has it in his experiments in
pure iambi (the Phaselus : ' Propontida trucemve Ponticum
sinum, per impotentia freta', where, according to Christ,
he is using weak longs to depict the rapid movement of
the vessel: so in his lampoon on Caesar, ^ultima Britannia',
xxix. 4). Latin seems to have had no natural tendency to such
effects ; they were lessons learned from the metrical practice of
certain Greek poets. They were not native to Athens either ;
rather, Attic tragedy learned them from the Ionian epic and
the Ionian iambics of Archilochus.

(/) Shortening before consonants other than a mute and
a liquid occurs very seldom in either language. Pindar has
ecrXoy^ and there are a few examples of shortening with iiv
(Aes. Agam. 990, Eur. Bacch. 71 v/ii^rjcrco; see Christ, Metrik,
p. 14). Apart from these, shortening occurs only with ctac, (ttt,
(TT and (TTp, ^, in Latin also with initial s^u. In one or two
instances shortening can be avoided by giving to / the sound
of y i^Ia-TLaLav, II. ii. 537, re aKLrj, Hes. Erga 589), but in a
greater number of cases nothing of the kind is possible and it
becomes unnecessary to assume it at all. Shortening occurs
chiefly with proper names {ZcckvuOo^, ZeXeia, ^KdfxavBpos:)
or words which otherwise could not find a place in a hexameter
{(TKeTTapvov, Od. v. 237).^

1 Shortening with consonants like sc^ str is rare, and therefore pre-
sumably difficult or repellent. It may be asked, * How was it possible at
all?' There is the extreme view that even in English, in a word like
' restriction ', the first syllable is not short, but is only inconspicuous
beside the strong stress accent pn the second S3'llable. The answer is
perhaps this : a rule that the syllable cannot be short would be true
only if pronunciation were always so rapid as just to avoid 'gabbling'
or * mumbling ' consonants ; but the delivery of ancient verse (and
probably the pronunciation of Greek and Latin generally) was not so
rapid as that, and hence there was no insuperable difficulty about making
a syllable with sp or str relatively short. Metre is not concerned with

IN EPIC VERSE 37

Roman poets are less strict. In the early drama — even in
anapaests, the metre most akin to dactylic verse — there are
numerous shortenings which have no place in the hexameter,
or in the stricter prosody of the Augustan age. The Law of
Breves Breviantes {infra, p. 90) sanctions not only molestSrum,
but also voluptdtefii ; as it sanctioned, too, the shortening of a
naturally long vowel in dd?m md7isit. But even in hexameters
there are things for which there is no analogy in Greek. There
is, to begin with, the large exception that down to the time of
Lucretius a final s is frequently attenuated and has no metrical
effect :

tum laterali(s) dolor, certissimu' nuntiu' mortis,

(Ennius.)

'frequently', but not regularly, for it often causes length by
position :

Corneliu' suaviloquenti
ore Cethegus Marcu' Tuditano conlega. (Ennius.)

Lucretius has this neglect of i" freely, Catullus has it once (' tu
dabi' supplicium ', in what may have been his earliest poem,
though put last in our editions), and Cicero, in 46 B.C., calls it
subrusticum. If it persisted later, it was in comedy only.

2 was not always in Italy distinctly a double consonant ;
it was more like English z ox s (cf. Sagtmtum for ZdKvi^do9 :
zenatuOy Faliscan gen. of senatiis^ &c.). Hence it was perhaps
rather easier for Virgil to put Zacynthus at the end of a line
than it had been for Homer {Aen. iii. 270). Seneca in
iambics has 'tranquilla Zephyri ' {Agam. 433).

Shortening before sc, sp, &c., is found chiefly in Lucretius
('cedere squamigeris: mollia strata ',&c., and even'pendentibu(s)
structas ') and in the Satires of Horace, where it occurs nine
times ('praemia scribae, saepe stilum vertas', &c. In i. 3. 44

ultimate questions of phonetics, but only with the grouping of syllables
which can be classified more or less reasonably as long and short.

COLLOCATION OF WORDS

('non fastldire. strabonem') it is rendered easier by a full stop).
Propertius has it five times (or six times if we include iii. i. 27,
Scamandro).^

The formal heroic Epos rejected it almost entirely. Virgil,
who has Zacynthiis only once, has this also only once, and with
the help of a full stop, Aen. xi. 309 'ponite. spes sibi quisque'.
Shortening before sni in the case of the word smaragdus is
found in various Roman poets, including Tibullus^ Propertius,
Ovid, Lucan, and Statius. Silius has Zacynthiis several times.
If it was difficult, though not absolutely interdicted, to shorten
the syllable, to lengthen a short vowel in a preceding word was
also difficult or repellent. What the Roman poets do is to avoid
rather carefully such a collocation of words as would necessi-
tate it. Ennius has stabilita scanma sohwiqtie ; Catullus, in
hexameters^ has one such lengthening :

nulla fugae ratio, nulla spes; (Ixiv. 186.)

Tibullus has pro segete spicas^' and one other instance.
L. Miiller {^De Re Metrica^ p. 390) collects six examples in all
in epic verse. Besides these there are a few in Seneca and
Martial, and Juvenal's occulta spolia (viii. 107). The extreme
scarcity of the effect seems to make it clear that the avoidance
of it was deliberate.

2. Ancient verse, with its syllables carefully placed in con-
tiguity, ' ut tesserulae omnes ', naturally abhorred ' hiatus '.
If a word ends in a vowel it must be definitely closed or
dismissed by running up against the consonantal beginning of
the next word. If the next word began with a vowel the two
vowels were left facing each other with some sort of unsatis-
factory 'rift' or 'gap' between them. It was not only in

^ Catullus had wiitten unda Scamandri. With the probable exception
of Propertius, later poets * showed more respect for metre than for the
gods ', as L. Miiller remarks, by calling the river Xanthiis.

^ Unless we should read, with some editors, an abl. in -t, segeii.

IN EPIC VERSE 39

verse that this effect was disliked. When prose was elaborated
and its rhythm studied, hiatus there, too, was avoided. The
Isocratean prose of the fourth century rejects an arrangement
of words like inel ijSr] ovSei^.^

The chief device by which hiatus was avoided was elision.
When two vowels came together the preceding one was thrust
out or forced out of the metrical scheme (e/idere, kKSXtp^iv).
It disappeared, it had no effect. But, it must be remembered,
it is only for metre that it disappears. That it disappeared
entirely in pronunciation is incredible. Perhaps it did so, or
all but did so, in a few cases, when it was an extremely slight
sound. The final e of que^ ve, ne may have been almost
•inaudible ; it had a tendency to efface itself in ordinary pro-
nunciation apart from verse (cf. vin^ viden ; nee beside neqice ; ac
beside atque ; and it has been rendered probable that the final
e of some words like inde^ unde, netnpe was similarly attenuated or
dropped in dramatic or colloquial verse). But the elided vowel
is often by no means a slight one. In Latin it is often long.
In quare age it is the short a of age that forms the second
syllable of the dactyl. How was the e pronounced ? It is
difficult to say. Ancient verse must be thought of as delivered
more slowly than our verse or than an English reader tends to
deliver it. The metrical scheme consists of spaces or com-
partments which have some room in them, room it would seem
for a rather sudden change. The sound of e is begun in the
second compartment of the dactyl, but instead of going on till
a consonant stops it or till it runs up against a consonant, it
is supplanted, after occupying some slight and not exactly
measurable part of the space — vocalis ante vocalem correpta —

^ Though Latin treated long final vowels very differently from Greek,
the Eomans also disliked the accumulation of such effects : Rhet. ad
Herenn. iv, § i8 ' compositio est verborum constructio aequabiliter
perpolita. ea conservabitur si fugiemus crebras vocalium concursiones,
quae vastam atque hiantem orationem reddunt, ut haec est: '"baccae
aereae amoenissimae impendebant.'' '

40 COLLOCATION OF WORDS

by the short a that follows. In ordinary speech, apart from
verse, something similar may have happened ; magna opere
becoming magno opere and then magndpere}

It is chiefly in Latin that this extreme kind of elision is
found. There is a great difference in this matter between
the two languages. Short syllables are freely elided in both,
and especially those short syllables that are of very frequent
occurrence in the terminations of nouns or verbs (a, e, o,
a and e in Latin), but Greek treats long syllables differently.

In dactylic verse it shortens the long syllable, if the syllable
that follows is short, irXdyy^Qr] eirel . . .; and is careful to avoid
placing words so that two long vowels come together {7r\dy)(Bri
ijdrj would be strange in Homeric verse, though quar{e) omnes
presents no difficulty in Latin).

In other forms of verse, and conspicuously and strictly in
iambic and trochaic verse, Greek arranges words so that a

^ It has been tliought that in the case of a diphthong one of" the two
component vowels suffered ehsion. Certainly, with eppeev vScup coming
at the end of a line, a beginning such as eppet vdojp might be explained
as eppf' vSaip — a case perhaps of the atticization of the Homeric text.
But a pronunciation which would be represented by di'dpa jxo' evuQne is
not a thing that it would be well to inculcate or practise. If we hold
that an elided vowel did not vanish entirely, it seems clearly best to
pronounce oi rapidly. In the case of a single vowel such as rj or o;, the
theory has to assume that it is made up of two xpo^^i^ o^" ^torae (»w> w
or v^v^) and that one of them goes out. The explanation becomes a rather
unreal one ; it is diflicult to feel or to imagine that this is what actually
happens. There is perhaps a feeling in some minds that only e and o
can be short, and 7; and cv cannot be. But this is an illusion. If it were
true, Boeotian Xiyovpav (^ = ?\iyvpdv would be impossible, and KdrovAos
could not stand for Caiulus, as it does.

Certain Attic spellings attested by inscriptions (ttow, -noili) do, how-
ever, point to the disappearance of an t, in a case of similar shortening
within a word. But it is doubtful whether these should be admitted in
literary texts where Trotw is an iambus. There is no difficulty about ttoiSj
as an iambus, for olos and 'Mip'aios can be scanned with their first and
third syllables short.

IxN EPIC VERSE 41

long vowel is not followed by another vowel, whether long
or short.

Roman poets sometimes wrote verses with few or no elisions
in them, aiming at a special effect of smoothness or rapidity,
but no such strictness as this was inherent in the language or
in the general principles of Latin verse.

What has been said of Greek verse is not universally true.
Reservations or exceptions have to be made.

(a) The terminations 01 and ai sometimes suffer elision after
the Latin fashion : most frequently in comedy, but such elision
is not unknown to epic verse {^ovXo/jl' eya>, IL i. 117) or to
dramatic and lyric verse {aetpofi ovS' dTraxro/jLac ktX., Soph.
Track. 216). Cf. ocrrjixepat {oo-at r]fj,epaL). The Lesbian
poets have elisions of the Latin type (dXXa fie kcoXv{€i)
ai8ct)9), but not so frequently as Latin.

(b) The converse of elision may take place, Aphaeresis.
The second or following vowel may be extruded or suppressed
{^\i7] 'yo) voTjixa — an example has been found in Homer also,
//. i. 277 ixriTe (TV, UrjXeiSTj, 'OeX' epL^ifieuat). This happens
to e or a with a long vowel preceding.

(c) The two vowels may be fused into one new vowel sound.
This fusion is Crasis : Kayw, ovfio^, &c. It is found in the
text of Homer (//. viii. 360 dXXcc naTrjp ovfxos (6 ejios)),
though not in places where the metre makes a long syllable
necessary. Its existence in the drama is undoubted :
ovcpSpet = €(p6p€L, rd/jLo. = to, e/xd, &c. Sometimes the
vowel of one of the words prevails, but is changed from short
to long by the absorption of the other : rdpa = tol dpa,
dSaveio-aTO = d kSaveiaaTO. There are other cases where
something of the nature of crasis happens, though it is not
represented in writing, e. g. rj XdOer' rj ovk kvo-qcrev, ey cb ovt
kfiavTov. The word avvaXoKprj is used for this by Bickel.
It is difficult to say whether in such cases something of the
nature of crasis takes place, or something more like elision

COLLOCATION OF WORDS

of the Latin type. ' Elision ' is a convenient metrical term for
all cases in which the preceding vowel has no effect, and only
the following one takes a place in the metrical scheme.

Besides vowel-endings Latin also elided a final m and its
preceding vowel. The attenuation of the vi in ordinary pro-
nunciation seems to be attested by the great frequency with
which it is left unwritten in inscriptions (e.g. Taurasia(m)
Cisauna(m) in the earliest of the Scipio epitaphs, but the
omission is not only early, it is common in inscriptions of all
periods). It is indicated also by forms like animadverto.
Probably the sound was gradually attenuated ; it grew fainter
as time went on. Ennius could leave it unelided in a heroic
hexameter (' milia militum octo '), and this seems to have been
rather more frequent in Saturnian verse. Virgil did not follow
Ennius's example. Horace has the effect once, in satire ('cocto
num adest honor idem?' ii. 2. 28). The text of TibuUus
presents one example (i. 5. -^^i ' ^^ tantum venerata virum,
hunc sedula curet'); there are two in Propertius and one in
Manilius. (Attempts have of course been made to remove
these by conjecture, but the conjectures are not very con-
vincing ; so it is perhaps better to follow L. Milller in retaining
them.) It remains to consider the conditions under which
Hiatus is admitted.

3. The occurrence of hiatus is a large subject, and a complete
account of it would involve a vast number of details and small
facts. What is important for the ordinary student is to learn
in outline how the practice of poets varied at different periods,
to understand some of the general principles which regulate it,
and to appreciate the poetic or technical effect which particular
writers had in mind when they admitted hiatus.

In the Homeric text as it stood 200 years ago hiatus was
very frequent, but about that time Bentley made or had made
the discovery of the /^, — whereby * ipsam sanavit artem
metricam ' — with the result that the number of cases was

IN EPIC VERSE 43

immensely reduced. ]\Iost of the harsher examples of it disap.
peared (ev feiScos — AnoXXcoui fdvaKTL, &c.). Still, in spite of
this, hiatus in Homer is fairly frequent, more frequent than in later
Greek epic {^/xii'dev, | €z' Trore roi . . . , Ticreiav Aavaoi \ k^a
SaKpva, Szc). Sometimes it is rendered easier by a pause in
the sense. Sometimes it occurs between a long and a short
syllable, an easier thing than hiatus between syllables of the
same quantity, easier between D 3 than between O O.'
Lyric poetry and Attic drama were far more strict. In the
drama, when hiatus does occur, there is usually some sort of
interjection or exclamation or repetition (co 0VT09 . . ., co eta . . .
LT€ ^OLK^aL 'lt^ PoLK^ai. Christ, Meirik, p. 40).

d, €, and 0, we have seen, are readily elided, especially in
common terminations. i and v are less accommodating.
darv could not suffer elision at all. l, when it is a verbal
suffix, is frequently elided (ei/z'(0* "^^^VH-'i^^ TLOr](T\i)) : in the
indeclinable en and dXXodi it is elided almost as readily as
e in dXXore. The i of the dative is much less frequently
elided {)(pv(T€irj KepKiS' ixpatvev, Od. v. 62). Elision of on
is rare and doubtful, ri is not elided, re is eHded with great
frequency. Disyllabic prepositions are readily elided, but irpo
refuses to become irp .

Besides these and similar cases, there is, in Greek dactylic
verse, the hiatus which accompanies the shortening of a long
vowel or diphthong. Whether this can be regarded as an
obscure case of elision has already been discussed. For the
ordinary reader it is not that, nor does he quite feel it to be
a case of real hiatus ; it is rather a hiatus that is paid for or
atoned for, and so cancelled, by loss of quantity.

When Catullus wrote the line (Ixvi. 11) :

qua rex tempestate novo | auctus hymenaeo

he was deliberately introducing two Greek effects into his

^ L. Miiller remarks that the line 'quid struit aut qua spe [ inimica in
gente moratur' would be vitiosus with ' hostili ' for 'inimica'.

44 ' COLLOCATION OF WORDS

verse ; and many things that are exceptional in Roman
versification are of this type, experiments intended to show
learning and taste, though the taste is sometimes a little
eccentric. The early drama shows no great abhorrence of
hiatus, though many instances of supposed hiatus have been
removed by emendation in one way or another, and there
are clear cases where Plautus selects an unusual word or
arrangement of words to avoid hiatus. Sometimes (though
not always or even more frequently than not) it occurs when
there is a change of speaker,^ and it is well established, though
not very frequent, at the juncture between two parts of a long
line (after the first four feet of a trochaic tetrameter or
iambic ' Septenarius '). But Ennius in his epic, both in
regard to elision and hiatus, had adopted very strict principles
of versification. In this matter he does not follow Homer.
He has fewer elisions than Virgil, and hiatus is not certainly
found in the extant lines except twice in the case of a final 7n
('milia militum octo : dum quidem unus homo'; and perhaps
'inimicitiam agitantes'), and, with shortening, in Scipio invicte.
Latin verse, as it is known to us in literature from Ennius
to Juvenal, and in many writers later than Juvenal, is charac-
terized by great strictness in the observance of metrical rules.
In the use which he made of elision, especially in the Aeneid^
to add dignity and volume to his verse ('omnia praecep(i)
atqu(e) animo mec(um) ante peregi'), Virgil stands rather apart
from other poets. He is great enough, like Homer, to be
a law to himself. Post-Augustan poets, though they owed
much to him in many ways, followed rather the norm of Ovid
in the mechanism of their verse. Hiatus also is used with
some freedom by Virgil, and he has effects in which later poets
did not venture to follow him. Perhaps they thought that
some of ihem were due to his having left the Aeneid unrevised

* This is not wholly unknown in Greek : an example has been found
in Menander.

IN EPIC VERSE 45

at his death. They knew that incomplete Hnes were due to
that cause, and impressive though the effect of them sometimes
is (as in ' numina magna deum ', Aen. ii. 623) they never tried
to repeat it.

Types of hiatus admitted by Virgil can be very definitely
classified :

i. After a syllable on which the icfus of the verse does
not fall.

(a) Two instances of hiatus after a short syllable, where
there is a marked pause in the sense :

addam cerea pruna. honos erit huic quoque porno.

{£c/. ii. 53.)

et vera incessu patuit dea. ille ubi matrem.

(Aen. i. 405.)
These are very exceptional.

(b) Hiatus of the Greek type, with shortening of a long
vowel. Sometimes this brings into dactylic verse a word
otherwise inadmissible ^ :

insulae lonio in magno. {Aen. iii. 211.)

Sometimes the effect is to bring the same syllable into a Hne
with two different quantities, a thing sometimes affected by
poets from Homer's ^Ape^, 'Ape^ downwards :

vale vale, inquit, loUa. (£d. iii. 79.)

Hyla Hyla, omne- sonaret. (lb. vi. 44.) ^

The shortening of va/e here has nothing to do with the ' Law

* For elision of insulae was not allowed ; elision of a word of Cretic
form (— v^ — ) was carefully avoided, Ennius had written ' Scipi6
invicte'; Catullus, ' uno in lectul6' (Ivii. 7), with less excuse for his
hendecasyllabic metre, readily admitted * lectiilo' (Accius in his Annales
had the harsh hexameter-ending inaxime Athenae).

2 The effect aimed at was the presentation of a sound dying away or
an echo dying in the distance. This interpretation of the poet's intention
does not invalidate the metrical explanation ; the metrical graecism is
the means by which the effect is achieved.

46 COLLOCATION OF WORDS

of Breves Breviantes ' (which could shorten cave and similar
words befo7'e a co?2so?ianf. Cf. 'vade vale cave ne titubes ', in
Horace). The second vale is, to start with, exactly like the
first ; it suffers shortening by what is substantially a Greek
principle of versification.^

Such shortening, however, does not seem to have been
entirely unknown to the Latin language. It appears to belong
to Latin most clearly in the case of monosyllables followed by
a short syllable. Plautus has ita me di a7?ient {ita me dt anient
in trochaic verse, as he would have sed ita 7?ie di a?ne?it in
iambics, ita me di ame'nt in anapaests {Fersa 492), as Catullus
has non ita 7ne di a77ient in elegiacs, xcvii. i). This shortening
probably answers to actual pronunciation of Latin. If it were
merely a piece of Greek metrical practice we should expect it
to occur in dactylic or anapaestic verse only. It is found in
verse that is more or less informal or conversational : Lucilius,
quid servas quo ea7ii ? [Sat. xxx. 21) ; Catullus, te in circo, te in
omnilms {libellis : tabe7'7iis^ L. Miiller) ; Horace, Sat. i. 9. 38
si me a7nas. Virgil has it in the Eclogues (viii. 108) an qia
a7}iant (also in ii. 65), and even in epic verse, Aen, vi. 507 te,
aifiice, 7iequivi. A monosyllable was elided only when the
following syllable was long^; before a short syllable it was
shortened.

Glauco et Panopeae et Inoo Melicertae

Virgil has the effect just described (in Pa7topeae\ along with
hiatus after Glauco, where is not shortened. He is repro-
ducing a line of Euphorion :

rXavKcp Kot Nrjpfji kol elvakico MeXiKiprrj.

1 In Horace's line ' vade, vale, cavS ne titubes ' there is no metrical
question about cave. The syllable was short, and no metrical principle
had to operate upon it to make it so.

2 The only exception in Virgil appears to be Aen. vi. 629 ' sed iam
age '. Qui is elided in Lucilius 505 (1029), if the text can be trusted :

sicuti te, qui ea quae speciem vitae esse putamus.

IN EPIC VERSE 47

TXavKCi) in Greek verse might be followed by a vowel without
much difficulty. Virgil's Glauco is almost as abnormal as
Horace's et Esgtiiltfme allies ; not quite so abnormal, for
Horace's line is iambic, and iambic verse is less tolerant of
such effects.

ii. After a syllable on which the Ictus of the verse falls,
L. Miiller {De Re Metrlca, p. 375) defines four cases in which
hiatus occurs, but perhaps the four cases can be reduced
to three.

(a) After one of the two dominant caesurae, the semiquinaria
or semiseptenaria :

munera sunt lauri | et suave rubens hyacinthus.^

{Ed. iii. 63.)
banc sine me spem ferre tui, | audentior ibo.

{^Aen. ix. 291.)

In the second of these lines there is a marked pause in the
sense, and it is that pause rather than any merely metrical
division that is the real cause of the hiatus. If so, this class
(a) would be merged in class (d), Infj-a. In the line

ter sunt conati | imponere Pelio Ossam {Georg. i. 281.)

the hiatus seems to contribute to the sense of effort and the
adaptation of sound to sense ; i. e. there is again a cause other
than the mere occurrence of the penthemimeral caesura.

(b) With a proper name or a Greek name :

Nereidum matri et Neptuno | Aegaeo, {^Aen, iii. 74.)
a line which also illustrates (a) by its hiatus after mairl.

^ The close of this line would be felt to be a Graecism, and probablj'
the hiatus also — a Graecism or, we might say, an annexation for Latin
of an effect of Greek verse. The whole history of Roman poetry, on
its formal side and from one point of view, may be thought of as a series
of such 'annexations' or conquests of literarj' provinces; more or less
successful annexation, with such' modifications or restrictions as make
the thing effective in Latin verse.

48 COLLOCATION OF WORDS IN EPIC VERSE

evolat infelix et femineo | ululatu.
stant et iuniperi et castaneae | hirsutae.

(d) With a rhetorical pause or pause in the sense :

si pereo, | hominum manibus periisse iuvabit.

(Which also illustrates (c) ; there may be more than one
justification for a metrical effect.)

L. Muller adds, ' It cannot be doubted that Virgil had the
authority of Ennius for these exceptions to metrical rule'.
But there are doubts, (c) at least, if not (b), suggests much
rather the example of the ' cantores Euphorionis ' than of
Ennius : and ' castaneae hirsutae ' is in the Eclogues, where
Virgil was more influenced by an Alexandrian than in his
later works.

(c) and (d), he further states^ are avoided by other classical
poets, explaining Ovid's ' purpureae Aurorae' as justified by
a proper name.

The writer of a complete Hisioj-ia Metronwi] would be
bound to tabulate the practice of each of the more important
classical poets. What is attempted here is only to define and
illustrate certain types. For the appreciation by the ordinary
reader of metrical effects in a poet like Statius or Valerius, the
main thing is to have some clear idea of the effects employed
by Virgil. They are not admitted with much frequency even
by him, and the general conclusion is obvious that hiatus was
kept within very strict and well-defined limits by the classical
poets of Rome.

CHAPTER III

THE ELEGIAC COUPLET

The word eAeyo? is scarcely distinguishable from Bprjvo^ ;
it meant a lament for the dead, Horace's qjterimonia {Ars
Poet. 75) : kXeyelov was a metrical term for the form of verse,
the couplet consisting of hexameter and pentameter. The
Romans, however, used the word ' elegi ' in the latter sense, or
at all events in a wider sense than the Greeks of the classical
period.

The elegiac couplet appears in literature early in the seventh
century b. c, associated with the names of Callinus and
Archilochus. It is a variation upon the heroic hexameter,
in the direction of lyric poetry ; the couplet is a short stanza
or strophe, and elegiac poets can be classed under ' Poetae
Lyrici ' in the wide sense of that phrase. Though accom-
panied in early times by the flute, it cannot be reckoned as
' melic '. It is clear that at a quite early date it became
a measure that was merely recited, not necessarily sung. It
arises in a period of unrest in Greece. The more placid Epos,
with its prolonged tale of a heroic past, has now beside it
forms of verse which express what is of nearer and more
everyday interest. In Callinus the verse is used for a war
song (tradition puts Callinus rather before Archilochus), and
it has been thought that this w^as its original purpose, a cry
of alarm when an enemy is approaching and a summons to
arms. But this is uncertain, as is also the derivation of the
word eXeyos ', it may be foreign, possibly Carian : if it is
Greek perhaps the most plausible derivation is from the

1887 E

5°

THE ELEGIAC COUPLET

exclamation €: e Aeye e Aeye €. The verse is used to
commemorate the dead by Simonides, and from being the
verse of the epitaph (e7rfypa/z//ara eTTLToicpta or eTriKTJSeia) it
became the verse of the epigram in general. But it had
already taken on various tones : an erotic, though pensive,
tone in Mimnermus, and in Mimnermus's contemporary, Solon,
a note of vigorous and patriotic exhortation. In all its forms
it is, of course, far more personal than the Epos : the per-
sonality of the Homeric singer remains in the background —
Hesiod is less reticent, as is also the author of the Hymn to
Apollo — whereas the main purpose of elegiac verse is to give
expression to the feelings or thoughts of the poet.

The ' Pentameter ' is constructed on a different principle
from the hexameter. It falls into two equal parts, and the
division between them is marked by the end of a word. It
is 2i + 2 J feet. In the second half only dactyls are admitted ;
it is a fairly common principle of structure that the primary
rhythm should become apparent at the close. There is
catalexis twice ; and it was this that made it appropriate for
the expression of grief or other emotions. It did not roll on
confidently to its close like the hexameter, but twice sank or
waned or 'died away in pain'.^

It is called ' Pentameter ' as early as the fifth century b. c.
It was the TrevB-qixLjxeph twice ; the actual words or sounds
amounted to five dactylic units or fieTpa. The scansion of it

as five consecutive feet (— ^=^^ \ — ^=^^ \ |v^v-^— |v_/w— )is

heard of, but this is the view only of some late metricians. It
is two groups of dactyls, each KaTaX-qKTLKov eh orvXXa^rjy :

_^=^_^^_;^ I _^v^_

V-/W

But this description of it is not altogether free from diflficulty.

^ "09(v TTd'TajxtTpov TO) ijpojiKa) avffJTTTOi', ovx 6/xodpafxovvTa ttj tov
irporepov SwcifAei, dA\' olov awcKirveovTa Kat cvvavoafievvvfjievov rati tov
T€\(vTriaai'TOi Ti;\;aij' ol 5' varepov irpui airai'Tas adia^pupMi' ovtqj Ai5vjj.os
kv TO) Tiepl TToiTjTuju (Orion).

THE ELEGIAC COUPLET 51

If there was a pause as long as a long syllable after the first
part (K€i^b9 8lxpouo9 or Sta-qfios)^ why is not the last syllable
of that part a syllaba a7icepsV Why not, say,

But that is not a legitimate line. It becomes legitimate if we
write uicro-erai for OL)(€Tai, so that the syllable is long ' by
position '. The verse then is continuous. If so, why the end
of a word ? why not — a line that actually occurs in Euripides —

The answer to that question seems to be that the first syllable
of BaK\e1e would have to be prolonged in a way that belongs
to song, and is quite unnatural in mere recitation. It would
have to be rerpaa-Ty/xoy or lj . The exceptions quoted — from
verse that is not ' melic ' — are apparent rather than real : rjfx^h
8* €19 ' E\Xrj(r\7rovrov aTreTrXeo/ieu ('EXXr]^ ttovtov).

The two groups or phrases or KcoXa are connected in
a somewhat peculiar fashion. Neither hiatus nor elision is
allowed (elision is at all events extremely rare — practically
forbidden). The last syllable of the first half must be either
long by nature and followed by a consonant, or long by
position.

The hexameter in an elegiac couplet does not differ in any
important way from the hexameter of the epic. Two points
may be noticed :

(a) The ' bucolic ' division of a hexameter was a favourite
one when it was the penultimate line of an epigram (see p. 18).
It was a division which had the effect of linking the two lines
together. A group of connected words began before the end
of the first line.

^ Compare e.g. the Archilochian juxtaposition in Horace (' Asynar-
tete') :

reducet in sedem vice. | nunc et Achaemenio.

E 2

52 THE ELEGIAC COUPLET

(b) A (TTTovSeid^cou or line ending in | is avoided

in elegiac verse. A line like

cara deum suboles, magnum lovis incrementum
is most, naturally followed by a marked pause. It is too
eminently fitted to be the last of a series to be happily placed
as the first of a couplet.

Both of these facts illustrate the close connexion between
the two lines. But In spite of this connexion the lines are
very rarely ' hypermetric ' or metrically continuous. There is
Simonides' ingenious introduction of the name ApLo-royeiTcou
into elegiac verse {supra^ p. 5). After this nothing, till we
come to a couplet of Callimachus :

7]fjLL(rV /jLOL "^V^fj^ €TL TO TTVeOV, rjjlLCTV 8' OVK olS'

eiT "Ep09 eiV' AlStj^ rjpTraa-e, wXrji^ d(paves.
Callimachus had much influence on Roman poets, and this
couplet may have had its effect. But it did not cause Roman
poets to make elegiac couplets hypermetric. It may have
suggested the effect in hexameters.

The two parts of the pentameter are set down, as it were, in
juxtaposition, with a diaeresis between them, not linked together
like the two parts of a hexameter. Their internal structure
must next be considered. There the principle of ' caesura '
comes into play. Coincidence between the end of a foot and
the end of a word is subject to restrictions, which are as usual
more rigid in Latin than in Greek. Meleager [Afith. Pal. v.
165. 2) has agreement of word and foot in the second half of
the line {av/jLTrXave, irorvLa vv^), and Theognis has a penta-
meter in which word and foot actually agree throughout (456 ;
quoted by Christ, Metrik, p. 208) :

oi/ro)? tiiaiTep vvv ovSe^b^ d^L09 ei.
The Greek line, with its monosyllabic endings, though unusual,
is not repellent ; nor are monosyllabic endings in English
repellent :

In the Pentameter aye | falling in melody back.

THE ELEGIAC COUPLET S3

A Latin line, constructed on the plan of the Greek one, e. g. :

illic saltern nunc advena plurimus est

is scarcely endurable. The explanation may be that in Latin,
when a word coincided with a spondee or dactyl or trochee,
the accent inevitably coincided with the ic/iis, and, being
a stress accent, over-emphasized it. In Greek, accent could
-coincide with ic^us without attracting special attention ; in
English, accent takes the place of quantity, and the metre is
nowhere without it.

Apart from the rarity of a monosyllabic ending the Greek
pentameter is subject to little restriction regarding the incidence
of word-endings. In Latin, on the other hand, there is a
gradual elimination of the unfit or survival of the fittest.
Elegiac verse was introduced by Ennius, and written by him
with some smoothness and finish, as far as the few extant
examples enable us to judge. A few pentameters of Lucilius
survive (Sa^, xxii) and show no advance in technique.
Catullu-s's elegiacs are by no means on a par with his epyllion
in neatness and euphony. Some of them are not 'duriusculi '
(as Pliny thought some of his hendecasyllabics), but 'duris-
simi ', e. g. (Ixxiii. 6) :

quam modo qui me unum atque unicum amicum habuit

(me elided : elision in the middle ; two elisions in the second
half ; ending in a word of three syllables),

ei misero eripuisti omnia nostra bona

(two elisions running, one in the middle of the line : three
neuters in a in an awkward string). Cornelius Gallus came
next, and we may conjecture that he attained a greater degree
of smoothness, though Quintilian calls him 'durior' {sc.
*Tibullo et Propertio '). In Tibullus — Propertius — Ovid the
further progress lies revealed. Tibullus and Propertius still

54 THE ELEGIAC COUPLET

have endings in a word of three syllables (though not
frequently) :

haesura in nostro tela gerit latere. (Tib. i. lo. 14.)

Similar to this is an ending in a word of five syllables (' harun-
dinibus ') ; a quadrisyllabic ending (' Pierides ') seems to have
been somewhat more euphonious, and maintained itself longer.
In Ovid a word of two syllables is the rule : exceptions are
extremely few. Ovid is careful also to make the last syllable
of the line actually long (unlike TibuUus's * latere '), not relying
on the syllaba anceps or the following pause. These are im-
provements in themselves, though there is a certain monotony
in his unvarying correctness. Accent and ictus are separated
by the disyllabic ending; but so they are also with 'latere' and
'Pierides'.^ Christ suggests that the 'feminine' or trochaic
division of the dactyl allowed the line to flow more easily to
its close, as compared with the ' masculine ' caesura in ' gerit |
latere '. The arrangement of words is often highly symmetrical
and regular, especially in Ovid, but also in the elder poets.
One of the commonest effects is that of an adjective at the end
of the first half agreeing with a substantive at the end of the

second :

et dare captivas ad fera vincla manus,

or the converse :

aspicio patriae tecta relicta meae.

{Ex Foiito i. 2. 48 and 50.)

But an ending in an adjective is rare, apart from the possessive -
adjectives nieus^ tuus, siius. The composer of elegiac verse
should be careful to make his line end with a substantive or
a verb. The rule applies to hexameter also. It is a principle
of symmetry and emphasis that a line should not end with an

^ Unless the accentuation Pierides still survived or could be felt,
Zielinski thinks that Ciceronian rhythm affords evidence for it {Clause!-
geseiz, p. 233).

THE ELEGIAC COUPLET 55

unimportant or otiose word, and this is even more clearly true
of the ending of a couplet.

In what precedes elegiac verse has been considered as it is
written in the best periods of Greece and Rome by consider-
able poets. The pentameter was not always preceded by one
hexameter. Inscriptions show the practice of substituting for
a couplet a group of three lines :

TOi^^e TToQ" "EXX-qi^e^ Nlktj^ Kpdr^L epyco 'Aprjo^
Uepaa^ i^eXdaavre^ eXevOepa 'EXXdSt kolvov
ISpvcravTO Alo^ /Scofibu 'EXevdepiov.

This appears in the Anthology (vi. 50) with a pentameter inter-
polated after the first line, ^vToXfico yjrv^TJ^ Xijfxari 7rei66fj.epoL
(see Wilamowitz, Sappho und Simonides, p. 197). In later
times there were eccentricities both in theory and practice.
There were theorists who held that the last syllable of the first
half was a syllaba anceps :

hoc mihi tam grande munus habere datur.

And a late Greek epigrammatist, Philippos, wrote pentameters,
Kara aTL\ov, i. e. without any intervening hexameters {Anthol.
xiii. i). If there was any abuse of the metre in earlier writers
it lay in using it for purposes other than those for which it was
originally intended. Callimachus used it for long narratives in
his AtTia (though shortly before his time it had seemed to
Aristotle incredible that anybody should write a narrative poem
in a metre other than the heroic hexameter), and he was
followed by Ovid in the Fasti, and by Propertius in some
shorter pieces. Callimachus also set the example of using
elegiac verse for a lampoon or personal attack in his Ibis, a
theme which for long had been claimed by iambic verse.
Callimachus's poem may have been short enough to count as
an epigram, but Ovid's Ibis is not.

CHAPTER IV

ANAPAESTS

An anapaest is the converse of a dactyl, di'ria-rpo<f)os tS>
SaKTuXco, ^w-, not -ww. But the rhythm is the same;
it is icro9, par (2:2, ww | v_/w).^

It is doubtful, however, whether an anapaest is exactly and
in all respects the converse of a dactyl. In a dactyl there is
a strong ictus on the first part of the foot, and the first two times
always take the form of a long syllable.^ In an anapaest the
second part of the foot is normally, but not always, a long syllable,
and the ictus may have been less marked. If we represent a
dactyl by -^ww, an anapaest may have been Ow-^ (o«^ | Ow).
The first part of the foot is often a long syllable; with this and
resolution in the second part an anapaest becomes — O w.
The slighter ictus perhaps helps to account for a strange fact
in Latin verse. In other metres Latin verse shows a great
reluctance to put the ictus on the second syllable of a dactylic
word : cardifie, vertite seem to have been repellent to the
Roman ear.'* But the anapaest that in syllables looks like
a dactyl — dvairaKTro^ SaKTvXo€iSi]9 — is freely used :

incliite | parva | prodtte | patria.
saeptum altisono | cardine templum.

1 Quint, ix. 4. 48 : ' rhythmo indifferens est, dactylicusne ille priores
habeat breves an sequentes ; tempus enim solum metitur, ut a sublatione
ad positionem idem spatii sit,'

2 There are some rare and rather disputable instances of the resolu-
tion of the long syllable of a dactyl in lyric verse. And it is possible
that Ennius admitted v^ v^ — or v^ v^ w w for a dactyl even in hexameters.

3 Zielinski; however, thinks that Ciceronian rhythm points to such an
effect <ClauseIgesei3, p. 230).

ANAPAESTS 57

The origin of anapaestic verse and its relation to dactylic
metres lie beyond the survey of metrical history. There is no
evidence. The second part of a common type of hexameter —
the hexameter with caesura semiquinaria — coincides in syl-
lables with an anapaestic dimeter catalectic, and may have
been derived from it:

Il7]\7]ia8i(o A-^iXrjo^
\jrv\a9 '^iSi TTpoiayj/ep.

As a separate verse this was called Paroemiacus, almost
certainly — though it has been doubted — because it was the
verse in which proverbs or Trapoi/jLiai were expressed {cpevyoou
fjLvXov d\(f)LTa (f>evyeLS — dyaQol 8' dpiSaKpves dvSpes)- Such
proverbs occur in hexameters, in Homer and Hesiod, some-
times with only one short syllable at the beginning {iraQoav Se
re UT]7rio9 eyuco, beside pe^deu 8e re vrjnLOS eyvco). When
an anapaestic dimeter, or line of four anapaests, had been
developed to accompany the march of troops or of a chorus,^
the catalectic form of it agreed in appearance with the verse-
proverb, but must have had a different rhythm, for, whereas
the dactylic half-verse was three feet with a kind of anacrusis
(w, — , or wv^), the anapaestic line was one of more than three
feet and must have had the time of four.

Associated with the efi^aTrjpLa of Tyrtaeus at Sparta, and
later used for the entrance and exit of the chorus in the Attic
theatre, anapaestic verse was obviously a march-rhythm." The

1 There is evidence for it also as an exhortation or accompaniment for
rowers : Serv. on Aen. iii. 128 ' Cretam proavosque petamus : celeuma
dicunt, et bene metro celeumatis usus est, id est anapaestico trimetro
hypercatalecto'. If this nautical use is ancient, we can see why Cratinus
wrote the verse Kara utIxov for a chorus of seamen in his 'OZvaaris
(ir. I44y . P^'^jj j^yj,^ ^^jjy ^'^g oi-yav,

KOI -navra Ko'^ov tolxo- iT(.voii'
rj^xiv 'WaKTj TTarph kariv,
nXiopxv 5' iiyL 'Ohvaaii 9tia'.

2 Like the iambic trimeter anapaests could also halt or limp. A

58 ANAPAESTS

short syllables accompany the raising of the foot (dpai^), and
with the long syllable it is set down again (Oiai^). Two m
anapaests accompany two steps, together they make a Pdais '
(the Roman passus, five feet as a measure of length). Two
anapaests make a fierpov, four are called a 'Dimeter'; they
are scanned Kara SiTroStav like iambi or trochees, in spite of
their greater length. This being the nature of the anapaest,
it seems clear that it is and was distinctly felt to be an
' ascending ' rhythm ; we must not follow J. H. H. Schmidt
in applying to it the methods of modern music and scanning
anapaests as dactyls with anacrusis

(v^w: — '^Vw' I — \j \j — WW j — ^y

The name dvaTraLcrros implies this, and it is confirmed by the

regularity with which a word ends with the end of the second

foot: ^ ^ ^ ^ i

SiOpovov AioBeu I Kai StcrK-qTrrpov

Tifxfj^ 6\vpov I ^eiJyo? 'ATpeiSdu.

The same question has been raised about iambic verse, which
Schmidt treated as trochaic with anacrusis. About both the
testimony of antiquity is that the rising movement gave an
effect of greater vigour and energy — the downward dactylic
and trochaic movements one of greater fluency and facility — ^

' cholanapaestic ' metre is found, on stone, in lines addressed by a gouty

patient to Asclepius :

rdSf aol Aiocpavros (Trfvxofiar

aaiauv fxf, fiditap adevapuTaTf.

laadfKvos woddypav Kan-qv.

(Kaibel's Supplementimi Epigraniniaium Graecorum, in Rhein. Mus. 34.
210.) Wilamowitz pointed out the appropriateness of the movement of
the verse, suggestive of a hobbling gait. When Diophantus recovers, he
returns thanks in dactylic hexameters.

The verse consists of three anapaests and an iambus, a metre which
requires further investigation. It is found (with accent taking the place
of quantity) in early Byzantine hymns. But it is also as early as Sappho
l^y\vKvm/epov d^dxavov opnfTov),

ANAPAESTS 59

and in the case of iambi Quintilian expressly says that this
effect was felt throughout the line, not merely at the beginning
of it. It must have been even more clearly so in anapaests.
In a hexameter or iambic trimeter the rhythm may be said
to be reversed at the caesura ; in an anapaestic dimeter the
initial effect was definitely repeated or renewed in the middle
of the line. Sometimes it is further emphasized by the con-
currence of a rhetorical effect, repetition or anaphora {vvv
kwaKovcrov, vvv kirdpri^ov. Aes. C/w. 725).

The chief forms of anapaestic verse are the following :

(a) The early ifi^arrjpLa of Tyrtaeus, in which the catalectic
form of line is repeated :

ayer' o) ^irdpTas evduSpov
KovpoL waTepcov iroXLardv,
Xaia fikv LTVP TTpo^aXiade,
86pv Se^Ljepa 8' ^vtoXjjlcds.

That is ^^- ] ^^- I i=^^_ I - or ^^- I ^^- | ^^- | »-» or
w^ _ I i^^ _ j v.^ _ I _ ^ or i=^^ _^^_^^u _. The third
foot may be a spondee (which it rarely is in the drama), and
the long syllable of the anapaest is not resolved.

(b) The acatalectic dimeter of tragedy and comedy (with
the catalectic line at the close of a group of lines) used mainly
for the H(To8os of the chorus. This is the most important and
most familiar form of anapaestic verse ; it will be considered
more fully.

(c) In the Greek drama dimeters of a freer and more lyrical
cast, in Oprjuot and other emotional passages, sometimes using
frequent spondees to express distress or perplexity {/on 859 f.
CO yj/v\d, TTcos (Ttydaci) ;) and sometimes admitting complete
resolution in passages of greater excitement or surprise, either
once in the line or twice or even in all three feet save the last :

T19 opea 1 PaOvKOfia | Td8' e7reav\T0 PpoTOiv ',^

* A resolved line of this type served the metricians as an example of

6o ANAPAESTS

Similarly resolved anapaests are found on a larger scale in the
VTTO p)(rj /la of Pratinas, i-4(\Vilamowitz, Sappho und Simonides,
p. 132 f.).

(d) A longer line, tetrameter or ApL(rTo<pdp€ioy, composed
of an acatalectic and a catalectic dimeter. It' is found in
kfiParripia :

dy€T ob '^irdpTas 'ivoirXoL Kovpoi \ irorl tolv lApeos KLuaaiu

(unless this should rather be regarded as two separate lines ;
the long line as written by later poets does not admit a
spondee in the seventh place). Epicharmus is said to have
composed whole plays in this metre, and it is used by Aristo-
phanes, especially in the paral?asis. At Rome Plautine drama
uses also very frequently an acatalectic line of 8 or 4 + 4
anapaests. The catalectic line was one of the many metres
written by Varro in his Saturae. In Aristophanes there is
regular diaeresis after the fourth foot, and the seventh foot
is not a spondee, though spondees are very freely admitted
elsewhere {Nub. 961) :

Xe^ft) Toivvv TTju dp)(aLau \ waLSeiau co? SieKetro,

or' eyo) tol SiKaia Xeycou i^vOovv \ kol (7(o(ppo(Tvyrj ^euoiiicTo.

Anapaestic verse, in its current and unmistakable forms,
may be called * dipodic ' and ' dimetric '. Groups of two feet
are combined with groups of four. A group of three or of six

composition in the foot called ' Pyrrhic ' (or rather ' Pyrrich ', for it is
pyrrichius, from the dance irvppixv)' A pyrrhic (w v^ = — ) can hardly
have had any real use or existence in metrical practice. Dionysius, De
Comp. Verb. c. xvii, gives the line :

Af-ye Be av Kara TroSa vfox^ra jxkXta.
A resolved dactyl, or anapaest {\j ^ 6'w'), would be indistinguishable
from a pyrrhic dipody. This particular line calls attention to the metre
in which it is composed : Kara trvha — foot by foot. ' Foot by foot
rehearse the measure, verse that flows in channel strange.' (It is difficult
to believe with Wilamowitz and Prof. Rhys Roberts that the line has
also another meaning, and refers to the rent hmbs of Pentheus.)

ANAPAESTS 6i

anapaests — a tripody or trimeter — is too rare and disputable
to be considered here.

In its collocation of words — the technical matter of brick-
laying — anapaestic verse, as we should expect, resembled
dactylic in admitting the shortening of a long vowel before
a following vowel — ' vocalis ante vocalem corripitur ':

oix^TOL dpSpciov. , (Aes. Fers. 60.)

TO) Qr](7€LSa S' I 0^0) AOtji/coi^, (Eur. I/ec. 123.)

(in the latter of which passages the shortened syllable carries
the icf7(s and may be compared with Plautus's i/a me \ di amefit,
in trochaic verse). But such shortening is far less frequent in
anapaests than in epic verse ; it is in fact rare. And of course
it is rarer still in Latin, where ' vocalis ante vocalem corripitur '
was never a prevalent metrical principle ; the principle came
into ^Xay withi?t a word—Q.g. fieri — more frequently than in
Greek, and as we have seen above (p. 46, i. b) a monosyllable
was shortened in verse, and in actual speech, when the fol-
lowing syllable was short. There is an example in a tetrameter
of Varro's :

non quaerenda est homini, | qui habet | virtutem, paenula
in imbri.

Anapaestic verse was not so congenial to Latin as iambic or
trochaic. Plautus does not employ this shortening to any
appreciable extent, but other metrical devices are rather
notably frequent in his anapaests : (i) fusion of two vowels
into one long one, ' filio, nuptiis ', scanned as spondees ;
(2) shortening on the principle of 'Breves Breviantes ',

fores an | cubiti ac | pedes plus | valeant.

It is possible, and it has been maintained by some, that,
instead of synizesis, we should see in the former of these
cases also the operation of the same law, resulting in two
short syllables (' filio, nuptiis ').

62 ANAPAESTS

It remains to consider the systems of anapaestic dimeters
which are so conspicuous in the drama. Their special purpose
was to accompany the entrance, ndpoSo^ or eicroSos, of the
chorus/ but occasional passages of similar anapaests are
found elsewhere, and the irdpoSo? usually does not consist
of anapaests alone, but of anapaests p/?/s /zeAoy.

In the Greek drama anapaestic systems are made up of |
groups of lines (three, four, or five or more lines, as the poet
chose to arrange them) which end with a paroemiacus or
catalectic line, and which are continuous in their metrical
structure. There is no hiatus or syllaba aiiceps at the end
of a line ; the composition is hypermetric, hypermetron, or
what was sometimes called irviyo^^ as giving the reciter no
rest or breathing-space.

A monometer or line of two anapaests is occasionally
admitted. It may be the penultimate line :

TTJaS' diro yoipas

Tjpav, (TTpaTL(OTLV dpcoydv,

or may mark some kind of pause in the thought.

^ In Ar. Poet. c. xii the irapobos is defined as irpwrrj Xe^is o\ov xopov.
It is not a fxeXoi. Westphal argued that it must have been recited, for
if it were sung the movement of the choreutae would be ludicrously
slow.

The other choric passages are araaiixa, and a aTaai/xov is defined as
TO dvev dvanaiaTov Kal Tpo\aiov, i. e. without anapaestic systems and
trochaic tetrameters. Trochaic tetrameters are not found in the TrapoSos
of an extant plaj', but the schol. on Ar. Ach. 204 says that tragic and
comic poets employed them, k-naddv dpofxaiojs eiadyaxri tovs xopoi/?, 'iva 6
\6yos avvrp^xv "^V 5pdfJ.aTi (leg. ^pajj.r]pLaTc). The close of the Oed. Tyr.
is a surviving relic of a trochaic e^ooos {ui ndrpai Qrj^rjs ^voikoi kt\.).

In a normal tragedy the entrance of the chorus is a formal and stately
affair, occupying some time. The choreutae enter in their ordered ranks
or groups, to assume a rectangular formation (^Terpdycovoy crxVI^'^)- At
the close of the play the situation was very different. The audience are
stirred or overwhelmed by the fear and pity which the catastrophe has
excited. Elaborate and prolonged evolutions would be out of place.
Hence the anapaests are often only a few lines (iroWal fxop(pai tojv
dai/JLOpicuv «tA.).

ANAPAESTS 63

Diaeresis is regular after the first fxerpov or dipody, except
that the division is in a few instances later by one short time :
TTTepvycdv kpeTjJLolcTLv I epecrcro/jLepoi.
fxaXaKOLS dSoXoiat \ irapr^yopiaL's.
Coincidence of word and foot is freely admitted in
anapaestic verse, both in Greek and Latin. It may extend
throughout a line or more than one line :

d)? Kal TTJ^ VVV (p6LfJ,iy7]^ VVKTO^

fieydXoL 06pv(3ot Kari^ova ?)//«?.

The form v-/ v^ ^ v^ (proceleusmaticus) is not admitted. Only
one example is quoted, and that is in comedy :

Slo, are 8e \ (pocTocu. (Ar. Clouds 916.)

The inverted anapaest (— o kS) is subject to considerable
restrictions. A line made up of four such feet is inadmissible,
and a line like

^vyov diKpi^akelv SovXlou 'EXXdSi (Aes. Persae 50.)
is infrequent. It may not precede an anapaest ; this would
result in bringing four short syllables together (— v.^v-' <^v.y— ).
Most commonly it is followed by a spondee, as in TrjaS' drro
\d>pa^, a group of syllables that make an ' Adonius ', which
closed a sapphic stanza.

To the Romans the composition of i\napaestic verse pre-
sented special difficulties, and their practice is consequently
different from that of the Greeks. In early Roman drama the
proceleusmaticus (v^ w vj:- w) is freely admitted, not only in
comedy, but also in tragedy ; and the diaeresis in the middle
of the dimeter is less strictly observed. Greek anapaests not
only had diaeresis in the middle of the line, but quite frequently
ended each anapaest with the end of a word ; in Latin such an
arrangement meant divergence throughout of ictus and accent :

incliite parva prodite patria.'

^ Compare lines of Anaxandrides (quoted by Lindsay, Capiivi, p. 77) :

(pVCTKUIV, ^OJfXOV, T€VT\uJV, OpiUJV,

9vvvi5€S oiTTai, (pvKida £({>9ai.

64 ANAPAESTS

Pacuvius is credited with a deliberate attempt to write
anapaests on a new principle, exemplified in the lines :

agite, ite, evol vita, rapite, coma
tractate per as|pera saxa et humum.

Here there is more agreement between accent and ictus, facili-
tated by the abolition of the diaeresis. Marius Victorinus^ who
mentions the experiment, of course gives no hint that agree-
ment with accent was arrived at (' Pacuvius novare propositum
volens noluit intra binos pedes finire sensum '), nor do we
know whether Pacuvius persisted in his experiment or tried it
on a large scale. It could not succeed or establish itself. The
result was too unlike the Greek norm ; and to compose in
this vein must have been extremely difficult. To write verse
that observes two different principles is a tour de force which
may be difficult in the extreme, e.g. to write hexameters in
English that observe both accent and quantity. In Latin
anapaests complete success was impossible. Pacuvius has to
end his lines with 'coma, humiim'. To achieve coincidence of
accent and ictus the line must either end with a word of
one syllable, which no doubt it might occasionally do, as in

Accius's

delubra tenes, mysteria quae,

or with one of a very limited number of quite exceptional
words such as 'nostras', 'tanton', 'abit' (where the abnormal
accent is due to loss of a syllable). It is notable that Terence
never uses anapaests in his few cantica, although they are the
favourite metre in the cantica of Plautus.

With a catalectic ending the conditions are reversed. Here
the agreement of ictus and accent was a thing not difficult to

(The exact coincidence of accent and ictus here is of course quite acci-
dental. Accent diverged from tcius just as readily :

Accent has no place in Greek metre till Babrius, and in Babrius it is
regarded onl}' in one syllable of the line.)

ANAPAESTS 65

attain, but difficult to avoid. So it is not surprising to find
Plautus writing catalectic dimeters continuously {Kara cttlxov
or iugiter) :

defessus siim pultando.

hoc postremiimst. vae vdbis, &c. {S^ic/ius ^i^f.)
Plautus also uses the catalectic line as a concluding line or
dausicla after a group of acatalectic dimeters, as do the tragic
poets : Accius, Philocieta :

unde igni' cluet mortalibu' clam
divisus : eiim dictii' Prometheus
clepsisse dol6 poena sque lovi
fato ^xpendisse supremo.^

This ending is found also in the Satiirae of Varro {Koa-fio-
Topvi'Tj) :

dum nos ventus flamine sudo

suavem ad patriam perducat.
But it is not consistently and invariably used by the early
poets, and it was entirely abandoned by Seneca. Plautus,
besides writing catalectic dimeters, frequently makes his longer
lines (tetrameters) catalectic. One or two lines are catalectic
in a passage otherwise acatalectic : Persa 783-4 :

qui illiim Persam atque omnes Persas atque etiam omnes

personas
male di 6mnes perdant, ita miser6 Toxilus haec mihi concivit.
It is difficult to see why Plautus did not make all his long
lines of this type. Aristophanes had done so, without any
inducement in the shape of coincident accent and ictus. And
the same question arises about iambic verse. The catalectic
form (* septenarius ') makes coincidence in the penultimate

' In the second line ' dictus Pr6metheus ' shows that the incidence of the
ictus did not enforce length by position. It was when the ictus fell on
a vowel originally long hy nature that the long quantity was revived or
protected (' mane mane' begins a trochaic line).

66 ANAPAESTS

syllable extremely eas^ of attainment and all but invariable.
Yet Plautus often writes the complete ' octonarius ', without
having much precedent for it in Greek comedy as far as we
know (though the 'I^vevrat of Sophocles has revealed a
passage of considerable length in satyric drama).

In the Roman drama anapaests are not associated with march-
ing or with the ela-oSos or 'i^oSos of a chorus. They may happen
to be used when a personage is entering, as in Trin. 840 f., but
that does not make them ' march-anapaests ' (Lindsay, Captivi^
p. 80). There was no regular chorus, and the 'orchestra' was
occupied by the seats of senators. The fishermen in the Rudens
enter with iambic septenarii. Anapaestic verse could be used as
a lyric anywhere in the play. Many of the more complex forms
of Greek lyric were unworkable in Latin, and anapaests were
one of the simpler metres that took their place.

Seneca's practice would have seemed very strange to the
Greeks of earlier times. His treatment of anapaests is in
keeping with what he does in the case of other metres. He
sometimes writes a long passage in Sapphics, without an
Adonius anywhere ; sometimes a long passage in Asclepia-
deans without a shorter closing Hne (Glyconeus). So in
anapaests his last line is often a dimeter like the rest. He
does, however, show some tendency to use a monometer as
a closing line, often in the form — ^ v^ :

quid plura canam ? vincit saevas

cura novercas. {Phaedra 357.)

Or the second dipody of the last line takes that shape :

nee sit terris ultima Thule. {Med. 379.)

In the Agamemnofi (310 f.) he has dimeter and monometer
alternating, a form unknown to Greek tragedy. In linking
his lines together Seneca is less careful than the Greek
dramatists. Hiatus and syllaba aticeps occur sometimes,
without being justified by the close of a period or by a marked

ANAPAESTS 67

pause in the sense. But the instances are few, and some of
them have been removed by emendation. They are notably
more frequent in the Octavia than in the other plays, and this
difference in metrical practice is one of the fairly numerous
and considerable reasons for assigning that play to a different
author. The author has also a tendency to make a monometer
end in a short syllable (' pulsata freta', 316, 'fletibus ora*, 330),
and he has an unusual lengthening before a mute and a liquid
in ' plura referre prohibet praesens ' (890).

F 2

CHAPTER V

IAMBIC VERSE
I. The Iambic Trimeter and Senarius

* Trimeter ' and * Senarius ' are not merely different words
for the same thing or words of precisely the same meaning.
The former designates a handling of the metre that was
distinctively Greek, though practised also by later Roman
poets : ' senarius ' is the more appropriate word for the heavier
and more amorphous type of line which prevailed at Rome
before the Augustan age.

In both languages there were several distinct veins of iambic
writing and types of iambic verse, each with principles and
restrictions of its own. Quintilian {Insi. Or. ix. 4. 139 f.),
speaking of the variation of rhythm in oratory to answer to
various emotions, illustrates this by iambic verses : sometimes
■ we aim at the ' tumor tragoediae ', which depends mainly on
iambi and spondees ; the iambus with its rising movement, he
would say, gives an effect of imperious energy, and the spondee
of course lends solemnity to the utterance :

en Impero Argis, sceptra mihi liquit Pelops

(words of Atreus, perhaps from a play of Accius) ; the verse of
comedy, he proceeds, gains 'celeritas' at the expense of
' gravitas ', it admits ' trochees ' (by which he means what we
are accustomed to call ' tribrachs ') and pyrrhics :

quid igitur faciam ? non earn ne nunc quidem :

IAMBIC TRIMETER AND SENARIUS 69

further, ' aspera et maledica ', when expressed in verse, take
the shape of iambi :

quis hoc potest videre, quis potest pati,
nisi impudicus et vorax et aleo ?

Quintilian is here quoting, from Catullus (xxix), lines which
admit no spondee and consist of pure iambi throughout. This
was a refinement on the abusive verse of Archilochus. The
effect was one of measured and dexterous ' celeritas ', like the
flashing of a rapier in a skilful hand or the flight of a well-
aimed missile.^

Iambic verse has no early history. It comes into view
suddenly in the middle of the seventh century b. c, written
in a finished and exact form by Archilochus of Paros, to whom
notable advances and innovations are attributed in several
different kinds of metre. It existed before, no doubt, probably
in a ruder and more popular form, with the licences which are
later seen in comedy. It belongs clearly to the lonians, and
it had some place in the popular festivals of Demeter and
lakchos, which flourished among the lonians and their
kindred of Attica — festivals connected with the rise of the
Attic drama.

The study of iambic verse begins most conveniendy with
the most regular form of it that had a wide vogue— Catullus's
absolutely pure iambi we may postpone, as an exceptional and
rather artificial or fanciful thing — the trimeter of Archilochus
and the tragedians. The practice of Archilochus differs so
slightly from that of tragedy that he need not be separately
treated. It was his verse that tragedy adopted, XeKTiKcoTarou
rcou ixirpGdv — 'aiternis aptum sermonibus ' (Hor. A. F. 81) — as

^ Quintilian's phrase about Archilochus, ' breves vibrantesque senten-
tiae' [yi. i. 60), compares his thouglits or meanings to the hurthng of
a spear through the air, or perhaps to a thunderbolt (compare the saying
of Cicero, which QuintiHan quotes [ix. 4. 55] : ' Demosthenis non tanto-
pere vibrarent ilia fulmina,' &c.).

70 IAMBIC TRIMETER

nearer to real life or actual debate than the elaborate and
stately hexameter. There are various indications that the
natural texture or tendency both of Greek and Latin was
iambo-trochaic (alternation of short and long) rather than
dactylic or anapaestic, though both languages lent themselves
readily enough to the latter forms of verse also.^ i

The iambus is a foot of three times (^ w >u), its rhythm
duplex or ScTrXda-ios (the ratio of the parts 2 : i, or in actual ^
order 1 + 2). The second and third times go together, taking
normally the shape of a long syllable {u —) ; when they do not
do so the ictus is on the second syllable of the foot (w | o ^).
It is a rising foot ; the slighter or weaker part precedes the ,
stronger. But though the ancients recognized and often ^
discuss the single iambus, Greek composition in iambics dealt
not with single iambi, but with pairs or dipodies (whence the
name trimeter ^ for a line containing six feet) : w — ^ — . Of J
the four syllables in such a group there was one that might be
heavier without detriment to the general effect — the first. To
make the third long would efface the structure of the group :
\^ is amorphous. The iambic line consisted of three I

^ Cicero {Orator 189) : ' versus saepe in oratione per imprudentiam.
dicimus . . . senarios vero et Hipponacteos effugere vix possumus ;
magnam enim partem ex iambis nostra constat oratio ' (where Cicero
would have ended with the fault he is describing if he had written,
' partem ex iambis constat nostra oratio '. He shuns that, and gives us
instead, as in the previous clause, the favourite prose ending of a double
Cretic < -/w y^—) : ib. § 191, he speaks of the view that iambic rhythm
belongs specially to oratory, 'quod sit orationi simillimus' ; it therefore
belongs to the drama too : ' qua de causa fieri ut is potissimum propter
similitudinem veritatis (= reality, real life) adhibeatur in fabulis, quod
ille dactylicus numerushexametrorum magniloquentiae sit accommodatior.'

^ Terentianus :

sed ter feritur ; hinc trimetrus dicitur,
scandendo binos quod pedes coniungimus.

('feritur', is beaten ; each of three groups of syllables has its dominant
ictus,)

AND-SENARIUS 71

such dipodies, and it followed that the first, fifth, and ninth
syllables might be long :

For feet of three times, the longest possible kooXou, according
to Aristoxenus, was one of six feet or eighteen times. The
trimeter then may be one kcoXou ; but in fact and in practice
the trimeter insisted on being divided, in very mu^h the same
way as the hexameter. It resented equal division ; like a
hexameter it refused to be 2 + 2 + 2 or 3 + 3 when it was
embodied in words : a line like

f dfir)^dv(£)V I d\yr)86v(ov j kTTi(TTpo(f)aL

is not admitted in tragedy, and Aeschylus's line (if he wrote it
in this shape)

Sp^Krjp 7repdcrauT€9 \ fioyis noXXco wovco

may be a case of sound deliberately made to answer to
sense :

The line too labours and the words move slow.

When elision occurred the division was tolerated :

S) Trdcra KdS/iov yaV, dnoXXyfiat SoXo),

and of course the end of a monosyllabic word might occur in
the middle of the line if the word was proclitic and not
enclitic :

ov fjLOL TO, Tvyeco tov iroXvy^pva-ov fieXec

is a perfectly euphonious line. Exceptionally, also, a break in
the middle of the line might emphasize a contrast :

drifjLLa^ jJlIv ov, irpop-ijOLa^ Se aov. {El. 1036.)
The trimeter then, like the hexameter, prefers to be 2\ + 3^
or 3-|+ 2 J. Often, of course, as in a hexameter like

Peliaco quondam prognatae vertice pinus
or

caerula verrentes abiegnis aequora palmis,

72 IAMBIC TRIMETER

the division is very slight, and exists rather for metre than for
the sense or for rhetoric. It was possible for a comic poet
to make a trimeter consist of one long compound word
{Wasps 220) :

dp^aLOiJLe\L(n8(ovo(ppvvL\rjpaTa,

though we may perhaps suppose a very slight division after
(tlScopo.

The analogy between these divisions and those of the
hexameter is so close that it seems necessary to call them
caesurae. If they are caesurae^ the fact is of some importance
for recent metrical methods and discussions.

The syllables of an iambic trimeter admit of being
construed as trochees with afiacmsis :

(In a trochaic dipody, which is the converse of an iambic one^
it is \}c\^ fourth syllable that is anceps or permitted to be long.)
This method of scansion, which is in agreement with modern
musical notation, was adopted by J. H. H. Schmidt and others
in the nineteenth century, and — for lyrics at all events — the
principle has had considerable currency in this country, since
it was set forth by Jebb in the introductions to his editions of
plays of Sophocles. It has advantages. It may be contended
that it gives a better and clearer account of certain forms of
verse than does iambic scansion. As regards the trimeter
of the drama— verse that is spoken or recited rather than
sung — this matter of the caesura is perhaps the most tangible
objection that can be brought against it. With trochaic scan-
sion it is difficult to see that there is any cumbrousness or
heaviness or rupture into two parts in the line of Aeschylus
quoted above :

Spr\\Kr\v 7r€pda-ai^\T€S [JLoyLS 7ro\\Xa> tto^O).

The normal divisions of the Trimeter would have to be called
diaereses and not caesurae, on the trochaic theory. Further,

AND SENARIUS 73

the difference in tj6o9, in feeling or effect, between trochaic
and iambic verse is discussed so often and so conspicuously
by the ancients that it is difficult to believe that the difference
consisted only in the presence or absence of one syllable at the
beginning.^ We have seen above that the structure of anapaests
is far from suggesting obviously that they should be scanned
as dactyls with anacrusis ; and it may be added that the
anacrusis is no more plausible in the case of dochmii

(v^ v_y — ), (f)pevS>v 8va-(f)p6v(ov afxaprrjiiaTa is not readily

thought of as (Ppe\v(Jov 8v(T(pp6v(£)V d\fj.apTrjfj.ara.

The essential structure of the tragic trimeter has now been
explained. If we speak of it in terms of feet, we may say that
only the first, third, and fifth may be heavy or spondaic. There
must be a caesura in the third foot or in the fourth. Subordi-
nate, but still quite important principles of structure remain.
A clear understanding of the nature of the verse was one of
the contributions made by English scholars to classical research.
It was made in the beginning of last century. One of the rules
is still known by the name of Porson (Lex Porsoni").

(i) Resolution. Unlike the long syllable of the dactyl in
a hexameter, resolution of which is found only in two or three
dubious lines of Ennius {siipra^ p. 56), the long syllable of an
iambus could be replaced by two short syllables. This was
done very sparingly by Archilochus, not more than once in
a line :

KJ \^

KXaLCt) I Toc Saai^odv ov to, MayvrjT(i)v KaKoi.

^ There is a passage in Quintilian (ix. 4. 136) which seems to show
that when a series of syllables occurred which could be analysed as
iambi {y — w — w — ....), the 'rising' elTect was not felt only at the
outset ('iambi . .. omnibus pedib us insurgunt et a brevibus in longas
nituntur et crescunt '). The believer in trochaic scansion should read the
iambic tetrameters in the 'Ixv^vrai of Sophocles (291 f.) with an open
mind, or a mind as unprejudiced as he can make it. He will not feel
them to be merely trochaic tetrameters with a syllable prefixed.

74 IAMBIC TRIMETER

Tragedy at first was similarly strict, but gradually assumed
greater freedom. When Euripides brought it down from
heroic heights to a level nearer that of everyday life, its
vocabulary and metre underwent a corresponding change. In
metre resolution became more frequent. Euripides has
. resolution as often as four times in a line :

irevla B\ <jo(pLav eXa\e Sia to 8v(TTV\iS'

Comedy admitted resolution with great freedom, leaving
untouched only the last foot of the line. In all forms of
the verse, at all periods, the last foot is a regular disyllabic
iambus, w!£.*

When the long syllable of the first, third, or fifth foot was

resolved, the result might be — w ^ , a group of syllables of

dactylic form, but differing from a real dactyl in the incidence

of the ictus. Tragedy admitted — w w only in the first and

^ third foot, not in the fifth.

When resolution took place, and the three syllables were
not within the same word but divided between two words^,
the strict rule, observed by Archilochus and the tragedians, >
was that the two short syllables which stood for the long
should be in the same word (w | w -^ , not w^ | v^), as in
Tcc ©a(Ti(a)i^), or in Aeschylus :

^KvBrjv ey oI/jl\ou, dpa\TOv els kprjfiLav.

^ A line in the Frogs appears to be an exception :

Koi KoiSdpiov teal XrjKvdiov fcal GvXaKiov

(1. 1203). The line would be normal if the first syllable of OvXclkiov
could be supposed to be short. But all the earlier evidence makes it
long, and the only instance of its shortness given by L. and S. is in
a late epigram in the Anthology {Atith. Pal. viii. 166), vv^hich has no
metrical authority. Further, the context demands a word exactly equi-
valent in its syllables to Kwhapiov and \rjKv6iou. The deviation from rule
is similar to that which is sometimes necessitated by a proper name.

AND SENARIUS 75

In comedy the rule is not observed, though it is not broken
with great frequency :

€fi€ fiev (TV 7ro\\ov9 Tov I Trarep' e\Xavu€i9 8p6fjLOV9.

(Arist. Clouds 29.)

(ii) An anapaest was admitted by tragedy only in the first
foot {TTorafioov re nriyai. . .), and that under the condition that
<the three syllables must be in the same word. An exception
was made in the case of proper names :

kfiol fi€v ovSeh fiv6o9, 'AvTiyovq, 0tAa)^'.

Comedy admitted an anapaest in all places but the last :

Kard^a, Kard^a, Kard/Sa, Kard^a. — KaTa^rjoro/iai.

(iii) The rule of the * final cretic ' {Lex Porsoni) when a line
ends in a word of ' cretic ' form (— ^ —), the preceding syllable
must be either short, or a word of one syllable connecting
itself with the word that follows ; it may not be long and the
last syllable of a word of more than one syllable. Thus

coy Tolaiv kfiTreLpOLa-L kol \ rds (rvfKpopa^

is a quite legitimate line, but

^rXa? 6 \a\KioLG-L ud>T0L9 ovpavov

is so exceptional — in tragedy — that doubts arise about the text.
Comedy did not observe the rule^ and it was entirely disregarded
by Roman poets, even when they wrote iambic verse with the
greatest strictness and finish, in the Augustan age and later.

The Porsonian canon has hitherto been a mere 'empirical
fact '. The practice of the Greek tragic poets commends itself
to the ear as euphonious, but no definite cause for it was
suggested by Porson himself, or for long after him. Recently
a promising attempt to assign a cause has been made by
K. Witte {Hermes, 1914, p. 229 f.). His theory may be
summarized as follows : — The iambic trimeter, like the
heroic hexameter, fell naturally into two parts, and the

76 IAMBIC TRIMETER

■«
favourite and most frequent division of it was the penthe-

mimeral :

a b

Further, the effect of this division was heightened, with extreme
frequency, by making the syllable before it long. If a precisely
similar effect followed at b, four syllables later, the division at
a would no longer be dominant. Hence if a line begins

it may be completed by the words

KevyeveLOLV kKirpeirus,

where the -av is short, but a quadrisyllable word, or group of
words, with the last syllable long may not follow the caesura.
Similarly (though here the argument becomes somewhat less
convincing) with a hephthemimeral division :

"EW-qves ov fievouv, dXXa (riXfiaariu,
the hephthemimeral division (which mt/s^ be preceded by a
short syllable) may not be followed by a similar division which
would obscure or eclipse it, i. e. not by a similar division with
the added emphasis of a long syllable before it.

That is a brief statement of Witte's principle, and it appears •
to be sound, at all events as regards the dominant penthe-
mimeral caesura, and the rule once evolved may have been
extended to lines with the less frequent hephthemimeral. In
a line like

v^ — — I — w

non ut superni villa candens Tusculi

there are two conspicuous groups of syllables arranged in a way
that rather distorts or destroys a trimeter, a metrical effect
belonging to lyrics and to a wholly different type of verse.

v^ — —

UvQcovL T av^rjs ovpov vjxvoov. (Find. Pyth. iv.)

Witte points out that, in the rare violations in Greek tragedy
of Porson's Law, the last five syllables of the line sometimes

AND SENARIUS 77

go very closely together in sense, or the words are bound
together by elision ^ :

d /JLOL TrpooreXdcov criya arj^Laiv eLT ex^^-

(Soph. Phil. 22.)

Now elision at this point — before the final cretic — is distinctly
preferred by Seneca. The effect of * villa candens Tusculi '
did not repel Horace, but it did repel him. In the great
majority of the lines in Seneca that end in a word of three
syllables, there is elision before that word. If we next come
back to Horace we find that in Epode xvii, a poem of a
dramatic cast rather than Archilochian iambi, the only violation
of Porson's rule is ' homicidam Hectorem '.

Tragedy, as it had an exalted, Ionic and poetic, diction of
its own, was also stately and regular in metre. The comic
poet can make an effective use of the difference. Thus in the
Peace Hermes, being a god, naturally speaks the language of
tragedy. When Trygaeus knocks at the gate of Olympus, he
begins :

TTodeu ISpoTov fi€ TTpocre^aX* —

(^poTov, for 6vr]Tov^ is tragic, and we may suppose that the
sentence was to end with words like i^aicpur]^ (pan?). But
he is startled by the apparition of the gigantic beetle, and he
goes on :

wi^a^ ^HpaKXeL^,

TOVTL TL k(TTL TO KaKOV ) TP. LTTTTOKdudapO^.

' Guva^ 'HpaKXeis ' and the form tovtl belong to everyday
colloquial Attic. The former is also metrically untragic. The

^ Witte proposes to deal with the first line of the Ion by writing it :

ArXas 6 xakKeoiai vuroia ovpavov,

with elision before the cretic. But this seems doubtful in Attic tragedy:
it would be more plausible in Archilochus, in verse written in actual
Ionic.

78 IAMBIC TRIMETER

resolution in tl €(ttl to Ka\K6v ; is not irregular or not
glaringly irregular, for the article to goes closely with

KaKOV.

The trimeter of x\ttic comedy enjoyed a large measure of
freedom. Some of its features have already been mentioned.
But it remains a very different thing from the * senarius ' of
the early Roman drama. Most notably, it never admits a
spondee in the second or fourth foot.

It might be supposed that the admission of an anapaest
would carry with it the admission of a spondee, but this is not
the case. Further, the anapaest is not admitted indiscrimi-
nately and in any shape. It is admitted most readily — with
great readiness — when all three syllables are in one word
{Kard^a, Kard^a ktX.). A long word has a longer pause
after it than a short word, and if a long word ended with one
of the short syllables the foot was broken or strained asunder
becoming less suitable to take a place among iambi. The
effect is therefore infrequent, and it has been observed that in
Greek it occurs within a dipody, not between two dipodies :

eTrtVlAfOTToy 7j\\Ka>.

8€vp\d TrdXjp \\ /SaSicrrioy.

The Latin senarius is stricter in this respect, and it has been
suggested that it was so because it ignored dipodic structure ;
it had no quadrisyllable group within which a wrongly divided
anapaest could find shelter. Hence the line [Asinariaj
Prol. ii)

Demophilu' scripsit, Maccu' vortit barbare

may be regarded as proof that, though Plautus's full and formal
name, at all events in his later life, was T. Maccius Plautus,
he was also known as Maccus. ' Macciu' | vortit ' divides an
anapaest wrongly.

The comic trimeter could divide itself in ways that were

AND SENARIUS 79

excluded from tragedy, even emphasizing a strange division
by change of speaker {Birds 175) :

IT. pxk-^ov KOiToo. EII. Kal Stj /SXeTTO). n. pxine vvv duoo.
The ' proceleusmaticus ' ('^ w w w), arrived at by resolution
of an anapaest, is very rare in Greek comedy, much rarer than
in Latin, but there are undoubted instances of it. A good
example is a line of the comic poet Plato :

ovTos, TL9 ei; \ Aeye rayy' \ tl (Tiyas ] ovk epei^.

The trimeter of the satyric drama calls for very brief notice.
It may be said to be intermediate between the tragic and the
comic trimeter, but not in the sense that it is half-way between
them. It is nearer the tragic form of verse — notably so in the
recently recovered *I\vevTaL of Sophocles — and differs from
it chiefly in admitting the anapaest more freely, in places other
than the first. Anapaests are fairly frequent in the Cyclops.
A fragment of the ' npo/irjOev^ UvpKaev^ ' of Aeschylus :

Xii/d Se Trt<T(Ta kco/jloXli^ov fiaKpol tovol

shows, by its anapaest in the fourth place — an ordinary word,
not a proper name — that the play must have been a satyric
drama and not a tragedy.

The history of iambic verse at Rome is in many points
obscure and complicated, much more difficult than the history
of the trimeter in Greek. It falls into two sharply distinguished
periods, or rather phases, which overlap in time, (i) The
' senarius ' of the early drama, which ignored dipodic structure
and admitted spondees in all places but the last — not only in
the first, third, and fifth — was used in tragedy from Livius
to Accius, and by Cicero in his versions from the Greek ; it is
found later in the fables of Phaedrus, and probably continued
to be used in comedy in imperial times ^ ; (2) a stricter form of

^ M. Pomponius Bassulus, who wrote comedies under Trajan or
Hadrian, composed his own epitaph, which is extant on stone. Presum-

8o IAMBIC TRIMETER

verse or ' trimeter ', conforming to Greek rule substantially,
though not in all details, was introduced first by ' iambograpbi '
in Cicero's time, Catullus and his friends; and in the Augustan
age tragedy in the hands of Varius and Ovid all but certainly ■
adopted a similar type of verse, not materially different from
the trimeter of Seneca. Horace would not have condemned
as loose or inartistic the spondaic lines of Ennius :

in scaenam missos cum magno pondere versus,
if his friends Pollio and Varius had still been writing lines of
the same type/

The verse of the early drama is a vast subject of investigation,
on which much has been written. It cannot be dealt with here, but
a gap would be left in the history of the metre if its nature were
not briefly indicated. It is somewhat cumbrous or ponderous,
especially in tragedy, less agile in movement than Greek iambic
verse. The effect is due to very frequent spondees (or their
equivalents, dactyl and anapaests) and also often to frequent
elision :

quianam tam adv^rso augiirio et inimico 6mine
Thebis radiatum lumen ostentum tuum ? (Accius.)

ably the verse is that which he was accustomed to write :

ne more pecoris otio transfungerer,

Menandri paucas vorti scitas fabulas

et ipsus etiam sedulo finxi novas, &c.
The second line has spondees in the second and fourth place, as have
some of the lines that follow. Compare also the iambics of Apuleius
on a toothpowder {Apologia^ c. vi).

* It has been supposed that when Horace described Pollio's tragedies
in the phrase

Pollio regum
facta cant pede ter percusso,
he meant to imply that the lines were of the strict Hellenic type. But
this seems doubtful. He may have been thinking vaguely of ' trimeter '
as the name for the verse of tragic dialogue, however constructed. In
the passage of the A. P. quoted above (1. 258) he speaks of the ' tri-
meters ' of Acaus {' hie et in Acci | nobilibus trimetris').

AND SENARIUS 8i

(In these two lines, as it happens, the fourth foot does conform
to Greek rule, et mi and en ost.) Cicero could write in the old
tragic vein with such exactness that his lines sometimes sound
almost like a parody of Pacuvius or Accius :

haec interemit tortu multiplicabili

draconem, auriferam obtiitu adservantem arbo.r^m.

Yet Cicero, in an often-quoted passage, speaks of the verses of
comedy as shapeless and inharmonious : ' comicorum senarii
propter similitudinem sermonis sic saepe sunt abiecti, ut nonnum-
quamvixineis numerus et versus intellegi possit' {Orator 184).
In the Ciceronian and Augustan ages literary Latin was being
rapidly polished, hellenized, stereotyped in Hellenic moulds.
Feeling and appreciation for its older and more spontaneous
forms was dying out or was impaired. The older verse was
not really formless. It observed rules of its own, ultimately
prescribed by the nature of the Latin language, many of which
have been made clear by modern research. But it was a
defect in the old Roman drama that the verse of tragedy and
the verse of comedy were so much alike — not that they were
exactly alike, but there was no such difference as in Greek.
While the metrical difference was less consistent and less
obvious, the old Roman poet differentiated tragedy by a tumid
vein of style, an often turgid and bombastic type of diction, de-
rived partly perhaps from Aeschylus, but partly no doubt from the
contemporary ' Asiatic ' or at best decadent rhetoric of Greece.
The differentiation was clear enough, and could be utilized by
the comic poet after the fashion of the scene from the Peace
quoted above : Plautus in the Rudens makes the aged priestess
address her suppliants in tragic language, and in very regular
cretic verse :

nempe equo ligneo per vias caerulas
esti' vectae ?
How the early Latin poets came to handle the metre as they

82 IAMBIC TRIMETER

did is obscure. Were there forms of Greek verse, current in
popular entertainments of the time, that were looser than the
trimeters of Aristophanes or Menander ? ^ Did the native
Saturnian verse set an example of indifference to the quantity
of the syllable on which the ictus did not fall ? Did the
incidence of the Latin accent — always on the penultimate
syllable if that syllable is long — accidentally or Kara crvyi^e-
^r}K6^ aid and enforce the iambic rhythm, so that less attention
to quantity was necessary? In a line like

laborans, quaerens, parcens, illi s^rviens

the coincidence is obvious. Apart from the first and last feet
of the line — where there is divergence, if these feet are formed
by disyllabic words — there is a great deal of coincidence in
the verse of the early drama. A syllable which is both long
and accented usually carries the ictus. A line like '

et vos a vostris abduxi negotiis

is comparatively rare. When it does occur the abnormal effect
is generally atoned for by the line's ending in a quadrisyllable
word (like ?iegotiis here) of obviously iambic cadence.

^ A Greek trimeter with a spondee in the wrong place is not a wholly
unknown thing, though foreign to the Attic drama. Kaibel, Epigram-
mata Graeca 502 (Thebes, third or fourth century) Kiirai yap vrjbvv
us kixTjv u iirjdvfins. Herondas's admission of a spondee in the fifth foot
of his scazons is a similar irregularity ; the recently recovered iambi of
Callimachus are as strict in this respect as those of Catullus. The old
Roman poet of course found anapaests with great frequency in the
second and fourth places in Greek comedy. He may have said to
himself. ' If an anapaest, why not a spondee?' But the Greeks discri-
minated, admitting the one and excluding the other. Priscian (Keil, G. L.
iii. 426) has a discussion of the question whether the Roman type of iambic
verse was ever written by the Greeks. He seems to quote one or two
Greek lines (now unrecognizable owing to the state of the text), but ||
arrives at the answer ' No '. Probably the line quoted above should be
regarded as simply incorrect.

AND SENARIUS 83

The early dramatic verse handed on to the verse of later
tragedy — the Latin trimeter — a marked liking for spondees
and anapaests. The liking for anapaests is not shared by the
iambographi. Catullus shuns them, and instances in the
Epodes of Horace are few and dubious {infra. Part II,
Chap. Ill, § 2).

It became an all but rigid rule that the fifth foot must
be a spondee, and it is put as a rule by Diomedes : ' iambicus
tragicus^ ut gravior iuxta materiae pondus esset, semper quinto
loco spondeum recipit (he means 'habet'). aliter enim esse
non potest tragicus.' The Latin iambic line was at all times
reluctant to end in two pure iambi. In Plautus it does so
chiefly with a word of three or four or more syllables (' civitate
caelittim, testimonils '). It specially abhorred an ending in
two separate words, each a pure iambus. The few exceptions
there are have to be justified by the proclisis of a preposition,
' in-malam crucem '". Horace has such an ending only twice
in the first ten epodes (v. 7 and ix. 33) :

per hoc inane purpurae decus precor,

and nowhere in the seventeenth, though Horace is far from
having a spondee always in the fifth place {mfra, pp. 231 f.).
In Seneca, according to L. Miiller, there are only six instances
of an ending in w — w — , all of them cases of a word of four
syllables {Med. 512) :

Phoebi nepotes Sisyphi nepotibus.

As many as six examples cannot reasonably be removed by
emendation, when the text is otherwise flawless. One other
instance would have to be added — with a word of three
syllables — if Here. 20 is rightly read as ' sparsa nuribus
impiis '.

The admission of the anapaest is carried further by Seneca
than by the Greek tragic poets.

G 2

84 IAMBIC TRIMETER

{a) An anapaest in the first foot need not be one word or
within one word :

nee ad omne clarum . . .
vide ut atra nubes . . .

and it may take the shape of a proceleusmaticus {Med. 670) :

pavet ani|mus, horret.

(b) There is at least one instance of an anapaest in the third
foot {Oed. 796) :

. inter senem iuvenemque, sed propior seni.

But by far the greatest exception or extension is the ready
admission of an anapaest in the fifth foot.

{c) In the first 500 trimeters of the Hercules and the first
500 of the Medea^ 1,000 lines in all, an anapaest in the fifth
place occurs 217 times or rather oftener than once in every
five lines. This anapaest in Seneca is subject to considerable
restriction. The two short syllables are very seldom in a
separate word : a line like

alte ilia cecidit quae viro caret Jlercule

is extremely rare. There is only one instance in the 1,000 lines
of the Hercules and Medea^ and that instance is rather apparent
than real ; it is satis est, where est is an enclitic. In the vast
majority of cases, there is a word of three syllables, either
complete or elided. Statistics are as follows :

Type, Argolicas agi't, propior seni 103 89 |

Type, deserni aetheris

Here.

Med.

103

116

loi 1

It is a further and rather curious fact that before a cretic
word, like aetheris^ Seneca shows a strong preference for

1 The Octavia shows no divergence in this respect from the other
plays. For the first 500 trimeters the numbers are 102 and 11.

rcii

Ot^!

AND SENARIUS " 85

elision. He has no liking for the ending which is so frequent
in Horace,

villa candens Tusculi, Silvane tutor finium.

In the 1,000 lines under review this ending occurs only three
times {Here. 255 'regni vindices ', 397 'voces amove',
495 ' penates Labdaci ' — nowhere in the first 500 trimeters
■of the Medea). This is an indication that lafiPoiroL'ta in the
Archilochian sense should be thought of as a distinct vein of
metrical composition, similar no doubt, but differing in certain
definite] ways from the iambics of tragedy. The divergence might
be illustrated also by pointing out — ^what it seems safe to say —
that the pure iambics of Catullus (* phaselus ille ', &c.) would
never be used by any good poet in the drama, or at all events
in the diverbium of a drama. Seneca, as it happens, writes in
a canticujH the iambic dimeter, which is the second verse in
the couplet of Horace's Epodes. In the incantation scene
in the Medea, 771-86, he writes a piece of sixteen lines
in the metre of the Epodes, trimeter followed by dimeter.
Probably he chose the metre because Horace had used it
for a scene of witchcraft (Epode v), but what we may call
the Horatian ending occurs only once (though once in as
ew as sixteen lines), 784:

Lernaea passae spicula.

[n the Agam. 795 f. he has another piece of sixteen lines in
dimeters throughout. In these the Horatian ending occurs
IS often as six times. Seneca's lyrics are throughout largely
Horatian.

These may seem small points ; but they inculcate what is

m important principle for the study of the highly elaborated

^erse of the ancients. It is necessary to study metrical forms

ar^ €l8os €Ka(TToy. An epic hexameter is different from

lyric hexameter, and both are different from the hexameter
)f satire. So it is, too, with iambic verse.

86 ' IAMBIC TRIMETER

EXCURSUS
On Four Further Questions

(a) Chor iambic substitution. — Recent writers on metre have
made much of the supposition that — w w — could readily take the
place of a diiambus or w — w— . This idea is applied to the ex-
planation of various metres, and the occurrence of — ^ v^ — in the
trimeter is appealed to in support of it. ' By anaclasis the two
short syllables of the iambic dipody' ('Viersilbler ') 'may come
together in the interior of the foot.' But the instances producible
are extremely few. In three of the passages of tragedy there is
a proper name :

iTTTTOjueSoi'TO? cr;^jj/ia Kai neyas tvkos. {S. C. Th. 488.)

Uapdevoiraios ^ApKas' 6 6e roioad^ avrjp. (lb. 547')

'A\0f(rii3oiai^, ^v 6 y^vvrjaas TraTrjp. (Soph. F'r. 785*)

An example in Herondas's scazons is also a proper name :

TTJs 'Yyut]s.

Apart from these there seem to be only :

(f)aioxiTu>v€S Koi TreTrXeKTavrjfjievai, {Cho. I049O

and in comedy :

d^v' aKovo), (Ar. Fax 663.)

and two instances found by Wilamowitz in Simonides, one with
the choriambus in the middle of the line :

a dr] ^OTci \ ^oio/xev ov\8ev elBoTes

(1. 4 in the passage beginning a ncu, reXos p-h Zevs : Sappho u?id
Simonides, p. 271 and p. 153).

These passages form a rather slender basis for the view that
choriambic substitution was an important and characteristic feature
of the metrical art of the lonians. Milton may have had the
passages of Aeschylus in view when he freely admitted a choriambic
effect in English :

Purples the East —

Better to reign in Hell —

AND SENARIUS 87

It is fairly common in English verse :

Dangerous secrets, for he tempts our powers. (Shelley.)

Ready to spring ; waiting a chance ; for this. (Tennyson.)

Is it that in a language in which accent comes into play it matters
less which of two syllables has the ichis or stress, so that a trochee
can take the place of an iambus ? Such a possibility would perhaps
account for some of the perplexing varieties of the Saturnian
measure in Italy, when, for example, ' Hercoli ' takes the place of
* Metelli ' ('donum danunt Herculi— dabunt malum Metelli ').

{b) The Roman disregard for ^Porson^s canon\ — No certain
explanation has been given of the divergence between Greek and
Roman verse in this respect. We may perhaps suppose that the
facts are something like these : — The observation of the rule by
the Greek tragic poets was instinctive, unconscious or half-
conscious, the result of an innate sense for euphony and propriety
of rhythm. It was not formulated as a rule of composition, and
did not come to the Romans as a precept. Their own early verse
differed widely from Greek verse in many ways, so that a subtlety
like this was not thought of, and when they began to write iambic
verse on more strictly Greek lines, they were still influenced by
the heavy and spondaic character of their early verse, and they
did not study Greek metrical practice with the minute scrutiny
bestowed upon it in a later age by Elmsley and Porson. Further,
there was perhaps in Latin a special reason for liking an ending
in a word of three syllables ; accent and ictus agreed, there was
notable coincidence in the fifth ictus of the line, and also in earlier
places (' villa candens Tusculi '). The Porsonian rule would have
fettered the composer, so the conditions regarding a trisyllabic
word undergo some modification ; they are relaxed to facilitate such
endings.

When Livius Andronicus set himself to produce Greek plays
at Rome in the metres of the Greeks, he might conceivably have
laid upon himself the rule that no line may begin or end with
a word of two syllables. But it would not occur to him to do that.
It would have been a highly artificial restriction, and in words like
probant, domos the quantity was sufficiently conspicuous to make
them workable as iambi. They had to be admitted, but lines

SS IAMBIC TRIMETER

ending in words of three or more syllables were preferred. Of the
extant senarii of Ennius about 34 per cent, end in words of two
syllables, of those of Accius about 38 per cent.'^ Of the first
100 lines of the Oed. Tyr. of Sophocles 62 end in words of two
syllables ; of the first 100 lines of the Philoctetes^ 58. If we now
turn to Seneca a remarkable result presents itself: of the first
100 lines of the Hercules 84 end in disyllables ; of the first 100
lines of the Thyestes, ^J. The dislike of a disyllabic ending has been
replaced by a preference for it ! But, of course, no Porsonic rule
is enacted. There is, on the contrary, a preference for its violation.
The Romans had always liked spondaic effects in tragedy, and
the liking now takes what a Greek would call a comparatively
legitimate shape. It is an all but rigid rule that the fifth foot
must be a spondee, and this precluded the observation of the
Porsonian canon.

{c) The 7iature and history of the old spondaic senarius at
Rome. — It is in general extremely difficult to compose verse
that is regulated by two different principles, such as quantity and
accent, at the same time. But when Andronicus and Naevius
saw their way to beginning and ending a line with a word of
two syllables — when they found that the effect was not repellent
to the ear — they had surmounted the chief difficulties.^ In the
middle of the line it was not very difficult to keep quantity and
accent in agreement. Given the regular incidence of the Latin
accent and the normal caesura of an iambic line, agreement
resulted almost mechanically :

ibis Liburnis | inter alta navium.

The Latin accent was not a strong enough stress to enable a short
syllable to take the place of a long, but when two or three longs

^ I count those lines in Ribbeck's text which are fairly certain, neither
formed by conjecture, nor possibly parts of trochaic tetrameters : 108
lines of Ennius, 284 of Accius.

* Some words of two syllables had perhaps, in certain positions, no
appreciable accent at all. They were of the nature of enclitics in phrases
like * operam dabit * or * voluptas mea '. These belong to colloquial
Latin, and it may be due to their frequency in comedy that Plautus more
often ends a line with a word of two syllables than the tragic poets do.

AND SENARIUS 89

came together it differentiated them. Thus an iambic effect
could be obtained without the quantitative strictness of the Greek
trimeter. In shaping the verse as they did Andronicus and
Naevius undoubtedly created something which suited the genius
of the Latin language. Barbaric looseness and irregularity is the
impression which this verse gives when we first turn to it from
the verse of the Greeks. But the impression is largely a mistaken
one. The verse is an artistic thing, and has its own laws (compare
what is said above, p. 82, regarding 'abduxi negotiis' — the com-
pensation provided).^ The proof that it suited the Latin language
lies in the fact that the admission of spondees in the second and
fourth places was a thing which gained ground. It did not
gradually die out. This can be roughly tested by counting in the
three great tragedians the number of lines which- satisfy Greek
rule— which have a pure iambus both in the second and in the
fourth place. We may call these ' trimeters ' and the other Hnes
' senarii '.

In Ennius the proportion is about 1:3 (i. e. one line in four
is a 'trimeter'). I have surveyed 96 lines, practically all that
can usefully be taken into account : 70 are senarii, 26 trimeters ;
but if we allow final s to make quantity by position, only 22 are
trimeters. In Pacuvius the proportion is about i : 4^. In Accius
it is about i : 6| (273 lines surveyed : 37 trimeters, or 33 if -s is
allowed to lengthen a syllable). Accius survived into the first
century B. c, and in that century a revolt or new movement took
place. Catullus writes not only ' trimeters ', but also the extremely
strict and artificial form of iambic verse which admits no spondees
at all. What, then, is Cicero's position ? Cicero had a great
admiration for the old poets, and could imitate their style
admirably, as we have seen. But he was not unaffected by the
new movements, and he knew the Greek poets very well. His

^ Terentianus says that comic poets aimed at a resemblance to real
speech :

ut quae loquuntur sumpta de vita putes,
they were deliberate artists in their handling of verse :
in metra peccant arte, non inscitia,
and he adds that Roman poets went further in this direction than Greek :

magis ista nostri.

90 IAMBIC TRIMETER

imitations of Pacuvius and Accius are akin to Horace's line (see
infra, p. 233, footnote) :

alitibus atque canibiis homicidam Hectorem.

The effect is frequently obtained withoict spondees in the second
or fourth places. Of in extant iambic lines of Cicero 35 are
trimeters, i. e. the ratio in his case approaches i : 3. Whether
Pollio wrote 'trimeters' only is perhaps doubtful, but it is highly
probable that Varius and Ovid did.

It was not only in this matter of the admission of spondees
that the verse of the early drama was in agreement with the
genius of the Latin language and the nature of Latin accentuation
and pronunciation. In its prosody, as well as in metre, it differed
widely from the verse of the Augustan age. It shortened many
syllables which were long by nature or position, and which were
always long for the hellenizing metricians. For them vohtptas

and domi are always a bacchius and an iambus, <^ and ^ — .

But the reader of Plautus and Terence will again and again find
such syllables shortened— treated as short for the metre, that is,
though whether the second syllable of voluptas was ever in fact
exactly as short as the first is another question. Most of these
shortenings come under a rule or principle known as the 'Law
of Breves Breviantes'. There is not precise agreement about its
formulation, but the essence of it is that before an accented syllable
the second syllable of an iambus is shortened ; as in voluptdtein
inesse tantum^ do?m mdnsit} These shortenings, it should be

^ For a full statement of facts and details the reader should consult
Professor Lindsay's account of Plautine verse in the Introduction to his
larger edition of the Captivi. ' Brevis brevians' was a name given to
the first syllable of an iambus, which was supposed to shorten the
syllable that followed. Its shortness was clearly a contributory cause :
'frlgefacio' does not shorten its e, but 'calefacio* does ; 'mo]6stc3rum' is
admissible in Plautine verse, but the second syllable oi funestus cannot
be shortened. The accent that was the other contributory cause was the
accent on the third syllable of the group, or the accent on the first, or
both. The result is found without an accent on the third syllable, as in
Terence's line :

ex Graecis bonis Latinas fecit non bonas.

AND SENARIUS 91

added, do not belong only to iambic verse, but are found in the
verse of the drama generally, e.g. in anapaests :

nobis datiir bona | paiisa loquendi. (Accius.)

It cannot be doubted that these phenomena in prosody answer
to the actual pronunciation of Latin in the living speech of the
time. They were not ' licences ', or things done inetri gratia— z.w
explanation which is seldom really tenable, for all but the most
incompetent poets could easily have written a line or a passage
quite differently if they had chosen. The old poets were neither
metrical blunderers nor deliberate and laborious metricians. They
wrote fluent verse by the ear, verse which was to be delivered
in a theatre, and have its rhythm for the audience (whether that
audience knew anything of metre or not). The feeling for this old
verse was perhaps beginning to be impaired when Cicero wrote
that some of the senarii of the comic poets are so abiecti or debased
that no ?tumerus can be found in them. But what seems to prove
conclusively that the shortenings answered to real pronunciation
is the fact that the principle operates upon the form of Latin words.
Only something that existed in current speech could do that. In
some words of iambic form the last syllable has become ambiguous,
short, but capable of resuming its length when the ictus of verse
fell upon it ('mihi,tibi, sibi : ibi,ubi: vide, cave' — so that 'cavg' can
find admission to the hexameter of Horatian satire) ; in others
the second syllable definitely ceased to be long ('bene, male: modo'
when it is an adverb). In compounds 'patefacio, calefacio' supplant
* patefacio, calefacio'.

{d) The length of the first syllable in an impure or heavy

iambus. — The iambic dipody w— can hardly have consisted

of two parts in the ratio of 4 : 3, making a total of seven times
(y\u w w I \j w w). Aristoxenus speaks of a syllable that is
oKoyo^^ and a heavy trochee seems to have been called x'^P^^^^^
aXoyos. The syllable was not a simple multiple of the short
syllable or of the XP°^°^ Trpcoros, and the ratio of the two parts
of the foot was fiera^v dvolv \6yoiv yvMpijjLOLv (2 : 2 and 2 : I being
yviopnioi \6yoL). What it was has been a subject of much discussion.
The various views are collected and summarized by Mr. White
{Verse of Greek Comedy, p. 5, § 16). Voss and Lehrs did give the

92 IAMBIC TRIMETER

syllable the time of a normal long. Westphal, taking Aristoxenus's
fiera^v to mean ' midway between ', made the syllables i| : 2 (ratio
3 : 4, not ypapifjLos). It has also been supposed that metrically —
perhaps it would have been safer to say ' for music or singing ' —
the syllable counted as short (Schmidt-Jebb : Mr. White does not
mention this view). Bockh gave the foot only the time of three
shorts, but made the ratio between the two syllables 3 : 4 (i. e.
f + VS instead of ^ + V). Schmidt, followed by Jebb and others,
uses a special symbol for an ' irrational ' long (>). The symbol has
some advantages, but it has not been generally adopted. The
question is not one of very great importance for the ordinary
reader of iambic and trochaic verse.

II. The Iambic Tetrameter Catalectic or

' Septenarius '

The iambic tetrameter shortened by a syllable was a favourite
verse of comedy :

it was written by Hipponax and Simonides, and so far as we
know it had no place in tragedy. It was vivacious or frivolous,
abusive or argumentative. Terentianus Maurus says of it :
sonum ministrat congruentem motibus iocosis.

The lyric use of it, with the ' scoptic ' tone and the manner
of a music-hall song, is well illustrated by Arist. Plutus,
290-321 :

KoX iir]v kyoa ^ov\.r](Toyiai 6p€TTave\b tov KvKXcoTra kt\.

(a system of five parts : strophe, antistrophe, strophe^*, anti-
strophe^, epode). Terentianus's line departs from the normal
structure of the verse, the line just quoted from Aristophanes
illustrates it ; there is usually diaeresis after the eighth syllable,
at the end of the fourth iambus. The line or a-Ti\o^ is made
up of two /cooAa, which are dimeters, each of these consisting
of two dipodies.

AND SENARIUS 93

The closing cadence has been described by some metricians

as :

. . . . — v^ — v^ I — — A

and this modern or trochaic method of scansion perhaps
represents the effect of the verse. At all events it brings it
into line with the ending of a trochaic tetrameter scazon.
Taken as strictly iambic it would end with ^^ — j _ 1. Neither
of these effects would be given exactly when the verse was not
sung but read, and for reading it is not very important to
decide between them. The penultimate syllable is never
resolved by the Greek poets. Plautus not unfrequently allows
it to be represented by two shorts, from which it may" be
inferred that he did not think of the syllable as rpi^povo^.
Roman poets sometimes misunderstood, or at all events
treated in a new way, the metres which they adopted. The
practice of the Greeks in this instance, though it does not
amount to proof, at least affords a presumption that the
syllable was felt as a notably long one.

The structure of the verse is affected by its place and
purpose. It may be ' melic ' outright, a lyric that is sung
to music. In other parts it was given in recitative (still with
some musical accompaniment). Or it might be merely spoken
(yfriXr} Xi^is). Mr. White ( Verse of Greek Co7?iedy, § 59)
distinguishes four grades or types : (i) melic ; (2) recitative ;
(3) melodramatic ; (4) spoken. By ' melodramatic ' he means
the method attributed to Archilochus, irapaKaTaXoyrf, in
which ordinary speech was supported by some musical notes.
But it is not quite clear that in TrapaKaraXoyri the delivery
was quite ordinary speech ; and, if it was not, TrapaKaraXoyri
must be identified with (2) and there is only one grade below
it, not two. This doubt, however, does not affect Mr. White's
statistics, for he deals with only three grades of iambic
' septenarius ', calling the third ' melodramatic '. Whether the
ordinary speaking voice in these verses was or was not sup-

94 IAMBIC TRIMETER

ported by notes of a musical instrument is not a very important
question.

In trochaic verse an 'anapaest' is admitted with some
freedom, for it is only a heavy trochee with the first syllable
resolved (O O -) ; a dactyl is very rare. Conversely, in iambic
verse a 'dactyl' finds free admission, being a heavy iambus
with its second syllable resolved (- O O), but the parallel does
not hold further : in comic iambic verse an anapaest is not
rare, but extremely frequent. These general considerations
must be kept in view in considering Mr. White's statistics,
which show some curious facts. His ' melodramatic ' (spoken)
tetrameters closely resemble the trimeter of comedy \ there are
many dactyls, many anapaests, and of course very many
tribrachs [Verse of Greek Comedy, p. 64, §§ i75~7)-
Diaeresis is neglected (i.e. the fourth foot does not end with
the end of a word) more frequently than in the 'recitative'
tetrameter (once in 4*8 lines as compared with i in 7*8). The
' recitative ' tetrameter is characterized by extreme severity as
regards tribrach and dactyl, and it rejects the anapaest entirely
(there is only one doubtful example in 155 lines). In these
respects it is far more strict than the 'melic' tetrameter, which,
however, is considerably stricter than the ' melodramatic ' as
regards anapaest and dactyl. The ' melic ' tetrameter is other-
wise very like the ' melodramatic '. All three have irrational
feet very frequently (i. e. the first syllable of a dipody is long) :
the percentage of irrational dipodies is 70 in the recitative
tetrameter, and very nearly as large in the other two (melic 69,
'melodramatic' 67). This is a larger percentage than that of
the trochaic tetrameter (65). The trochaic tetrameter rejects
the dactyl as persistently as the iambic tetrameter rejects the
anapaest. Mr. White's figures for the dactyl in trochaic tetra-
meters are 6 in 776, but if we disallow two of these (p. 105) the
proportion is about i in 200.

In the early Roman drama the iambic ' septenarius ' was of

AND SENARIUS 95

course written with un-Greek variations which are found in
other metres. Apart from these Plautus's treatment of it is
marked by great regularity in the observance of diaeresis.
There is almost always the end of a word at the end of the
fourth foot. The two parts of the verse are separated more
than they are in Greek. It is in keeping with this that syllaba
anceps and hiatus are readily admitted at this point :

hinc med amantem ex aedibus | eiecit huiu' mater.

argenti viginti minae | ad mortem me adpulerunt.

If the first part of the line is to be thought of as a separate
verse, its last foot should be a pure iambus. This also is the
rule in Roman comedy. The exceptions are so few as to raise
a suspicion about the soundness of the text where they occur.
The metre has practically no further history in ' classical '
times, for no comedy of the imperial age is extant. But it
had great vogue in Byzantine times, invaded by accent, and
becoming in the end almost wholly accentual :

KXavSiov 8e (papfxa^Oevros Nepcou 6 /jLrjrpoKTOi'o?
7rapeLO-€(j)0dpT] KccKLo-ra rots Ta>v 'Pco/xaicou (TKrJTTTpoL^.

(In (j)apiid\6evTGs and in Nepchu accent and ictus diverge,
but otherwise there is coincidence ; KccKLcrTa has a slight
secondary accent on the last syllable, which carries the iambic
ictus^. In later European literature a verse that closely
resembles it has wide currency, a line of six iambi plus a
syllable. It is a verse that has hardly any place in ancient
poetry. Christ quotes for it only Aes. Choeph. 323 :

rkKvov, cj)p6vr]iia rod Oavovros ov Sa/xd^ei.

The words, he adds, are written in the Codex Laurentianus as
two lyric /coiXa :

rkKvov (j)p6vrjixa rod.

OavovTos ov Safid^eL.

No doubt they are rightly written so. The effect is almost the
same as would be given by :

96 IAMBIC TRIMETER

T€Kvov, <pp6i^r}/ia Kar-
OavovTos ov Safjid^ei.

The words tov OavovTo^ go closely together, and there is no
diaeresis such as is characteristic of iambic tetrameters. There
is such a diaeresis, after the third foot, in the ' hypercatalectic
hexapody', known as one of the two forms of the Alexandrine
of classical French poetry.^ Christ gives as French and
German examples :

Je ne me suis cSnnu | qu'au bout de ma carrier©.^

(Voltaire.)

Alt war ich lind der Nacht klagt' ich's durch Trauerlieder.

(Riickert.)

This line is the modern counterpart of the ancient 'septenarius'.
It is shorter by two syllables, but its effect, for the ear of the
ordinary reader, is not very different. The ancient line is not
felt to be a longer one. The cause of this equality in effect is
probably that in a modern language, and especially in English,
words are on the average shorter and more numerous. Similarly
Milton's decasyllabic line has very much the same effect for
the ear as the ancient dodecasyllabic trimeter. There is a very
slight pause after a word, and the cumulative effect of these
more frequent interstices makes the time of the one line not
greatly different from the time of the other. Further, shorter
words mean that more thought, more turns or articulations of
thought, will be contained in the same number of syllables ;
the length of the line for the apprehending mind will thus be
greater, and it is this mental tetn^o that is important. It is

1 It is only in quite recent times — in the nineteenth century — that
French poets have written the Alexandrine line without diaeresis.

2 The quantitative symbols \j — , here used by Christ, may be con-
veniently used for modern verse with the reservation that it is not
necessarily quantity in the ancient sense, or always quantity at all, that
is meant.

AND SENARIUS 97

quite possible that if we could hear a trimeter delivered exactly
as it was delivered on the stage in the time of Sophocles, the
physical or actual time in seconds that it occupied would exceed
the time occupied by an English blank verse as it is commonly
read.

18S7 jj

CHAPTER VI

THE SCAZON OR CHOLIAMBUS

{TpL/jL€Tpos a-Kci^coy, yodXtafi^oSf senarius claudus.)

The ' celeritas ' of Archilochus's verse was the dexterity
and rapidity of movement that belongs to a skilled fencer or
swordsman. The measure was a weapon of offence. Hipponax
at a later date gave it a slower and more prosaic movement by
making the penultimate syllable a long one. As a weapon
this was rather a club or cudgel than a rapier. As a line
moving on ' feet ' it was said to halt or limp, to drag its last
foot. Ovid combines the two metaphors in his couplet :
liber in adversos hostes stringatur iambus,
seu celer, extremum seu trahit ille pedem.

The 'scazon' ended in a cadence which was a favoured and

familiar one in prose :

Suffenus iste, Vare, quern probe nosti
homo est venustus et dicax et urbanus.

The ending may be described as cretic + trochee (or spondee,
the last syllable being anceps), and it is of course found also
in cretic verse when that is catalectic. A cretic verse cata-
lectic, with the antepenultimate long resolved, coincides with
the famous or notorious prose-ending esse videatur :

e;)(€re \^L[.Lccva t epo^vra MapaOcopos-

THE SCAZON OR CHOLIAMBUS 99

But this resolution never occurs in scazons. There, we may
infer, the syllable was too long to be resolvable into two shorts.
It was longer than an ordinary long, though perhaps in ordinary
reading it was not strictly rpia-rj/io? or exactly equal to three short
syllables. One iambus may follow another without perceptible
pause, but it is not easy to pass in a moment from a rising to
a falling rhythm, ^— \ -^. There must be a slight pause
v^ - A — w , or if there is no end of a word, a protraction of
a syllable. The ' scazon ' is a form of verse for which the
trochaic method of scansion provides a natural and intelligible
interpretation: *quem probe nosti' = — ^ | 1-. | — ^. That
any ancient metrician would so describe it is doubtful. But
something like this must have been the effect in ordinary
recitation. The iambic scazon nearly always has a very marked
penthemimeral or hephthemimeral caesura, and the part of
a line that follows such a caesura of course begins with a
conspicuously trochaic effect.

In analysing the verse in this way we have assumed that the
last ictus was on the penultimate syllable, not on the last.
But there is a tradition to the contrary, which some modern
writers have accepted (Plotius Sacerd., p. 519 k. : 'Hipponac-
teum trimetrum clodum percutitur sicut iambicum trimetrum
archilochium comicum vel tragicum, sed paenultimam longam
habet '). The history of the verse is against this. It had con-
siderable vogue at Rome. Introduced by Laevius, Matius,
and Varro, it was written frequently by Catullus and later by
Martial. The line hardly ever ends in a word of one syllable
(except it be the enclitic st^m, est, &c.); and, monosyllables
excluded, the Latin accent inevitably falls on the penultimate
syllable (' nosti, urbanus '). The incidence of the verse-ictus
on the last syllable would certainly not be attractive to the
Roman ear. Would they tolerate the effect ' nosti, ilrbaniis '
at the end of every line ? It is more likely that accent and
ictus coincided. Further, it has been thought, and it is

H 2

TOO THE SCAZON

probable, that the Latin scazon suggested to Babrius what is
the earliest appearance of accent in Greek versification. In
Babrius the penultimate syllable has an accent, usually the
acute accent, as in :

di^rjp Adrjvaios Ti^ dvSpl Orj^aLCO
K0LV009 oSevcov, axnrep e/zcoy, oyjiLXei.

(Usually too, as here, the vowel is naturally long.) It is
reasonable to suppose that in both languages accent aided
and reinforced ictus.

It is obvious, theoretically, that if the last foot of an iambic
line is to be a spondee, the effect of the ending will be
obscured if the preceding foot is also a spondee. We should
expect that the scazon, unlike the ordinary trimeter, would
have a pure iambus regularly in the fifth place ; and this rule
is in fact laid down by Roman metricians, Caesius Bassus
and Terentianus Maurus. The fifth foot must be a pure
iambus ; otherwise four long syllables coming together will
give the line an obscure and uneuphonious close :
ne deprehensae quattuor simul longae
parum sonoro fine destruant versum.

But the inventor of the verse, Hipponax, lays down no such
rule for himself; he admits a spondee in the fifth place :

irdXaL yap avTovs TrpoaSeyovToi \d(TK0VT€^.

So, too, Herondas in a later age [Mimiambix. 21) :

aXX', w TkKvov, Kocrov tlv ijSfj yrjpaiveL^
\p6uou ;

Both writers, however, have the spondee so infrequently as to
show that the effect repelled them, and the recently recovered
portions of the'^ la/jL^oi of Callimachus present no example of
it. Had the rule been formulated at Alexandria? Varro, in
his Saturae^ does not observe it (his Saturae were a work of his
earlier life); his younger contemporary Catullus does, as do all
Roman writers of scazons after him.

OR CHOLT/,MBUc loi

It is only in the fifth and sixth feet that the scazon differs
from the Archilochian trimeter. The first four feet are written
in the same way (the second and fourth always pure iambi).
The fifth and sixth seem to exchange places. Was it in this
way that Hipponax arrived at the verse, by transposing these
two feet ? The most recent theory of its origin is not unlike
that supposition. It is suggested that just as the diiambus
could become a choriambus (— w w — ), in which the two iambi
as it were face each other, so it could also become an antispast

(w \u), in which they are set back to back : the scazon was

arrived at by making the third of the three dipodies take this
shape. But, it may well be argued, variations like the chor-
iambus or antispast must be exact and strict in form, if they
are to be recognized — the choriambus always is. Would not
Hipponax have made the fifth foot invariably a pure iambus
if he had thought of the verse in this way ? His practice
rather suggests that he made a deliberate change in one foot of
the Archilochian line, but unconsciously or half-consciously
shrank from the group of five long syllables which resulted
from making the fifth foot a spondee.

Like almost all forms of verse invented by the Greeks the
scazon illustrates adaptation of form to theme or substance.
It was used for homely and personal topics, things belonging
to everyday life. It is the verse of lampoons, and of epigrams
(not necessarily abusive) in Martial. It is used for Mi/XLa/x^oi,
in which the mime takes a literary shape — the dialect that of
Hipponax, Ionic. And it is used for the popular, familiar,
moralizing fable by Callimachus and Babrius. Phaedrus does
not use it ; but he gets a somewhat similar literary effect by
using the old, largely spondaic, senarius, in an age when, as
w^e have seen, tragedy at least, though perhaps not comedy,
had adopted the strict canons of the Greek trimeter. Though
used for a form of mime, it does not seem to have found any
place in regular comedy. It has no place in the Roman

102 THF SCAZQN OR CHOLIAMBUS

drama, and in Greek only two scazons of Eupolis are known,
these being a parody or echo of the old iambic poet Ananius
{ual fxa ra? KpafL^as — Ananius had written ral fia rrju
Kpdjj.^7]i^). The influence of the la/jL^OTroLOL on the old
comedy of Athens is undoubted. Cratinus wrote a play
entitled 'Ap)(^L\o)(oi, and Hermippus was both an la/xPoiroios
and a kco/icoS otto 169. Aristotle calls the old type of comedy
the la/xISiKr) ISea (abusive, personal, critical). But there is
no fusion or confusion of style and versification. The trimeter
of Aristophanes is no^ the trimeter of Archilochus, but widely
different from it, and the verse of Hipponax hardly found
admission at all, as far as our evidence goes.

CHAPTER VII

THE TROCHAIC TETRAMETER AND
' SEPTENARIUS '

I. In Normal Form

The trochaic tetrameter is simple in structure, and presents
no difficult or dubious problems. It is in fact the form of
verse to which the learner should be first introduced, knowing
its English analogue as he does in Tennyson's Locksley Hall:

Many a night I saw the Pleiads | rising through the mellow

shade.
Every moment lightly shaken | ran itself in golden sands.^

It readily appeals to the ordinary ear, and it was a highly
popular verse in antiquity, whether in the old festivals of
Dionysus or at a triumph in the streets of Rome :

Gallos Caesar in triumphum duxit, idem in curiam,^

We have seen that in dactylic verse the close of a group of
six feet was marked by making the last disyllabic or spondaic.
Similarly, a group of trochees had its close marked by a varia-
tion in the foot. The last syllable might be a long one,^ the

1 These two lines begin with a tribrach, ev6ry, many ii.

^ Some of the verses scribbled on the walls of Pompeii are septenarii :
Bupa (= puella) quae bella es, tibi me misit qui tuus est : vale.
(Conceivably a line from a popular mime.)

2 (For the quantity of this sj'llable see p. 106, note.)

I04 THE TROCHAIC TETRAMETER

foot a spondee or heavier trochee. The shortest possible
group is a group of two ; and this is the element out of which
the trochaic ' tetrameter ' is constructed : — w — ^ is repeated
four times^ and the last dipody is catalectic. Further, the
dipodies are arranged in pairs :

The learner should first, of course, become familiar with the
verse as it is written in Greek tragedy, with very few and very
slight variations, before he passes on to comedy, and to the
still more varied forms which the verse takes in Roman
drama :

Kol TTopov fieTeppvO/XL^e Kal ireSais (TCpvprjXaTOLS
TTepL^aXoou noXXrjy KeXevOou rfwcev ttoXXco (TTpaTco.

A tribrach is a very slight variation, and it is very readily
admitted. Next to it comes the form of foot arrived at by
resolving the first syllable of a heavy trochee, ^ ^ — (corre-
sponding to an anapaest in syllables, but differing from it in
ictus). This is readily admitted in the second, fourth, and
sixth places. Beyond these two types of resolution there is
very little variation, even in comedy. A line of comedy may
of course be very different in effect from a tragic line, but it
is only through the frequency of one or both of these two
perfectly legitimate resolutions, as e.g. in Epicharmus's line
about shell-fish :

a SieXeTv /xiu icm )(aX€7Ta KaracpayeLV 8' evfiapea

(first, fourth, fifth, and seventh feet resolved).

It is misleading to say, as Bickel does,^ that ' the technique
of the verse is in every respect the same as that of the
senarius ' ; and to suggest or imply in particular, as the same
writer proceeds to do, that the two forms of verse are similar
in their admission of ww for w in the * Senkung '. The admis-

^ Einleittmg in die Alteythumswtssenschaft, ed. Gercke and Norden,
vol. i. p. 260. What he says is true of Seneca.

AND 'SEPTENARIUS' 105

sion of this in iambics means the admission of an anapaest.
What answers to that in trochaic verse is the admission of a
dactyl. The anapaest in comic iambics is extremely frequent :
a dactyl in trochaic tetrameters is extremely rare.

In tragic tetrameters it occurs only in the case of a proper
name. One or two instances in the tragic text, apart from
this, have long ago been removed — quite convincingly — by con-
jectural emendation. In comedy it is so infrequent that
attempts have been made to explain it away. Christ proposed
to do this by suppressing a short syllable in Ach. 318 :

VTTep kirL^rfvov OeX-^a-co Tr)u Kecp^Xrju 'i^(x>v Xiyeiv,

and by synizesis in jEcc/. 1156 :

T0L9 yeXcocTL 5' rjSicos 8ia tov yeXcou Kpiueiv e/xe.

But this solution has not recently found favour, and it certainly
seems untenable. There are more instances than Christ sup-
posed. There are two more in Aristophanes, prj Ala Ka/xe
ravT eSpao-e, Eq. 319, and Tot's d<pvaL9 rjSvcTiid tl, Vesp.
496. There are several in Epicharmus, and one at least in
Menander (IlepLKeipofjLepr], 1. 150). The safer conclusion
seems to be that a dactyl is admissible, but is very rare.^

This is precisely in harmony with the history of the verse.
According to Aristotle {Poet.^ c. iv) it was the predecessor of

^ Examples were collected by v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff in his
Isyllos (pp. 7, 8). He finds four in Epicharmus, to which should be
added 'OSucrceuj avrofxiXos fr. 2 haifxoviws a-nwKeaa, and perhaps B 40
(ed. Lorenz), if Cobet's an ovtivos is right. Of his Aristophanic
examples Av. 396 and Thestii. 436 are open to question ; the verse is
not strictly the trochaic tetrameter, but trochaic lyrics resembling it.
Mr. White {Vevse of Greek Comedy, p. 100) gives six instances of dactyls
in Aristophanes, but two of them are doubtful. In Av. 373, the reading
XpT](riixov Tj is not admitted by the editors of the Oxford Text, who excise
the ri ; xp-qaijjLov ri gives a very harsh and conspicuous dactyl. In
Av. 1 1 13, rrpijyopeSjvas vpiTv ■nip.\po^iv, synizesis has to be reckoned with,
so that nprjyopeojvas is — w — w. Synizesis is much more probable with
€ than with i, and it accounts for some apparent dactyls in Archilochus.

io6 THE TROCHAIC TETRAMETER

the iambic trimeter in tragedy. Strict and regular in Aeschylus,
it attains to some degree of freedom in Euripides, who uses it
for a lively altercation in the Fhoenissae (592 f.). Attic
comedy, so far as we know it, did not use it with great
freedom or frequency for a casual conversation. Epicharmus,
before Aristophanes, had given it greater looseness and flexi-
bility, and this conversational use of it is found, after him, in
Menander, from whom it passed to the Roman drama. But
in the text of the Roman comic drama, trochaic tetrameters
are usually designated 'C {= canticuvi). It is not quite
ordinary speech, as senarii are. In Aristophanes there are
passages where it is certainly cantiawi and not sertno ; e. g.
Ach. 204-40, where it is combined in antistrophic form with
cretics. Where it is not ' melic ' outright, it was probably
delivered in some sort of recitative. Its most conspicuous use
in Attic comedy is for the continuous utterance of the poet
(through the chorus) in the parabasis.^

In the early Roman drama the trochaic tetrameter, like the
iambic trimeter and other metres, took shapes which were

^ Statistics are given by Mr. White {Verse of Greek Comedy, p. 99 f.)
for {a) 'melic' tetrameters (of which he recognizes only 116) and
* recitative ' tetrameters, either {b) in the parabasis (epirrhemata and
antepirrhemata), or (c) in "other places. The differences prove to be
inconsiderable. ' The melic tetrameter is somewhat severer than the
recitative in excluding the dactyl and in some minor particulars.' The
dactyl is so rare that its non-occurrence in n6 lines is of no significance.
The anapaest occurs once in 21 hues — in {b) it is i in 16, in (c) i in 20.
The occurrence of an anapaest once in 21 or 20 lines as compared with
once in 16 can hardly have been deliberate on the part of the poet,
or readily perceptible to the hearer. The poet unconsciously wrote
with slightly greater strictness in lyrics and in the parabasis. Conver-
sation would sometimes make a non-trochaic word almost unavoidable
(e. g. TTOTcpov, kreov). In regard to the admission of a long syllable in
the place where it is allowed (— w — i-1), the difference is, again, not
very great. In (b) and (c) together * sixty-five per cent, of the complete
metres ' ( = dipodies) * are irrational '. In melic tetrameters the per-
centage is 56.

AND 'SEPTENARIUS' 107

unknown to the Greeks. It became a * septenarius ' — seven
complete feet plus a syllable — instead of being scanned by
dipodies (/cara 8i7ro8iay). Its Plautine form is described
by Professor Lindsay in his Metrical Introduction to the
Captivi (large edition), pp. 7 2-5.

The early tragic poets gave it a somewhat graver and more
stately movement than it has in comedy, but there is no very
marked difference — in this metre there was no very great
difference in Greece either between the two forms of the
drama.

adest, adest fax obvoluta sanguine atque incendio;^
miiltos annos latuit. cives, ferte opem et restinguit(^.

(Ennius, Alexander^

With a spondee or its equivalent admissible in every place the
line labours and moves slowly :

l^'ortunam insanam esse et ca^cam et briitam perhibent phi'lo-
sophi. (Pacuvius.)

In this and other lines there is no pure trochee except at the
end (here there is a tribrach, ' philosophi '). This heaviness
must have suited the Latin language and the taste of the
Romans ; for, as in the case of the senarius, it continues to
increase, and the end is a revolt, not a gradual diminution.
Accius's septenarii are heavier than those of Ennius."

' The line probabl}' begins adest adest fax {y\j\j ), though it is

not quite impossible that Ennius meant it for an iambic octonarius
(adest adest). There are passages in which octonarii and septenarii are
mingled.

2 For the senarius see pp. 79, 88. Out of 128 trochaic lines of
Ennius only 16 are 'Greek' or ' tetrameters', i.e. have no spondee (or
its equivalent) in an uneven place; out of 124 lines of Accius only 7.
Of Ennius's lines 52 are Roman throughout (i.e. have spondees in the
uneven places in both halves), of Accius's 70, Of Ennius's lines 20 are
strict or Hellenic in the first half, 40 in the second half (a curiously
exact result — for the first half presents two opportunities for a misplaced
spondee, the second only one). Of Accius's lines 13 are strict in the first

ic8 THE TROCHAIC TETRAMETER

It remains to consider the shape it takes in Seneca and
some later writers.

Seneca has three passages in trochaic tetrameters {Med.
740 f., Oed. 223 f., and Phaedra 1201 f.). His verses are of
course of the Greek type, tetrameters and not septenarii. If
Varius or Ovid wrote the verse in tragedy, they also probably
wrote it with Greek strictness. Seneca, however, deviates
from the Greek norm in one way : he admits a dactyl in the
sixth foot {Med. 746) :

gravior uni poena sedeat coniugis socero mei.^

Besides this he once in the thirty-four lines has a dactyl in
another place {Med. 743) :

suppliers (= suppliciis) animae remissis currite ad thalamos
novos.

His treatment of this verse, the reader will have observed, is
very similar to his treatment of the iambic trimeter. There he
has very seldom an anapaest in a place other than the fifth
('inter senem iuvenemque sed propior seni'; see p. 84). And
his dactyl in the sixth foot makes the end of the line exactly
like the end of a trimeter.^ Seneca must have known, and

half, 34 in the second. (In counting these cases I have assumed that
final 5 followed by one consonant does not make the syllable long. If
this is disallowed, the numbers for the more or less strict types would be
reduced by 2, 3, or 4 — not more than 4 or less than 2 — a difference
which does not affect the general result.)

* As this line has been misunderstood by editors, I may be allowed
to call attention in passing to its real meaning, The socer is not Creon,
but simply Sisyphus : the next line is :

lubricus per saxa retro Sisyphum volvat lapis.
Sisyphus was not strictly the socer of Jason, but he was thought of
by Seneca as Creusa's grandfather or great-grandfather, and so he was
the giver of the bride.

^ There is the further similarity that Seneca's lines never end in
v-/ -- *^ — {supra, p. 83). The sixth foot is either a spondee or (less
frequently) a dactyl, so that the last three syllables are always preceded
by — or WW. And, again, Seneca here also disregards the Porsonian
canon {Phaedra 1206 'rapite in altos gurgites').

AND ' SEPTENARIUS ' 109

perhaps accepted, the view that a trochaic tetrameter is made
up of cretic and iambic trimeter :

comprecor vulgus silentum vosque ferales deos.

In the verse on Caesar quoted above it will be observed
that there is much coincidence of accent and ictus :

Gallos Caesar in tridmphum duxit, idem in curiam.

The Latin language lent itself to such coincidence in trochaic
verse.^ Conversely, when trochaic verse is written accentually
we find a considerable number of lines which can be scanned
by quantity :

iudex 6rgo ciim sedebit.

cum vix iustus sit securus.

In trochaic tetrameters after Seneca's time the coincidence
seems to become more marked. Seneca himself has a few
lines in which there is hardly any divergence :

Tantalus securus ilndas hauriat Pirenidas.

meque ovantem scelere tanto rapite in altos gurgites.

In Tiberianus coincidence has become the rule :

amnis ibat inter arva valle fiisus frigida,
luce ridens calculorum, flore pictus herbido.

The versification of the Pervigilium Veneris — perhaps also by
Tiberianus — is not materially different from this.

ruris hie erunt puellae vel puellae fontium

quaeque silvas quaeque lucos quaeque montes incolunt.

In his admission of the dactyl the author of the Pervigilium
closely resembles Seneca. There is the occasional dactyl
in an earlier place :

en micant lacrimae trementes . . . ,

1 So its movement was very obvious : * aptum est olivam terentibus '
(Serv. on Georg. ii. 519).

no THE TROCHAIC TETRAMETER

and the penultimate dactyl :

caerulas inter catervas inter et bipedes equos.^

Unlike Seneca he is ready to make the sixth foot a pure
trochee ; the second part of the line sometimes has no spondee
{' iussit Ire myrteo ').

The first half of the verse usually ends with the end of a
word ; the composition of the line is marked by diaeresis.
There is no exception to this rule in Archilochus or Solon,
and exceptions in tragedy are extremely few. (Aes. Pers. 165):

TavTcc /jLoi SiTrXrj /lepLfxi/^ d(ppa(TT69 kcrTLV kv ^p^crt

(the conjectural reading /lipt/xya (ppaarro? is not attractive)
may be compared with Horace's ' arcanique fides prodiga per-
lucidior vitro' {infra^ p. 257), or with 'quid enim in-mortalibus
atque beatis '. But there is a real deviation from the norm in
Soph. Phil. 1402 :

ei SoKeT, arTeL)(^coiJL€i'. d) yepluaTou elprjKcbs eVo?.

In Seneca and in the Pervigiliiim the rule is strictly observed..
In comedy it is broken with some frequency — not very
frequently, for the lines in which it happens are a small
minority. Three occur together in the Clouds 607 f., but
this is very unusual :

'r]viy^ r\yi^X<i Sevp" d(f)opixda-\Bai 7rap€(TK€vd<T/jL€6a,
T) (TeXrjvT] <TvvTV\ov(T^ v\/^^^ eTricrreiXeu (ppda-ac,
npoora pkv y^atpetv A6r]vaL\oL(Ti kol toIs avfiixdyoLS.

Plautus also carries a word over the iunctura, but unlike the
Greek poets he also has hiatus sometimes at this point, thus
disrupting the verse into two separate portions.

1 Mr. Garrod in the Oxford Book of Latin Verse has transformed this-
line into

caerulas inter cavernas inter et virides specus ;

'bipedes equos' is Virgilian {Georg. iv. 389), and is unquestionably
sound, nor is '■ catervas ' open to any real objection.

AND 'SEPTENARIUS m

The Porsonian canon or Lex Porsoni has been incidentally
mentioned above as valid for trochaic tetrameters. As in the
case of the iambic trimeter it is valid only for Greek tragedy.
Comedy and Roman tragedy ignore it. Clouds 625 :

Tov (TTk(^avov dcPupeOrj' /idXXov yap oi/rcoy eiaeTai.
(For Seneca see p. 108, footnote.) Resolution is regulated by
the same principle as in iambi. The two short syllables which

Ky v^

stand for a long should be in the same word (e.g. Toy (rT€\(pauou
d\(j)r]pid7]). But this is not a hard and fast rule for comedy

\^ ^ KJ

(Menander, Samia 221 70 y^yovos (ppdaat a-acpco^)-

. Trochaeus is a foot that ' runs ', and the trochaic tetrameter
was described by the ancients as Tpo)(€p69 or dyeuijs, its
movement was opxrja-TtKcoTepa or KopSaKiKcorepa. A falling
rhythm has not the vigour and energy of a ' climbing ' one.
Tetrameters were specially used for the ndpoSo^ in comedy,
when the chorus enters hurriedly or in excitement : Schol. on
Ac/i. 204 (quoted above, p. 62, footnote) yiypainai 8e to
fieTpou Tpo\aLKov irpocrcpopou Trj tcov Slcokovtcov yepouTCou
cnrovSfj. TavTa Se Troceiu etcoOaariu ol tcou Spa/iaTCou TroirjTal
KcofjLLKol KOL TpayiKOL, kiT^LSdv Spofiaico^ elardycoai tov9
^opov9, iv oXoyos awTpe^rj tS> SpdjxaTL (leg. Spa/xij/jLaTL ?).^
The metre is first used by Archilochus, in very much the same
way as iambic verse, for lampoon or invective, personal or
' scoptic ' effusions. For this purpose we should expect that
celerity would be imparted to it by keeping the foot pure or

normal, -w rather than . (Compare the 'scoptic'

trimeter discussed above, p. 69). This is very clearly the
case tn the seco7id half of the line^ if we compare Archilochus
with the dramatic poets. There are about sixty tetrameters

^ There is no extant example of tetrameters in the parodos of a
tragedy, but O. Tyy. 1515 is a survival of its use for the e^odos. The
Aristotelian definition of a aTacrifxov in tragedy as to dvev dvanaiaTov Kal
rpoxaiov {Poef., c. xii) implies its use in parodos and exodos.

112 THE TROCHAIC TETRAMETER

of Archilochus extant (a few more were added by the discovery
of the monument to Archilochus in Paros, but these may be
left out of account). In the second part of the line there
are twelve spondees (and one anapaest). In fifty-six lines of
Aeschylus {Fersae 703-58) there are nineteen spondees, or
one in every three lines as compared with one in every five in
Archilochus. In Euripides there are rather more spondees :
in the Phoenissae 588-637 (the altercation of Eteocles and
Polynices, fifty lines) there are nineteen (and two anapaests),
or one in every two and a half lines. In Aristophanes the
occurrence of spondees is much more frequent, as Mr. White's
statistics show, one and three-quarters to a line, or two to a
line if anapaests are included. Aeschylus, it would seem,
retained something of the Archilochian rapidity and precision
in the second part of the line, though making it distinctly
more spondaic than Archilochus ; while in Euripides it is
more heavily weighted with spondees, and in Aristophanes —
a result which one would hardly have predicted — more heavily
still. In the first part of the line there is no difference between
the four poets that would be perceptible to a reader. Here,
of course, there are two places where a spondee may occur,
not only one, and the numbers are greater, and in fact more
than twice as great ; roughly there are five spondees to every
four lines or one and a quarter to a line.

In Menander's tetrameters {^Samia and UepLKeLpo/jiiurj) the
Aristophanic proportion of spondees is maintained. Thus the
preference of the Roman drama for spondees (which becomes
a rigid rule for the fifth foot in Seneca) only carried further
a tendency which had shown itself in the drama of Athens.

II. The Tetrameter Scazon

Like the iambic trimeter the tetrameter was converted by
the pugnacious Hipponax into a heavy-headed club or cudgel
by making the penultimate syllable long.

AND 'SEPTENARIUS' T13

Xd^ere /lov Oalfidria, Koylrco BovwaXov tov 6(f)6a\/i6u'
dficpcSe^io^ ydp €i/jLi Kov)( d/jLapTduco kotttcou.
The second part of the Hne was no doubt — v^ | — ^ | l_ | — ^ .
The history of this verse precisely resembles that of the choliam-
bus. Hipponax and Ananius do ?/^/make the sixth foot invariably
a pure trochee (as Martial would have done if he had written
tetrameters) :

dXXd irdaLV l^OveaaLV e/jL7rp€7rr]^ kv fivTTcorcp.

The verse was written by Varro at Rome in his Saiurae. He
has a line of the strictest type :

hunc Ceres cibi ministra frugibus suis porcet,

but other lines show that he did not bind himself by the
restrictions seen in this one :

hunc vocasse ex liquida vita in curiae vostrae faecem !
sic canis fit e catello, sic e tritico spica.

'Liquida' (w w — ) in the third place in the first of these lines,

and 'sic e ' ( ) in the fifth place in the second line/ show

that Varro is not even following Hipponax ; he is making a
Latin septenarius limp, heavy though its gait already is
through the admission of spondees and anapaests in the first,
third, and fifth, as well as in the other places.

^ Like fit I'sj't in the Pompeian line quoted above (p. 103, footnote).

1887

CHAPTER VIII

HENDECASYLLABICS OR PHALAECEI

The lyric art of Pindar or Bacchylides with its varied
cadence was forgotten or neglected in the Alexandrian age, and
the tendency of poets was to take some one simple form of line
and repeat it unchanged throughout the whole piece. To use
a metre in this way was to use it Kara (ttl\ov (' iugiter uti ' is
Terentianus's phrase). This Alexandrian tendency is dominant
in Catullus, but not in Horace. The poet who so used a verse
for the first time, or who used it conspicuously in this manner,
sometimes gave his name to it. Thus a form of verse which
had been written by Alcaeus — and written by him Kara
(TTiyov — came to bear the name Asclepiadean. So, too, the
verse with which we are now concerned, though it had been
written by Sappho and called ^a7v(^iKdv^ came to bear the name
of an obscure and presumably Alexandrian poet, Phalaecus.
The Romans, however, commonly designated it by the number
of syllables it contained, 'hendecasyllabi' (sc. 'versus'). There
were other forms of line that contained eleven syllables, but
this was the only one to be frequently employed Karh (rriyov.
Mainly lyric in origin, and used occasionally in the lyric parts
of tragedy (e. g. Eur. Orestes 833), it became with the Romans
only semi-lyric in character. It lent itself in Latin to light and
casual composition on familiar topics. Like most metres when
they passed to Latin, it underwent, after Catullus's time, very
strict regulation, and the old freedom of the first two syllables
was entirely discarded.

HENDECASYLLABICS OR PHALAECEI 115

It is this ' stichic ' and highly regulated use of it at Rome
that brings it into the company of familiar and standard metres
like the senarius and hexameter. Its earlier history asso-
ciates it with lyrics, and problems about its structure arise
which can hardly be discussed apart from various forms of
lyric verse. The scheme of it in Greek is :

— \j
w —

— V^W — KJ — W — —

i. e. it begins with the ' Aeolic basis ', two syllables which are
not yet stereotyped in one unvarying shape. Perhaps the most
famous Greek example of it is to be found in the first two lines
of the stanza in the scolion on the liberators of Athens, or
supposed liberators, from the tyranny of Pisistratus :

(ptXraO^ 'ApjjLoSC, ov tl ttov r^OvrjKas,
u7]croi9 8' kv /xaKccpcoy ere (paariu eluai,

(where the first line begins with — w and the second with

). It is obviously akin to Glyconic verse, and a Glyconic

line results if we remove the last three syllables :

cui dono lepidum librum ?

CatuUus's first poem begins :

cui dono lepidum novum libellum
arida modo pumice expolitum?
Cornell, tibi ; namque tu solebas
meas esse aliquid putare nugas.

As the second and fourth lines show, Catullus admits both
— w and w — at the beginning. He does not admit ^ ^,
though once he seems to have a tribrach (in a proper name :
' Camerium mihi, pessimae puellae ' — unless we are to take
this as 'Cameryum '). In the same poem, where the tribrach
occurs, he makes the curious experiment of admitting —-in
place of the dactyl which follows the ' basis '.

I 2

ii6 HENDECASYLLABICS

Like several other metres the hendecasyllabic admitted of
being interpreted as Ionic, and this view of it was taken at
least as early as Varro.^ An ' lonicus a minori ' could take
several forms : ww — — or — - — or ww — v^ or — \j —^ .
Catullus's first line read in this way becomes :

cui dono | lepidiim noivum libdllum.
That the verse was commonly so read in classical times is not
to be believed ; the rapid and turbulent or unhinged move-
ment of Ionics is quite out of harmony with the tone and
theme of most hendecasyllabics. But at a later time hymns
were written in it with variations which show that the writer
-thought of it as Ionic. Besides the Ionic theory of its nature
there was the view that the line consisted of part of a hexameter
and part of a senarius, two-and-a-half feet of each (TrevOrj/iL'
fiepes SaKTvXiKov •{• irevOrjiiLfi^pks lafL^LKoy) :

— — I — ww| — w — w — j —

cui dono lepidum || novum libellum.

Both these views of it would lead to the belief that the first
syllable oug/tf to be long, and after Catullus's time it became
the regular practice of Roman poets (so far as we know it) to
make it so. Horace no doubt would have begun his lines
with a spondee, if he had written any hendecasyllabics, and
Martial invariably does so. Sidonius calls the verse

triplicis metrum trochaei
spondeo comitante dactyloque
dulces hendecasyllabos.

' Terentianus Maurus, 2833-48 : ' Idcirco ' (because, if an anapaest
be inserted after the first two syllables of a hendecasyllabic line, a

Sotadean results, [w v-/ — ] — v^ v^ — ^w* — w— J=£) :

genus hoc Phalaeciorum
vir doctissimus undecumque Varro
ad legem redigens lonicorum
hinc natos ait esse, sed minores.
Atilius Fortunatianus says : 'Varro in CynodidascalicoPhalaecion metrum
ionicum trimetrum appellat, quidam ionicum minorem.'

OR PHALAECEI 117

Terentianus Maurus analyses the verse in various ways, begin-
ning with the division suggested by what was probably the
prevalent theory of its origin :

cui dono lepidum | novum libellum,

and taking next the division

I — WW II — w — w — — .

In Statius's poems on the ' Via Domitiana ' {Silv. iv. 3) and
on the ' Birthday of Lucan ' {Silv. ii. 7), the longest and
most elaborate pieces of hendecasyllabics that we have from
the first century of our era, the great majority of the lines are
of one or other of these two types :

Lucani proprium | diem frequentet
quisquis coUibus | Isthmiae Diones
pendentis bibit | ungulae liquorem.

It is noticeable further in the practice of Statius and Martial
that elisions are very few and very slight. There is a careful
avoidance of elision which is foreign to Catullus. Coincidence
between word and foot is not avoided. There are many lines
in which only one foot does not end with the end of a word :

Baetin, Mantua, provO|Care noli.

Coincidence throughout, however, is quite rare {ViaDom. 91):

Poenos Bagrada serpit inter agros

(where spondee, dactyl, and the three trochees are all separate
words).

PART II

CHAPTER I

GREEK LYRIC VERSE

-Mr

I. Archilochus, Alcman, and Sappho

Whatever forms of lyric verse existed prior to the Homeric
poems or contemporary with them — and it seems probable
that shorter lines, more or less Aeolian, existed, out of which
a hexameter could be formed — the first 'lyric' verse that
presents itself in literature or to the view of the historian is
the elegiac couplet. The ancients would not classify it as
' lyric ', but it is clearly a change in the direction of lyric
poetry. Tradition made Callinus or Tyrtaeus its founder,
along with Archilochus, but for our present purpose we may
ignore the dubious question of priority and contemplate it as
one of the various advances in metrical art made by the
poet of Paros. Archilochus was looked upon by ancient critics
as a poet of the same quality as Homer, though he attempted
nothing on the scale of the epos,^ and in particular as an
originator of new metrical and musical forms. Marius Vic-
torinus called him ' parentem artis musicae, iuxta multiformem |
metrorum seriem diversamque progeniem '. Slight as the
surviving fragments of Archilochus's poetry are, it is possible

* Quint. X. I. 60 : ' Summa in hoc vis elocutionis, cum validae turn
breves vibrantesque sententiae, plurimum sanguinis atque nervorum,
adeo ut videatur quibusdam, quod quoquam minor est, materiae esse non
ingenii vitium.'

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 119

to discover in them at least three important lines of advance
in metrical art.

(i) There is first the vein of composition which we may
associate with the word ' epode ' as that term is applied to
verses of Horace. A well-known and established line or
(TTL\os has a different appendage attached to it to make
a couplet. An elegiac couplet is an epode in this sense (the
second line a sequel or following verse, kircoSos)- It was a
further step, and a very important one, to make this appendage
consist of feet of a different type, e. g. to make the alternating
line an iambic dimeter :

Sv(rT7]uos eyKeLfiai irodo),
d-\^v\o^, y^aXerrrjcrL Oecov 68ijurj(TLV €Kr]TL
ireirapiiivo^ SC ocrricou,

or, conversely, a normal iambic line might be followed by
something shorter that was dactylic :

epeco TLV^ viXLV alvou, cb KrjpvKdSrj'

d)(^uv/jLevr] aKvrdXi]'
TTidrjKos fj^L Orjpicoy aTroKptOeh

/J.OVUOS dv' k(r\aTLrjv'

Besides these there was the combination of the longer and
shorter iambic line, trimeter and dimeter, which Horace
adopted in most of his epodes.

The ' epodic ' vein is known to us chiefly in Horace. The
recurrent couplet or short stanza has little place in the lyrics
of the drama or in Pindar. Pindar or Sophocles set up every
time a new fabric of 'manifold music', a fresh piece of metrical
and musical architecture ; the elements combined were more
or less familiar, but the combination of them was devised for
the occasion. The simpler ' epodic ' vein is seldom seen in
tragedy. The elegiac couplet is found only once, for a Oprjvos,
in the Andromache of Euripides, a iiovcoSia ('iXico alTreLvd
IldpLs ov ydfxov ktX., 1. 103 f.), and in the same play he has

120 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

a dactylic hexameter followed by a trochaic KotXov (1. 117):

S> yvuat, a OiriSos SdireSoi^ Kol duccKTopa Bd<T(reLS
Sapbu ovSe XeLTrei^.

Many lyric systems have an encpSbs cTTiyo^ in the sense of a
following or closing verse that is different from what precedes.
But it seems expedient to speak of this rather as a ' clausula ',
and to reserve the term ' epode ' for something of the nature of
a recurrent couplet, of which a normal (ttl\os forms part.
Though written in two Mines' the group may of course
contain more than two KcoXa ; there are four in Horace's
combination :

horrida tempestas | caelum contraxit et imbres |

nivesque deducunt lovem ; | nunc mare, nunc siliiae.

(ii) One of the extant fragments of Archilochus is a line
which runs thus :

dWd II 6 Xva-LfieXijs, S> 'raipe, BdfivaraL nodos-

This also may have been part of an ' epodic ' couplet, perhaps
with an iambic trimeter before it, as in Horace :

Petti, nihil me sicut antea iuvat
scribere versiculos amore percussum gravi.

Horace probably thought of the second part of the longer line
as iambic, and divided the whole thus :

— WW — WW — j — — w — — — w — .

But Archilochus's syllables can be taken in another way and,
whether he meant it or not, the line will serve as an introductory
example of a large class of lyrics :

— WW — WW I — w — w — w — A.

Here we have a dactylic and a trochaic group ; and the dactylic
group comes to a marked close, like a hexameter. It ends in
a spondee (though we may expect to find occasionally a
syllaba anceps, the last foot appearing for prosody as

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 121

a trochee). Verse of this type (with the trochaic part usually

shortened and weighted at the close, — w ) was wTitten very

extensively by Pindar, Bacchylides, and others, and various
names have been devised for it, of which 'dactylo-epitrite' was
perhaps the most useful and the least ambiguous.

(iii) Another extant fragment of Archilochus runs :

ToTos yap (piXorrjTO^ epooy virb KapStrjv eXvadeh
TToWrji/ Kar d)(Xvu o/jL/jLaTcou e^euei^.

\^KJ KJ<y WV-^ I \^

(Hor. Odes i. 4 'solvitur acris hiems', &c.). The first line
consists of a group of four dactyls and a trochaic phrase, the
second is iambic (catalectic)). Here the dactylic group ends
with a dactyl ; it is not brought to a close by a spondee, and
the rhetorical pause or pause in sense between utto a.nd KapSirju
is very slight. Whether Archilochus, like Horace, always made
the fourth foot a dactyl is uncertain ; Cratinus wrote :

y^atp^Te irdvTe^ oaoi ttoXv^cotov irovTiav ^epK^ou

— WW — WW — WW — w — w — — ,

and in this shape the line does not differ in principle from the
preceding type (ii). But taking it as it stands in the extant
fragment and as Horace wrote it, it is an example of a some-
what different arrangement. The dactylic portion is not
completed or secluded or relegated to a separate compartment
by a variation in the form of its last foot. The whole cannot
be a single Ka>Xov ; according to Aristoxenus the longest
dactylic kS>Xov is one of four feet, and even if we think of the
dactyls as more rapid than ordinary dactyls and equivalent in
time to trochees, the feet are still too numerous— for trochees
Aristoxenus's limit was six. But if; while preserving the
structure, w^e reduce the number of dactyls, or of trochees,
or of both, we shall arrive at lines which are short enough
to be single KooXa, and these will form a new type of metre —

122 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

dactyl and trochee not in separate compartments, but in the
same kcoXou. Clearly there will be several species :

(a) JVif/i dactyls preponderating and trochees few :

09 [i^Ta M.aivd(TL ^OLKyjLOS oyLjiaaL SauTai

(Ar. Lys. 1285.)
(four dactyls, and trochaic dipody catalectic — ^ — a).

0) Slol tS>v OvpLScou KaXov e/j.^XeTTOKTa

(three dactyls, and trochaic dipody or possibly — u^ l_ — a).

The same with w w or — or w prefixed :

dTeXeoTTara yap Kal dfid)(ava tovs Bavovras
KXaUiv. (Stesichorus.)

Sapov 8' dVeo) \p6vov rja-TO Td(p€L Treiraym.

(Ibycus.)
'Avavpov vnep TroXv/Sorpvos e^ 'IcoXkov.

(Simonides.)

(b) JVitA dactyls reduced tfi number — reduced to one :
Kal jjiiXi Kal TO, TepTTv' dvOe dcppoSLO-ia

(this is still two KcoXa, — ww — ^ l__ ' — v^ — w —\^ — a).

TIdu, TleXaayLKov 'Apyos i/J-ISaTevcov
(Phalaecean,

— ^ — WW — w — w — — or — w — WW — w — w I — — a).

TTOLKiXoOpou' dOdvaT^ A(ppoSLTa
(Sapphic,, — w — w — WW — w — — ).

vdi (f)opriiJLe6a crvv fieXalva
(—WW — WW — w — — , Alcaic decasyllableX

r) TToXiv rjixerepav e^ef (Ar. Thesm. 1140.)

(the same, catalectic).

The latter is seen also in Ibycus, fr, 1 :

GREEK LYRIC VERSE

123

r]pL fi€u ai T€ KvScouLac
firjXiSes dpSo/ieuaL poav
eK TToraficoi^, 'Iva irapQivoav

(the next three lines here are complete dactylic tetrapodies,
each ending in a dactyl and ' hypermetric ' in scansion :

" t' olvauOiSe^

av^oii^vai ktX.).

The survey of these metres has led us into regions which it is
not known that Archilochus trod. The shortest kS>\ov of the
type which has now come into view is -ww -v^ -a (ofxfia-
(TLV kvSlKOLS, ' vulgus ct arceo ')or - \j\j -k^ -^ {Sv(rfj.a\a
S' €(ttI KpTvaL, 'Lydia, die per omnes'). Verse like this is not
' Parian '. It has been called ' Logaoedic ' or ' Lesbian ' or
' Aeolian '. * Logaoedic ' is a word that was invented by
metricians of Roman imperial times. It was applied to lines
of the type o) Bloc, tcov OvpiSccv KaXov kfJLpXeTTOLaa (five or six
feet, six if the ending is 1— — a ; the maximum number of feet
that can form a single kcoXou in trochaic time).

We have now met with two priiiciples on which composite
metres can be constructed ; the principle of separate groups or
compartments, dactyls in one group, trochees in another, and
the principle of mixture, groups internally heterogeneous,
dactyl and trochee in the same KchXov. I'he words which
come nearest to expressing this difference of principle are the
Greek adjectives kindvvQ^TOv and jiiktov {eTnavi^OeTou, ' out-
wardly compounded ', compounded by juxtaposition of groups).
But before tracing these two veins of composition further —
both of them are extensively illustrated in Pindar and the
drama — we must revert to early history, and it will also be
desirable to survey first those lyrics in which there is no
heterogeneity at all, metres composed of one type of foot only
{/lirpa {loi^GeiSfj or 6/xo^iSrj).

In the time of Archilochus or not long after it, in the

124 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

{

seventh and sixth centuries B.C., there were other develop-
ments of music and metre in Greece : Dorian, represented by
Alcman at Sparta and Stesichorus in Sicily, and Aeolian or
Lesbian, represented by Sappho and Alcaeus. The Dorian :
poetry is mainly choric, composed for a public occasion and i
expressing the feelings of a people or of a large company. The
Aeolian poetry expresses the feelings of the poet or poetess,
and it is often addressed to a particular person.

Stesichorus (or Tisias) of Himera was a poet of considerable
versatility and importance.^ Quintilian describes him as ' epici
carminis onera lyra sustinentem'. He related heroic stories in
new shapes, for example making Clytaemnestra take the lead in
the murder of Agamemnon (as she does not do in Homer);
and for these heroic lays he seems to have used metres akin to
that of the epos, numerous groups of dactyls, if we may judge .
by a few extant passages, with only few and short groups of
trochees interwoven with them :

ovveKa TvvSdpeos

pi^cov TTOTe 7rd(TL BeoLs fJLovvas Aa^er' rjirtoSSpov
KvTTpiSos' KHva Se TvuSapiov Kopais
\oX(0(Ta/j.iur) Scyd/iovs re Kal Tptyd/iovs rlBrja-Lv
Kal XiTrecrdvopas ...

— WW — WW — ^

— — V^\^ — WW — — — WW — WW

— \^ _^_^ _v^_

W — WW— WW— W— WW— w— —

— WW —WW ... (or —WW — w — a).

(TvuSapeov is trisyllabic, by synizesis TvuSapeov. Two of
the lines are preceded by — and w, a syllable for which

* The versatility which we attribute to Stesichorus may perhaps be
illusory, things written by various poets having attached themselves to
the name 'Stesichorus'. His personality is obsCure. But the most
sceptical view of him does not impugn the existence of an early vein
of lyric poetry in Sicily in the metre here described'.

GREEK LYRIC VERSE T25

modern metricians have used the useful term ■ anacrusis '.
Here the syllables can be accounted for as belonging to the
preceding kcoXov : ovveKa Tvv8dp€0$ p^\C^v irore irda-L
6eoh ktX., but this is not always the case. The last kcoXou
in the fourth line is one that we have met with as the shortest
Mogaoedic' group, -^w -w -^.) The longest extant passage
is dactylic almost throughout :

AeXLO^ S' 'TnepiopiSa^ Siwa^ kcTKaTe^aLvev

)(pvcr€OV, 6(f)pa St' 'flKeayoio Trepdaa^

dcpLKoiO' Upas TTOTL fievOea vvktos epejii^d^

TTOTt fiaripa KovpiStav r' dXoyov TraiSd^ re ^lXovs'

6 8' ey dXa-09 ^(Sa

Sd(f)vaL(TL KardaKLOv Troaal TraiV ^169.

— WV^ — V^W — ^W — WV> — WV^ — —

— (^V_/ — WW — WW — WW

WW — WW — WW — WW — WW

WW — WW — WW — WW — WW — /\

WW —WW —

— — WW — w — — WW — w — .

(Heracles landing at Gades from the Sungod's boat, to
encounter Geryones. In the third line an ' anacrusis ' which
cannot be attached to the preceding line. Ancient metricians
had to make this line anapaestic, w w - | w w -, &c.; or they
made the whole anapaestic and called the dactylic lines
' acephalous '). Tradition ascribes to Stesichorus the inven-
tion of the triple or triadic arrangement by which a strophe
was repeated and followed by an ' epode ' — eircoSSs here
meaning a strophe that follows another duplicated one, not
a line that follows other lines.

Of Alcman's poetry many short fragments survive which
show great finish and variety of metrical form, and we have
also a considerable part of a TrapBevLov, which was mono-
strophic — the same strophe recurs, without an epode. In this

126 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

system trochees predominate, a few lines are ' logaoedic ', and
the penultimate line is one of four dactyls and the last is the
Alcaic decasyllabic (= ' virginibus puerisque canto ') :

77 oij-x opfj^ ; 6 /xeu KeXr}9

'EveTLKQs, OL (5e yjxira

TOLs e/j.ds dvey^ids

^4.yr)(TL\6pas kiravOel

^pL'cro? 0)9 aKriparos

TO r' dpyupiov 7rp6(T007rov

SiacpdSau — tl tol Xiyco ; —

Ayr](TL^6pa /leu avra. —

a de SevTepa neS' AyiScou to fei^o?

L7r7ro9 eiprjucp KoXa^alos SpafieiTat,

Tal TreXeLaSes ydp dplv

'OpOia ^dpos (pepoLcrai?

vvKTa 81' dfiPpocTLav aTe crrjpLOU

do'Tpov dfeipofiij/ai p.d)(0VTai.

The first line is -^ -w -w - (=' non ebur nee aureum ').
For the second the preceding strophe has 6 5' oXpLos octtls

€v(ppcoi^, w -V-/V-/ -^ , so that oA/Sioy answers to

{'E)j^eTiK69, -^^ to ^^^, an indication that in a lyric
which is on the whole trochaic we have to reckon with a
dactyl which has the time of a trochee. The couplet is
repeated four times : lines i, 2 = 3, 4 = 5, 6 = 7, 8. Then
follow two longer trochaic lines, trimeters, the element repeated
being - ^ - ^ . Next come two dimeters of the same type
(- v^ - ^ I - ^ - ^), then the dactylic tetrapody (ending in
a dactyl, and ' hypermetric ' or continuous in scansion with
the line that follows), then the Alcaic decasyllabic, d<TTpov
dfeLpofievaL iJLd)(ovTaL (in the next strophe its first foot is
a spondee, dXX' 'Ayr](TL\6pa fxe TTjpeT). Aeschylus also,
besides Alcman, had a liking for this decasyllabic as a clausula
or concluding cadence, and, like Alcman, he sometimes has

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 127

a penultimate dactylic kcoXou or KooXa in a system that is
mainly trochaic.

In its general structure Alcman's strophe has something of
a ' Parian ' character. Several lines are exactly alike, and
trochaic throughout, while one is dactylic throughout ; so far
as it consists of such elements it is * Parian '. If we call
it ' Alcmanian \ and take ' Parian ' or kiriorvvB^rov as the
name for a genus, the ge/ms will include at least three species :
(i) the Archilochian and Horatian 'epode' or epodic couplet,
(2) Alcmanian, (3) 'dactylo-epitrite' (consisting of the elements
-v>/v^ -^Ky — and - ^ — )} A good example of what we
are proposing to call by Alcman's name is seen in the lines
(Ar. Av. 747 (■):

eudeu axTTrepel jxeXLTra

^pvvL\os dfiPpo(TL(x)v €7ri(ou dnelSocrKeTO Kapirov del

(pepoou yXvKelav ccSdv.

— \J KJ — WW — WW — WW — WW — WW —

w — w — w — — .

It has been proposed to call this ' simplified logaoedic V but
the simplification, or separation of groups of similar feet, is
carried so far that the term 'logaoedic' ceases to be appropriate.
If the word ' logaoedic ' is to be retained, it would be most
serviceable in the sense that dactyl and trochee occur within
the same kcoXoi/ — a kS)Xov which includes both is ' logaoedic' ;
and we may regard on Sid tcou OvptScou KaXov efijSXiiroicra —
to which the ancients gave the name — as the upper limit or
extreme case. Anything longer than that — with the dactyls
grouped together, and the trochees in another group — is not
'logaoedic'.

'G*-

Solvitur acris hiems grata vice , veris et Favoni

^ A different account of ' dactylo-epitrite' verse, which has found
favour with recent metricians, is discussed on p. 177,
2 By Mr. White, in his Verse of Greek Comedy.

128 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

will be excluded from the -category. Contrast with this the
so-called * Priapean ' line :

o colonia quae cupis \ ponte ludere longo

— w— v-^w— v^— A — <^— WW ^or I — ~ a),

which consists of two KcoXa, each palpably ' logaoedic ' or ^
/XLKTov, a ' Glyconic ' and a ' Pherecratean ' verse. Glyconic
was one of the many measures written by Sappho.

The poetry of Alcaeus and Sappho is known to us very
imperfectly, in a few portions of poems, stanzas, or lines that
have been more or less accidentally preserved. In quite recent
years a few portions of poems of Sappho have been recovered,
which are metrically instructive.^

The chief forms of verse written by the Lesbian or Aeolian
poets are the following :

(i) The Sapphic stanza :

7roLKi\60pop\ dOdvar^ A(ppoSLTa.

— \^ — :=^ — \^v^ — <^ — ^=-

— W W

^ fer

(The fourth syllable may be short or long. Horace made it
invariably long, and Horace also preferred the caesura seen in

KOL yap at (pevyei \ Ta\e(o9 Sid>^€i.

Sappho has no such preference, and very frequently ends
a word with the fourth syllable, as in :

(paLuerat fioi \ Krjuo9 l<to9 deoicrip
^ 'ijifi^v covrjp \ 6(TTLS kvavrios rot.)

(2) The Alcaic stanza :

do'vi'irrjfiL tS>v dvefiodv (TTacnv'

TO jxkv yap evOev KVjxa KvXivSeTai,

^ They have been made accessible in Diehl's Sitpplementmn Lyricum,
one of the ' Kleine Texte' published at Bonn (by Marcus and Weber),
which contains also parts of two poems of Corinna and Paeans of Pindar.

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 129

TO euuew afx/ies au to /j.€(T(tou
pal' (f)opr]fj.€Oa crvv jieXatva

ii. — v_/ — ^ \J — V^ —

v^ — ^ — — — v^ — i^

— ^1^ — wv-* — v-/

(Horace made the fifth syllable always long, and introduced
a diaeresis after it in the first and second lines : see Chap. III.)

(3) Metres of which some were afterwards called 'Ascle-
piadean ', each line beginning with what has been called a
* basis ' or ' basis Aeolica ', a kind of disyllabic anacrusis,

syllables which may be — v^ or v^ — or «^ '^ or . The chief

metres of this type are :

Phalaecean :

^^ :_^w -w -^ -^

Glyconic (with Pherecratean^ which is shorter by a syllable,
the shortest of the lines of the type) :

^^;_^^ _^_ (Pherecratean, ^'^\~^^^ - ^).

Metres like the Glyconic, but with more than one dactyl :
(a) ijL€iiuaL(rO\ oiaOa yap coy ere TreSrJTTO/j.^i'. (Sappho.)

^V^ Vw^V-/ — v^ — ,

(b) wPTjp ovTOs 6 /xaio/xepos to fiiya KpeT09

dpTpi'^eL Taya Tav ttoXlv, a 8' €)(€Tac poiras.

(Alcaeus.)

— \J ^ — WV^ — v^v,^ — v^

Asclepiadean metres :

(a) TjXde^ €K TrepaTcov yds eXecpaPTiuap
Xd(3au TOO ^L(f)^os \pv(To8eTav e\cou

— V^v-/ — — v_/w — \^ — .

(j8) ixr]8\v dXXo (pvTevcrrjs TrpoTepou SeuSpiou d/nreXco

_V^V^ — — \^ ^_/ — — WW — V_/ — .

1887

130 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

The last two metres are obtained from the Glyconic by the
introduction of one or of two choriambi (- w w -). Xd^av
Xpva-oSeTau e\coj/ is a Glyconic, as is firjSeu SeuSpiou
d/jL7ri\co.

So far we have been describing metres in terms of dactyls
and trochees. It is now necessary to explain that a different
view of them has recently become current and has been
advocated by distinguished scholars. An upholder of it would
say to us at this point : 'There are no dactyls in these metres ;
what you take for a dactyl is really part of a choriambus ;
primitive Aeolian verse, so far as it divided itself into fixed
groups of syllables,' he would probably be cautious enough to
make this reservation, ' fell into groups of four syllables. The
apparent dactyl in a Glyconic line results simply from an
iambus following a trochee : dpio-Tou fiku \ vScop 6 Si,
w — w I N^ — w -.' Postponing the discussion of this theory,
which is open to some serious objections, let us first see what
can be done with the dactyl and trochee. The ' Aeolist ' or
' Indo-European ' or ' quadrisyllabist ' metricians themselves
admit that there was verse in which a dactyl and a trochee
came together. What metrical elements or phrases are wanted
for the construction of the verses of Sappho and Alcaeus ?

We want hardly anything beyond the two forms of the
shortest kooXou of the mixed type, which have been mentioned
above :

(a) —WW -\j — , vulgus et arceo, oixfLacrLu €u8ikol9.

(b) — w w - w Lydia, die per omnes, Svcrfia^a 8' ia-ri

Kplvai}

* Perhaps discoverable in the Linus-song (Schol. //. xviii. 57o\ At
all events the lines

^oiPos Se KOTO) a' dvaipfi
Movcai 5e ae dprjuiovaiv

seem to be the least questionable part of the text of it ( vw — w —^).

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 131

(b) is written Kara aTL\ov by Aristophanes (Tr. 10) :

ovK kros, ft) yvuaiK€9,

Trdcri KaKolcTLV -qfids

<pXa>criu eKacTToO' dvSpe^ ktX.,

and Eupolis wrote a stanza in it ending with the line (J^r. 163):
/xijXa 8e \p€jjL7rT€Tai {— (a)).

(a) coincides in syllables with a very frequent form of the
dochmius, which sometimes has (b) attached to it as a
clausula :

— \j \^ — \_) —

/ZT^re (re OvfioTrXr] Or)$ Soptfiapyos dja (pepirco KaKov 5'

— V^ \_/ — <^ _

€K/3aX^ €pcoT09 dp\dv.

(a), w^hich has been called, and may conveniently be called,
an ' Aeolic tripody ', enters into various metres. It is the
second part of the first and second lines of an Alcaic stanza
{vulgus et arceo). It is also the close of an Asclepiadean line
{sevens arboreni). With two syllables prefixed it is a Glyconic
{cui flavam religas coma7?i\ and to prefix a ' basis ' of two
syllables is a regular habit of Aeolian verse. With four
syllables prefixed (a kind of double 'basis', in the regular
shape of a ditrochaeus, -^-^) it is a Sapphic line {ttol-
KiXoOpov dOduar' AcppoScTa).^ With the dactyl doubled
it is the fourth line of an Alcaic stanza, and the effect of
an Alcaic stanza depends on the fact that the third and fourth
lines taken together exhibit on a larger scale the movement

* In one of the recently recovered poems Sapplio makes a more
curious experiment in construction than this would be, prefixing a cretic
to a Glyconic line {Suppl. Lyr. 7) :

vvv 5e ti.v\Za.iaiv luTpe-mrai ^vvai-

where the Hne is followed, in a regular three-line stanza, by another
Glyconic and a Phalaecean.

132 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

seen In the first and second lines separately — the third line is
a longer trochaic or iambic phrase than the first part of one
of the preceding lines ; and dactylic movement, after being as
it were longer staved off, comes when it does come in greater
volume, two dactyls instead of one. In the first two lines what
is prefixed to (a) is an iambic wei/Orj/iLfxepe^, the syllables
^ - w — — .^ Whether we call this an iambic TTei^dr]fjLi/i€ph
or a ditrochaeus with anacrusis makes no difference to our
reading of them ; if we adopt the latter description of odi
profanum it does not mean that we propose to pronounce
them 'o— di pro — fanum '. What words Alcaeus would use
to describe the syllables we do not know ; possibly words
that would describe them very imperfectly. Metrical, like
grammatical, terminology was probably very scanty and in-
complete in early times ; so, for example, in the line

ydii/rei \^ipos iXcou diro irvpyov, Xvypov oXeOpov

[oXeOpou constructed as pLyjni^ dXedpiav would be) Homer
writes an exact specimen of the construction now called
'cognate' or 'internal accusative', but it is certain that Homer
had no such phrase by which to describe it.

In the third line of an Alcaic stanza the lap,pLKov TrevOrj-
fjLL/iepi?, instead of being prefixed to (a), precedes a ditro-
chaeus (— - w - i=^ I - w — i=^) ; or we may say that the line

is a trochaic dimeter with anacrusis (— j - w | - *^ )j

which is in some ways a more convenient description, and if
we adopt it we can point to Seneca's use of the line without

anacrusis :

semper ingentes alumnos. {Agam. 8ro.)

* These syllables are readily prefixed in various forms of composition.

They precede an ' enoplius ' (— v^w —\j<u ) again and again in Pindar.

They seem even to precede * anaclastic ' Ionics in Aes. P. V. 128 nrjdlv
(po0T]6Tjs' II (piXia yap | 7/5e ra^is kt\. Compare also the line avwXoKv^av \
Kiaaocpopoii em hiOvpajx^ois in a poem attributed to Simonides or Bacchy-
lides (Anth. Pal. xiii. 28), where it precedes the Alcaic decasyllabic.

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 133

We have now described or constructed the familiar Sapphic

and Alcaic stanzas. What can be done with Glyconics ? One

of the recently recovered poems of Sappho is important for our

inquiry. It is written in stanzas of three lines, two Glyconics,

and a line which differs from them only in having an additional

dactyl :

Tctu 8' eyci) TccS' dfj.€tl36fj,au'

)(aLpoi(r' '^px^o Kcc/ieOeu

fjLi/jLpaiaO', oiada yap cw? ere TreSijiro/xeu ^

— V-/— WW — w —
— \^ \^ — w —

— WW — WW — w — .

Quadrisyllabic scansion may give a reasonable account of the
first two lines :

— w — w |w— w —

but it does not give an equally good account of the third

— WjW— wwl— w — ,

and it becomes still less attractive when a third dactyl is
added :

oouTjp ovTos 6 fj.aLo/xei'o^ TO fxeya Kperos
(Alcaeus — but Sappho also writes the line :

fjLudcreaOaL tlvol (pafxi Kal vcTrepou d/jL/jLeooi^) ^

W j W — WW — WW— I w— .

^ iTed'f}Trofx(v — fieOeiirofXfv.

'^ One of the recent volumes of Oxyrhynchus papyri contains a portion
of a poem of Sappho in which this verse was written Kara otlxov. The
subject was the wedding of Hector and Andromache :
"EnTOJp Kal cvviraipoi dyoia^ kXiKoiiriSa
@r](3as l£ lapas TIXaKias t an divvdco
dfipav 'Avdpopdxo-V ^vl vavaiv Itt' dkpivpov
novTOv ktX.

Here the shortening awiraipoi is Homeric, and belongs to dactylic verse.
The poems in this Oxyrhynchus volume show us both Sappho and
Alcaeus (p. 55) interested in Homer, and recalling Homeric events and
Homeric phraseology.

134 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

It is difficult to believe that the longer lines are not dactylic ;
and if they contain dactyls, is it credible that the syllables
— w ^ in the shortest line are something quite different ? We
have then a series or scale, in which a Glyconic grows by the
accretion of dactyls :

(a) ray 8' eyco rdS' dfJLeL^ofiav.

(b) fMe/iuaia-O^ olaSa yap a>s (re TreS-qTroji^u.

But there is also another series, starting from a Glyconic :

(a) Tai^ 8' eyo) Td8' dp,€iP6fiav — cui flavam religas

comam.^

(b) Xd/Sau tS> ^L(p€09 \pv(To8eTav 'i\(ov — Maecenas

atavis edite regibus.

nullam, Vare, sacra vite prius severis arborem.'^

The two series are so much alike that it is almost impossible
to dissociate them. But if they are parallel and cognate the
first two syllables in the second series are a ' basis ', and the
line does not begin with a quadrisyllabic foot.^ The scansion

1 Horace made the * basis ' regularly .

2 It was a curious fancy of Prudentius's to make these three lines form

a stanza for his preface to the Cathemerinott (not altogether unlike what

Sappho sometimes does, and not so infelicitous in effect as might be

expected) :

num quid talia proderunt

carnis post obitum vel bona vel mala,

cum iam quicquid id est quod fueram mors aboleverit.

3 A similar beginning in a hexameter was recognized as Aeolic,

XpoLKTixHu, (VT ttv TToXXot kt\, {supru , p. 25). It appears in Sappho's

hexameters :

01 av Tav vaKivOov ev ovpecn iroifjiives dvdp(s,

olov rb ykvKVfjiaKov kt\.
Compare also the wedding song, where a hexameter is disrupted :

lip 01 5i) TO fxeKaOpov

"Tfir]yaov
d(pp€T€ TiKTOvds dvbpes.

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 135

fJiijSep dXXo ' (f)VT€V(Tr)^ 7rp6\Tepov SeuSpi ov a/ZTreXo)

seems to be excluded. That the first two syllables stand
apart from the rest is indicated by the fact that they alone are

variable : they may be — v^ or w — or or w ^ . Every

other syllable in an Alcaic or * Asclepiadean ' line of this type
is absolutely fixed. If we may assume then dactylic movement
or effect in what follows, the simplest description of what
happens in our two series will be this : in the former the
first three syllables of — w w — w — (a)y ere Tr^S-qrrofiev) are
duplicated, in the latter it is the first four. The phrase coy ae
ireSrjTTOiiev begins but is arrested (cw? o-e ireSr]- co? ere neSi]-
TTOfieu), and in the longer line or 'greater Asclepiad' it is so
arrested twice.

It is this description or analysis of the verse that will enable
a modern reader to find it pleasing. To read * antispasts '
with ease and pleasure (<pvT€V(Tr]9 7rp6 repov SeuSpi-) is a thing
which he might arrive at by assiduous practice, though even
that seems doubtful. 'But', it may be said, 'that is an un-
scientific and unhistorical attitude to assume ; if antispasts
were what the Greeks felt here, the effort must be made.'
This may be admitted ; but we are entitled to ask that the
evidence be strong and conclusive. We must be careful not
to make some of the greatest poetry of the Greeks difficult,
or even repellent, for the literary student, in obedience to
what may be only a dubious and ingenious theory. The
discussion of the evidence must find a place in a separate
JVote or Excursus.

136 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

EXCURSUS

(a) ' Aeo//c' Verse.

The 'Indo-European', 'Aeolic', or 'quadrisyllabic' theory which
has had much vogue in recent years may be summarized as
follows :

Indo-European verse was at first ' syllabic ' ; syllables were
merely counted, they were in no way regulated and might be long
or short. Such a group of eight syllables may be represented by
the symbols 00000000. It is a * carmen ' only in the sense of
an utterance of fixed length. Two such groups could make a
longer line of sixteen syllables (seen in early Indian verse), and
there was also a group of twelve syllables. The octasyllabic group
began to be regulated at the end, the last four syllables became
w — w o (iambic) or — w v^ — (choriambic), while the first four were
still free. When two groups of four syllables come into view the
verse may be called a ' dimeter ', and the longer verse similarly
became a ' trimeter '. From the octasyllabic verse arose the
iambic and trochaic dimeters {kj — ^ — »^_^_ and — »>> — w
— w — w). Apart from these the chief forms which it assumed
were :

(i) 0000 —WW— (the first four syllables unregulated), the
' polyschematist ' dimeter.

(ii) 00 — WW — w— (two syllables still unregulated), 'Glyconic '•
The choriambus has shifted its place and is now in the middle of
the line.

(iii) — WW— w — w — (all the syllables now regulated), ' choriambo.
iambic '.

The choriambus moves gradually back from the end of the line.
On the other theory of the verse it is a dactyl that shifts its place,
(ii) is normal ^Glyconic', in (i) the dactyl is nearer the end of the
line, in (iii) it is at the beginning of it. Which description is to be
preferred ?

When stage (ii) is reached a possibility of compromise comes into
view. We may say, 'whatever happened before this, in primitive

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 137

times, about which we have no direct evidence, it was surely
possible that when the "Glyconic proper" was evolved (rav 8' e^cb
Tad' afi(i^nfjLnv) the syllables — *^ w in it could be taken as a dactyl,
at a time when a dactylic epos was flourishing; and it was thus
that it became possible for Sappho to lengthen the line by intro-
ducing another dactyl, and to use this longer line in a three-line
stanza with two Glyconics '.

But recent metricians would not admit even as much as this.
They regard 'quadrisyllable' scansion or structure as much more
lasting than that, and they find verses in the sixth and fifth centuries
which they define as partly ' syllabic ' or amorphous. One of
them ^ even gives the scheme of a Sapphic line as

0000 — ^»^ — w ,

and the ' polyschematist ' dimeter is discovered frequently in the
lyrics of the drama.

It must be admitted that there are lyrics in Aristophanes which
the Aeolic theory accounts for very neatly. It fits them exactly:
TTerov, TTiTov, 'SiKod'iKrjf fw — v^ — ! —WW—, diiambus and

Trpii' e/JLTreTrprjcrdai KaXvKrjv cnoriambus) ;

or :

es (Badv TTjs rjXiKias (— w w w w — , two choriambi) ;

and it is possible that ancient forms of verse would survive in
comedy. The theory suits also the second of the recently recovered
poems of Corinna, and an ancient vein of verse might also be looked
for in (TKoXia and carniina popnlaria. But when we turn to
the eminently 'Aeolian' poets, the 'Aeolic' theory meets with
difficulties. There is no question of four unregulated syllables.
In the first four syllables of a Sapphic line, and in the first five of
an Alcaic hendecasyllable, the variations are of the most innocent
and commonplace description. The ditrochaeus with which a
Sapphic line begins is regulated as much as any ditrochaeus ever
was in the usual verse of early Greece ; and in the Alcaic line the
variations are those which are familiar in any iambic Trci/^r^/xt/xepe?.

^ Schroder, in Horazens Versmasse fi'ir Anfdnger erkldrt. The
'beginner', when he turns to his text of Horace, of course finds the first
four syllables absolutely fixed. In Sappho only one of them is variable
(the fourth).

138 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

Horace regulated the metres still further, making certain syllables
invariably long ; he fixed all the variable syllables, except the first
of an Alcaic line, which he sometimes allows to be short. His
lyrics were written to be read, mainly, though the Carmen Saeculare
was undoubtedly sung. Sappho's verses were things which could
easily be sung to the lute, without elaborate musical training and
special preparation. They must have been also read. They are
addressed often to particular persons and they were sometimes of
the nature of a poetical epistle, e.g. the now extant poem on her
brother's return. So they are regular, like Horace's. The same
stanza is repeated with only the slightest variations. The notion
that a Sapphic line was in part unregulated or amorphous is the
opposite of the truth.

The first two syllables in certain forms of Aeolian verse may be
said to be unregulated ; but it does not follow quite certainly that
this part of the verse was ' syllabic ' or amorphous. Several different
forms of it, it may be, were definitely recognized and permitted.
The same may be the case with the ' polyschematist ' dimeter.
If the first four syllables of it were entirely unregulated we should
expect to find all the sixteen combinations that are arithmetically
possible, but it is admitted that only nine of them are actually
found.

There are at least three quite definite arguments which we may
advance against Aeolic or quadrisyllable scansion.

(i) The first has been already anticipated. It consists in pointing
out that Sappho could extend a Glyconic line by introducing a
dactyl— on the dactylic theory, a second dactyl — and use this line
in a three-line stanza with two Glyconics ; and further {supra, p. 134),
that rising, as it were, out of the Glyconic, we seem to have two
parallel scales or series, one obtained by the insertion of dactyls,
the other by the insertion of what, on the dactylic theory, are only
' apparent ' choriambi (— w w — A), and that the dactylic expansion
seems to show that the first two syllables are a disyllabic basis.

But this is not the only form that this argument takes. There is
perhaps also expansion or extension by the insertion of a single
trochee, notably in the case of scolia. Scansion by means of
choriambi, diiambi, and Ionics explains some Hues, and then
breaks down in others.

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 139

A common form of stanza in scolia began with two Phalaeceans,
and the Phalaecean, as we have seen, is capable of Ionic or quadri-
syllabic analysis.

vyiaiveiu fiep opiaTOV (iv8p\ BvrjTto

looks promising for the quadrisyllabist metrician

but the next line is less tractable :

devrepov de (f)vav koXov yeviuOui
— \j — I v^w — >^ I — ^u J

the third line :

TO rpiTov de nXovrelu ddoXojs

presents to us a five-syllable group,

\u ^u — w — I — WW — ,

but no further difficulty, and the fourth looks like a perfect * Aeolic '
trimeter :

Koi TO TCTapTOV i]^a.v pera Tcav (f)t\cov

— WW — I w w I W — W — J

choriamb, antispast, and diiambus. It occurs also in Aristophanes,
and is scanned by Mr. White in that way :

f'crrt dcKaiov el 8i]poKpaTovpe6n

— >^w — w w w — w —

But this line coincides with a double dochmius, and if it is that it
is divided in the middle into two equal parts, like

pTjre ere 6vpoTvkr]\6r]s bopipapyos njra kt\.

Apart from this agreement with a double dochmius, the line also
perhaps occurs with an additional trochee in it, though the text is
not altogether certain :

TvSeidrjv re (f)a<nv ecrdXov Aioprj?)en
and

€v(f)po(Tvvai(Ti, Toicrb^ aoiBdii K€)(apT]pevos,^

^ The text of the first line is reported to be (paat toi' ea6\6v, and of
the other evcppoavvms rats 5' doiSah. The lines are brought into agree-
ment with other examples of the closing line (i) by deleting kaOXov, (2)
by reading evcppoai ratab' doibais (there are other conjectures).

I40 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

that is, by quadrisyllabic division :

— WW— I W — W— I — WW— j w— ,

wliere the two syllables at the end, ea, are not at all happily
accounted for. On the other theory the latter part of the line is |
simply the familiar Aeolian tripody, and what precedes is similar
(sometimes called ' first Glyconic ' from the place of the dactyl) :

WW — w — w I — .| — WW — w — ;

and it is impossible to dissociate this line from Sappho's

where quadrisyllabic scansion leaves us with Kex^rai irpoaoiTrcp to be
accounted for (w w — w j ).

(ii) The second argument is not a new one. Recent material
supplied by one of the Aeolists themselves seems to strengthen it
a little.

It consists in the fact that a shortening such as is seen in ^aivoy-ai
elvai belongs conspicuously to dactylic verse, and is also found in
Aeolic verse, where the Aeolists deny that there is any dactyl at all.

This shortening of a final vowel before a following vowel is
altogether alien to iambic or trochaic verse. It is unimaginable
that a trochaic line could begin Se^at « mivTaiv apiaTe, or an iambic
line with koL de^aX r]ixas or TTpoKeiraX oiKvpos.^ One of two syllables is
assimilated to a short that follows it (as in navpoX o/xcos) or precedes
it. Hence it is admitted also in anapaests and in regular Ionics

(edeXjjcreis tl pot ovf, at ndrep, fjv crov Ti 8erjda) ; ww ww , &C.).

It is seen in Aeolic verse in

dp.(j)i fioX avTC, $01^' ava^, [Clouds 595*)

yr]S re Kai oKixvpas 6aXd(Tcrr]s, (/did. S^7')

iv T<o rpoTTM COS Xe'-yei?, {^Kilights 1 1 33.)

and also in the Persae of Timotheus :

tvQa K€LcropnX oiKrpos 6p-
v'l6(x)X> ivaXicov ^opd,

1 Horace's Esquilinae alites is very exceptional. Reasons will be
given (Chap. Ill, § ii) for thinking that the final syllable oi Esquilinae is
not to be thought of as shortened. It is a case of unmitigated hiatus.
It resembles the o of Glauco, not the ae oi Panopeae, in Virgil's line :
Glauc5 I et Panopeae et Inoo Melicertae.

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 141

where quadrisyllabic scansion sunders the two short syllables of
K€i<rofxaL (_w-^lw-v^-, naXohrpos op). Mr. White has collected
all such shortenings in Aristophanes, and the result is instructive
in a way that has not occurred to him. The great majority of
course are in anapaestic tetrameters and dactylic hexameters
( Verse of Greek Comedy, §§ 79S-9)- Then he collects those that are
in other metres (§ 800). ' Of these exceptions one is Ionic, four are
trochaic, two paeonic-trochaic, three anapaestic, one enoplic, six
Aeolic, and, as we should expect from the dominating influence of
Homer, twelve dactylic' Now in the other metres, including the
Aeolic, the text is invariably sound, and there is no doubt whatever
about the shortening. But of the passages classified as trochaic or
paeonic-trochaic there is not one that is free from doubt. In two
of them it is not metrically certain that the syllable is shortened
(in Thesni. 1 150 it is at least as likely that it is elided), and in the
others the text which Mr. White adopts would not be accepted or
allowed to be certain by editors. The passages have been read
otherwise, not solely on metrical grounds, or, if on metrical grounds,
not solely to get rid of the shortening. This is a rather remarkable
fact. It is not a positive proof perhaps. But it certainly strengthens
the belief that when a shortening like Keiaofxat occurs the foot is
a dactyl

(iii) Sometimes a familiar Aeolic line, such as the Alcaic deca-
syllable, occurs in a context where the quadrisyllabic scansion
cannot be applied to it.

TO S' evOfV, afifxes S' dv to necra-ov
vai ipoprj^eOa crvv fxeXaiva

is, according to the Aeolists,

(-/ifs 8' dv TO n€(T\aov vai (f)o\pr]fJie6a avv \ fie'Kaiva). It is difficult,

at the best, to read an Alcaic stanza in this way, and to write Alcaics
with such a scheme in mind would be more difficuh still. But
apart from that the last line occurs in contexts where there is no
long syllable before it to make up the Ionic foot. For example, in
Aes. F. V. 166-7 :

{TVp\v dv) T] Kopearj Keap r] TTokap-a Tivl
TCiv Svo-aXcoroi/ TKtj tis dpxdv,

142 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

where it is plainly preceded by dactyls :

— v^v^ — \^ KJ — v-^v^y — w^

— WW — WW — W .

This we have already found in Alcman, the Alcaic clmisula at the
end of a strophe of some length and immediately preceded by
dactyls. In another of Alcman's strophae what answers to it is

aKa(Tra de
epya iraaov (= enaOov) kuko. firjcrdfJievoi

— WW — WW — WW — .

Here it is difficult to avoid recognizing three dactyls ; thus we have

a dactylic dipody catalectic (— w w —a) answering to — w .

The syllables — w w — at the end of a line are not necessarily a
choriambus.

The Indo-European theory is not the only shape in which
quadrisyllable scansion is imposed upon verse of the Glyconic type.
The ' acephalous ' form of a Glyconic line can also be taken as
Ionic. Thus

S) S^jue, koXtjv y' e'x^ty

cipxjiv OTL 7rdvT€s av-

dpcOTTOl Kt\.

may be either (o) o — w ] w — w — (Aeolic) or it may be v^ w |

— ^ — /\ (Ionic). ^ One is a survival from primeval times. The
other, lonicization, is a kind of malady that invades verse in later
ages. The history of lyric verse is therefore complicated by two
quite different possibilities of quadrisyllable scansion. How long
did the former survive (if it ever really existed) ? How early did
the other begin (that it had some vogue is certain) ? For the
complete solution of the problems involved in these questions it is
probable that much more extensive evidence would be necessary
than we now possess. We want some fifth or sixth-century account
of metrical composition — a thing not to be hoped for, though it is

^ — w — i±l is often found among Ionics a niatori as an alternative or
equivalent. In Sotades it may occur three times running :

oapKiKov yap elx^ XP^"^^ '^^^ '^^ ^^PP-' ofxoiov
beside av xp^<^°^<^PV^j tovto tuxj/s kcrlv, evap/xa.

— w — w I — w — w I — w — w I — ^7\
and WW j wv j — — ww | — izd/s;.

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 143

perhaps just possible that a fifth-century work, such as the 'E77i^r]fj.iai
of Ion might contain very instructive passages bearing on metre. We
want also more extensive texts, more of Stesichorus, to name only
one early poet, and more of Anacreon, who seems to have been
a poet of great skill and versatility. ' lonicization ' will be con-
sidered when we have reviewed Ionics themselves and have discussed
'prosodiac-enoplic' verse.

11. Simple or Homogeneous Metres {fiouoeiSfj)

Doubts and difficulties about lyric verse arise chiefly where
feet of different kinds are combined. But there are some lyric
systems of a simpler type in which the same foot is used
throughout, jieTpa fiovoeiSij, employing only one el^oy of
rhythm. Even here we shall not escape controversy ; we may
be asked, at the outset : ' Do you mean that for this purpose
iambic is one elSo? and trochaic another ? Or do both belonsr
to the same elSo^, since the ratio between the parts of the foot
is the same (2 : i, Aoyoy SiTrXdaio^)?' To this we may pro-
visionally reply : ' Spoken iambic and trochaic verse, trimeters
and tetrameters, are certainly very different things, but in strictly
lyric compositions iambus and trochee may be regarded as
belonging to the same elSos- Consider, for example, Aes.
Agaf?i. 438-48 :

6 )(pv(TaiJL0i^b9 S' "Apr}s crcofidToov
Koi Ta\avTov\os kv /Jid\T] Sopbs ktX.

Some of the lines almost certainly have an iambic, some a
trochaic, beginning. But there is absolutely 7io change in the
tone of the passage, the voice of melancholy foreboding is
the same throughout. Real iambi have a different ^609 from
trochaics. Is it not safest to suppose that for Aeschylus such
a system was not iambic in one place and trochaic in other,
but, throughout, either or neither or both ? '

144 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

We have thus been dragged back into the turbid waters of
controversy at the very outset :

rursus in bellum resorbens
unda fretis tulit aestuosis.

But let us try to select examples which raise no large questions.
Doubts about a detail here and there we can hardly expect to
escape in dealing with any ancient verse. Let us first keep
to 'descending' rhythms as far as possible, avoiding iambi and
anapaests.

Specimens of simple verse, fiirpa jjLoyoeiSrj, of course fall
into three classes according to the nature of the foot or
rhythm. If we begin with the shortest there are : (i) trochee
(- ^, ratio 2 : I, <^ w I w) ; (2) dactyl (- w w, ratio 2 : 2, l(T09,
»^ w I w v^) ; (3) cretic or paean (- w -, ratio 3 : 2, r}/ii6\io9,
y^ ^ \j \ ^ y^). The first el^oy includes iamb (and tribrach), the
second anapaest (and ' proceleusmaticus '). The Greeks did
not make the iambus a separate €lSos from the trochee ;
obviously trochees and iambi are most conveniently regarded
as sud-species or different forjus of the same. Another way of
putting this is to say that they are different for fieTpiKrj, but
the same for pvOfjiiKrj. ^atvovTai fikv 01 pvO/xoL, ra Se /xerpa
SiaipeLTai — /Saiuco is sca?ido and does not mean what we
mean by 'scan'; when an Englishman 'scans' a verse v/hat
he usually does is p.krpa Siaipeii'.

The following are simple specimens of verse in each eiSos-

(i) Trochaic (or more simply, kv BLTrXaa-tcc Xoyco, if we think
that both ' trochaic ' and ' iambic ' are words of doubtful
validity for what is strictly lyrical).

Aes. jEt^m. 916 f. :

Si^ofxai IlaXXdSo? ^vvoiKiav,

ovS' aTi/xdo-oo ttoXlv,

rav KOI Zev9 6 nayKparr]? 'Ap-qs re

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 145

(fypovpLOV Oeoou v^jieL

pvai/Scofjiov ^EWdvcov dyaXiia Saifiovcop.

ar eyo) Karev^ojiaL

6e(T7ri<Ta<Ta irp^vfievcos

kiTLcrcrvTOv^ (3lov rvx(^9 dyqat/jLOV^

yaia<s e^afx/SpvaaL

(paiSpbu tjXlov creXay.

This is the whole stanza or strophe. The learner should at
first perhaps confine his attention to the first five lines, since
there is in them ?iothing at all doubtful. They run :

— w — A — ^ — ^ — ^ — A

— w — \j —\J — A

I — I — — \j — \j — \j — \j

— \j — \j — \j — A

— w— wi — I — — w— w— w— A.

There is nothing really doubtful, for it is incredible that the
two contiguous long syllables in the third and fifth lines should
be heavy or irrational trochees (sometimes written - >). The
irrational trochee is not a thing that may occur anywhere ;
the country in which it is to be found is quite definitely
mapped out. It comes in the group - v^ - ^ (ditrochaeus), and
it comes also, for example, at the beginning of a logaoedic
line like

Srjfjios TOL ere KaXei yvvai-}
To assume it here would make the second line one oifive feet,
and the last would be 3 + 4. Se^o/iai may be either - w - a
or - ^ L_ . In the antistrophe we must assume protraction of
a syllable rather than a pause within a word {SevSpOTrrfficou Se
fjL7] TTi^ioL pXdpa).

The remaining five lines are not so completely free from

^ Of course when this is taken as 'Aeolic' ( \j \ w— v-/— )it is

not there (cf. sttpra, p. 136).

1887

146 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

what is dubious. Is the third iambic ? (It is certainly not at
all like a trimeter, for it is divided as no trimeter — outside
conversation in comedy — could be ; so too in the antistrophe.

Tpi<j)OL Xpov(£> I T^Tay [JLevco' \ yovo^ [5' del].)
Or should the lines be written

Oeairio-acTa Trpevfievoos e-
7ri(T(TVTOV9 i^iov Tv\a^ ovrjaipLOvs ?

Or may we leave them as they stand, ivithout thinking of the
second as ' iambic ' ? The last line but one presents a different
problem. It consists of six long syllables. What was it ?
Certainly not three irrational or heavy trochees. It is not quite
so unlikely — but still improbable — that it was - > i— - > l_ .
Without Aeschylus's music all we can do is to suppose that it
was a line of six syncopated feet, l_ i_ ^ ^ l_ i_ .

Having followed the structure of this lyric the learner should
take as an exercise another lyric of the same type, and analyse
it for himself, e.g. Persae 115 f.

ravTOL \ioL ^e\ay\iTcov

(pprjy dfiV(r(T€Tai <p6l3cp,

6d, UepariKov o-TpaTevfiaTOs

TOvSe, fiT) ttoXls TTvdrj-

rai K€vav8pov fxiy' olcttv ^ovctlSo^.

Here he may regard 6d as extra metrum. It may not have
been that, but without Aeschylus's music we do not know how
it was treated. In this example he will find syncopated feet
not contiguous as in the passage of the £!uMemdes, but alter-
nating {fjiT] TToXis ttvOt] — Tai K€vav — 8pov yiky'ddTV ^ovaiSos).
In the next strophe, 126 f. (Tray yap iTrirrjXdTas ktX.), he will
be called upon to discover such alternation more frequently,
and his knowledge of * prosody ' will be tested by rbv dp,(pL'
(evKTov e^afjieLyjra? (= wl_i_ -^ -w -^ or more pro-
bably, at the end, - w i- - a). 131 diK^OTepas dXiov,
a dactylic colon, he will disregard for the present, but he will

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 147

later come to recognize a liking in Aeschylus for a short
dactylic strain just before the close of a trochaic system (e. g.
Agam. 416 f. = 433 f. and 452 f. = 471 f., where the trochaic
rhythm is resumed or reasserted in the clausula). Another
simple strophe of the same type is Aga7n. 160-7, Zevs,
oa-TLs TTOT kcTTLV ktX. (Here also there is a dactylic phrase
before the close, longer than d/x(PoT€pa9 dXiov — TrXr^v A169,
ei TO fjidrau diro (j)poi^Ti8o^ d\6os), and the following system,
176 f. Tov (ppoueTu ^poTov9 dScocrauTa ktX., would furnish
a similar exercise.

(ii) Dactylic (iu icro) Aoyo)).

Systems that are dactylic from beginning to end are not
very com.mon in tragedy. Stesichorus probably wrote purely
dactylic lyrics, but the extant passages are not long enough to
prove this. Aristophanes has several dactylic systems. Some-
times in tragedy the non-dactylic element is very slight. Thus
in the epode in Aes. Pers. 897 f. the clausula alone is trochaic
(907-8):

(8/xauipT€s fieydXcos TrXa-)

yaT(Tl TTOUTLaiCTLU,

while strophae a, P\ and y' alike have two trochaic phrases
each, one as a clausula and one earlier (866 ov8^ d(j> iaTia^
(Tvdeh, 870 0pTjKL(ou eiravXcov).

Dactylic verse differs from anapaestic in several ways. An
anapaest may take dactylic shape (- o w), but a dactyl never
takes anapaestic, it is never o w -. Resolution is extremely
rare, rarer than in lyric anapaests. The ' dimeter ' or tetra-
pody is very frequent^ but not dominant as in anapaests.

A rule of Aristoxenus makes the maximum colon in this
type of rhythm (Terpdo-rj/Mou, \j^ ^^) a group of four feet.
Various shorter KcoXa are possible, besides, and some have
more vogue than others. A few of the prevalent groups may
be enumerated.

L 2

148 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

(a) Dimeter or tetrapody, ending either in — w w or — :

TToWaKi S' kv Kopv<f)aLS opioou, oKa

$€oT<Tiy dSr] 7ro\v(f>aiJLOs ioprd. (Alcman.)

When the last foot is a dactyl the construction is 'hypermetric';

another dactylic line must follow, without hiatus.*

(b) Tripody, complete or catalectic :

a> Albs d8v€7r€9 (pdri,

719 TTore rd? woXvxpvo'ov. (O. T.)

It may also begin with a spondee :

na/xfiLKTcop r' ewiKovpooy. {Fers.)

Catalectic ;

dkvaoL vecpiXat. (Ar. JVu^.)

dj^poTepas dXiov. {Supra, p. 146.)

(c) Dipody or ' monometer ', usually ending in a spondee,
and often making with a tetrapody the lyric counterpart of a
'bucolic ' hexameter, but found also in the form —^^ ~\^\j.

One of the few wholly dactylic systems in tragedy occurs in
the Phoenissae of Euripides (1. 784 f.) :

© TToXvfio^Qos ^^p'HS, ri nod' ai/xaTi
Kot Oavdrat Kareyjei Bpofiiov 7rapd/j,ov(ro9 eopraTs ;
ovK kirl KaXXiyopoL^ (rrecpdpoKTL vedviBos copa9
p6crTpv\ov diiTrerdcras Xootov Kara TTPev/jiaTa fieXirei
5 jiovcrav, kv a \dpLTes xopoiroLot.
O) ^adioou TrerdXcov noXvdrjpoTa- ' dvT.

Tov vdiTos, 'ipTe/iLSos XLOVOTp6<pov ofi/xa, KiOaipoop,
/XT^TTore Tou 6avdT(D irporeOevTa, Xo^ef/x' 'loKdcrra^,
wcpeXe^ OlSiTToSap KOfLiaaL, pp€<po9 eK^oXov oikcov,

^ In Pax 789-90 Mr. White assumes this dactylic ending before

anapaests :

opTvyas olKoyeucts yvMavx^vas — k^ \j — \j \J — kj y^ — \j \j
6pX'i]<TTas vauvocpveis acpvpdSaiv v.^*^ — ^ ^ — .

The effect is at best very rare, and it may be doubted whether the Hnes

are rightly so divided.

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 149

5 )(pvcroSeTOLS wepovaLS €7ri<rafjLou'
117)81 TO irapBivLOv irrepov, ovpetou repas, kXO^lv \ nivOea

yaias
"ScjyLyyos dfjiovcroTdTaia-L (tvv coSah,
a TTore KaSfioyeufj Terpa^dfioorL )(aXaL9
TeLX^a-L \pLinTTOfieva (pip€U aiQepos e/y d/BaTou (f)6o9
10 y^vvav, rdv 6 Kara ^Oovos A'lSas

Ka8fi€ioi9 €7rL7r€fjL7r€L' SvaSatfioDU 8' €pi9 dWa.

The only serious doubts arise in regard to the division of Ka>\a.
The seventh and ninth lines are clearly tetrapodies. Line 4
is likely to be tetrapody + dipody (bucolic division suggested
by the words — but we cannot be quite sure that the division
was there) : line 8 may have the same division. Line 6 may
be supposed to be 3 + 3 + 2. Lines 2 and 3 would perhaps be
best taken as 2^+3-|, divided as hexameters (line 3 contains
an effect that is not permitted in the epic hexameter, st^J>ra
p. 21).

The dactylic lyric in the Clouds is well known (275 f.) :

dkvaoi ve(pe\aL,

dpOcojiev (pauepal 8pocr€pdv (fevcriu evdyrjTou

Trarpoy an' 'flKeauov ^apva^io^

vy\rri\S>v opecov Kopvcpd^ kwl
280 8ev8poK6fiovs ivoL

Trj\€<f)aP€L9 (TKOTTids d(l)opd>/jL€da

KapTTOvs T dp8o/j,iuau 0' Updv ^Oova

KOL TTOTafxcctv ^adicou K^\a8riiiaTa

KOL TTOVTOV Ke\d8ovTa ^apvPpofjLoV
285 oixiia yap alOepo^

aKd/jLarou (reXayeiTai

fiap/jLapeais kv avyal^.

dXS! aTToaeLO'dfjLevai vecjyos o/i^pLou

dOavdra^ I8ias e7rt8oofj,e6a
290 TTjXeaKOTrcp 6fi/A,aTi yaXav.

I50 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

The first line is catalectic, -^w — <^v^ -7^, with a very
natural pause after the vocative. There is of course no reason
against hiatus between this line and the next. The next is no
doubt 4+2. Then follow two tetrapodies of the type first
seen in Alcman, then a similar dipody {SeuSpoKofiov^ lvoC);
then four dimeters or tetrapodies of the same hypermetric
type ; next 2 + 3, probably (in the antistrophe ''eva-Te^avoi re
Be\S)v OvcriaL BaXtaL re). Line 287 was not certainly dactylic.
If we read fxapfiapiai^ kv avyais it is a logaoedic line, but it
is easily made dactylic by reading it fiapfiapiaicrtv kv avyals
(and in the antistrophe TravToSaTraicnv kv copaLs). The
presence of a logaoedic line is not incredible, but it would be
more likely if it were the last of the whole system. Here the
final clausula is a paroemiac or catalectic anapaestic dimeter.

The dactylic verse of lyrics has several marked charac-
teristics as compared with the hexameter. Spondees are rare,
occurring chiefly at the end or at the beginning of a colon.^
Trochaic caesura is avoided : only one melic hexameter in
Aristophanes has it, but in recited hexameters, epic or mock-
heroic, it is frequent.^ Shortening of a long vowel before
another is not excluded (e.g. napOivoL 6/iPpo(f>6poL), but it
is not frequent.

* Bucolic ' division of a group of six feet (4+2) is now and
again suggested by the words :

ea-TL TL t5>v8* krvjicos ; ein, ® irdrep, | €l ti (piXcT^ /^e.

{Pax 118.)
elni fioL, S) \pvaias t^kvov kXmSo^, afjL^poTe (pdfjLa.

(Soph. O. T. 158.)

But that a lyric line of six dactyls was regularly divided in the

1 @r)l3ar eKTeranai (polSepav (ppeva heiimri rraWojv, O. T. In this lyric
verse does resemble epic (xpato^A*«j/, eur' av noWoi, supra, p. 25).

2 Forty lines out of 142 have it, according to Mr. White's statistics
(Verse of Greek Com., § 363).

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 151

ratio 4 : 2 seems to be rather a theory than a thing that can
be seen in actual texts. Sappho's divided hexameter :

L^OL Srj TO fiiXadpou

^Tfirivaov
d€pp€T€, TeKToves dvSpes,

is against it. Division between words perhaps does not count
for much as evidence of division in a lyric, and some forms of
lyric verse even preferred to make a k5)\ov end in the middle
of a word, but the forms in which this certainly happens are
not as a rule purely dactylic. To impose a scheme of 4 + 2
gives results like these :

rivLK &v o^vXdXov iraptSr} OrjyovTos oSovra.

(J?an. 815.)

dpyaXiooi/ t kv ottXol? ^vvoScoy. KXeo (f)6ou8e fid^eaOo).

{lb. 1532.)

In the former passage (where the same strophe is repeated
four times) one of the lines consists of five dactyls, and in all
four strophae the division suggested by the words is penthe-
mimeral :

pri^ara SaLOfi^vrj \ KaTaXeTrroXoyqaei. {828.y

The dactylic system here closes with a trochaic dimeter
catalectic as a clausula. So also at 883 a short trochaic line
closes a system of dactyls. So, too, in Agam. 104-21 the
penultimate line is trochaic {^Xa/Siura XoktOicov SpSficou).
This is prepared for by two brief trochaic movements in 1. 108
and 1. 116; and it prepares the way for trochees in the next
strophe, 160 f. So in Oed. C. 228-35 there is a trochaic (or
iambic) ending.

1 There is an anapaestic pentapody in Ac/i. 285 (= 336) : <T€ fikv ovv
ftaraKevcronev, a; fxiapa fC€<pa\Tj, which has been taken to be a brachycata-
ectic trimeter in logaoedic time. Is it possible that Aristoxenus's
limitation was not absolute or universally valid ?

152 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

(iii) Paeonic or Cretic (eu Xoyco rj fiioXLO)).

A 'paeonic' foot, with the ratio 3:2, may be - w — ('cretic')
or —www (first paeon, which is very common), or w w w -
(which is less frequent, and quite rare in Aristophanes) ; the
possible forms that intervene, w - w w and w w - w, can hardly
be said to exist as real elements in metre.

It is now generally agreed that a five-time rhythm is not a
fiction of theorists, but was actually in use. Some nineteenth-
century metricians explained away paeonics as trochees with
syncopation (- w l_ , 1— w w w , &c., six times, not five). The
discovery of the Delphic hymns helped to establish the
reality of cretics. Von Wilamowitz holds that the paeon is
derived from trochaic verse, the second long in a trochaic
dipody having been lightened to answer to a light footfall in
the dance (- w w ^ taking the place of - w - w). But
'derivation' of metres, in which the Greeks expatiated, is
a region in which there are very few definite landmarks to
guide the traveller.

The simplest extant specimen of purely paeonic verse is in
Aes. Suppl. 418 f.:

(PpouTKTOu Kal yeuov

irpo^euos' rav (pvydSa firj wpoS^s
Tocu eKaO^y eKpoXoLs
Svadioi^ opjievav.

The next strophe begins with a line of three cretics :

but the rest of it consists of dochmii.

It will be observed that the structure is ' hypermetric ' ;
there is no hiatus or syllaba aficeps. The number of feet
is uneven ; either one stood alone, or there is a group of
three. The latter alternative is the more probable, as the
beginning of the next strophe helps to show. Authorities later

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 153

than Aristoxenus make a group of three the longest per-
missible. Aristoxenus laid down the strange rule that as
many as five (answering to the number of times in the foot)
could form one k5)\ov (twenty-five times). It is difficult to
believe this, if dactylic /ccoXa were limited to sixteen times.

Cretics appear with some frequency in the earlier plays of
Aristophanes, and they are common also in Roman comedy.
The 'I^vevTai of Sophocles furnishes several good examples
of a cretic lyric in a satyric play. They are frequently asso-
ciated with trochaics, and sometimes it is not quite certain
that we have real cretics. It is not true that all cretics were
syncopated trochees, but some apparent cretics may be. The
doubt arises in regard to the cretics in the Sicr/jLio^ v^vos
of the Furies in Aes. Eum. 328 :

eTTi Oe TO) T6UVfJi€P(p

ToSe fJLeXo9, TTapaKOTrd,

(www -, the ' fourth paeon', or w w w l__ ^ a trochaic dipody).
The greatest poem that has come dow^n to us, in cretic verse,
is the second Olympian ode of Pindar.^ There are many
difficulties about its metrical construction. They are diffi-
culties of detail which cannot be discussed here. In the
following text of the first strophe and epode cretics are marked
where they are clear and certain. In two lines bacchii or

* antibacchii ' should perhaps be recognized ( ^ or w — ),

a form of 'paeonic' foot which is rare in the extant Greek
drama, but frequent in Plautus.

(TTp. a .

— w — — w —

ava^L(f)6piiLyyes vfiuoi,

w — — v_/ WW — w wwl— w —

— v^ — — w WW I — w wwl— w —

TLua Beov, TLV ijpcoa, rtva 8' duSpa KeXaorjo-ojiev ;

1 Another remarkable poem, partly in cretics, but not cretic through-
out, is the story of Theseus and Minos in Bacchylides (xvi). The student
of cretic verse should read also the two Delphic hymns — of the third
century B.C. — in very regular cretics (text in Musici Scriptores Graeci,
Teubner, p. 435 f.).

154 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

iJTOL Uia-a fieu Alos' 'OXvfnndSa 8* ea-raa-eu ^HpaKke-qs

— w — w w w —
CLKpoBlVa TToXi/jLOV

— w w w j — w — I www — !— w —

5 S-qpoova Se TerpdopLa^ eueKa VLKa(f>opov

\_l _— U/v^ w— w — — w— ^

yeycovqreov ottlv SiKatov ^iucoi/

w — — j w — —

epeio-fx 'AKpdyavTos

eifcouvficov re Trarepodv dcorou opOoTToXiv.

The division of the third line is very doubtful. Between the
first and second lines it will be observed that the syllables -ol
TLva Oe- do make a paeonic foot. The last line is not certainly
cretic throughout. Cretics or bacchii can be found in the
first half of it, but it is quite likely that there was a non-cretic
clausula, as there plainly is in the epode :

{ev<j)p^v dpovpav 'in iraTptav (T(j)icnv k6/il(tou)

€770)869

— v^— [— w — I — w —

XoLTT^ yivei. toou 5e Trerrpayfjiiycoi/

— www— w — — w — ?

€V Slko, t€ kol irapd 8LKav diroir^TOv ov8' dv

www— www— I— w —

\p6vos 6 TrdvTCdv Trarrip 8vuaLT0 Oifieu epycou riXos'
XdOa 8e TTOT/xo) crvu €v8aLfioyL yevoLT dv

— www!— w— j — w —
5 ka-Xcov yap vtto ^apfjidroou Trrjfia dudcTKec
TTaXtyKOTov 8a/ia(r6iu.

The clausula is clearly trochaic or iambic, and in lines 2
and 3 it is not unlikely that this was foreshadowed by some

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 155

trochaic movement, perhaps^ei' SUa re kol \ wapa SiKav olttol-,
— v-/ — w -A v^v^v^|-«w^|i — Line -? can be construed as
paeonic only if we are prepared to bring in a ' second paeon '

and bacchii, [thus www— |— w— ]w — ww| w |w — 7^.

Tiov iraTrjp Bvvai- would be a trochaic phrase like those
which can be found in the preceding line. The catalexis
seen in the fourth line is found also in Alcman :

A(f)po8iTa fieu ovk eaTL fidpyo^ 8' epco? oia ttols TraLcSec.
It is found in Plautus, but is rare in Aristophanes' Comedies
It is the cadence which coincides with the end of a scazon
{supra, p. 98), and with the familiar ' esse videatur ' of Roman
oratory.^

In addition to the three great types of verse which we have
now illustrated there are two other kinds of metre which can
be called ixovo^lStj, dochmiac and Ionic, in which the same
foot (though with considerable variations in both cases) is
used throughout. Regular Ionics are clearly kv SiTrXaa-LO)

\6ya> : w w is a dupHcated trochee, 4:2 for 2 : i, and

whatever broken or anaclastic Ionics really were, it is not
likely that their rhythm constituted a different yeuos or €l8o9.
It is not clear that dochmii did not. They are described as
an oKTacTj/jLos pvOfios, and there is the authority of Quintilian
and of the Scholiast on Heph., c. 10. 3, for regarding the foot

^ Terentianus speaks of the cretic as a highly effective foot both for
verse and for oratory :

optimus pes et melodis et pedestri gloriae.
plurimum orantes decebit, quando paene in ultimo
obtinet sedem, beatam terminet si clausulam
Mktv\os, cnovbfios imam, nee rpox^-iov respuo
(i.e. it should be penultimate, followed by dactyl, spondee, or trochee.
With spondee or trochee it is — w — | — k: . When a dactyl follows
the ending is really in a double cretic, — w— | — wJsi, the last syllable
being anceps. These are the first and second of Zielinski's preferred or
favourite cadences).

156 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

as divided in the ratio 5 : 3 or 3 : 5 {rpia^ TT/aoy irevTaSa).
Dochmii are easy in one way and difficult in another. What
they really were and how they were arrived at is a very
obscure question. The forms they assume, in syllables, are
quite definite, and it is generally easy to recognize and scan
and read them. To do this is important for the study of
tragedy. It is to tragedy that they belong (though they are
of course found in comedy also, where many tragic effects
are parodied), and they seem to have been devised to express
the intense feelings of distress or suspense or despair which
accompany the crisis of a tragic action. (It is a rhythm
iTTLTjjSeLO^ TTpbs Oprjvovs Kal (TTevayfjiovs, Schol. on Aes.
S. c. Th. 98.)

The normal form of a dochmius is '^ w — . Each of

the long syllables may be resolved, and both the short
syllables may be irrational — actually long, if counting as
short ( > ). An irrational first syllable, with resolution of the
second, would give > w v^ - v^ - , but whether this form was
arrived at in that way is uncertain. Of the many theories
which have been advanced about the origin of the dochmius,
one, the most recent, Mr. White's, is perhaps the most
promising, or the least unpromising. He suggests that it is
derived from an iambic tripody, — - w - w -, by total sup-
pression of the third syllable.^ The short syllable, he thinks,
was not represented by a pause or by protraction of an
adjacent syllable (which would leave the rhythm still kvv^d-
crrjfjLO^), but dropped entirely so that the total time is eight
\p6voL and the foot is 'oblique' or 'askew ', 86)(fjiL09i twisted
or distorted to express mental anxiety or agony.^ The usual

^ Compare Aes. Suppl. 911 :

where three iambi precede a dochmius : w— v-/— v..^— | \y w— .

2 WilamowitZ; in his most recent book {Sappho und S., p. 183), throws
out a suggestion which would undermine all such attempts to show that

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 157

line consists of two dochmii, and a line of the same form
occurs occasionally outside tragedy, e.g. Pindar, 01. i:

but this may be an accidental coincidence in syllables. The
rhythm of Pindar's line may have been quite different. Dochmii
are abundant in the S. c. Th., where they express the alarm
and anxiety of the chorus for the fate of their city, besieged
by the Argive host ; or their agonized appeals to Eteocles
(686 f.) to refrain from combat with his brother. Except for
a few iambi and cretics' the whole of the first utterance of the
chorus is dochmiac (78-180), and the opening of it will serve
as an example of the metre :

Opiofxai (polSepa /leydX' ciyr}'
fiedeLTac crrpaTO^' crTpaTOTreSov Xlttoov
p€L TToXvs 68e Aeo)? TrpoSpofxos iTnrora^'
aidepLa kovls /jl€ ireideL (pai/eTa-'
5 duavSos cra(f)r}s erv/xos dyyeXos. —
eri 8k yds kfids ireSC ottXoktvtt' (o-
TL \pLjX7rT^L Podv TTOTaTaL, (Spk/iei 8*
dijLa^krov 8iKau v8aTos opoTVirov.

the foot was in itself * askew'. He thinks that it is a verse that comes in
cross-wise, that runs aslant or athwart the structure of the lyric. It
does this, he thinks, in the SkoUon of Simonides, which he is discussing.

It is perhaps unnecessary to find the emotional effect of dochmii in the
nature of the foot itself. —\j<j —\j— is a short and elementary phrase
entering into many forms of lyric verse : it is introduced by a ' basis ' in
the Glyconic ( — w ! — w *^ — ^ — ) a"d combined with a different group
of syllables in the Alcaic (Js^— ^ — — i —^^ — w— ). The repetition
of the short phrase without such introduction or elaboration gave the
effect of despair, agitation, or excited suspense at the crisis of a tragedy.

^ There are also a few bacchii (104 ri pi^eis ; TrpoScuaets, -naXaixOaiv

'' A.prjs, TCLv TiCLv ;), a passage which might be quoted for the view that

dochmii are really bacchii with catalexis (but there are serious objections

to that theory) ; and a trochaic or iambic clausula, occurring more than

once, akin to lines discussed above {apT]^ov | baiwv dXojaiv).

158 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

The only doubtful line here is the first. It seems to begin
with a detached anapaest (dpeo/iai, ^^-); granted that,
the rest is dochmiac, with resolution of the first two longs

{y \y^ WW W-). The rest of the passage is as follows :

w — — w — W WW — w —

> WW WW W — W WW — w —

> WW — w— jw— — w —
c w — — w — i W WW — w —

\^ W*-/ — W — W WW — w —

v^_ — v^ — jv^ — — v^ —
W WW — W — ;W WW WW W — .

In some passages of this play the form - ww - w - is very
frequent (219-21, 226-8, 692-3, 698-700, 705-7)-

lom'c verse is in some of its forms very simple and regular,
in others it presents very difficult problems. In its regular

shape it is either ' a maiori ' (' faUing ' — ww ww) or

'a minori' ('rising' w w w w ). In its 'broken' shape

{'looviKol di/aK\(ofji€i/OL or KeKXaa-jxevoL) it is most frequently
ww-w -^-^ (Anacreontic). The r^Bos of the measure
was one of excitement and turbulence, frenzy or ecstasis, of
licence and effeminacy.

euoe, recenti mens trepidat metu
plenoque Bacchi pectore turbidum
laetatur. euoe, parce. Liber,
parce gravi metuende thyrso.^

It was dveifiivoy, ' mollissimum rhythmorum genus ', asso-

' Ionic verse would be an appropriate vehicle for this : not so appro-
priate for the tranquil close of Horace's ode :

et recedentis trilingui
ore pedes tetigitque crura.
Horace is giving us here something like a dithyramb on a small scale, in
a different metrical medium. Closing in tranquillity the ode successfully
depicts what Aristotle would call the KaQapais of Ivdovaiaoixos by means
of an bpyiadTiKov /xf\os.

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 159

ciated with the 'mollities' or d^pocrvur} of Ionia and with the
orgiastic worship of Dionysus and of Cybele. It could express
the abandonment of grief or despair (KeKXaa/xiuo^ Trpo? to
OpTjuijTLKOu). Its intrusion in the realm of metre may be
compared with the advent of Dionysus at Thebes, and it
sometimes provoked an attitude of protest or resistance like
that of Pentheus. Plato would have banished it from his
Ideal State, and perhaps had it in mind when he spoke of
v^pecos rj fiauias npiTrova-ai Pda-eis. The condemnation
would apply most obviously to certain forms of dvaKX(o/jLeuoi,
such as Galliambics.

Regular Ionics are quoted from Sappho and Alcaeus :
' a maiori ', evfiopcporepa MuacnSLKa ray dnaXd^ TvpLvva>s

( v^w WW ^u\J — w . This is not quite regular

throughout, -^ — taking the place of the last Ionic) ;
'a minori ', e/xe 8d\av, kjie iraddv KaKOTaToov 7re8i\0L<Tav
(Alcaeus, v-/w — ww — ww — ww — , the original of
Horace's ' miserarum est neque amori dare ludum neque
dulci ', &c.).

In its regular form Ionic verse is not necessarily dueifieuou
or /jLaui6o8€9. It is capable of a certain stateliness and dignity
not unlike that of anapaests. In the eiaroSos of the Persae
it immediately follows anapaests, and the last anapaestic lines
have a certain resemblance to it :

T0Ke€9 T d\o\OL 0' r]fj.€poX€ySby (ww-jww ww )

TelvovTa ^povov TpofiiouTai (ending in w w ).

In the first strophe and antistrophe of the Ionics the only
variation is occasional syncope (wwi— i), by which the foot
in syllables resembles an anapaest :

TrenepaKeu fieu 6 TrepcreTrroAiy rjSr]
padtXeLOs (TTpaTos e/y dv-

TLTTopov y^LTOva \(x)pav,
XiuoSia-fxa) cr^eSta nop-

\^V^ WW WW

^V^ Vw'W

WW WW

i6o GREEK LYRIC VERSE

V^ W 1 1 \^ \J

WO' — I WW

WW I I WW WW

AOafiavTlSos "EWaSf

TToXvyoficfyov oSicrfia

(vyov dn(j)LJ3a\oov avy^kvi ttovtov

According to a tradition preserved in a scholium on the
Prometheus (1. 130) Anacreon came to Athens in the time of
the Pisistratidae, and thus Aeschylus became acquainted with
the secrets of Ionic verse. Certainly he makes very eifective
use of it, lifting it far above the level of the Anacreontic \
drinking-song {0e/o' v^cap, (pep' oTvov, w iroLf w w ^ w | - w -^ -).
At the close of the Suppliants (1018 f.) it expresses gratitude
and exultation. In the Persae (65 f.) the Persian host is
glorified in regular Ionics — unbrokenly regular in the first two
strophes, a and a'; in those that follow suffering dvaKkacn^
at the close, until in strophe e, with a more despondent tone,
the metre changes into trochaics outright -} Tavrd ftot fieXay-
\iT(ov I <j)priv dfjLvarcreTaL ^o^co ktX. In the Prometheus
(399 f.) Ionics are the vehicle of grief and commiseration for
the sufferings of the Titan. In the Agamemnon Ionics are
twice used very effectively to present the disastrous results
of the beauty of Helen (709 f.) :

lxeTap.av6d\vov(Ta 8' v[jlvov \ Upidfiov 7t6\Xls yepaia ktX.,

and 744 f . :

TTapaKXivacr' | erreKpaueu \ 8e yd/jLov TTLKpas TeXevrds ktX.,

while in the antistrophe to the latter passage (757 f.) they
introduce the poet's protest against old and immoral beliefs :

(5r)(a S' dXX(x)v \ /xoi^ocppcoy el /xr rb Svo-a€\l3€^ yap epyov,

^ In strophes ^ and f' there is a further change. Syncopation is
frequent : afir/vos us — l/fAcAot — irev ficXicr — adu ovv bpxaixw orpaTOv.
The misgivings of the chorus increase, and the flow of the verse is
arrested. Ionic verse appears also in the invocation of the ghost of
Darius (633-4, 647-50^ and it expresses the awe and trepidation of the
elders when the ghost appears 694 aefiofxai jxlv irpoaideaOai ktX.. with
an anapaestic clausula).

GREEK LYRIC VERSE i6t

Apart from the Bacchae, where it is naturally predominant, the
extant plays of Sophocles and Euripides show no such exten-
sive and subtle use of the measure. (There is also an Ionic
lyric in the Snpplices of the latter, 1. 42 f , where the theme is
urgent and despairing entreaty.)

In recent years Tonic verse has been recognized in English.
Prof. Gilbert Murray finds the rhythm of dvaK\oi)iievoL in
Mr. Kipling's ballad of Matidalay :

And the sunshine | and the palm-trees | and the tinkly | temple

bells
On the road to | Mandalay.

It is sporadic in other poets, written by them unconsciously,
it would seem, without knowledge of the Greek verse and
without any thought of Anacreon :

In the midnight, | in the silence | of the sle'ep-time

(Browning.)

(but here it is only in this first line, with its short syllables —
'in the', ^ in the', 'of the', — that the effect is obvious). It is
more continuous in Campbell's Battle of the Baltic

When the sign of i battle flew on the 16fty British line.

Another form of Ionic can be felt in Lamb's lines :

All all are ! gone the | old familiar faces..

KT] S' dix^poatas jxeu Kparrjp e/ce/cparo,
^Epfxd9 S' eXeu oXttlv Beols olvoyorj(TaL.

Prof. Gilbert Murray has rendered the Ionic measures of the
Bacchae in English Ionics. Much of Longfellow's Hiawatha
reads itself readily as Anacreontic.

If we contemplate the effect in English, it is fairly clear
what it is and how it comes about. It comes through stressing
heavily the second trochee in a ditrochaeus or trochaic dipody:
' on the lofty | British line '. If the third syllable is much
stronger than the first the foot can be described as w v-^ - v^,

1887 M

1 62 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

which is an anapaest plus a short syllable, a thing which
readily becomes catalectic, for an anapaest in English is
familiar and frequent. Was it arrived at in the same way
in Greek ? Possibly ; at all events the forms of it can be
deduced from such a weighted or ill-balanced ditrochaeus.
Ionics were in use long before Anacreon, but if we compare

TTcoXe ©prjKirj, tl Si] /xe Xo^bu 6/jLjia(rL{u) ^XiiTova-a
with

TToXiol fiey r]/j,LU TJSrj KporacpoL Kaprj re XevKou,

we may conjecture that one was derived from the other, when
some poet by the help of Tvxrj or Ti\U7] happened to try the
experiment of givin- the second trochee a strengthened ic^us.
The trochaic form of the line re-emerges in some of the later
Anacreontea, 36. 16 ray Se (j>pouTiSa9 [leOcaiiev, 57. i rov
KeXaii/oxp'jjTa ^oTpw. If the third syllable is very strong
in a group of four, the reduction of the first to a short is only
a way of making the same effect a little more obvious. Thus
from the ditrochaeus ~ \^ — "^ we should get both ^^ — ^ and
WW — , But if w v^ l^ w has given the reader the clue, he
will have no difficulty in reading the next ditiochaeus in an
Ionic fashion. The first syllable of that need not be
reduced. Hence the Anacreontic combination of two Ionic
feet ww-w I -^^-. The metre which expresses a loose,
unhinged, excited state of mind is obtained by disturbing the
balance of a trochaic dipody.

Whether this is what actually happened or not, the possibiHty
of such an origin for Anacreontics is of some importance. It
is a trochaic dipody that has to be disturbed. No similar
manipulation, as far as I can see, will elicit any Ionic form
from an iambic dipody, w - ^ -. If trochees and iambi were
equally real, an iambic dipody ought to give birth somehow to
an lonicus a maiori. The inference would seem to be that, for
lyric verse, iambic scansion is illusory. Ancient metricians —

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 163

in later times at all events — construed much lyric verse
iambically. But the reading of it that really works — like
Copernican as compared with Ptolemaic astronomy — is trochaic
(involving the assumption of anacrusis in many metres).

The ditrochaeus is an element in many forms of verse, and
if we set down two 'Anacreontei' other syllabic coincidences
are discoverable ; we can pick out a ' logaoedic ' group of
syllables, an ' Ithyphallic ' and others :

itr. log.

KJ '<y — KJ — Vw* W«^ — Ky — V^

diiambus Ith.

Conversely, some portion of another verse could be taken for
Ionic, and the poet might be tempted to construct more of it
in such a fashion that Ionic scansion was possible.' Owing to
the great variety and flexibility of Greek lyric verse, Ionic effects
were a thing which the poet could toy with at every turn.
Sometimes only the poet's actual hearers would know, from
the music, whether the effect was intended or not. Though
there has been much discussion of Ionic verse in recent years,
Ionic lines still sometimes escape detection and are classed as
logaoedic or iambic^ e.g.:

ra apLcrv oaai^ Trpocri^Kei,
or

TTpoa-i^ova 'irv^ov efiavrrj^.

1 Further coincidences besides those here given would appear, if we

included resolved forms of Ionic feet, such as ww — v^*^ for ^ ^ .

The two Anacreontei contemplated here make up, with catalexis in the
second, the metre of the Attis of Catullus (which he got from Callimachus
or some other Alexandrian). The theory of ditrochaic origin, which we
have provisionally advanced, could be illustrated by reading some of
Catullus's lines as accentual Latin verse, when a trochaic tetrameter
emerges, like that of the Peyvigiliuni Veneris, except that that is still
quantitative and that here resolution of the penultimate foot is the rule :

adiitque opaca silvis | redimita Idea deae.

M 2

t64 greek lyric VERSE

Both of these are clearly Ionic, the first an ' Anacreonteus', the

second regular Ionics with resolution (v^/w — v^v^ | wv^ ).

They can be construed as species of Mogaoedic ', no doubt.
In what would the difference consist ? In the first, taken as
Anacreontic, there would be a marked ictus on two syllables :

ra apidv ocrat? TTpoa-rjKei,

the intermediate long syllable would be ecfipsed by the other
two. If the verse is logaoedic this inequality disappears, or at
all events is much less ; and there is a possibility of syncopa-
tion, 7rpo<Tr]K€L (or on the Seikelos principle TrpoorrjKei), making
(probably) the total time of the verse rather longer. In the
other verse logaoedic structure presumably would mean icf?^s
on a different syllable of erv^oy — eTv^ou, not eTvxo^-

How subtle and compHcated such effects might be we
have no means of determining with certainty. We have seen
Aeschylus in the Persae prepare the way for trochaics by
anaclasis at the end of Ionic strophae. In the lyric of the
Agameinno7i, where ixeTaixavBdvova-a 8' vfivov occurs, the
beginning is purely trochaic {Ag. 68 1 f . = 699 f.), but before we
come to that line the tendency to Ionics has shown itself :

{Trpacr)(Toiieva to PV/KpOTifiou

In ih.^ Prometheus^ 399 f-j Ionics (mostly broken or Anacreontic)
are followed by trochaics in strophe ^\ arranged so that they
resemble 'Anacreontei' m length and movement:

KoX)(lSo9 T€ yd^ 'ivoLKOL
TvapOevoL ixd\as drpecrTOL
Kal ^KvBrjs ojiiXos, ot yds . . .
(the rest is logaoedic). This lyric system, and the lyrics at
1. 128, begins in a way which it is very difficult to explain. There
seems to be an anacrusis before Anacreontics : ^

crT€\vco (Te rds ov Xofxiuas Tv'was, IIpo/iTjdev,
* Cf. also Pers. 652, 5. c. Th. 720, Agavn. 686 (and perhaps also 459).

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 165

and in 128

fxrjSep (j)oPr]6fjS' \ (piXia yap \ d8e rd^LS

TTTepvycou Oo'iaT^ afilWaL'S.
Do both begin with an La/j.(3iKbu Tr^pOrjfiLjiepl^ hke * odi
profanum ' in Alcaics? There is a similar beginning at 133,
within the strophe :

KTVTTOV yap a^o) | ^dXvjBos Sl fj^eu dvrpoov \

liv\6v, eK 8' enXij^i [lov ,

Tav OeiiepcdTTLv alSco'

(Tv6r}v S' aTriSiXos 6^(d TTTepcoTw.
It will be seen that the indubitable 'Anacreontei' do not lead
to any satisfactory quadrisyllable scansion of what follows :
TrXrj^e jxov rdv \ QenepSiinv alSoo <tv or al8(o (rvdrju is not
an arrangement that has any merits. The analogy of 418-19
points to the last two lines being logaoedic. . The last is the
Alcaic decasyllabic, with a short syllable prefixed, a clear case
of ' anacrusis '.

III. Pindar and the Dramatic Poets

The ' individualistic ' or personal lyric of Sappho and
Alcaeus as a rule took the shape of a fixed stanza of no
great length, repeated, as often as the poet chose, without
variation of its structure and indeed with no variation at all
except that one or two inconspicuous syllables might be either
short or long. The Alcaic and Sapphic stanzas have no place
in the drama, or in the processions and choric celebrations for
which Pindar composed a paean or an ode of victory. With
a chorus and a chorodidascalos, who in early times was the
poet himself, much more complex effects could be achieved.
Poet and musician were one ; the ' structure brave, the
manifold music' ^ was 'built' afresh for each occasion. The

1 Browning, Abi Vogler, which the late Sir R. Jebb translated into
Pindaric verse :

iWd fxiixvoi TToiKiXvipCiivov 'iZos

dwfi.^ 6 T€vx<^ SatdaXucy . . .

i66 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

predecessors of Pindar and the dramatists in such composition
were not Sappho and Alcaeus, but Alcman and Stesichorus.
The Lesbian poets were not without their influence ; we have
seen, for example, the Alcaic decasyllabic (rav SvaaXoaTOV
eXt] Tis dp)(dp) still appearing as a clausula (especially in
Aeschylus). But the prevailing structure is the threefold or
triadic one (strophe, antistrophe, epode) which tradition
attributed to the choric poet of Sicily.

Aeschylus, so far as extant plays enable us to judge, stands
somewhat apart, in his //eXo7ro/ta, from the other two tragic
poets. Stimulated by Anacreon perhaps, if we may believe
tradition, he makes a highly effective use of Ionics and
'IcouLKol dvaKXcojjL€i^ot. Further, he has a liking for varying
syncopation in a simple metre, getting the effect of tragic
gravity or pathos by prolonged syllables :

TToXXd jxev yd TpicfeeL Seipd Sei/xdrcoi/ d\ri

— w — A (or 1— ) — w — A (or L_) — \^ — w — Kj — A

— w — A (or 1— ) — v_/ — A
TrovTLai r dyKoXai . . .

aXX' virkp — toX[jlov dv — 8po^ (ppourjfia tls Xiyoi ktX.

— wi . — w I — .!— w — v-/ — w — A.

Thirdly, he seems to use more often than Sophocles does the
type of fiirpov eTTLcrvvdeTou that has sometimes been called
'dactylo-epitrite'. After Aeschylus measures of the 'logaoedic'
type, more or less akin to Glyconics, tend to prevail, and
they are indeed frequent in Aeschylus himself. All three
poets make an effective use of dochmii at the crisis of a tragic
action {supra, p. 157).

In Euripides, along with some innovations such as the solo
or fiovdoSia with its complex music, there are signs of a rever-
sion to the Aeschylean manner. Euripides can make a highly
effective use of Ionics when his subject calls for them, as it
does in the Bacchae. Again, some of his most famous odes

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 167

(e.g, 'EpexOeiSai to iraXaiov oX/Slol ktX., Aled. 824) are in
' dactylo-epitrite ' verse, and the dactylic canticum of the
Phoenissae [siipra^ p. 148) is perhaps definitely Stesichorean,
The heroic lays of Stesichoriis perhaps exercised a greater
influence upon Aeschylus and Euripides than upon Sophocles.
There are indications of it in things other than metre. It
was probably from Stesichorus that Aeschylus got his guilty
Clytaemnestra and Euripides his innocent Helen} The Ajaoc^
an early play of Sophocles, has Aeschylean traits, and con-
spicuously a lyric in ' dactylo-epitrite ' verse :

i] pa (xe TavpoTToXa Alo^ 'ApTefiis,
on fieydXa (paTLS, co
fidrep al<T\vvas kfids ...

and a somewhat similar Aeschylean vein in the Rhesus helps
to the conclusion that the play was really an early work of
Euripides.^

Apart from jiirpa /jlouo^lStj, dochmiacs and Ionics, there
are two main types of lyric metre in the (TTaa-L/ia of tragedy —
the €L(To8o9 in the early drama being in regular anapaests —
namely, ' dactylo-epitrite ' and ' logaoedic '.

It is convenient to speak of them in the first instance as
' dactylo-epitrite ' and * logaoedic ', words for them which have
had considerable currency. But it is by no means clear what
would be the best or most exact terms.

The elements of which the former consists are normally
WW and — w — ^ . A dactylic group comes to

— v-/ v_/

^ See Robert, Bild tind Lied. For Clytaemnestra's dream of the snake
that draws blood from her breast, Sophocles substitutes a quite different
dream, derived from his friend Herodotus. Stesichorus's naKivajdia sent
Helen to Egypt and only her eiOcoXop to Troy, or at all events gave rise
to that version of the story.

2 ' Dactylo-epitrite ', verse 225-41, 527 f. Ionics {dvaK\u>nfvoi),
363-4— a touch of Ionic rhythm, as in Aeschylus, where the subject
suits it.

i68 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

a close in a spondee, and the trochaic phrase is the shortest
possible, a dipody with the last syllable usually long. Either
group may be preceded by a syllable (anacrusis) usually long
(or, resolved, w v^), but sometimes short.

Various names have been in use for this type of metre :
* Dorian ' (partly from a hint given by Pindar himself : AcopL(p
(pcoi/au kvapfJLO^aL Tre^/Xo), 01. iii. 6); ' dactylo-epitrite' (from
ewLTpLTOs, the Greek adjective for . the ratio 4 to 3, the
trochaic element being in syllables ^ www ' wwww, 3 + 4);
' dactylo-trochaic ' (which is too wide in meaning) ; and most
recently ' prosodiac-enoplic '. Various notations or modes of
analysis have also been in use for it.

(a) When a syllable precedes the groups -ww-ww — and

- w they can be described as anapaestic and iambic

respectively. This was a method adopted by ancient metri-
cians. For the trochaic group it presents little difficulty.
Anapaestic scansion becomes questionable when the first
syllable is short, as in aVo) noTa/ioop iepcov ; and in a famous
opening of Pindar's, reproduced by Aristophanes in E^/. 1264,
TL kccXXlov dp)(oiiivoL(TLv rj KaTaTravo/xivoicriv. lambo-
anapaestic scansion becomes highly questionable when the
second group is no^ catalectic, for the whole then becomes
hypercatalectic , a term which has no clear or satisfactory
meaning ( — ^~J — ww- ww-|— ). See infra^ Excursus,
p. 177.

(b) The syllable that precedes is regarded as an anacrusis,
a method belonging to modern music which has many
advantages.

^ Or, ' for mere prosody '. That the second syllable in the apparent
spondee is not a real long is shown by the fact that it is not resolved.
The first syllable is a fjatcpa hio-qp.os.

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 169

parts, a choriambus and an ' lonicus a minori ' (- w v>^ - |

v^ w ), each of six times, i^da-rj/xa, and each therefore

equal to a ditrochaeus (which the epitritus is assumed to be).
It has the advantage of avoiding the assumption of a group
oi three feet, which is difficult for anything that may accompany
a march or procession — a march-rhythm is naturally in
multiples of two, dipodies and dimeters (as in anapaests) ;
but the poems actually written in this type of metre seldom
belong to a procession {TrpocroSo^) and seldom are ' enoplic '
in the sense of accompanying a march or war-dance. It is
not clear that the choriambo-ionic division is more than
a special musical setting or musical arrangement adopted
sometimes and for some purposes and not certainly very
ancient.

. For the ordinary reader (b) is by far the most convenient
method, for (besides anacrusis) he has to recognize only tivo

recurring elements, — ww — ww and — w . The

reader of Pindar would do well to begin with the fourth
Pythian ode :

— w— — j — \y ^ — wv^ — ^

a-d/iepou jikv XPl ^^ Trap' duSpl (piXco

— \u — — — \J ^ — Kj y^ — —

(TTa/jLev evLTTTTOV ^a(nXrji Kvpdva'S

— v^— — — w w — v^v^— ^

o^pa Kcofid^ouTL (Tvv jipKea-iXa.

Clearly, if we adopt simple symbols for the two elements, the
metrical structure of this can be exhibited with great brevity :
for example, e and E (the initial of ewLrpLTo? and the initial
of kvonXios — kvorrXiO^ was an ancient name for the dactylic
group, whether it was always thought of as dactylic or not).
6 — might stand for the catalectic form of the group, + e for
the group with anacrusis. On this notation the preceding
lines are € E— € E € E— .

lyo GREEK LYRIC VERSE

MoTaa Aaroi Saiaiv 6(peiX6fxeyov Tlv Ocovl t av^rjs

ovpov VflVCOV.

That is e E € e.

ev6a wore \pv(Te(ov Aios alrjrSyv TrdpeSpo^

ovK ccTroSd/xov AttoXXcouos tv\6vto^ Ipia

Xprjcrei^ olKKrrrjpa Bdrrov Kapno(f)6pov Ai^vas, Upav

vdcrov 0)9 rj8r] Xlttchv KTL(rcr€iei' eudp/xaTOV

ttoXlv €U dpyivoevTL fiacTTcp.

— V^V^ — WW — WW i— w — —

— WW — WW |~*~^ — w— w —

— W i""*^ 1— WW — WW — WW — ^

www — w .

In these lines there are variations which would render our
brief notation more complicated. There are two groups of
foi/r dactyls (E* ?), in the fourth line of the ode and the sixth,
the second of them catalectic {E^—?)? In line 7 there is
syncopation of a foot or protraction of a syllable in -aeiej^
ev-dpiiarov (whether the syllable ev should be thought of
as exactly TpiarjfjLos is a difficult question which hardly con-
cerns the ordinary reader ; on any method of scansion it must
be prolonged, it is jiaKpds JjL€l(ciou). In the last line there
is resolution of a trochee {ttoXlv ev, w w w). The devices
or variations presented by this strophe provide the reader with
the means of scanning about half of the odes of Pindar. Of the
recently recovered poems the paean written for an Athenian

^ On the dactylic theory, a group of four dactyls raises no difficulty,
except this slight question of brief notation. The ' prosodiac-enoplic '
or quadrisyllabic scansion has more trouble with it. According to Blass
(Introduction to Bacchylides. p. xxxiv) there are two groups, one cata-
lectic, which together ' tetrapodiae speciem falsam praebent ' {evOa -norl

Xpvcreoju^ — WW — ww — 7\, Atos alrjTWu vapdhpos, ww — w — ^\

Bacch. ix, strophe \. 6, dvOiOi ^avdav avabt]aai.i(vos K((pa\av is — w

— WW — , WW - , w w ' . This is not plausible.

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 171

Oecopiato Delos (St/pJ>/. Lyr, v) is a simple example of 'enoplo-
trochaic' metre (if we may add one more to the many attempts
to find a name for this mode of composition). Each strophe
began with the words lr\U AaXi 'AttoWov (a 'prosodiacus ';
or we may say that the first kS)\ov — here it is the first kcoXov
alone — has an anacrusis) :

irj'ie AdXi 'AttoWov

— WW— WW— —

Kol (TTTOpaSas (Pepe/irjXovs

— W— — '— WW — WW — —

eKTiaau vdcrovs epiKvSia t 'ia^ov

— w w — w w— —

AdXov, enei (t(J)lv AttoXXcou *

— WW — WW— ^ (or —WW - ?)

ScoK€u 6 y^pvcroK6[JLas

— W W— WW — —

A(TT€pia9 SifJLaS 0LK€?P'

Lrji'e AdXi AiroXXoV
Aaroos 'ivda //e TroiSes

— W — — ~ ^ ^■— WW— —

evfxeyei Si^acrde v6(£> OepdirovTa
vfjiirepoy K^XaSevvd

(jvv fxeXtydpyi irai-

duos dyaKXios ofMCpd.

In the second strophe it appears that the third line is separated
from the fourth {fi^pdirovToi, an ending in a syllaba anceps
and hiatus). In the first strophe this is not revealed. Con-
versely, the second strophe reveals also continuity between the
penultimate line and the last.

KJ \y — W —

— W V^ .

Looking at the other specimens of Anacreon's composition in
this form of verse v*'e observe (a) the structure is ' hyper-
metric ', the last syllable always long and followed by no
hiatus^ (cf. a-vfJLPovXo^^ rov kjxov S' epcoT, co Aevuva-e.
Se)(€cr6ai and k\a(p7](B6Xl \ ^av6rj, lengthening before the
double consonant ^): (b) Anacreon has a strong preference for

beginning with , the 'spondaic basis', which Horace made

invariable in metres of this type : ^ (c) the last line is. catalectic

or shorter by a syllable, in its rhythm very probably ^ ^

t— — A , and coinciding in syllables with a syncopated or con-

^ No Inatus, that is, within the stanza. There may be hiatus between
one stanza and the next.

2 A few of the extant lines show an iambus, w— (€70; §' ovt^ av
'AfxaXOirji, Fr. 8;.

172 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

It is possible that Anacreon, besides suggesting ' broken ' ;
Ionics in Aeschylus, gave a fresh impulse towards the com -
position of verse of the Glyconic and Pherecratean type.
They are seen together in the lines which have been taken for
a regular hymn to ArtemiS;, but which Wilamowitz has shown
to be rather a compliment to the people of Magnesia {Sappho
inid S., p. 113). In this poem the longer stanza consists of
four Glyconics followed by a Pherecratean : Catullus in his
hymn to Diana has three Glyconics, as Anacreon has in other
poems. Here, as in a similar verse to Dionysus, Anacreon
begins with a shorter stanza, in which there are only two
Glyconics :

yovvovfJLai a-', eXa(pr]^6X€,
^apOrj rral Aios, ay plow
BecriTOLV 'Aprefii $r]pa>y.

That is, if we assume that - w ^ is a dactyl :

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 173

densed anapaestic line whicli Pherecrates, the comic poet,
wrote Kara (ttl\ov {infra, p. 254, footnote).^

Verse of this type was no doubt known to all the early
poets, though there is no extant specimen by the Ionian,
Archilochus. We have seen Sappho writing a stanza which
consisted of two Glyconics and a line in which there is an
additional dactyl :

TToWa Kol t6S' eeiTri fior
^ a)L fi (B? Selva 7r€7r6i^6afi€v,
WdcTTCp', T) [xdv a diKoicr' aTrvXifjiTrdi^a)'
(which is one of the chief arguments for dactylic scansion, and
from which it seemed easy to arrive at the 'iAsclepiadean' type
of ' Maecenas atavis edite regibus '). Besides being used in
fixed stanzas by the Lesbian poets and by Anacreon^ Glyconic
verse was very frequently written by Pindar and by the
dramatists, with numerous variations, such as resolution of
a syllable or the transference of the dactyl to a different place
in the line. The first Olympian ode begins with Glyconic
H- Pherecratean :

dpL(TTOv iikv vScop, 6 8e ! xpvcrbs ocldofievou irvp.

\_/ — — V^V^ — \J — j — \J — WW — —

Aeschylus makes less use of it than the other two tragic poets.
His lyric composition is characterized by a liking for other
things, for long dactylic groups, or systems of trochees with
frequent syncopation, or the broken Ionics which he is said to
have learned from Anacreon. But he does write Glyconics
and Pherecrateans, sometimes alternating :

NTcrou dOavdras rpiyo^

vocrcpLaacr' dTrpo^ovXcos

TTveovO' d Kvi^6(ppcop inrv(D.

KLjydveL 8e viv 'Epjirj^. {Choeph. 619—22.)

1 It is strange to find Mr. White {V. of Gr. Com., § 547) giving
Pherecrates' lines with 'Aeolic' scansion, when their purport is to call
attention to themselves as crvfi-nrvKToi di'd-naiaTOt.

174 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

Or as the closing cadences of a strophe :

ofjLfidiTcoy 8' kv (X)(r]VLaLS

epp€L TTCca-' A(ppo8iTa.
Or

T0V9 8' cLKpavTos ex^i i^v^.

He shows also a liking for certain variations or kindred
forms, e. g. : }

yetvaro 7raL8' d/ie/Kpfj.

8v(Tixa\a 8' €(TTL Kpivat ^

(which may be described as Pherecratean with the dactyl in
the first place instead of the second). Like Euripides {Her.
Fur. 419-22) he has a sequence of Pherecratean lines, with
a penultimate Glyconic :

vovorcjiiv 8' eV/xoy octt' olcttcov

i^OL Kparos drepTTij^'

evfJLevrjs o AvK€i09 ecr-

Tco irdcra veoXata. {Siippl. 684-7 = ^94~7')

(So also in the two preceding strophes, 639-42 = 652-5,
and 663-6 =: 674-7.)

Euripides shows some inclination to revert to Aeschylean
enoplo-trochaics and Ionics ; but apart from that the lyrics of
the two younger dramatists are mainly of the Glyconic type.

The following are passages where Glyconics are written with
considerable regularity :

Soph. Antig. 332 f.
TToXXd Tcc 8eLvd kov8\v dv-
OpcoTTOv 8€iu6Tepov TriXei'
TovTo Kal ttoXlov rripau
TTOVTOV ^eLjiepLco p6t(o
Xft)p€l irepilBpvx^oL-
(TLV irepcov vtt ol8yia(Tiv

^ Compare his liking for the Alcaic ending rav dvadkcurov 'ikr} ris dpxav
( — v^v^ — WW — w ), with two dactyls.

—

1 1

—

. -

- w

V-/ L.

—

— <^v^ — W I

W — — ^^ V-/' — W

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 17;

Oed. Co/. 1 2 1 1 f.

OCTTL^ TOV TrXeorO? fjL€pOV9 — wv^ — w — A

XPllC^L TOV fjL^Tptov napeh — ww — ^ — a

C<J^€.LU, (TKaiocrvvav (pvXdcr-

orcov kv kfJLol KaTdSrjXo^ ecTTai

In Oed. Tyr. 1186-95 the strophe consists of groups
(irepioSoL) of three, four and four lines, each group ending
with a Pherecratean.

Oed. Col. 668 f.

^VLTTTTOV, ^eve, TaaSe ^co- — v^w — v^ l_

pa9 iKov rd KpaTicrra yds eiravXa,^ -— - ^^ — ^ — ^ -w
670 rot^ dpyrjra KoXcovov, evO' ^— —^^ —^ t—

a Xiyela [iLvvpeTai —^ — ww — v^ -a

OafjLL^ovcra /idXio-T drj-

Scbi' )(X(opah VTTO fSdcrorais,

Toy olv(£>Tra ve/xovo'a klct- ^^ ~ — v^w — v^ u_
675 o-bu Kal Tav dfSaTOv O^ov — ww— v^— a

(pvXXdSa fivpLOKapiTOV dv-qXiov —^<^ — ^w — v^v^ — v^v^

dvqveixov re irdi^TCOv

)(^eifj,coi'coi^, 'lv ^aK^m-

Tas del Alovvq-os e/ipaTevei

(or--)

680 Oeais d/jLCpLTToXcoi' TiOijuais ^ — —\^ y^ — ^

(or ^ -A

Here hne 676 is a dactylic tetrapody, a verse not unfrequently
interposed among lines of other types (e.g. it is the penultimate
line of the strophe in Alcman's irapOkvLOv)^ and the line that
follows— as if to restore the balance, or to make the two lines
together a brief deviation towards neTpov kTnavvdeTov — has
no dactyl at all.

1 A Phalaecean line, if this division of the lines is right. The pen-
ultimate line also is Phalaecean.

^ = xP^<^«'''os 'Acppodira in the antistrophe, O^ais is one syllable.

v_/ — v_/ — v_/

— v^ w

— '— — v_/w —\^ — w — ■

176 GREEK LYRIC VERSE

It will be observed that the line quite frequently ends in the
middle of a word. There are passages where this occurs
throughout or nearly so, e.g. Eur. Io7i. 184-7. A less regular
group of lines is seen in Soph. AJax, 1217-22 :
yevoL- fxav 'iv v- <^ l_ — ^ (_

XoL^v 'iirecTTL ttovt- — w w — w i_ J i,

Of Trpo^Xrjfi aXiKkvcTTOV olk- —^ — ww — v^ i_
pau vno irXoLKa ^ovvtov, —^ — ^ ^ — w —

TCCS Upas OTTC09 —WW — w —

TTpoaeLTTOi/iep 'ABdvas ^ ^"^ (or i_ — a)

where only the third and fourth lines are normal Glyconics.

The combination of Glyconic with Pherecratean was some-
times treated as a line or (ttl\os and written Kara <TTi\ov.
It was so written by Anacreon, and a few lines of his are
preserved. For the ordinary reader it is represented chiefly
by one of the poems of Catullus :

(o colonia quae cupis ; ponte ludere longo)

The Glyconic or Pherecratean line is not unfrequently
'acephalous'. O. T. 11 95 ovBev fj.aKapL^oo is a good example,
- -WW L_ - A . The other periods in the strophe end with a
normal Pherecratean, so that here the long syllable is likely to
be I— . This acephalous line is repeated in Aristophanes.
0) Sfj/j,€, KaXrji^ y €)(€£? — - w w — w —
dp^rjv, on irdvTes dv- — — w w — w —

— — WW — w —

\J — \J\^ — ^

OpCOTTOL SeSiaCTL (T COOT-

Trep dvSpa rvpavvov.
aXA' evirapdycoyos ei __^^_v^_

OccTTevonevos re >(«/'- - — w w — w i_

pe^? Kd^aTTaTd)[X€vos,
irpos Tov 76 XkyovT del
K€)(T]pa9, 6 I'ovs Se aov w
irapcbv d7roS7]/jL€L

— —WW — w —

— — WW — w —
w w — w —

^ -^^. _^1

^ The strophe is repeated four times. The short syllable at the

GREEK LYRIC VERSE 177

Of these lyric systems some lend themselves more readily
than others to the now fashionable quadrisyllabic method of
scansion. Any Glyconic line of course does so (^ ^ - w :
v^ — v-^ — ), once we are prepared to regard two short syllables
coming together as belonging to different sections of the verse.
eviTTTTOV, ^eve, ToicrSe xcopa^ ktX. fits the scheme fairly well,
beginning with a heavy 'antispast' (the first syllable long)

( ^ I v^ — w -, evLTTTTOv, ^e|^€ TccaSe X^")' ^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^^'

turbing to find a line of four unmistakable dactyls (676) ;
0) 8rjfj.e, KaXrju y '^X^'-^ ^^ ' acephalous ', the first syllable of
the antispast disappearing ; the clausula -wep dvSpa rvpavvov
remains rather obscure, as does the first syllable short in
Ke)(r}va9, 6 i^ov9 Si <tov. The lyric from the Ajax is
instructive, and perhaps furnishes a sort of clue to the nature
of dochmii. The first and second lines are in syllables —
whatever their time was — the two famiUar types of dochmius -,
then follow two Glyconics, which answer to the second type of
dochmius preceded by a disyllabic ' basis '. Next comes the
second form of dochmius again, and the last line is Phere-
cratean. On the quadrisyllabic theory the first line will be
antispast + syllable, which was actually one of the ancient
descriptions of a dochmius ; it consisted e^ avrLcnrdcrTOV kol
<TvXXal3rjs.

EXCURSUS

{/?) On the quadrisyllabic sca?isio?i of ' Dactylo-Epitrite ' ve7'se^

on ' Iambic Syncopatioji ', and oft ' Ictus \

The type of metre which has often been called ' dactylo-epitrite '

consisted, on that theory, of separate short groups of dactyls,

interspersed with the 'epitritus', a metrical element which in

syllables is — w-^. The 'epitritus' was so called by ancient

beginning of a line was unusual, it would seem, and the poet does not
persist with it. It occurs three times in the first strophe, twice in the
second, and not at all in the third and fourth.

1887 N

178 DACTVLO-EPITRITES,

metricians because its two parts were in the ratio 3 : 4. Whether that
was so or not it is a convenient name for the group of syllables.
The compound adjective ' dactylo-epitrite ' is not ancient, but the
parts of it are. Recent metricians have found a different structure
in such verse, attested by ancient evidence (though the evidence does
not really take us back to the nmsical score of Pindar or Aeschylus),
and supplying, they claim, a better account of all the facts.
The opening of the third Olympian ode :

Tvv8apidais re (piXo^eivoLs a^dv /caXXiTrXo/cn/xo) ^' EXeVa

KXeivau ' AKpdyavTd yepaipaiv €V)(op,at

was analysed by J. H. Schmidt, W. Christ, and other metrical
writers of the nineteenth century as follows :

— — ov^ — wv_y j — w — .

They differed about details, and there was much discussion about
the precise musical value of the syllables. Was the trochee
lengthened in time to equal a dactyl, perhaps by being made l_ kj
or J. ^? These differences are comparatively unimportant, for
recent metricians (notably Schroder in his edition of Pindar, and
Blass in his edition of Bacchylides) have adopted a different analysis
altogether :

— WW — I WW ] — W [ — WW — I WW — 7\

WW j — W <J — I w — .

They call the metre 'enoplic' or 'enoplic-prosodiac', and the
quadrisyllable elements or bars are of the Ionic or choriambic
type. The dactyls have vanished. What is the value of the
analysis, and precisely how ancient is it ?

The former method involves 'anacrusis', the latter dispenses
with it. The word ' anacrusis ' is not ancient, but it is still possible
to argue for it. When Hermann invented it, did he hit upon a
neater and simpler way of dealing with facts for which the Greeks
had only a rather cumbrous and complicated terminology? Is it
possible to say of him— as he himself said of Bentley's discovery of
the digamYna in Homer — that ' ipsam sanavit artem metricam ' ? ^

^ Compare what has been said above (p. 162) in regard to the possible
derivation of Ionics from a trochaic dipody f^while an iambic dipody

SYNCOPATION AND ICTUS 179

The nineteenth-century metricians were wrong in construing
ordinary iambi and anapaests as trochees and dactyls with
anacrusis. But it is not clear that the Greeks would not have
welcomed the word anacrusis for other metres. In the case of the
'prosodiac-enoplic ' type of verse the facts are obscure and com-
phcated without it. In the line

Tov Trnly o Aarovs ivpVfjLeScov tc Ylnaeibiiv

we are asked to recognize this structure,

— ,^_1 — ^v^;_w^_I_^

so that the line is ' hypercatalectic '. But what is ' hypercatalexis ' ?
It is a more difficult and obscure notion than ' anacrusis '. Probably
neither was known to Aeschylus or Pindar. Further, this line
when it was shorter by a syllable was called ' iambelegus ' — 'elegus '
implying dactyls. Instead of ' anacrusis ' a method of describing
the line was to say that it began with an ' iambic penthemimeres ' ;
and this seems to divide it rightly. It is the ancient — more
cumbrous— equivalent for scansion with anacrusis. It begins with
a group of five syllables (as the first two lines of an Alcaic stanza
do), not with a group of four.

Another objection is a historical one. The choriambo-ionic
scansion divorces the metre from similar lyrics which clearly consist
of dactyls and trochees.

refuses to generate anything similar). The comparison there suggested
between iambic scansion and Ptolemaic astronomy applies to the case —
if this contention is sound — with curious accuracy. For Ptolemaic or
geocentric astronomy was right about tJie moon. So iambic scansion was
right for the iambic trimeter (and a few kindred forms of spoken verse),
but not right about lyric verse. Compare also the modern treatment of
rhythm in Latin prose with ancient, theories on the subject. Zielinski's
Clauselgesetz is based on extensive statistical labour, which the ancients
did not attempt, and, whether we are prepared to accept his theory as
final in every detail or not, it does arrive at a principle — an intelligible
principle as to the number of syllables that are to be taken into account.
How far back into the sentence are we to go ? The ancient treatment
as seen in Quintilian (ix, c. 4) is comparatively arbitrary and unregulated.
Numerous metrical terms are applied to groups of syllables taken at
haphazard. Zielinski's method is sound in the main, because the natural
tendency of Latin was to a trochaeo-cretic movement : he saj's in effect,
' go back to what is characteristic of Latin prose rhythm, — \j —\

N 2

t8o DACTYLO-EPTTRITES,

oacras d* elXe vroXeis Tropov
OX) 8ia[3os ' AXvos TTOTafxolo
ov8' a(f)* ((TTLas avdels.

What is the 'epitritus' but the shortest trochaic kcoXovI And the
enopliiis but a group of dactyls, not the shortest possible, but a
short and effective one ? Can we imagine a poet — not in India or
in Persia, but in Greece — inventing a metre which consists of a
choriamb and an * lonicus a maiori '? Some of the quadrisyllabists
themselves do not deny the relation to dactylo-trochaic lyrics. But
if it is admitted, the choriambo-ionic scheme becomes merely a
possible aspect of the group of syllables, a later interpretation or
a special musical setting — a thing with which the ordinary reader
need not concern himself.

Again, if we think of the 'prosodiac* as dactyls preceded by
a syllable, we can understand why that syllable can be short, as it
often is (o tos Oeov^ op "i^afidOein tlkt eVl pt]yixivi ttovtov). A ' prosodiac '
is a 'paroemiac', and a paroemiac was part of a hexameter; it
might be either pex,^€v be re vrjjrios eyvoa or Tra.6u)V de re vi^irios eyvco.
In a famous lyric of Euripides the short syllable is prefixed to the
first KO)\ov only (liuco TroTapav Upav X'^povcri Trayal ktX.), not to the
KQ)\a that follow. It is difficult to believe that that colon alone
began with an iambus and an anapaest, or alone was hypercatalectic
{(ivu) TroTn\pa)v Upuyp | }(a)povo-i 7T(t\yai). Similar things occur with
other metres : a short syllable is prefixed to something so well known
and constant that it is difficult to believe that its presence causes
the whole to be transmuted or rearranged ; e.g. Alcaeus's modifica-
tion of a Sapphic line, IottXok liyva peWixop^ibe 'Edncpoi, or the short
syllable before Ionics in Aes. P. V. 399.

But the choriambo-ionic enoplius claims to be attested by
tradition, and it will be well to look at this evidence before
proceeding further. Mr. White says {Verse of Greek Comedy,
§ 647) : ' There is ample evidence that they '-^the poets of the fifth
century B.C. — 'differentiated the prosodiac and enoplius from true
anapaestic and dactylic cola.' 'Aristophanes himself testifies* as
to the enoplius. Socrates in the Clouds (649 f.), in the first extant

^ The passage has often been quoted and appealed to by other writers
besides Mr. White.

SYNCOPATION AND ICTUS i8i

literary reference to the enoplius, instructs Strepsiades that it is
important for a gentleman in society to understand the difference
between dactylic and enoplic verse. The two were different and
yet so similar that an uninstructed person like Strepsiades might
confuse them. Their differentiation is now not difficult. The

enoplic dimeter — ^w— v^w differs from the dactylic tripody

in metrical constitution.' The passage is :

€7ratop6* oTTolos earl Ta>v pyd/xcop

Kar* ivoirkiov x,u>7rolos av Kara daKTvXoi^.

What exactly does it prove ? To argue, from a passage in comedy
is never a very safe thing to do, and here the chances are that
what Socrates thinks so important is some preposterous piece of
hair-splitting comparable in value to the measurement of yl/'uWcov
i;^^??. A dactylic lyric like « noXvfxoxdos "A/j^ys-, n' tto^' aluciTL in the
Phoenissae could presumably be scanned kixto. haKxvkov or Kara
fxouoTToBlai/, and so could a hexameter (though a heroic hexameter
could also be taken as two KcbXa divided and linked together by
caemra). But a line like

(paivojjLevav S' op' €S nrav aTvevbev o/xiXof iKecrOai

is neither of these things and not to be treated in either way. You
must take it as— what? Something not dactylic at all .^ Not
necessarily. It runs kgt ivoTvKiov. But Aristophanes would have
written as he did even if an evoTrXios was a group of three dactyls
(the" third spondaic in form). It is true that Ka6' eua daKTvXov or
KnTo. daKTvXou eKaarov would have made a more logical contrast.
That is the precise point at which it becomes unsafe to argue from
a comic poet's phrase. The passage does not really prove anything
about the internal constitution of an evoTvXios in the fifth century.
The Scholiast on the passage and ancient writers on metre, taken
together, give us every possible view of the group of syllables

— WW— v^"^ : there are four disyllabic feet (— w | w — | w w ] )

or a choriamb and an Ionic, or the group is ro exov 6vo daKTvXovs
Koi eva aTTovbelou. It is also said that two of them make a i^afxerpov
Kar euorrXiov — the e^afxerpov, perhaps, which Strepsiades is to distin-
guish from a different sort of hexameter.

i82 DACTYLO-EPITRITES,

The next witness is Plato, in a well-known passage of the Republic,
400 B : ol^ai ^e yue aKTjKOivnt ov ancfias ivoTrXiov re rivn ovo}xn^ovTos
avTov ^vvOerov Kai dciKTvXov koi rjpQ>6u -ye, ovk oida ottms dtaKoa/xovPTos
Kai icrov iivo) Kai kutco ridevrns, (Is jSpa^v re k(u fxaKpou yiyvo^ievov, Kcii,
MS eyo) oijjLai, 'Lajji(3ov Kai tiu' aWou rpox^mov MVo/jLa^e, .^fJLTjKrj Se Ka\
l3paxvTy]Tas irpocrrjnTe. This passage, like that in Aristophanes, is
not one from which it will be safe to draw very precise inferences.
It is casual in tone ; the speaker is waiving aside the technicalities
of the subject. So far as it does go, it does not seem to afford any
very tangible support for the choriambo-ionic enoplius. ' 'i(Tov aiw
Kai /cttro)' is a phrase that belongs to dactyls and anapaests, the
yeuos 'icrov (w w = — ). The equality between a choriamb and an
Ionic is not very likely to be in the speaker's mind (and which of
these is avco, which /carco ?). It is simply dactyls (or dactyls and
anapaests) that he is thinking of in the first part of the sentence.
Then he' goes on to speak of iambi and trochees. An enoplius is
something dactylic, one oi fhfee things. But we have already had
three things in view : the dactjds of the Phoenissae w irokvp.oxOos
"ApT]<i (or, we might add, the unclosed, hypermetric dactyls of the
type TToWuKi 5' ev Kopv(pais opccov, oKa, supra, p. 148), the heroic
hexameter, and the hexameter Kar ivonXiov^ (Paivn/jLevav 6' a/j' ev
(iTav airevdev opiKos iKeaOai. Blass (in his Preface to Bacchylides,
p. xxxi) lays stress on the word ^vvB^tos : a thing can be called
avi'derov or composite if it is made up of dissimilar parts (such as
choriamb and Ionic). If putting like parts together were a-uuBea-ts,
any and every rhythm would be avvderos. That is true ; but it is
not the only possible reason why a thing should be called avvOfTov.
It might be so called because the parts were more distinct one from
another than the parts of other things. And that would be the case
here if we suppose that an evonXLos ain'Oeros meant the combination
of two simple ivoTrXioi. The caesura in a hexameter is a slight
division : metrically, all that is required is the end of a word,
though a strongly marked rhetorical pause or pause in this sense
may coincide with it. The division between one line and the next

^ SclnSder says of this {Pindar, Appendix, p. 499) ' Platonis locum . . .
procul habere satius crit '. ' Procul habere ' is a good thing to do with
a passage that does not prove what it is taken to prove.

. SYNCOPATION AND ICTUS 183

in hypermetric dactyls must also be a slight one. But an enoplius
has a marked closing cadence, the last foot is different from the
others (like the end of a hexameter). The structure is avvQeTou
because the parts have a fixed structure of their own. They can be
easily seen and discriminated. Here iiriaviOeTov comes into view
as an adjective for a more complex building on the same principle.
The next piece of evidence is a passage in Hephaestion (c. xv)
discussed by Mr. White {V. of Gr. Coj/i., § 630). It runs thus:

TTpcoTos 6e Kcil TovTOis (sc. eTTLcrvvdeTOis) ^Ap)(iXo)(OS KexprjraL' Trij ^dv yap
(TToirjaiv eK re avaTrniaTtKov icpdrjiju/jifpovs Kai Tpo)((UKOv 77/^10X101; tov
KaXoi'ffeVou Wvcf)aWiKov

'Epnapovidt] Xop/Aaf, XPVH-''^ '^"'' yfXoio;/.

TovTO Se ol per' avrnv ovx oixnicos avTCO eypnyj/nv' ovt09 pev yup tj} re
Topfi di oXov K€)(prjTai TOV e(f)dr]pip€povs, Kcii (nrnv^einvs TrapeXujBev iv tco
avaTTaKTTLKOi kcoKm. olov

daroiiy 6' 01 pkv KaroTTLcrOev fjirav' ol 8i TroXXot.

01 de /li6t' avTov rfj pev ropr) aduKpopoos e;(p//rrai^ro, aarrep Kpurluos

X^''^p\ ^ f^y' aXpeioyeXcos opiXe, rals e7Tt,3Saty,
Tijs rjperepas ao(f)ias KpirrjS cipiare ndpTcov,
evdaipov^ €tikt€ rre p^'jT^p iKpioov \l/6(f)r]cn^.

ivravBa yap opoicos to Tpirou p^Tpov TeTpijTcu toIs 'A/j;)^iAo;(6ioif, tu de
wpo civTov dvo TTpo (TvXXaf'iijS. K(H pevToi K(u Tovs anovdelovs 7r<ipr,Tij-
aavTo TOVS iv to5 /Lxecro) ol peTa tov ApxiXoxov, ovx (^^ avmraKTTiKov
i]yovp€VOL, aWa TrpoaoduiKov, to e^ loii'iK?]S Km xopinpl^i-Krj^, Trjs loi)ViKrjs
Kn\ ^pax^lav Ti)v Tvpu>Tr]v Se;!^o/xeV/?s'. What exactly does this passage
tell us ?

Archilochus wrote an often-quoted line ^Epaapovi^q ktX. In Archi-
lochus himself there was always a Topr} (caes^ira or diaeresis —
the end of a word) before the last six syllables, which thus were

trochaic (— >^ — w ). But later poets (a very vague phrase)

were not careful to have the Tvpi) exactly there. Cratinus, for
example, wrote the three lines x"'^p' ^ H-^y' '^^'^•j only the third of
which is like Archilochus's line — lKpL(t>v ■^6<bi]cns: answers to ;\;/jf5/x(i tvl
yeXolov. In the others the division is a syllable earlier ix'up\ ^ M^V
nype/oyeXcoy | opiXe, tcus eTriiidais). Moreover they — ' poets after Archi-
lochus ' — deprecated, or dispensed with, the spondees in the middle,

1 84 DACTYLO-EPITRITES,

as though regarding the first part not as anapaestic, but as
prosodiac (the words are loosely set down — the meaning seems to
be rather cos ovk avairaicmKov rjyovjievoi aWa npoa.), prosodiac which
consists of an Ionic and choriamb : (do not look at 'Epaa-fiovibrj and
object to this, for) an Ionic does admit of a short syllable at the
beginning. Later poets did not write pr^Trjp in the middle of the
line, as Cratinus did. They made the 'anapaestic' part stop a
syllable earlier, apparently, presumably regarding it as prosodiac.

What does Mr. White elicit from the passage ? ' Cratinus and
the poets who followed him maintained and cultivated a fixed
prosodiac form of this "tetrameter". They made it a real tetrameter,
treating its division with indifference : x^'P' ^ A'^V "XPf'^yf^'^y '^^^v
and regarding its first half not as anapaestic, but as prosodiac'
' Cratinus and his successors, pleased with its rhythm, adopted
a fixed form of the logaoedic period employed by Archilochus,
but gave it a different metrical constitution : ' — the italics are
Mr. White's — ' the first half was identified with the prosodiac, an
ancient and well-known dimeter, the second was a catalectic iambic
dimeter.'

' Cratinus and the poets who followed him '—so that Cratinus
(senior to Aristophanes) launched the metre on new lines. But
there is not a word about ' Cratinus and his followers ' ! oi jxer' ahrbv
means oi per* ^Apxi^oxoi'. The writer merely finds a useful
illustration in lines of Cratinus. Poets later than Archilochus may
mean anybody, possibly Callimachus and Theocritus. A group of
poets is meant who refused to do what Cratinus obviously did do,
to write a line with a spondee like p^t'IP in the middle of it. So far
as the passage indicates anything it suggests that the prosodiac-
enoplic reform or reconstruction was later than Cratinus. This is
part of the ' ample evidence ' for such a treatment of the verse by
poets of the fifth century ! {V. of Gree^ Com., § 647.)

The passages show that evoirXios was a term in use in the fifth
century, with some definite meaning. For the choriamb-ionic
they seem to me to furnish no evidence at all. Nor does the word
in itself suggest anything of the kind. It suggests martial
exercises :

ayer (o ^Trdpras evdvdpov
Kovpoi Traripcov rroKLaTav.

SYNCOPATION AND ICTUS 185

The second line is an enoplios with a syllable prefixed, or a
'prosodiac', and 'prosodiac' suggests marching— not to war, but
in a procession, to a temple {ni)6ao8oL ixciKiipcov UpwraTai, Ar.
Cloudsy 307).

If there are vulnerable points in the evidence, if it is not
absolutely cogent, the modern reader seems to be released from
any strict and imperative obligation to spend time and toil in
training his ear to follow a strange and alien rhythm, which may in
the end prove to be a fiction of theorists. But we may now ask
our next question, assuming that the schemes now in vogue have
some basis. What is their nature and value ?

Ouadrisyllabic scansion, as we have seen, gives the following
scheme for the lines of Pindar quoted above :

— V^W— \ KJ ^ I — \j I — \J \J — I \J \u —

\^ KJ I — ^ ^ . — { W— .

A rhythm is 'rising' (iambic) or 'falling' (trochaic), or presumably
it may be neither (e.g. a choriambus). Thus the groups of syllables or
bars or feet are(i) neither, (2) rising, (3) falling, (4) neither, (5) rising;
and in the next line, (6) falling, (7) neither, (8) rising. It is not an
easy thing to pass at once from a rising to a falling rhythm. The
diversity or heterogeneity of this scheme is too great for reading ;
it seems plainly impossible that a reader could follow or render
effectively such a thing. And what we want, for practical purposes,
is to be able to read ancient poetry with some facility and pleasure,
some perception of rhythm.

Here we shall of course be met by the answer or objection:
* It is not a scheme that is meant to be ?-ead\ the groups of
syllables are not ordinary Ionics or choriambi, they are simply
equivalent groups of musical notes, without an ictus\ your "rising"
and " falling " rhythm perhaps involves an ictiis^ but we deny that
there was any ichiSy given by the voice, in Greek verse generally,
and we deny it with special emphasis here. The verses were written
to be sung to music (or rather, for the phrase "to music" would
annoy Pratinas,^ "with a musical accompaniment").'

Reserving for the present the question of ictus^ we shall now

^ rav aoihav Karkaraoi. liupXs I3aai\(iav' 6 5' av\us

varepos xopfviroo' Kal yap eaO' vn-qpiras.

1 86 DACTYLO-EPITRITES,

reflect : ' Then to 7-cad Pindar or Bacchylides is altogether illegiti-
mate ; we must close the volume— unless indeed we can train
a chorus and have the poems rendered in song with music— and
we must assume that the ancients never read Pindar at all, or read
the text as prose (possibly — possibly Cicero ^ did so), or read it on
simpler principles than those of this musical scheme.^

This brings us to Mr. White's central indictment of nineteenth-
century Metrik. He holds that Apel, Schmidt, Christ, and others
misapplied to melic verse simpler metrical principles which really
belonged only to spoken verse ( Verse of Greek Comedy, Intro-
duction, p. xix f.). ' Iambic is the only rhythm that was used in
spoken verse in Greek' (that is, in \//'tXj) \i^i^ in the strictest sense).
'Iambic, anapaestic, trochaic, and dactylic are the rhythms that
were used in recitative rendering, but recitative does not signify in
the least what we mean when we speak of an actor's reciting his
lines. These are the four rhythms that modern poetry has
developed. Both Greek and English, therefore, employ only simple
disyllabic and trisyllabic rhythms in non-melic verse.^ The
Greeks, however, developed other rhythms, paeonic, Ionic, dochmiac,
prosodiac-enoplic, Aeolic. With rare exceptions these rhythms
were exclusively melic. The choruses of tragedy were sung.
Only a highly imaginative mind can grasp the idea of reading
dochmiac verse. The word "lyrical" has now a connotation far
removed from its original Greek sense, and Bacchylides and
Swinburne are not, in fact, poets of the same genre. If now the

^ ' In versibus res est apertior, quamquam etiam a modis quibusdam
cantu remoto soluta esse videtur oratio, maximeque id in optimo quoque
eorum poetarum, qui XvpiKol a Graecis nominantur, quos cum cantu
spoliaveris, nuda paene remanet oratio ', Cic. Orator, § 183.

2 There are pieces in ' enoplic-prosodiac ' verse which cannot have
been intended solely or chiefly for an elaborate choric performance, e. g.
the verses in which Timocreon of Rhodes assailed Themistocles, or the
later satirical moralizings of Cercidas which have recently come to light,
Timocreon's contemporaries would not read his verse as prose.

^ Ionics {a.vaKXu;jj.euoi or Anacreontics) do exist in English (• all the
might of Denmark's crown ', ' on the l6fty British line '), and Ionic is
a verse which, both in Greek and English, can be read quite easily and
quite effectively, or at all events with a sufficient realization of its
movement. But that matter is not relevant to the main argument here.

SYNCOPATION AND ICTUS

187

rhythms just named were not used in spoken verse in Greek, how
credible and convincing is the allegation that the metrical structure
of Aeolic verse must have been a form — a bastard form, at best —
of the simple trochaic and dactylic rhythms that the Greek poets
did employ in non-melic rendering, because we moderns cannot
read Aeolic verse in any other manner ! Regret that we cannot
teach our pupils to render the Odes of Pindar as Greeks rendered
them is an amiable sentiment, the resolution to read them even at
the cost of reading them in the wrong fashion is prompted no
doubt by a generous impulse, but neither has the least significance
in the scientific determination of facts.'

Much that is said here is true and instructive, and the whole
passage puts the issue in a very clear way. It might be pointed
out further that when the Romans took to writing lyric verse for
readers — as they clearly did, though the carmen saeculare and
a few other things may have been actually sung — they regularized
their structure in a very thorough way, ' stereotyping ' a particular
form of line and almost entirely excluding variations, thus making
them easy for readers.^ The Roman who tried Pindaric verse,

Pindarici fontis qui iioti expalluit haustus,

did not produce anything that was effective enough to survive
(or to be mentioned in a survey of literature like Ouintilian's in
Inst. Or. X, c. i).

But the argument, perhaps, does not lead exactly in the direction
that Mr. \^'hite supposes, and there is more than an ' amiable
sentiment ' involved. The question again thrusts itself upon us,
' How then did the ancients read Pindar and Bacchylides ? Or did
they never read them at all? And if the works of these poets
could not be read — could not be produced, with artistic justification,
except by a trained chorus with music — are we not bound to put
them on the shelf, to exclude them from ordinary teaching and

^ Easy also for composition by a verse-writer who is not also a musical
composer. Could Alcaic verse be easily or even possibly written on
a quadrisyllable scheme: * Non ante vul'gatas per ar tes verba lojquor
socian'da chordis'? Are we quite prepared to believe that even a
Greek poet and musician ever wrote it so with that scheme in his
mind ?

i88 DACTYLO-EPITRITES,

literary study altogether ? Reading them as prose (even though
Cicero possibly did it) cannot be justified.'

We are not absolutely limited, of course, to \//-iXr; Xe'^i?. A reader
can imagine the verse sung, though he could produce the sounds
only in a very incomplete way. To prolong a syllable to three or
four times, to make it Tpla-r^jios or TeTpaa-rjixos is a thing that lies
beyond x/ztX/) Xe'|if, it is not natural to conversational utterance.
But some sort of recitative or chant or half- chanting delivery is not
excluded ; it is not impossible for ordinary pupils or incomprehen-
sible to them. So we may at least refuse to put on the shelf a
number of lyrics of which the structure is simple and certain-
We shall not exclude a trochaic lyric of Aeschylus because it has
occasional syncopation:

pvai^o}nov *EX-Xa-j/cov ayaXfia daijJiovuiV
(— v^ — wi — I — — w — ^ — ^ — A).

What is the reasonable attitude, for an ordinary teacher, towards
more difficult lyrical effects ? Perhaps we may suppoce him to say
something like this : * We do not wish to read Greek verse in
a way that has no historical justification, or that would seriously
misrepresent its effect. But our aim is not the strictly scientific
one. We are prepared to be content with some approximate
rendering, something short of scientific or archaeological precision.
Further, we think that the importance of division by feet, for
reading, is often exaggerated. It is important to know (and
against the quadrisyllable scansionists we are fairly sure of ^/la/)
that Horace thought of his Alcaic line as beginning with a group of
Jii'e syllables. Whether it is described as an Inp^iKov 7rei^^///xt/Mep€s
or as two trochees with anacrusis does not affect the delivery.
Calling it trochaic does not mean that we pronounce it "o — di pro
— fanum", nor if we call it iambic is it to be pronounced "odi —
profa — num ". The ionic-choriambic-diiambic-ditrochaic scansion
of Pindar may be only a musical arrangement — convenient for
certain purposes— which does not bind the reader. In any case we
are not prepared to accept or attempt these, for us, difficult
arrangements except in so far as they are incontestably proved.
In Roman imperial times— read for example Terentianus or Caesius
Bassus on hendecasyllabics— metrical analysis was obviously a

SYNCOPATION AND ICTUS 189

kind of ingenious game, chess-playing with syllables, and much of
the metrical theory produced is complicated and useless lumber.
We do not wish to be burdened with that, and therefore we
scrutinize evidence closely. We do not think that your evidence
does carry us back quite certainly to the fifth or sixth century.
And the choriambic-ionic scansion is not always convincing. It is
not entirely convincing when, as in the strophes of the fourth
Pythian, we find among groups which are evoirXioi a group of
syllables which we should call /our dactylic feet [tlwee dactyls and
a spondee :

%v6a TTore xpycriutv Aibs alrjiratv ndpc^pos).

— \jy^— \^^ — Ky\\^ is not so convincing that we can welcome

it with enthusiasm. Conversely, — w w — , which sometimes occurs,
may be a shorter dactylic kcoXoi/ rather than a choriambus. The
dactylic scansion, which we are still inclined to retain (not being
absolutely convinced about the other) does not misdivide Pindar's
lines. The group of syllables that we take together is precisely
the same, and we suggest that the two scansions are, for the
ordinary reader, alike unreal, like the "iambic" and "trochaic"
pronunciations of "odi profanum", i.e. he may adopt either without
being seriously misled by it. You admit yourselves that the
prosodiac and enoplius originated in, or grew out of, the dactylic or
anapaestic paroemiac. The enoplius is an "acephalous " form of it.
Mr. White says (§ 643) : " The enoplius therefore is in origin a
dactylic tripody of fixed form, but it differs from this tripody in
metrical constitution " ; and again (§ 647) : " these poets " (the poets of
the fifth century) " must have felt the anapaestic movement in the
prosodiac and the dactylic in the enoplius." That is a good deal
to admit. How do we know that a poet of the fifth or even fourth
century (when the scansion you uphold had presumably gained
ground) would not have told an ordinary reader who consulted him
that the ionic-choriambic division was a musical arrangement or
special treatment of the syllables with which he need not concern
himself?'

The answer or retort to such a speech would perhaps be the
following : ' There may be cases in which your dactylic scansion
would not " seriously mislead" the reader. But discussion of them

190 DACTYLO-EPITRITES,

may be postponed ; for we maintain that there are other cases
where the reader is seriously misled by the dactylic or trochaic
scansion, with anacrusis, which Apel, Schmidt & Co. have imposed
upon you. There is the question of iambic catalexis and the
Seikelos inscription, an inscription which, together with certain
fragments of Aristoxenus, proves that you have been protj'acting
the ivrong syllable.''

This evidence is fully presented and discussed by Mr. White
(p. 356 f., §§ 779-81), and it is unnecessary to enter into details about
it here. The argument which follows (§§ 782-9), from the music
of the 'two second-century hymns to Helios and Nemesis, is more
complicated and subtle, but appears to be sound. We may take it
that there is sound evidence for what may be called ' iambic
syncopation ', and it may be suggested that it would be convenient
to make — j (not >— ) the symbol for it. The words with which the
lyric of Seikelos (first century of the Christian era) begins, oaov Cfjs,
are w 1, not v^ i_ — .

This is not only shown by evidence. It is in itself reasonable,
if iambic verse is to be separated from trochaic. The nineteenth-
century metricians read iambic verse as trochaic with anacrusis,
and consequently missed, or abolished, this effect. If a line really
is iambic and begins with ^ — \^ — , we cannot take this as
'^ — WL_. The second foot is an iambus; ^ i— is not intelligible
at all. The syncope must be found in the following syllable.

TTPoal §' OTTO '2Tpvixuvos jJioXovaai

is (^ — w — — i w — v^ 1, it is not wj— ^-^i — \ — \j — \u i — — A.

The first syllable of ^Tpvfxovos, not the last of dno, is prolonged. It is
prolonged to the length of an iambus, so that the iambic movement
can start again or proceed with -/jloi^os fxoXnv-, and then the last
syllable is protracted (the Seikelos inscription and the hymns seem
to attest its protraction rather than the completion of the time by
a pause).

Here then is a definite difference, and a quite important one.
We cannot argue about it as we did about *odi profanum '. Iambic
and trochaic scansion give a notably different effect ;

fivn^ b' 6 TTfjea^vs \ rod' etVe (f)u)vu>i/
tiapfia pev Krjp \ ro pr) nLdeaOai.

SYNCOPATION AND ICTUS 19 r

It is certainly very different. It divides tiiese lines conspicuously

into two equal halves. Again, in S. c. Th. 293 we should have :

I — I — I ....

vTTfp8idoiK€u Xexnicop dvaevvdTOjms. Must we accept the principle as

final, and learn to apply it and realize it throughout in the text of

Aeschylus ? And in all other poets who write anything that can be

construed as iambic ? ^

Perhaps. But let us at least contemplate carefully the limits of
our knowledge and run no risk of being too readily credulous.

Aeschylus wrote about a century and a half before Aristoxenus.
We' do not know what kind of metrical and musical notation, what
terminology or ideas, existed in his day. They may have been
very rudimentary. Grammatical terminology can hardly have
existed at all. It is still incomplete in Aristotle. Yet Aeschylus
writes correctly ; there is very seldom anything that is obscure or
confused ; it is very seldom that we find anything like

iBpe'^ar olKi]Trjp(is . . . ttkttovs ottcos yevoicrBe rrpos Xpf'o? To^e.

Further, Aeschylus and other ancient writers sometimes have
things of which modern grammar can give a better and clearer
account than Greek grammarians could do.^ It is possible that if we
could summon Aeschylus as his Persians summoned Darius, and
put questions to him, showing him modern musical notation for
some of his verses, he would say, ' That expresses very much the
effect that I intended, and expresses it more neatly and completely
than the notation that I knew on earth.' Tp/fierpoi/ and TerpajLterpoi/
would be current in his time, probably, as names for the iambic
trimeter and trochaic tetrameter. He would think of the former
as consisting of uifi(3oi. What words would he use to describe the
structure of a lyric like nfoal 5' aKo ^rpvp-uvos poXoDo-m ? When he
composed it with its music, would he divide it into bars and use
symbols that indicated quantity, or only put musical notes above

^ Mr. White, if one may argue from his notation, is not an ardent
propagandist. In his metrical schemes he either does not indicate the
protraction, or he puts a dot to indicate the missing time or syllable :
€;raux7cras Se rots aois \6yois ^ — • — • — w — • — \j — (§ 73). This nota-
tion does not make it obvious to the eye which syllable, the preceding
or the following one, is to be prolonged.

^ For an illustration see supra, p. 132.

192 DACTYLO-EPITRITES,

syllables ? If he thought of it as consisting of ' feet ', it is possible
that he would use the word x^^P^^^^i which is certainly an early word
and would be a convenient word for short ph^s long in either order,
su — or — w, or for lyric composition in alternate ' longs and shorts '.
If we try in this way to detach ourselves from notation and to
imagine Aeschylus's procedure, further questions begin to suggest
themselves. If a line began w — w . . . (what we now call an
'iambic' beginning), did that necessitate 'iambic syncopation'
throughout the verse and at the end of it ? To illustrate the point
from Aristophanes, in the lines :

Xpr](rifinv fxev ovhev r»A-
Xcoj Se beiKov koX fxeya

we have no doubt trochaic syncopation, but in

^}]rovvT€s i)uiK' av av m-

Kas \eycov rhs diKns

we are to recognize iambic syncopatior. It is quite certain that
Aeschylus did not know the term anacrusis (which was invented
by Hermann), but it is probable or all but equally certain that he
did not know 'acephalous' either. Is it not possible that he would
think of the rhythm of a line ' iambically ' in one place, ' trochaically '
in another, and thus be free to make eitJiei' of two contiguous long
syllables a protracted one ?

When this possibility has been stated it opens up a further view.
Can it be the real explanation of things which the nineteenth-
century metricians explained by applying the method of modern
music, with its invariable anacrusis and descending scansion ?
^TpvfjLovos jjLoXovanL is a very familiar phrase — not iambic. Can it
be that the line began as iambic and ended as trochaic ? The
iambic trimeter could easily be regarded as doing that, with its

caesura :

evdyyeXos [xev, \ coarrfp t) napoip-in,

€a>s yei'oiTO | prjrpos €v(f)povi]i irapn,

' coanep T] nnpoipia ' presents itself to the ear rather as trochaic

than iambic.^

* So in the scazon a trochaic movement may be said to ' set in ' after
a marked ' caesura ', leading to the ending — v^ ' - [ — i=i :
Suffenus iste, Vare, | quem probe nosti.

SYNCOPATION AND ICTUS 193

mea renidet | in domo lacunar

was actually described in later times as an iambic followed by
a trochaic group. 'in domo lacunar' is the same phrase as
'Erpvi-iouos fjioXova-ni. l( Tri'oai 8' u~6 answers to ' mea renidet', would
not the structure of the line demand that the suppressed or absorbed
time should be absorbed by the first comma or group of syllables
and not by the second ? In a similar way the second part of a
hexameter could be thought of as anapaestic. The paroemiac
{p^X^kv hi re vr^TTios eyvw) coincides with a catalectic anapaestic
dimeter. In later times at all events there was no shrinking from
such analysis. When Aristophanes was composing anapaestic
tetrameters, did he in bringing a line to a close stop to reflect
whether it was dactylic or anapaestic ?

tJkktt^ aXX' ovpdviai vecpeXai, fxcydXat, Oeai dphpaaip dpyols.

It is a hexameter from ovpdviai onwards, and we shall be justified
in waiting for very cogent evidence before we begin to contemplate
the scansion :

Xe^o) Toivvv TrjV dp^aiav rrniheiav o)? 8Uk.(ito (or ^ /\ ?)
ot' e-yo) TCI dUaia Xiycov rjvQovv Kai acocfypocrvvri ^vevopLcrro.

The provisional conclusion or contention which we seem to arrive
at from this discussion is that, while iambic syncopation appears to
be a proved fact, we are not yet prepared to admit that all verses
which appear to have an iambic beginning were thought of as
' iambic ' by the poet — we do not know that Aeschylus would have
called his lyrics either iambic or trochaic — or were thought of as
iambic throughout, for this purpose of syncopation.

The question of reading lyric verse involves the question of t'c^us,
which we postponed. Mr. White follows various metricians of
recent times in denying that there was any voice-ictus or stress-ictus
— a voice-ictus can hardly have been anything but a slight stress —
in ancient Greek verse {V. of Gr. Coi?i., Intr., pp. xxiii, xxiv, § 28).
There is no ancient evidence for it, only for beating time with the
hand or wand or foot. He quotes M. Kawczynski : ' Or il me
parait inadmissible de faire executer aux anciens par la bouche ce
qu'ils faisaient avec le pied.' But Greek poetry was far more often
choric or supported by music than ours is. Mr. White has told us

1P87 Q

T94 DACTYLO-EPITRITES,

that no metre but the iambic trimeter was delivered in yj/iXr] Xe|ty.
Such beating of time was far more familiar to them than to us.
But what if there is no conductor's wand or dancer's foot available
or obtainable? Must not sojnething be done 'par la bouche ' to
replace it ? Does a long string of short syllables become necessarily
amorphous, scopae solutae, unless we can beat the floor or move
a hand, unless we can make a movement which the hearer
can hear or see ? What if he is in the next room and cannot
see us ? Does that make it impossible to read to him resolved
anapaests :

Ka<o(PaTida ^odv, KaKOfxeXcTOv lav,

six short syllables and a long one, w w v^ ^ v^ w — , which would
be rendered at once intelligible by the very slightest rise of the
voice on the third of them ?

ve(f)os €fx6p aTToTponov^ €7nn\6fi€vov liffiaTov

can be read as resolved anapaests (vecfios k^ov anoTponov), but the
context shows it to be dochmiac and the incidence of ictus would
be different — what it would be in a dochmius is one of the things
about which we have no quite certain information. It is not only
in cases like this, where there are short syllables throughout, that
icttis is called for in reading. It is plainly important that when
a heavy trochee or iambus takes by resolution the shape w w — or
— ^ w, the apparent anapaest and dactyl should be distinguished
by ictus from the real anapaest and dactyl of anapaestic and
dactylic verse. They are O w > and > O w, not equivalent in time
to the true anapaest and dactyl, for the long is an irrational, not
a normal long. Whether we mark both short syllables with the
ictus or only one of them (o o — or O w — ) seems unimportant.
For reading, it would suffice that the very slight stress required
should be heard on the first syllable ; both syllables would accom-
pany the downward stroke of a conductor's wand or of the foot.
The structure of Greek verse was given by quantity, and when
such verse was sung, with music, or gesture and movement
(axfjpaTa), or both, there would seem to be no need for a stress of
the voice also. In that sense we may admit it to be true that
' there was no ictus in Greek verse '. But when these adjuncts are

SYNCOPATION AND ICTUS 195

removed, either icins is soniethhig audible or the structure of the
verse must be lost.^

The bearing of this on the main subject of this excursus is to
strengthen the contention that the lonic-choriambic-diiambic-
ditrochaic scansion would be impossible for a reader, ancient or
modern.

1 In Latin the whole question of ictus becomes a different one. The
conditions were different in at least three ways: (1) The Latin accent
was different from the Greek accent, stress not pitch, and so more like
what ictus had to be when given by the voice ; (2) it was regular in its
incidence on words, following a uniform and simple law; (3) the Romans
more often wrote verse for readers.

CHAPTER II

THE HISTORY OF METRE AT ROME

The history of verse at Rome falls into three great phases

or stages, of the first of which we have only a dim and distant

view : (i) Saturnian verse, (2) verse of the Republican period,

(3) verse of the Imperial age (some of its features disclose

themselves before the end of the Republic). To these might

be added a fourth, the later time when accent indubitably

asserts itself as a principle of verse composition. But the

latter of these periods is beyond the scope of this book ; it

connects itself with the Middle Ages when verse could be

written like ' dies irae, dies ilia ' {' dies ' replacing ' dies ') or

ad Mar6nis Mausoleum

ductus fudit super ^um

piae r6rem lacrimae

(where ' -eum ' rhymes with ' eum ' and presumably had a
similar sound).

Ancient Greek verse is consistently quantitative throughout,
as far as we know it (till accent begins to assert itself in the
first or second century after Christ). At a quite early time
it has shaken off alliteration. There are alliterative phrases
occasionally in Homer, such as vrirjcras €V vfja? or to yap
yepas ecrW yepovTcou, and proverbs show a tendency to it
(kukov KopaKos KUKou coov), but there is nothing at all
resembling the alliteration of Old Italian or Old English

HISTORY OF METRE AT ROME 197

verse. Further, if there was a period when the less con-
spicuous part of a foot was ' free ' and might be one syllable
or two (— or v^ or ww), the earliest verse we know has regulated
very strictly such variation. There is hardly any question of
a trochee in an epic hexameter (though a beginning like
TToXXa \i<T(T0fi€U7j has been taken to be an indication of such

a thing) ; no question of a Sapphic line's beginning with

or — v^^; no spondee in the 'even' places of an iambic line.
The verse of the Lesbian poets does seem, it is true, to admit
the substitution of one group of four syllables for another.
The most curious example of this is in a quite recently
recovered poem of Alcaeus, the verse of which is that known
to readers of Horace as the Lesser Asclepiadean. The four
syllables which follow the ' basis ' may be not only — ^ v^ — ,

but also w w or v^ or w-^-. But this variation

is regulated in its incidence. It is admitted in every second
line, the alternate lines being strictly Asclepiadean {Oxyr/iyn-
chus Papyri^ vol. x, pp. 73-5).

Very different are the beginnings of verse in Italy. The
Versus Faimius or Saturnius shows no such strict regulation
and definiteness of form. It is multiform, if not irregular,
in the highest degree — Caesius Bassus says that it varied so
much ' ut vix invenerim apud Naevium quos pro exemplo
ponerem ' — and it has been the subject of much discussion.
Was it a genuine Italian verse, independent of Greek verse,
in its origin at all events, if perhaps influenced by it later?
Was it strictly quantitative, or much affected by accent, or
wholly accentual? Which theory will best account for the
greatest number of the extant lines ? Ancient metricians
(quite justifiably, as far as our evidence goes) quoted as a
normal Saturnian, if any one form could be regarded as
normal, the line :

dabunt malum Metelli Naevio poetae.

198 HISTORY OF METRE

The accentual theory scans this

dabunt malum Metelli | Na^vio po^tae.

There are three accents in the first part of the line, and two in
the second : both parts begin with a trochaic or 'falling' effect,
the first syllable being accented. Scanned by quantity the
verse resembles

The queen was in her parlour eating bread and honey,

which Macaulay quoted to illustrate it in the Preface to his
Lays. It is

\J — — — w — v^ — — ,

The quantitative theory makes the verse ' iambic ', the move-
ment is a ' rising ' one, at all events in the first part of the
line ; though of course we may describe the whole — for
a modern inquirer, and without asserting that the ancients
felt it so or felt it so throughout — as consisting of two trochaic
tripodies preceded by an anacrusis. The accentual theory of
the verse has somewhat lost ground in recent years. Leo
threw the weight of his authority into the ' quantitative ' scale.
The issue cannot here be discussed at length. There is
certainly some difficulty in supposing that Livius and Naevius
composed at the same time ^ — though in different works — two
kinds of verse which are so different in principle. As to the
vital matter of accounting for extant lines — there are about
170 in all — it may be said briefly that, while the quantitative
theory leaves many lines unexplained or very hard to explain,
the accentual view explained too 7?iany : i. e. it did not account
for them convincingly, it was too complaisant or flexible in its
scheme.

The verse certainly consists of two parts. There is almost

^ Livius perhaps began by translating the Odyssey into Saturnians,
producing plays later, but there is quite sufficient evidence that Naevius
wrote his Belhini Pnnicutti in his old age, after he had produced many
dramas.

AT ROME 199

always some sort of pause or division about the middle of it.
It is also pervaded by alliteration, a feature of Old Italian
poetry which long survived, finding its way into the hexameter
and other metres of Greek origin. In these two features it
bears a marked resemblance to Old English verse, such as was
written by Langland or whoever was the author of Piers
Plowma7i :

I was ^yeori of wandringe ' and wente me to reste
Under a brod banke ' bi a bourne syde.

In the English verse alliteration is regular : a letter or sound
occurs twice in the first half of the verse and once in the
second. This was not the case in Saturnians, though now
and again the alliteration in' a Saturnian does conform to
English rule : ^

magnam domum decoremque | ditem vexarant.
There was a revival of verse of this kind in the West of England
in the latter half of the fourteenth century. During the same
period Chaucer and other poets were writing verse of a different
kind, characterized by rhyme and by a regular rhythm (iambic)
derived from French verse. '^ Thus there would seem to be in
England in 1350-1400 a state of things as regards metre very
closely resembling the conditions at Rome in the third century
B.C. Does this analogy support the view that Saturnians were
accentual ? Does it make it much easier to believe that

^ Now arid again, also, a Saturnian shows what is said to be a feature
of early Celtic verse, the 'binding* of the beginning of the second
hemistich with the end of the first by alliteration :

superbiter cowtemptim ] cowterit legiones.
2 Mr. Bridges' poem on ' Christmas Eve ' is a very subtle reproduction
of what might have been written between 1350 and 1400, for the new
tendencies are not excluded altogether. Rhyme and rhythm both
appear in it :

The constellated sounds] [ran sprinkling on earth's floor
As the dark vault above |1 with stars was spangled o'er.

200 HISTORY OF METRE

accentual verse and verse that was quantitative in its basis
were written at the same time ? Perhaps it helps a little
towards such a conclusion. But it would be highly unsafe
to take it as evidence or to give it any serious weight. For
there are considerable differences. It does not appear that
the same poet ever wrote both, in the distinct and wholly
separate — consistently separate — way in which Naevius wrote
his Saturnians and his dramatic metres derived from the
Greek. There had been some confusion of the two in
Layamon, Of Langland Prof. Saintsbury says, ' He knows
the new metre quite well enough to have written it had he
chosen, certainly well enough (which is perhaps even a higher
degree) to avoid falling into it constantly when he does not
choose, though its irresistibleness traps him now and then '
{^History of English Prosody, vol. i, p. i8i). A second differ-
ence between the two cases is even more important. It is not
suggested — there are no indications — that the same word would
be pronounced differently, or would tend to be delivered differ-
ently, in the two forms of verse, 'weori' and 'wandringe', the
words in themselves, sounded alike whether they occurred in
the verse of Langland- or in the verse of Chaucer. x\lliteration
and rhythm were different devices for dealing with the same
linguistic material. But it is not so in Naevius, if Saturnians
were accentual. ' dabunt malum ', if the verse is accentual, are
in falling rhythm : the first syllable of two is the syllable that
is conspicuous or that counts. If the verse is quantitative,
the syllables make two iambi, ^ — w - . Could the same
material be treated so differently by the same poet at the same
time ? It cannot be said to be impossible. But the English
analogy does not make it much more probable, in any very
definite way. If we are to look for an analogy, we might
perhaps point rather to the time when the edifice of quanti-
tative verse was crumbling, the time when Hilarius could write
in trochaics * nihil ultra vox honoris afferebat desuper ', or

AT ROME 20 1

Augustine ' genus autem mixtum piscis ', while Claudian could
write quantitative verse with a correctness scarcely inferior to
Ovid's.^ The converse, it might be argued, is equally con-
ceivable, a time when accent was waning and quantity gaining
ground. But the two cases are not exactly on the same level.
The accent that was gaining ground in the fourth century was
an undoubted feature of the real, living speech of the people,
and literary verse was or had become an artificial thing. In
the time of Andronicus and Naevius, quantitative verse was no
doubt in a sense artificial. It was cultivated by men of letters
who knew Greek. But it succeeded and prevailed — succeeded
even on the stage, for popular audiences. Could it have done
so if it w^as a superstructure of an artificial kind with no real
foundations in the Latin language ? Mr. Bridges and others
have tried to make English verse quantitative ; they have pro-
duced some curious and beautiful pieces that have an interest
for scholars, but they have not altered the main current of
English verse. Why did Ennius succeed where Mr. Bridges
and his predecessors have failed ?

That is the issue — what has been said is rather a statement
of the issue than a necessarily final argument. There are things
which the accentualists could adduce on the other side. They
could say: 'If the experiment succeeded, it was largely because
the incidence of accent in Latin was such as to make coinci-
dence of ictus and accent a thing easily achieved.' They
might argue also that the morphology of Latin points to a
quite strong stress accent in early times, Nomasios, for example,
becoming Numisius or Numerius. And they could point to
the fact, or probability, that owing to the practical and un-
imaginative bent of the Old Italian character, no great and

^ Claudian (if the text at the place is sound) lapsed once and once
only into a colloquial or non-classical quantity :

ipsum etiam feritura lov^em {De R. Pros. iii. 359") ;
feritura is a good example of the Law of Breves Breviantes.

202 HISTORY OF METRE

widely known poems had been written in the native form of
verse. Ennius had not, like Mr. Bridges, a Shakespeare or
a Milton before him.

The recent and still rather tentative science of 'Comparative
Metric' has of course included Saturnians in its view, and has
endeavoured to bring them into relation to a supposed Indo-
European form of verse. That form is a verse of sixteen
syllables, 8 + 8, which gradually took iambic or choriambic
shape at its close ; the half of it became oooow — «^o (where
o stands for an indeterminate syllable^ short or long). To
relate to this a verse which has the look of being two tripodies —
one of them conspicuously trochaic — does not seem an easy
matter, but it can be done. The Greek tetrameter, iambic or
trochaic, made its second half catalectic, while the first half
remained complete. The long line was thus an artistic structure ;
it did not end twice in the same way. But the Saturnian cut
short and condensed both halves at the end, while also making
the second ' acephalous '. The original scheme would be

\U — \J — W— \J — \J — \J — \J — w —

(of course not in this strict form : for ^, a long syllable or two
shorts would freely be admitted). The Saturnian is

v^— v^— w— I — |a — w — \j — I — (or — v_/ —\j I — — )
novem lovis conc6rdes | filiae sor6res.^

^ The iambic dimeter is seen in

The king was in his counting-house | counting out his money,

and the treatment of verse of this type by English poets is sometimes
instructive, or at all events suggestive, for the interpretation of Saturnians.
The occurrence of a compound word or of two monosyllables at the end
of a half-line shows how natural and obvious is the effect of syncopation
there,

under yonder beech-tree | single on the green sward.

Meredith has also syncopation in other places :

the white star hovers
Low over dim fields [ fresh with bloomy dew.

AT ROME 203

Both parts of the line end in the same way, and the double
syncopation tends to separate them. At the end of the first,
hiatus and syllaba anceps naturally occur :

virum mihi^ Camena, | insece versutum (P. Liv. i.)*

(Livius's rendering of dv8pa /jlol evuene, Movaa — he addresses
the Italian goddess of song),

subigit omnem Loucanam | obsidesque abdoucit

(I. 405. 6.)

Hiatus has been thought to occur also at the end of each
dipody, as in

topper citi i ad aedes | venimus Circae,

but it certainly occurs also within a dipody or after one foot

postquam avem aspexit | in templo Anchisa.

The quantitative scheme, it must be admitted, requires many
licences to make it workable ; so many that its claim to be
a real scheme becomes rather doubtful. The second part
of the Saturn ian line has an obvious resemblance to certain
phrases which existed in a quite definite shape in Greek verse.
It coincides in syllables with

" veris et Favoni,

the second kcoXop in one of Horace's Archilochian metres
(Odes i. 4), and also with the second part of a line which
Horace writes in Odes ii. 18

mea renidet j in domo lacunar —

In the first of these lines, and in others,

Knees and tresses folded | to slip and ripple idly,

the arrangement of words seems to make the second part begin with an
anacrusis (or, if we prefer that description, an acephalous iambic phrase
recovers its first syllable), as in Saturnians we have in expeditioneni or
Romdnt rediit triuntphans.

1 References are to Diehl's Altlateinische Inschriften (I.) and Poctae
Romani veteres (P.) in the Bonn ' Kleine Texte '.

204 HISTORY OF METRE

a line which requires only the insertion of an iambus (e.g.
'quidem' after 'mea') to make it a regular Saturnian. That
part of the Saturnian coincided so often with a well-known
Greek verse was no doubt one of the things which caused the
Roman metricians to treat it as quantitative. If the writers
of it wrote it as quantitative, they were negligent of its
proper rhythmical effect. In a trochaic phrase like * in domo
lacunar' it is not unlikely that the penultimate syllable
was Tpi\povos or TpL(TT]/i09 L_ = v^ w w), and this would
forbid its resolution into two shorts. This the Roman writers
of Saturnians ignored or had forgotten. They sometimes
resolve the syllable, as Plautus resolves the penultimate syllable
of an iambic septenarius.

One of the most certain variations in the Saturnian is a
further syncope, the suppression of another syllable, so that

instead of - v.^ - ^ we have - ^ ^ — . With the first

half normal, this results in coincidence with a choriambus :

-w^ -^

Amulius divisque gratulabatur.^

Another curious and clearly recognizable variation is the
substitution of trochee for iambus. The substitution of a
choriambus for two iambi — which means the substitution of
a trochee for the first — appears to occur in English iambics,
as when a blank verse begins ' Purples the east . . .'. It is
found also in the Greek trimeter, and though it is very rare
{supra^ p. 86), one or two of the instances may have been
known to Milton. But in the extant Saturnians choriambi
are very few, and many other appearances of trochees have
to be reckoned with. In the line

immolabat auream | victimam pulcram (P. Naev. 2.)

^ The cadence of the scazon is the most frequent ending for a period

in oratorical prose {^—^ ). It is notable that other Saturnian

forms coincide with favourite prose-endings : ' maxume mereto '' —\j —
\-/^w, 'donum danunt Herc6li' (Zielinski's double cretic), 'terra

pestem teneto ' (the ' Asiatic ' clausula, — w w — iri . Clearly these

were things that appealed to the Italian ear whether in verse or prose.

AT ROME 205

the whole of the first part is trochaic, atiream taking the place
of Metelli. But - v^ - may take the place of ' Metelli ' without
any change in the preceding feet

donum danunt Hercolei | maxume mereto (I. 65. 4.)

and the converse of this seems to occur in the old incantation
(P. carm. vetust. 6)

— \^ — — \^

Terra pestem teneto

Salus hie maneto {y\— — w ?).

So in Naevius t8

\J — — v^

deinde pollens sagittis ! inclutus Arquitenens (— ww i—v^w — ?)

There are numerous other variations, some slight, some
perplexing in the extreme. Among the slighter is the admis-
sion of an anapaest for an iambus, or of a dactyl for a trochee
('conterit legiones', P. Naev. 31). A few lines appear to have
no diaeresis in the middle — a word does not end at the end of
the first part. There are two examples in the dedicatory
inscription of a Guild of Cooks :

opiparum ad vitam quolunjdam festosque dies

(I. 86. 2.)
a line which seems to begin with w 00 — ± — ^— , where
the cretic may be compared with HercoH quoted above.^

^ The &vid\x\% festosque dies or -dam festosque dies ( v./ w— ) is strange,

on any quantitative theory, and the more so because it would have been
so easy to make it answer to the norm (if there was a norm) by making
it -dant diesque festos ( = Naevio poetae). The exact date of the inscription
is not known. If the cooks were in Sardinia before 204, cooking for
Roman officers, it is a curious coincidence that there \vas in the army
(perhaps as a petty officer in an auxiliary cohort) a man from Rudiae who
was to be famous as a poet. But it would be fanciful to suggest that
the cooks employed Ennius to write the verses for them. Ennius no
doubt could write Saturnians, though he disparaged them later when he
competed with Naevius in epic poetry {Annates vii, init.). His

2o6 HISTORY OF METRE

The fifth line is :

ququei {= coqui) hue (= hoc) dederunt imperajtoribus
summis,

where the second part of the line seems to show the syncopa-
tion already illustrated ('-toribus summis', -^^ i— — ). If
so, the first part is a complete iambic dimeter, which might be
quoted by the holders of the Indo-European theory. They
might point also to forms of the second part of the line,
such as

imperator dedicat (I. 66, 5.)

in expeditionem (P. Naev. 20.)

which together might be held to point to 'in expeditionibus'

as a possible form.* But probably these are accidental vagaries

rather than reversions conscious or unconscious to a primitive

type. Against them must be set the most perplexing variations

of all, when the second part of the line assumes so attenuated

a form

parisuma fuit ^

fuisse virum

that one is tempted to resume the accentual theory and
suppose that the principle of the second part was simply
that there must be accents in it.

Upon the primitive Italian versification there supervened —
overlapping it considerably — the verse of the early drama.

Hedyphagetica (and his gout !) could be adduced as showing an interest
in the art of the cooks.

^ The ancient metricians cited half a dozen different forms of Greek
verse as answering to various forms of the Saturnian. One of these
makes the first part an iambic dimeter :

turdis edacibus dolos | comparas amice.

In nearly all of these schemes the second part is the same, — v^ — »^ — ^
(* Naevio poetae'). An iambic dimeter there, we may infer, was
unknown, or at all events unfamiliar.

'^ parisuma fuit is not quite so difficult as fuisse virutn, perhaps, for
fuit (fuvit) may beft'tit.

AT ROME 207

The nature and history of this have been briefly considered
above (pp. 79 f.)- It may be taken as estabHshed that this verse
took some account of accent : that can hardly be doubted by
any careful reader of Prof. Lindsay's Appendix to his larger
edition of the Captivi. And with this regard for accent are
connected the deviations from the Greek restrictions. Livius
and Naevius made words like * dabunt ' or 'malum' iambic,
not trochaic, and they had to face some deviation of ictus
from accent, especially in certain parts of the line, such as the
beginning and the end of a senarius :

utinam ne in nemore . . .
vecti petebant.

A word of one or of three syllables immediately started a
movement natural to Latin in which accent and ictus largely
coincided. O di immoridles was a natural beginning for an
iambic line, mimortales di was an effect to be avoided ;
lab6ra?is, quae'rens^ pdrcens, illi servie?is was iambic throughout
for the Roman ear, though there is a short syllable only in the
first foot and the last. In trochaic verse the difficulties were
less, and popular verse as we have seen was often trochaic
{supra^ p. 103) :

Gallos Caesar in triiimphum duxit, idem in curiam.

Ennius originated a different movement in his hexameters, in
which the deviations from Greek quantitative principles were
very slight. But the other kind of verse flourished and
advanced in the drama, and hexameters for long made little
progress towards Greek finish. A new movement towards
precision and euphony begins only within the last fifty years
of the Republic, with Cicero, Laevius, and Catullus. The
versification of the Republican period is characterized on the
whole by the neglect of Greek restrictions. Certain new
restrictions and compensations were introduced, no doubt,
which belonged specially to Latin. But the general fact

2o8 HISTORY OF METRE

remains. It depends on the point of view whether we say
that this Roman verse has greater freedom and naturalness,
or greater licence and irregularity.

In the time of Augustus and his successors the Roman
handling of Greek metres was very different. Apart from
comedy, probably, and the Fables of Phaedrus certainly, there
was very little that the strictest Hellenist could call licence
or irregularity. On the contrary, the Greek would have to
acknowledge that Latin versification was stricter than his own.
He would find tragic verse in which the fifth foot was always
a spondee : in lyric verse of the Glyconic, Asclepiadean, and
hendecasyllabic type, the first two syllables always both long,
never ^ - or - ^ (which Catullus had admitted) : the heroic
hexameter almost always ending in a word of two or three
syllables, very rarely in a monosyllable, very rarely in a word
of four syllables, and still more rarely in one of five : the
elegiac pentameter nearly always ending in a word of two
syllables : and many other limitations of the same kind. In
this period, as in the earlier one, the Romans modify Greek
forms of verse to suit their own language. But now the
modifications are within Greek rules and involve hardly any
transgression of them. New laws are imposed. Horace enacts
a number of new rules for his lyric metres, sometimes obeying
them with absolute uniformity, sometimes deviating once or
twice from his rule, as if to show that it is after all only an
enactment of his own, as when he once in an early ode begins
a Glyconic line with - w

ignis Iliacas domos

and twice neglects the diaeresis which he imposed upon Alcaics

spectandus in cerjtamine Martio.

Horace's rules, as far as we know, were regarded by his
successors as absolutely binding. Statius was not free to
write an Alcaic line like that.

AT ROME 209

For this tendency in later Roman versification more than
one cause can be assigned. There is first the very general
cause that the Romans were related to the Greeks as Statins,
when he wrote Alcaics, to Horace. In the form of their
poetry they were imitators, and the imitator or successor
cannot take the same liberties that were taken by his master.
What in the predecessor were the pleasing vagaries or experi-
ments of genius are in the imitator only licence or negligence.
Greek and Latin verse composition at the present day is
subject to this principle. Nobody proposes to allow a school-
boy to write a pentameter like

quam modo qui me unum atque unicum amicum habuit.

The hexameter he is expected to attempt is the Virgilian or
Ovidian, his elegiac couplet is to be modelled upon Ovid,
or at all events upon nothing earlier than Propertius or Tibullus.
Of every form of verse at Rome it may be said, in Aristotle's
words, that TroXXa? fiera^oXas fieralSaXova-a kTravcraro kir^l
ecrx€ Tr]v avrfj^ (pva-ii/. Of course the modern composer
does sometimes try to write verse exactly in the vein of
Lucretius or Catullus. But that is a four de force or a special
kind of literary exercise. The ancient poet or verse-writer
was not an imitator in the same degree, and did not set about
his work in that way. It was not only at Rome that this
principle operated : Callimachus and Apollonius had prepared
the way for Virgil by avoiding many of the features of Homeric
verse; they did not allow themselves the freer and looser
movement of many Homeric lines, only the more euphonious
and well-balanced were retained.

A second cause was undoubtedly the nature of the Latin
language, its fibre or texture, and in particular the nature and
incidence of its accent. A stress accent, even though slight,
came into competition with the ictus or beat of the verse, as
the Greek accent did not do. It is probable, though perhaps

1887 P

2IO HISTORY OF METRE

not provable, that this was the reason why in hexameters an
ending like

nee mi pretium dederitis

was avoided. Whether such changes were made consciously
or half-consciously or from a vague and almost unconscious j
feeling for euphony, it is difficult to say. It seems certain
that the more complex and variable types of Greek lyric were
found to be unworkable in Latin. The language could not be
poured into moulds so exact and so elaborate. The reader
could not follow so subtle a structure, partly because the Latin
accent would lead him astray. The Latin accent also had
perplexing effects upon quantity. There is practically nothing
in Greek that resembles ' domi mansit 'or 'ex Graecis bonis
Latinas'.^ Even in the Augustan age, when the sense for quantity
and for metrical form had been highly developed, the reader
probably demanded some well-known and recurrent metrical
scheme to guide him. Horace, when he was asked by Augustus
to compose a hymn for the Ludi Saeculares, must have been
tempted to choose some Pindaric form. But he chooses one
of the Lesbian stanzas which he had already practised and
'standardized'. He does not even take the Alcaic stanza,
which he had used with conspicuous success for political and
religious themes. He selects the Sapphic stanza, with its three

1 The incidence of accent in Greek was different and much more
varied, and even if it happened to fall similarly on a group of syllables,
being a musical accent or pitch-accent, it had not the same power to
affect quantity. In Greek verse quantity was rigid. It is sometimes
said that Greek varies its quantities more than Latin, and Martial gave
currency to the idea when he wrote :

Graeci, quibus est nihil negatum
et quos 'A/3f? "Apes decet sonare.

But in the same dialect and in the same period quantity' is not variable
to any appreciable extent. Attic tragedy had ^(Tvos and fiovvos beside
^ivos and fxSvos, but the speech of tragedy is composite, and these forms
were Ionic or Old Attic.

AT ROME 211

lines all exactly alike and the fourth extremely simple. And
he chooses this with Greek precedent against him, for the fixed
and recurrent short stanza of the Lesbian 'individualistic' lyric
had had no place in such public celebrations.

The third cause was a metrical theory which had become
current at Rome in Horace's time. It was set out by Varro,
and afterwards by Caesius Bassus. It has been traced back
to Heraclides Ponticus, and it may have been invented or
developed by him. We shall have to consider it further in
dealing with Horace's lyrics. It was a theory of the origin
and derivation of metres. They were supposed to have sprung
from certain simple verse forms, especially the hexameter and
the iambic trimeter. The trochaic tetrameter was also required.
A hexameter like

Kovprjri? r kiid\ovTO kol
AiTcoXoL ii^ve\dpixaL

gave birth to the Glyconic and Pherecratean lines. A 'hen-
decasyllabic' line was accounted for in a similar way. It
followed that the first two syllables should both be long.
A Sapphic line contained the beginning of a trochaic tetra-
meter :

v^ —

mteger vitae,

and since the Romans and the Latin language had a liking
for spondees and long syllables,^ the Roman lyric poet was
ready to enact that the second foot must be a spondee.

^ It seems probable, though it might be difficult to prove, that Latin
supplied spondees in greater profusion than Greek. It is not difficult
to recall terminations that are heavier in Latin, showing either a long
syllable or a syllable closed by a consonant where Greek has something
less : corpus, ow^xa, inonti, ntoniem, monfes, dvdpfy dvSpd, dvdpis, dvdpas,
solvebas, solvi, sohtsit, eAi»€S, eKvad, AeAutfa, eXvads, fen'ebas, feriebatur^
(Tvnres, hvuTiTo. No doubt there are also cases of the converse, such
as vavTT]s, nauid, a^X-qvq, lund.

P 2

212 HISTORY OF METRE

All this theory and practice began at Rome before the-
Empire, in the last days of the Republic. Catullus, it is
true, does not adopt the theory in his Sapphics and hendeca-
syllabics.^ But it was known in his time, and he and his friends
(preceded by Laevius and Cicero) were cultivating a more
exact and refined versification than had hitherto been attempted.
This they learned largely from the poets of the Alexandrian
age, from Callimachus or Euphorion. Alexandrian poetry
never attained to the highest levels, and after Apollonius it
became feebler and more frigid. But Rome was a different
place from Egypt or Syria,

quas sub perpetuis tenuerunt fata tyrannis.

It was still a free State in CatuUus's time (though freedom was
gravely menaced), and it had great traditions of freedom and
self-respect, a national life and spirit which in the next
generation resulted in poetry such as had not been written
for some four centuries — since the great age of Athens came
to an end with Euripides.

This greater poetry of Rome and Italy begins, for us^ with
the Georgics (completed and read to Octavian at Atella in
29 B.C.). It is not likely that what Varius had produced was
of great importance ; Ennius had been national in spirit, but
crude and rugged in form; Lucretius's subject had not been
specially Roman, and his verse fell short of consistent finish
and harmony.

The century which preceded the Georgics was a period of
very varied literary activity at Rome and of very varied
experiments in metre. In the last three decades of the second
century B.C. Lucilius was writing his Satiirae, in which after
experiments with other metres (iambic and trochaic, written of

^ Some of his hendecasyllabic poems have only as the 'basis',

e. g. Nos. V, IX, X. In these he may have been deliberately following
the Heraclidean precept.

AT ROME 213

course in the Roman fashion, and a few elegiacs) he made
a free and rather formless hexameter the vehicle of his satire,
creating a type of satire — in hexameters throughout — of which
Quintilian could say ' tota nostra est'; Accius was carrying
on the work of Ennius and Pacuvius in tragedy, writing verse
which was even more defiantly Roman in its frequent spondees
than the verse of Ennius (supra, p. 89) ; and comedy was
dealing with Roman or Italian scenes in the Togata, to be
presently succeeded by the Atellana — both of these in verse
substantially similar to that of Plautus. Even these coarser
and more national forms of comedy had to compete in popular
favour (as Terentian comedy earlier had had to compete) with
boxing-matches or gladiatorial shows, which now received the
recognition of the State. In the general life and politics of the
time, Roman or Italian, anti-Hellenic tendencies are repre-
sented by Marius, the peasant-soldier of Arpinum, whose rival
Sulla was much more Hellenist and cosmopolitan.

Roman tendencies and native ideas did not hold the field.
Beside them there was much study and effort more or less
inspired by Greece, and especially by Alexandria and Per-
gamum. Accius wrote various forms of verse, outside his
tragedies. Whether he wrote any Saturnians is doubtful.^
He certainly wrote Sotadean verse, which had more vogue"
at Rome than the modern reader realizes (' Ionic a maiore '
in the form of a catalectic tetrapody,

and he used this Sotadean verse as a vehicle for discourse
on poetry and literary topics. Eratosthenes had dealt with
the history of comedy in verse, and Horace's alleged prede-
cessor, Neoptolemus of Parium, with the principles of poetry

1 It was" maintained by Leo, but the evidence is not quite conclusive.
This wras part of his case for the quantitative nature of Saturnians. If
Accius wrote them, some sort of continuity of tradition comes into view :
Accius— Varro — Caesius Bassus.

214 HISTORY OF METRE

in general. At Rome, besides Accius, there were Volcacius
Sedigitus and Porcius Licinus. From the former we have
what was an Alexandrian thing, a * canon ' of poets, the well-
known lines in which Roman comic poets are marshalled in
order of merit, Caecilius coming first and Plautus second :

Plautus secundus facile exsuperat ceteros ;

Licinus dealt with the history of poetry in verse :

Punico bello secundo Musa pinnato gradu
intulit se bellicosam in Romuli gentem feram.

'Musa' is Ennius's goddess of Greek or Graeco-Roman song,
not the 'Camena' whom Andronicus had addressed in the
first line of his Saturnian Odyssey; and Licinus is nearer
the truth than Horace with his 'post Punica bella '. The two
trochaic lines of Licinus show no violation of Greek rule :
there is no spondee in the first, third, or fifth place. ^

In the first three decades of the next century (100-70 B.C.)
a new movement begins in Roman poetry. To that time
belongs Cicero's version in Latin hexameters of the ^aLvofieva
of Aratus, which, as he tells us himself, he wrote when he was
'admodum adulescentulus', a phrase which points to 90-85 B.C.
or, if it exaggerates his youthfulness, to 80 at latest. The hexa-
meter has undergone a great change. Straggling and unpruned
in Ennius, it is here coerced into a shape not greatly different
from that of the Augustan age. How far the change was due
to Cicero himself it is difficult to say, for only scanty fragments
of the verse of this time have survived, and still more scanty
evidence for dating them. To these years probably belong
Matius's rendering of the I/iad, and an earlier Moretum in
verse much looser than that of the Moretum which came to be
ascribed to Virgil. Apart from hexameters, Catulus presents

^ In the twelve lines, however, in which Licinus deals with the career
and death of Terence, the versification is less strict.

AT ROME 215

an example of a Roman of rank amusing himself with the
composition of epigrams in an Alexandrian vein : '

constiteram exorientem Auroram forte salutans,
cum subito a laeva Roscius exoritur, etc.;

and there are the romantic effusions and metrical excursions
of Laevius, commonly assigned to this time, though the date
and personality of Laevius are somewhat obscure and ill-
attested. In Laevius metrical and poetical experiment seems
to be a kind of pastime, the fanciful and artificial occupation
of hours of leisure, composition such as is depicted a little
later by Catullus :

scribens versiculos uterque nostrum
ludebat numero modo hoc, modo illo,
reddens mutua per iocum atque vinum
ut convenerat esse delicatos.

The extreme of artificiality is seen in the Alexandrian attempt,
after the example of Dosiadas, to write a poem in lines of
such regulated length as to present to the eye on the page the
figure of an altar or an axe or other object. The surviving
fragments of Laevius reveal also experiments in the precis •
composition of Ionics, and a curiously romantic and eccentric
treatment of old Greek stories in iambic dimeters, along wuth
a new vein of fancy in titles, double compounds such as
Protesilaudamia and Sirenocirca. Laodamia wonders whether
her long-absent lord has fallen under the spell of some
enchantress in Asia, decked out in Lydian gold and gems :

aut

nunc quaepiam alia de Ilio

Asiatico ornatu adfluens

aut Sardiano aut Lydio,

fulgens decore et gratia

pellicuit ?

1 Mainly Alexandrian, though there are earlier examples, one or two
of them attributed to Plato.

2i6 HISTORY OF METRE

Andromache has twined a wreath for Hector :

tu, Andromacha, per ludum manu
lascivola ac tenellula
capiti meo trepidans libens,
insolita plexti munera.

We are far from Homer and Homer's spirit when Andromache's
hand is ' lascivola ac tenellula ', and these inolliculi versus of
a te7ier poeta ^ are metrically careful and exact ; they run
smoothly, and the second foot is a pure iambus. In his
liking for this metre Laevius anticipates the taste of later
centuries and reminds us of the age of Prudentius and early
Christian poetry. In diction as in metre he had a tendency to
curious refinements, to what is unfamiliar, bizarre, or recherche^
(Aul. Gel!, xix. 7. 4).

Thus Laevius, if his work is rightly placed about 80 b.c,
was a forerunner of the group of young poets whom Cicero
called * cantores Euphorionis ', out of whose number Asinius
Pollio and Cornelius Gallus (whom Cicero perhaps had in
mind when he spoke of Euphorion) survived to see the
Augustan age. In their hands and in their time (roughly
65-45 B.C.) poetry at Rome was what it would quite naturally
be in a period of great political agitation and social unrest.
It was either violently political and personal, plunging into the
midst of the unrest and agitation, as in Catullus's verses on
Caesar :

socer generque, perdidistis omnia;

or it dealt with the most remote and romantic stories, such
as were collected for Gallus by Parthenius in his 'EpcortKa

^ Catullus's phrase for his friend Caecilius. There were precedents
for the lyric treatment of Homeric stories in Alcman, Stesichorus, and
Sappho. The Andromache fragment recalls the recently recovered poem
on the wedding of Hector and Andromache, attributed (though not with
certainty) to Sappho.

AT ROME 217

TTaOrj/iaTa, as in CatuUus's Peleus and Thetis^ Calvus's lo^
Cinna's Smyrna^ and the extant Ciris^ which later was attri-
buted to Virgil, who was then a youth. Lucretius stood aloof
from the tempests of the time in a different spirit, preaching
with grave earnestness the creed of Epicurus, which was to set
men free from unrest and ambition, from the fear of gods and
the fear of death. But we are here concerned with the metrical
qualities of all this poetry, not with its spirit or its themes.

Both in its iambic and its romantic vein the poetry of the
' cantores ' was characterized by a high degree of finish and
exactness and even artificiality. To write a poem in purely
iambic feet throughout (as Catullus did in his Fhaselus and in
his most venomous attack on Caesar, No. XXIX) was something
of a tour de force, especially in the somewhat heavy and
spondaic language of Latium. The workmanship was the
workmanship of Callimachus,^ and the choice of metres was
more or less Alexandrian, only now and again deviating into
direct imitation of Sappho. Callimachus had used the 'scazon*
or 'choriambus' extensively in his Fables, as a recently recovered
papyrus has enabled us to realize. In their treatment of the
hexameter the ' cantores ' showed similar smoothness and
finish. They decried Ennius, and agreed with Callimachus in
deprecating the long and ambitious epic or kvkKlkov iroLrjiia.
They cultivated poetic diction (though they have still a number
of prosaic words and phrases which Augustan poetry rejected),
and they spent great pains in polishing the cadence of their
lines. Elision is infrequent, though sometimes rather harsh
when it does occur. They have an Alexandrian liking, which

^ Not, specially, of Archilochus. Horace had some justification when
he wrote :

Parios ego primus iambos
ostendi Latio, numeros animosque secutus
Archilochi.

Catullus, no doubt, had something of the animus: perhaps more of it
than Horace.

2i8 HISTORY OF METRE

Cicero did not share, for the (rnovSeid^cov, seen in Catullus's
poem, in the Ciri's (to a less degree), in the anonymous passage
(no doubt rightly assigned to a 'cantor Euphorionis') (Bahrens,
J^r, Poet. Lat.j p. 327)

tuque Lycaonio prognata e semine nymphe,
quam gelido raptam de vertice Nonacrenae,

and in the scanty fragments of Varro Atacinus, who may be
said to stand between them and Virgil or to represent the
transition from them to the Augustan age :

hortantes ' o Phoebe ' et ' ieie ' conclamarant.

These are minor features of their verse. Its general character
is that it has a certain monotony in cadence and heaviness in
construction. The monotony arises from the too frequent use
of a type of line, quite effective in itself, which is in evidence
at the very opening of Catullus's poem :

Peliaco quondam prognatae vertice pinus
dicuntur hquidas Neptuni nasse per lindas.^

Accent and ictus coincide three times. The heaviness of
construction consists in the frequent extension of a grammatical
period or sentence over many lines, its subordinate clauses or
cola often occupying a whole hexameter each. The oratorical
period is dominant ; the structure of the language has not yet
been adapted to verse. The sense too often ends with the end
of the line. The frequency with which it does so has been
investigated. The result is to show it happening about twice
as often in Catullus as in Virgil. The inquirer Drachmann
(in Hermes, vol. 43) gives figures for the ending of periods,
sentences, and subordinate clauses. The figures for sentences
will suffice for our present purpose. They are : Cicero, Aratea,
50-3 percent. ; Catullus LXVI, 50-8 per cent.; Lucretius, about j

^ Observe in this line how Catulhis's Alexandrianism betraj's itself in
' dicuntur ' (itXeiovTai, (pari^iTai). The story is not a reality to the poet ;
he thinks of it as a myth.

AT ROME 219

50 percent.; Ciris, 51-3 per cent.; Culex, 41*3 per cent.;
Georgics, 34*8 per cent. ; Aeneid^ 27*7 per cent. (These figures
must be taken as only approximate, for they are based not on
a survey of the whole texts, but on tracts of two or three hundred
lines.) Very often the subordinate clause which occupies
a whole line is participial :

caerula verrentes abiegnis aequora palmis, (Catullus.)
coccina non teneris pedibus Sicyonia servans,

{Ciris, 169.)

a thing which Virgil and the Augustan poets admitted very
sparingly. The present participle in the nominative — especially
if it came at the end of the line, and was preceded by the
principal verb — seems to have been particularly disliked; in the
Eclogues, which usher in a new era, there is only one example
of it — one in 829 lines — and that is an echo of Lucretius :

florentes ferulas et grandia lilia quassans.

{Ed. X. 25 : Lucr. iv. 587.)

What remained for Virgil to do, and what he did — perhaps
Varro Atacinus helped — was to recast the language of poetry,
to pour it into different moulds, to break it up into shorter
sentences which either occupied about half a line or at all
events stopped at a caesura, usually the penthemimeral or
hephthemimeral. This was a thing which never had to be
done for Greek, in historical times ; the Homeric poet or
succession of poets had achieved this mastery of sentence-
construction in verse. But this was not the whole of Virgil's
secret. The other part of it was to vary the division of the
line in such a way that a whole group of lines gained harmony
and coherence. Instead of a long grammatical sentence with
its clauses occupying lines of verse, we have now a poetic
fabric or structure, a paragraph held together by metrical or
rhythmical variations. The caesura shifts or swings this way
and that, in a way that could often be represented by a curved

220 HISTORY OF METRE

line. Verses formed by one sentence, in which the caesura is
very slight and rather metrical than rhetorical, do occur. But
they are not heaped together. Such a verse often stands very
effectively as the first or last of a group.

The achievement of the Augustan age lay partly in the
mastery of metre, partly in things which lie extra artem
metricam^ the treatment in a new spirit of larger themes —
themes of national significance, or of graver human importance
than the abnormal adventures and passions of lo, Smyrna, or
Scylla. The Georgics is at once the encomium of Italy and
the epic of Man's relations with Nature ; the Aeneid the epic
of a far-reaching purpose of the gods, worked out through the
fortunes and efforts of a strong but submissive personality —
strong at least in the outcome, for such weakness as Aeneas
shows belongs to the earlier part of his career and does not
reappear after his meeting with the shade of Anchises in the
world of ghosts. These things belong to the history of Roman
poetry, not to the history of metre. In the Augustan age several

1 In analysing a group of Virgilian lines, it is cjesirable to have a
different symbol for what we have seen to be the vital caesura, and for
divisions which, though not vital, have yet considerable metrical and
rhetorical importance. The symbol for the latter might be used for
a division which is sometimes the vital one, but is not so in a particular
line. The first of the lines quoted above perhaps has a subordinate
trochaic division : 'sine sorte \ datae 1 '.

irj

AT ROME 221

forms of verse were brought to maturity, were regulated and
more or less finally ' standardized '. One of these was the elegiac
(supra, p. 53). Tragic verse was probably written by Varius
and Ovid in a strict and hellenized form differing little from
the verse of Seneca. Horace gave new grace and finish to the
Lucilian hexameter of satire, while preserving its conversational
ease and variety. And Horace set himself to be the Alcaeus
of Latium and to annex for Rome a new province of lyric
poetry, or rather several provinces, for his lyric had more than
one vein, it could be moral or patriotic, erotic or convivial.
The metres of Horace will be treated in a separate chapter,
but it may be useful to summarize here the changes which he
made in the forms of verse he adopted. They are changes
characteristic of the Roman craftsman. The Roman had an
aptitude for law and for framing definite regulations, and
Horace was the vofMoOirij^ for lyric verse after his time. The
historian of poetry may speak of the secret of lyric verse being
lost with Horace and the moulds broken,^ but what Horace
did — from the metrician's point of view — was to impart to the
moulds a rigidity that was unbreakable. In the metres of the
Odes, there are no variable syllables, no places where the poet
may put a short or a long as he pleases. And this regularity
is obtained by enacting that where the metre admits a long
syllable that syllable shall ahvays be long. In some metres
this had a greater effect than in others. It made Alcaics
capable of a Roman gravidas which eminently suited such
patriotic odes as the first six of Book III. Secondly, Horace
laid it down that certain places in a line must be marked by
the end of a word. In Asclepiadean metres it was the end of
the first, or of the first and second, ^choriambus '. In Sapphics,
and in the first two lines of an Alcaic stanza, the result was to
give the lines a more complex structure, they ceased to be

^ Mr. J. W. Mackail in his sketch oi Latin Literature.

222 HISTORY OF METRE AT ROME

single cola and became lines consisting of two parts, divided
by a caesura and a diaeresis, as in the hexameter and penta-
meter, respectively. It should be added that, though Horace's
regulations were not broken by later poets, most of them were
once or twice departed from by Horace himself, as if he
wished to show that he knew quite well that the verse had
been different and that these restrictions were self-imposed.

The more important metres were so effectually 'standardized'
in the Augustan age that very little that is new in principle is
met with after that time. The historian of verse in the
Imperial age would have to deal with a few new phenomena,
such as the vogue of ' Faliscan ' verse

(quando flagella iugas, ita iuga, — ww— ww— | ww^^-),

unimportant for literature, or the occasional use of Ana-
creontics, as in Hadrian's epitaph for his horse. And if he
went far enough or aimed at completeness he would have to
deal with what is indeed new and in fact revolutionary in
principle — the encroachments of accent and the rise of accen-
tual verse. But this does not come within the scope of a
text-book of classical metre. It is rather a prelude to the
metrical history of later centuries. In its beginnings, moreover,
it is peculiarly entangled and perplexing. Accent supplants
quantity sporadically, at long intervals (as in Hilarius), or the
verse is half invaded by it, or (as in Commodianus) there is
a strange mixture of accent and pseudo - quantity — things
which happen also in Greek verse at Byzantium.

CHAPTER III

THE LYRIC METRES OF HORACE

I. Introductory

The following pages on Horatian lyrics were written before
the rest of this book and without reference to it, as has been
explained in the Preface. I have not rewritten them, or altered
them materially, for it is here in particular that some repetition
may be justified or at all events excused. The Odes of Horace
are read in all schools where classics are taught at all, but
at the present day, unfortunately, many of the pupils do not
know Greek.

The pages, however, were not written for readers entirely
ignorant of Greek. Greek is occasionally quoted, and Greek
theory and practice are touched upon. To what extent this
should be done — for the student of Horace — is a somewhat
difficult matter. He ought to have some idea of the form in
which Horatian metres were composed by Sappho and Alcaeus,
but he is not deeply concerned with the nature and rhythmical
structure which the metres had in these early days, and he is
still more slightly concerned with theories of an 'Indo-European
verse' from which they are supposed to be derived. It is more
important to explain to him (so far as there is any evidence for
it) what views Horace himself probably held about the verse
he was writing. This means touching upon the Varronian
theory of the derivation of metres, the metrical notions of

224 THE LYRIC METRES

Caesius Bassus (who cannot have known Horace, but who was
perhaps born early enough to know Ovid), and the metrical
practice of Seneca in lyric composition. Iq arrangement,
I follow here also the threefold classification of metres which
comes from the Greeks. It seems inevitable — there are only
three ways of combining feet in metrical groups — and it has
two great advantages in that it at once leads the learner from
the simpler to the more complex and follows the chronological
order in which Horace probably mastered the forms of verse
which he wrote.

It seems obvious that the common practice of taking up
some one book of the Odes and reading it continuously cannot
result in introducing the pupil to Horatian metre in any easy
or simple way. If it is the Second Book or the Third, he will
begin with Alcaics ; if it is the First, the variety and complexity
will be too great. Another method of dealing with the Odes
would be that the teacher should make his own selection from
them, beginning with what is metrically simple. So, too, in
reading Pindar, it is better to begin, say, with the fourth
Pythian than with the first Olympian ode. If this method
were adopted, and applied to spheres other than metre, the
result would be that instead of reading perhaps two books of
the Odes from beginning to end, the Class or Form would
read all that are of conspicuous' interest and importance. The
pupil should have a plain text of the whole of Horace (so that
passages in the Satires or Epistles could be looked up) or at all
events an edition of the Odes and Epodes^ such as Mr. Page's.
Initiation into metre should come first; for a Horatian ode
read unmetrically or as prose is an absurdity, more likely
to destroy the pupil's sense of literary form than to foster it.
The selection will therefore begin with a group of poems read
mainly for their metre. To suggest such a metrical group is
all that is strictly relevant here, and beyond the sphere of
metre each teacher will have his own preferences and will

OF HORACE 225

prefer to make his own selection. But, in order to adumbrate
the method as a whole, I venture to append a selection of
poems arranged in other groups. In the metrical group the
pupil should be required to learn by heart, and very thoroughly,
several lines of each form of verse. In simpler metres two
lines may suffice. In Sapphic or Alcaic verse he should be
required to learn and to recite correctly several stanzas. In
suggesting a group of poems to be read for their metre, I have
endeavoured to select things which have an intrinsic interest
also, but which might have been written by Horace at any time
— which are undated, and do not fall into any chronological
arrangement of his lyrics.

Metrical Selection,

Odes I. vii (' Laudabunt alii ') | , ,.

„ IV. vii (' Di ff ugere nives )
Epodes ii (' Beatus ille') iambic.
Odes III. xii (' Miserarum est') Ionic.

II.

Epodes xiii (' Horrida tempestas ').
Odes I. iv ('Solvitur acris hiems').

III.

Odes I. xii (' Quern virum aut heroa ') Sapphic.

„ II. xiii ('Ille et nefasto') Alcaic.

„ IV. viii (' Donarem pateras ') \

„ I. xi ('Tu ne quaesieris'V . , • 1

... , ^. ,. „ }• Asclepiadean.

„ I. ni (' Sic te diva ')

„ I. xiv (' O navis referent ')

Poems of historical inte7'est
(in order of time).
Epodes xvi (' Altera iam teritur.' To be compared with
Virg. ^^/. iv. About 40 B.C.?).

1887 Q

226 THE LYRIC METRES

Epodes vii (' Quo, quo scelesti.' An early protest against
civil war).
„ ix (' Quando repostum.' Actium).

Odes I. xxxvii (' Nunc est bibendum.' Conquest of

Egypt).
„ I. xxxi ('Quid dedicatum.' Temple of Apollo,

28 B.d).
„ II. XV ('lam paucaaratro.' Selfish luxury of the age).
„ III. ii ('Angustam amice.' Virtues called for under |

the new government).
„ III. iii (' lustum et tenacem.' Troy not to be

refounded). ■ I

„ III. V (' Caelo tonantem.' Lessons of history,

Regulus).
„ III. vi (' Delicta maiorum.' Corruption of the age).
„ III. xiv (' Herculis ritu.' Augustus in Spain).
„ III. xxiv ('Intactis opulentior.' The demand for \

moral legislation ; a thankless task, 1. 30, ;

' clarus postgenitis ').

Carmen Saeculare (1. 17, hopes of success — legislation
attempted).

Odes IV. V (' Divis orte bonis ')
„ IV. XV ('Phoebus volentem ')
„ IV. iv and xiv (Successes of Drusus and Tiberius).

Successful reform.

Horace as a Poet.
His poetic art.

Odes I. i (' Maecenas atavis.' The poet's vocation).
„ I. xxxii ('Poscimur. si quid.' Alcaeus).
„ III. XXX (' Exegi monumentum ').
„ IV. ii (Pindar. ' Operosa parvus | carmina fingo ').
„ IV. iii (' Quern tu Melpomene.' Recognition).

OF HORACE 227

Anacreoniea. Poems of Love and Wine.

Odes I. V (' Quis multa gracilis ').
„ I. xxii ('Integer vitae').
„ III. ix ('Donee gratus eram tibi').
„ III. vii (' Quid fles, Asterie.' A novel in a nutshell).
,, III. xxvii (Europa. A lyric with a narrative and

dramatic element).
,, III. xxi (' O nata mecum ').

A Poet of Natui-e and the Cou?itry.

Odes III. xiii (' O fons Bandusiae ').
,, III. xviii (' Faune, Nympharum ').
,, III. xxiii (' Caelo supinas.' Phidyle).

Hymiis to gods.

Odes I. x (Mercury. Mythological).

,, I. xxi (To Apollo and Diana, the tutelar divinities
of Augustus. To be compared with Catullus,
xxxiv).

„ I. xxxiv (' Parcus deorum cultor.' A declaration
of belief; not, perhaps, what he would say in
a satire or epistle).

„ II. xix ('Bacchum in remotis.' A more subtle study.
Ecstasy subsiding into tranquillity; a delinea-
tion of the KaOapais of hBov(na(T iios).

Poems of friejidship.

Odes I. xxiv (' Quis desiderio.' On the death of Quin-
tilius).
„ II. i (' Motum ex Metello.' Pollio).
„ II. vii ('O saepe mecum.' Philippi).
„ II. ix (' Non semper imbres.' To Valgius, depre-
cating plaintive elegies).
„ II. xvii (' Cur me querelis.' Maecenas).

Q 2

2 28 THE LYRIC METRES

Poe7ns on the philosophy of life.

Odes II. iii ('Aequam memento ').
,, II. X (' Rectius vives, Licini ').
„ II. xviii (' Non ebur nee aureum ').
,, III. i (The poet's creed).

This selection includes 55 poems out of 121. It is only
tentative; oiher selections could be made. But if the pupil
read these pieces he would certainly get some idea of the
scope and quality of Horace's poetry ; and of the pieces that
are excluded, many would quite certainly be excluded by any
selecting hand. The Metrical Selection includes a few poems
which would also come under one or other of the subsequent
heads (the first and second, for example, are poems of Nature
or Natural Scenery).

II. Homogeneous Metres

{nerpa fxouo€iSfj)

By a homogeneous metre is meant one which uses the same
foot — or rather the same type or €lSo9 of foot — throughout.
Such a metre is the dactylic hexameter; for the spondee
that occurs in it is not a different type of foot — a long syllable
takes the place of two shorts, that is all. Such also is the
iambic trimeter ; for here also the spondee is not to be thought
of as an alien or dissimilar element.

i. Dactylic.

Horace uses the hexameter as an alternate line, the first
of a couplet. A poem written in hexameters throughout could
hardly count as a 'lyric'. The second line is sometimes iambic
or in part iambic : that arrangement belongs to Section III
{infra). When the second line is dactylic, the couplet, and

OF HORACE 229

the metre of the whole poem, come under our present head
' Homogeneous '.

First, a word about the nature of Horace's hexameter. The
student is perhaps tempted to dismiss it without consideration :
'Hexameter? Oh, that is the metre we know in Virgil.' This
is a great mistake, and will result in failure to appreciate
Horace's metrical art. A lyric hexameter and an epic hexa-
meter are very different things. There is nothing in Horace's
hexameters at all resembling such things as

monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens
or

omnia praecepi atque animo mecum ante peregi.

Here in one line are three elisions (' monstr(um) ', ' hor-
rend(um) ', ' inform(e) ' — ' praecep(i) ', ' atqu(e) ', ' mec(um) ' ).
A lyric line must have a lighter and more rapid movement,
and the rapidity is achieved mainly by the avoidance of elision.
In Horace's lyric hexameters an elision occurs on the average
about once in every twelve lines. In the Aeneid they are
about six times as numerous, one occurring in every two lines.^
The lyric hexameter runs swiftly and smoothly to its close ;
and, further, rapidity is given to a passage or group of lines
by variety of pause : sometimes a strong pause occurs within
a line, and a slight one, or none, at the end of it, e. g. :

1 There are 123 hexameters in the Odes and Epodes, and in them there
are ten elisions. Of the ten, three are elisions of the short e of ueque,
and it is not certain that Horace did not write nee. In the Eclogues —
which are lyric and dramatic in character, not epic or heroic — elisions
are less frequent than in the Aeneid. In several eclogues an elision
occurs at the rate of one to every three lines ; in others they are still
less frequent (in Eel. vii, one to eight lines). It is a very rare thing in
the Eclogues to find two elisions in the same line. When Seneca uses
the hexameter in lyrical passages of tragedy he has no elisions at all
{Med. 110-15. ^^"^ 407 f •

230 THE LYRIC METRES

. . . seu te fulgentia signis
castra tenent | seu densa tenebit
Tiburis umbra tui. | Teucer Salamina patremque

cum fugeret | tamen uda Lyaeo
tempora populea fertur vinxisse corona. |

[Odes i. 7. 19-23.)

The caesura is usually of a very normal sort, in the middle
of the third or fourth foot (penthemimeral — coming after the
fifth half-foot, as in ' Tiburis umbra tui ' — or hepthemimeral,
after the seventh). Horace does Jiot (as one might perhaps
expect him to do) make much use of the ' trochaic ' caesura,
which divides a dactyl thus : - w | v^/

naturae verique. sed omnes una manet nox.

(i. 28. 15.)^

Two purely dactylic metres are used by Horace, (a) In
Odes i. 7 and 28 a hexameter is followed by a shorter
dactylic line of four feet (tetrameter). The shorter, like the
longer, ends in a spondee, and is similar in its general effect.
It shows greater freedom in its termination ; it may end with
a word of four syllables, or with two disyllables [inorituro^
7iihil idtra^ Ve?iusi?iae, 7iocituram^ etc.). The hexameter con-
forms to what may be called the general norm of the Virgilian
or Ovidian hexameter, i. e. a quadrisyllable ending occurs
usually in the shape of a Greek proper name [Rhodon aut
Afyiile?ien^ comes Orid7iis\ (b) In Odes iv. 7 the couplet
consists of a hexameter followed by what may conveniently be
called a dactylic tripody catalectic, - w v^ - ^ w -, the group
of syllables which forms the second half of a 'pentameter';
more accurately, or more rhythmically, written -ww -ww -7^;
i. e. the third dactyl is incomplete, only half of it is expressed in

' It is the comparative frequency of the ' trochaic ' caesura in Homer
that gives to the Homeric hexameter its rapid movement.

OF HORACE 231

sound, and the rest of its time (equal to the duration of one
long syllable) is a pause or space of silence. There is only
one elision in the whole poem (or none at all, if we read 7i€c
for neque in 1. 25). The shorter line does not conform in its
termination to the norm of the Ovidian pentameter ; there is
no overwhelming preference for an ending in a word of two
syllables {^qiiae dederis animo, fecerit arbitria — only six lines out
of fourteen have a disyllabic ending).'

ii. Iambic,

In one of the Epodes (xvi) Horace writes, as the second line
of a couplet, a line consisting of pure iambic feet throughout

With these light and rapid iambi are associated hexameters in
which no elision occurs ; in the iambic lines there are only
four elisions (two cases of ^iieqiie\ and elision of the final
syllables of ratem and gregem (11. 24 and 62). Thus the poem
as a whole has in an eminent degree the ease and rapidity of
movement which we have already observed in Horace's dactylic
verse. Catullus had written the same form of iambic verse
(in iv, * Phaselus ille quem videtis hospites '). Neither poet
admits so much as a tribrach or resolved iambus, a thing
which could be done without adding any weight to the line.

A verse wTitten with this degree of strictness and regularity
is an artificial thing, and Catullus perhaps learned it from the
poets of Alexandria."-^ Horace, however, appears to have

^ This metre is the nearest approach that Horace makes to elegiac
verse. He does not write that ; he seems to prefer to attach to a hexa-
meter anything rather than a pentameter. There are indications that
he was not in sympathy with Propertius, and when he addresses Tibulhis
(i. 33) and Valgius (ii. 9) it is to deprecate the plaintive tone of the
elegy. Suetonius says that he had seen elegiac poems that were said to
be Horace's, but he thought them spurious.

2 In Archilochus and in the Attic drama a line consisting of pure

232 THE LYRIC METRES

thought that it was the original form of the iambic trimeter,
and that spondees were admitted later {Ars Poet. 255-8) :

taidior ut paullo graviorque veniret ad aures,
spondeos stabiles in iura paterna recepit
commodus et patiens, non ut de sede secunda
cederet aut quarta socialiter.

The iambus, with good-natured courtesy and tolerance, allowed
spondees to come in, but not to the extent of vacating in their
favour the second or fourth place in the line. The view is
unhistorical, but it gives us briefly the structure of an iambic
line. It is assumed as a matter of course that the iambus did
not vacate the sixth and last place. Even in the verse of
Plautus and Terence he does not do that. What account can
be given of this arrangement? A genuine spondee is not

equal to an iambus ; it is a foot of four times ( = »^ w v^ »^),

not of three. No poet would deliberately set about constructing
a line out of elements or bars so unequal as these.

A clue is supplied by the Greek name of the metre —
Trimeter. The Romans called it a Senarhis, with less under-
standing of its nature. In calling it a trimeter the Greek was
thinking of a dipody as the fxerpov or constituent or unit of
measurement. It is a line of three dipodies. Now in the
group o - w - there is one syllable which can be lengthened,
which may be allowed to be somewhat heavier, without im-
pairing the general effect. That is the first syllable ; the
dipody may be ^ —} The second foot must be a pure

iambi, with no spondee, does of course occur from time to time. Such
a line is also found in lyric systems (e.g. a-^ovaa t avTi<p(pvov 'l\ia)
(pOopav, Aes. Agam. 406). What is new in Catullus is the use of it
throughout a poem, line after line {^Kara orixov).

^ Rhythmically, or when the verse was sung, the syllable probably had
not the time of a normal long. The time may have been i^: 2, not 2 :2.
For such a syllable some metricians have used the symbol > (> — , a
spondee which could be combined with iambi ; — >, a heavy trochee or
trochaic spondee). Or the time may have been i~ : i^.

OF HORACE 233

iambus. In trochaic verse the converse is seen. It is the
last syllable of the dipody that may be heavier ; it is the first
foot that must be a pure trochee. If we try the experiment
of inverting the order in either case, we shall see that this is
inevitable. If the second iambus were allowed to be heavy,

the dipody would present the appearance of v^ , a short

syllable and three longs, an amorphous thing. So, if the first

trochee were heavy, the syllables would be ^ , again

a thing that has no obvious rhythm or easily recognizable
structure. The trochaic dipody, with this option in the last
syllable (- w —^) is an element in many forms of verse. We
shall meet with it again in lyric measures, and shall there find
that a further step was possible — to enact that the last syllable
of the four f/ms^ be heavy or long.

It remains to describe briefly the chief forms of Horatian
iambi and their characteristics.

In one poem (£j>. xvii) he uses the trimeter throughout,
line after line {Kara (rTL)(^ov), with the normal option of a
spondee in the first, third, and fifth places.^

In the first ten epodes he uses the same line as an alternate
one, putting after it the shorter dimeter (of four feet, quater-
narius). Such a line was called an €770)56?, whence the name
epodi for the whole collection of pieces.

(a) The caesura is usually conspicuous and highly normal,
in the third or fourth foot :

1 In lines 11-12 of this poem Horace has a metrical effect which recalls
the older tragedians, Ennius or Pacuvius :

unxere matres Iliae addictum feris

alitibus atque canibus homicidam Hectorem.

Several of the old tragedies were on subjects taken from the stor}' of
Troy. Though Horace speaks of them elsewhere with no great admira-
tion, thinking their versification heavy and cumbrous, the mention of
Hector recalls them to his mind, and in the second of these lines, without
violating his own stricter canons, he writes a line in tlie manner of
Ennius.

234 THE LYRIC METRES

beatus ille | qui procul negotiis.
minatus urbi vincla | quae detraxerat.

(13) A tribrach is admitted, i.e. the long syllable may be
resolved. When the long is so resolved, the two short
syllables must be in the same word :

pavidumque leporem at advenam laqueo gruem

(observe that the ordinary accent on the first syllable of
' leporem ' helps the effect, coinciding with the idus of a
resolved iambus ; ^ — becomes v^ ^ w). Thus in the line

aut amite levi rara tendit retia
metre at once determines that the words are * amite levi;

for the scansion 'aut amite levi' would divide a tribrach
wrongly.

(y) There are a few instances of what seems to be an
anapaest in the fifth place (so laqueo in a line just quoted) :

priusque terra sidet inferius mari.
nunc gloriantis quamlibet mulierculam.

But all of them are open to a doubt : it is possible to pro-
nounce ' inferyus ', ' mulyerculam '. It is not clear that
Horace meant to admit an anapaest in the fifth foot at all.

(5) Horace's iambi do not conform to the rule known as
' Porson's Canon '.

The rule is that if the last word in a line is in form
a ' cretic ' foot (- w - , Tuscuh), and if the preceding w^ord
is one of more than one syllable, then the syllable immediately
preceding the 'cretic' must be short.

Thus the rule is not broken in the line :

furorne caecus an rapit | vis acrior
but it is broken in lines like :

non ut superni villa | candens | Tusculi.

OF HORACE 235

Such lines are very rare in the Greek drama, and where they
do occur, attempts have been made to remove them by con-
jectural emendation.^ When the rule is violated, the line is
weighted towards the end, an effect which seems to have
pleased the Romans. It is used by Horace in a special way,
to weight the end of the couplet. In the first ten epodes
there are 366 lines, 183 trimeters, and 183 dimeters. In the
trimeters the Porsonian rule is broken seventeen times ; in the
dimeters — that is, at the end of the couplet — seventy-four
times. In the trimeters the effect occurs on the average
once in eleven lines, in the dimeters nearly twice in every
five lines. '^

(e) If we consider the number of lines in which the penulti-
mate foot is a spondee, we find a similar result and a similar
contrast between the trimeter and dimeter. Out of 183
trimeters 97 have that ending; of the 183 dimeters only r6
(or 15) have not a spondee in the third place; as many
as 167 are spondaic. But even in trimeters Horace has

1 A famous instance is the first line of the Ion of Euripides :

"ArXas o xaXKiOiai vwtols ovpavuv
emended by writing vuitois xciA/f€ oto'i*'. In

. . . 'Apiofxapdos ^a.p8€(Tiv,
Aes. Pers. 321, a proper name justifies the deviation from rule.

2 As against these seventy- four cases, there are only six certain

examples of the type :

pernicis ux6r Apuli,

where the line ends in a word of three syllables, and the Porsonian rule

is not violated. Therefore in the line v. 100 :

et Esquilinae alites

the probability is quite 12 to i that Horace meant ' Esquilinae alites',
i. e. there is no shortening (a thing which belonged to dactylic verse in
Greek, not to iambic), but rather what is seen in Virgil's line

Glauco et Panopeae et Inoo Melicertae
(where Panopeae is an instance of what it is not safe to assume in
Horatian or high!}' hellenized iambics).

236 THE LYRIC METRES

a penultimate spondee more often than the Greek tragic
poets ; the percentage in his verses is 53, in theirs about 40.^
Roman tragedy, we shall not be surprised to find, is heavier
still in its penultimate feet. In Seneca's tragedies the spondee
seems to be compulsory (with the alternative of an anapaest) ;
examples of iambi in the fifth place are very rare and doubtful.
One other form of iambic verse remains to be mentioned —
the ' catalectic ' line, which is the second of the couplet in
Odes ii. 1 8 :

non ebur nee aureum
mea renidet in domo lacunar.

This couplet is a ' homogeneous ' metre, though the first line
is a trochaic (-v^ -w -w -a); a trochee is a foot of the
same kind or type as an iambus, its parts being in the same
ratio of 2 : I. But it is not certain that the first line would
be thought of as trochaic. It was called EvpiTrlSeiou (or
Xt^kvOlov sometimes, from the scene in Aristophanes, Frogs
1200 f.). It was part of an iambic line, from the penthe-
mimeral caesura onwards. Further, it is a question whether
iambic or trochaic scansion is preferable for the second line.
Taken as trochaic, with a preliminary syllable or ' anacrusis ',
the line is :

This scansion gives the more intelligible account of the
closing cadence ; the penultimate syllable is one of three
times (= v^«^v^ or = a whole trochee), and the last syllable
is part of a trochee — a trochee catalectic.^ The line, how-
ever, begins with an iambic movement, and it is not impossible
that Horace thought of it as made up of two parts :

^ This is based on a survey of about 500 lines of tragedy.
2 The last S3'llable of lacunar is short in prosody, but the last s^'llable
of a line is a syllaba anceps, i.e. may be reckoned metrically as long.

OF HORACE 237

mea renidet | in domo lacunar.^

' mea renidet ' is the first part of an iambic line, the two-and-
a-half feet that come before one of the chief pauses, 'in domo
lacunar ', — ^^ —k^ —^ or — w — w i_ — a is a well-known
metrical group or phrase ; and it is a phrase which Horace
appends to a group of dactyls in an ode (i. 4) in which the
second line of the couplet is the line we are now considering.
It is only in these two odes that Horace uses this metrical
phrase ; the other ode is not 'homogeneous' and belongs to
Section HI."^

iii. Io7iic,

The only other ' homogeneous ' metre written by Horace is
the Ionic verse of Odes iii. 12. This is so regular and simple
in form that little need be said of it. The foot is the lonicus

a mi?iore, w w , and the poem consists of four stanzas,

each containing ten lonici. Within the stanza the grouping
seems to be 4-f4-}-2, but this is more doubtful. The end
of a foot is usually marked by the end of a w^ord, an arrange-
ment which has a somewhat monotonous effect. Catullus
used this metre in a very different way in the 'Attis' (see
p. 163).

^ This view is found in Terentianus Maurus :

sequens epodos | cum parte iambi tres habet trochaeos.

^ The pause after the fifth syllable is quite distinct in ever)' line of

i. 4 (' regumque turres. o beate Sesti '). It is a curious fact that

Horace's Hne wants only the addition of one iambus to make it a normal

Saturnian •

mea (quidem) renidet | in domo lacunar.

dabunt malum Metelli | Naevio poetae.

Perhaps the horridus numerus of the carmina Livtj enforced by the cane
of Orbilius, made a deeper impression upon his mind than he cares to
admit. It may be noted also that there are a few Saturnians which have
as their first part syllables answering to non ebur nee aureuin (in

Naevius, 'immolabat auream'; 'qui suis astutiis* (— v^ w — ) in t e

verses o he 'Collegium Coquorum').

238 THE LYRIC METRES

III. Archilochian or Parian Metres

{fxerpa kirLa-vvdera)

Archilochus of Paros, in the seventh century B.C., wrote
both iambic poems and elegies. Horace is a professed
follower of his, and claims to have been the first to present
his ' iambi ' to the Roman reader :

Parios ego primus iambos
ostendi Latio, numeros animosque secutus
Archilochi. {^PP- i- i9- 23.)

The claim at first sight seems a little unjust to Catullus, who
certainly had something of the spirit or 'animi' of Archilochus.
But as regards the 'numeri' it is strictly justified. Catullus
writes the 'scazon' mainly (which belonged to Hipponax, not
to Archilochus), very seldom the ordinary trimeter, in more
than one poem the rigid form of verse which admitted no
spondee, and nowhere the combination of trimeter with
dimeter in a couplet, which Horace uses regularly in his
Epodes.

But Archilochus not only wrote iambic and elegiac poems
separately ; he also combined the two forms of metre in the
same verse or couplet, and here, too, Horace probably had
a valid claim to be the first to introduce Archilochian 'numeri'
at Rome. Greater variety, piquancy, or complexity was given
to a verse by combining in it different metres. But what
Archilochus did was not to fuse or mix up different types of
feet. To put a dactyl and a trochee in the same group or
KooXou was a thing which belonged not to him, but to the
Aeolian or Lesbian school of poets. What Archilochus did
was to set down a group of iambi or trochees beside a group

OF HORACE 239

of dactyls. The groups were internally homogeneous ; it was
only the whole verse or couplet that combined unlike elements.
The simplest example of such an arrangement is a hexameter
followed by an iambic trimeter [Epode xvi) :

altera iam teritur bellis civilibus aetas,
suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit.

But the groups combined may be shorter than these, and the
transition from one movement to another more frequent :

Kj — \j — — — \^ —

nunc mare nunc siluae

nivesque deducunt lovem.

(iambic dimeter followed by a dactylic tripody catalectic).

Here the reader may be disposed to ask : ' Is this last

example a verse made up of two grotips or Ka>Xa, or is it

two verses ? What do you mean by verse and by kcoXou ? '

One thing that can be said with some certainty in answer

is that for a group, phrase, or kcoXov there was an upward

limit of length ; e. g. for dactyls the limit was four. A series

of more than four dactyls is not one phrase but two.' Is

there also a downward limit for a ^ verse ' ? ' Verse ' is a

looser term, and perhaps not much would be gained by

making it a strict one. A simple kooXoj/ or phrase may be

a ' verse ', e. g. it would be inconvenient to be debarred

from speaking of an iambic dimeter as a ' verse '. The

phrases

nivesque deducunt lovem

nunc mare nunc siluae

are long enough to serve as separate verses. They may be
written in one line if the poet or the editor wishes to suggest
that they are to be taken very closely together, with only
a slight pause between them. Another question is possible :
'Is there a downward limit for a kooXou?' e.g. do the Izvo

^ A hexameter consists of two tcojXa, not exactly equal in length,
linked together by the device of the caesura.

240 THE LYRIC METRES

dactyls in the last line of an Alcaic stanza make a kooXou ? But
this question does not yet concern us ; for in his Archilochian
metres Horace uses no phrase shorter than three dactyls or
four iambi.

The Archilochian metres present no great difficulties or
problems. We may classify them by taking first those in
which there is least complexity :

(i) A dactylic hexameter of the rapid, lyric type described
in Section H, followed by an iambic trimeter which also moves
rapidly, having in it no spondees. Ej>ode xvi. There are no
elisions in the hexameters^ and in the iambi they are very few
and slight.

(2) Epodes xiv and xv. Hexameter followed by iambic
dimeter. The dimeter has the characteristics already noted
as belonging to it when it follows an iambic trimeter ; a liking
for a spondee in the fifth place, and ready admission of an
ending like ' adhaerens bracchiis ', which does not conform
to the Porsonian rule.

(3) A hexameter followed by a line of which the second
half is the second half of an elegiac ' pentameter ', while the
first half is an iambic dimeter. They are ' halves ' in time or
rhythm, for an iambic dimeter and a dactylic tripody alike
have twelve morae or tempora (each is a ScoSeKda-Tjjjiou or
8(o8eKdxpovov fieyedos). We have seen that each is long
enough to count as a separate verse. Further, they are
written as separate verses; for at the end of the first (as is
not the case in an elegiac pentameter) a syllaha anceps is
admitted {Epode xiii) :

reducet in sedem vice. I nunc et Achaemenio

levare diris pectora | sollicitudinibus

findunt Scamandri flumina | lubricus et Simois.

Like the dactylic tripody catalectic in Odes iv. 7, the second

OF HORACE 241

KcoXov shows no preference for the Ovidian disyllabic ending.
Out of nine lines, five end in a word of three syllables
^'siliiae', 1. 2 ; 'genua', 1. 4, &c.).

In one Archilochian metre the iambic part comes first :

(4) An iambic trimeter (admitting spondees in the usual
places) followed by a dactylic tripody catalectic and an iambic
dimeter. Some of the lines can be construed as a complete
dactylic tripody followed by a trochaic dimeter catalectic
i^Epode xi) :

— KJ \J — \J w— — — \^ — — — w — A

fabula quanta fui, con viviorum et paenitet.

But that this is not what Horace meant is shown both by syllaba
anceps :

Inachia furere | silvis honorem decutit

and by hiatus :*

fervidiore mero | arcana promorat loco.

All the dimeters but one have a spondee in the third place,
and several of them are also non-Porsonian.

(5) In Odes i. 4, the first line consists of a dactylic tetra-
meter, followed by a trochaic kS)\ov of three feet (originally
no doubt of four, but we cannot be sure that Horace meant it
to be read so) :

— w— w or —^ — ^ \ — — A.

The second Hne is one which has been alre§.dy discussed
(p. 236). In the first line no hiatus occurs between the
dactylic and the trochaic part ; the two parts are not ' asynar-
tete ' or detached, as in the case in the compound lines of
Epodes xi and xiii.

1887 R

242 THE LYRIC METRES

IV. Metres of the 'Aeolian' or 'Lesbian' Type

(jikrpa jXiKToi)

When a dactyl and a trochee occur in juxtaposition within
what is undoubtedly one phrase or kcoXou, we have a type of
metre clearly different from the two preceding kinds. The
KcoXou is now internally heterogeneous.^

Verse of this kind was probably as old as Archilochus, and
perhaps much older ; for it would seem to belong to quite
primitive minstrelsy to make the less conspicuous part of a
foot consist indifferently of one short syllable or of two. But
it is in the Lesbian poets, a little later than Archilochus, that
it first appears in an artistic shape and finds a place in
literature. This Lesbian or Aeolian verse perhaps retained
one feature of its origin ; some forms of it began with two
syllables which seem to be subject to no restriction ; they

may be or w — or — w or w w — or even w w . This

so-called ' basis ' or ' basis Aeolica ' is in Horace strictly
regulated. It is uniformly a spondee.^

But, it may be asked, how are we to draw a line
between this type of metre and the ' Parian ' type ? This
is the question which we postponed — how skorf may a kS)\ov
be ? If tivo consecutive feet are alike, are we to regard them
as a kS)\ov aad so make the metre Parian ? Perhaps it is

1 The term ' Logaoedic ' for metre of this kind has fallen into dis-
credit, but some designation is wanted for the class : juiktov fxerpov is
a convenient and simple term. It is not to be understood as meaning
that the feet were of different length. When a dactyl was used along
with trochees it may have been more rapid, its time equivalent io kj \j \j.

2 With one exception in Odes i. 15. 36 ('ignis Iliacas domos': it is
difficult to believe that the prosody of ignis could be ignis and not ignis).
Perhaps an early ode, written before Horace had finally fixed his
metrical scheme.

OF HORACE 243

best to postpone the question again, or dismiss it with only
an approximate answer ; it would be fairly accurate to say that
at least three feet must be alike, to be treated as a separate
KcoXov. We have seen that no kooXou in Horace's Parian
metres is less than that.

We may approach the matter in a different way by enu-
merating some of the elements, or groups of syllables, which
are met with in the non-Parian metres.

(a) There is first the ' basis ' just mentioned, in Horace
always — (found in Asclepiadean, Glyconic, and Pherecratean
lines). That it should be separated in some \Yay from the rest
of the line seems to be indicated by the occurrence of lines
in which it is absent :

Sevri vvv djSpat XdpLT€9 KaXXtKO/iot re Movaai

(which is otherwise very like ' nullam, Vare, sacra ', &c. Odes
i. 18).

(b) Another important element is the trochaic dipody,

— w — ^ or — v^ . The second of these forms, with the

last syllable long, is, or coincides with, the Pindaric 'epitritus',
and it has been suggested that in the third line of the Alcaic
stanza Horace has a Pindaric effect in view, though the metre
he is writing is a very different one.^

with anacrusis, or the first two and a half feet of an iambic
trimeter {lafi^iKou 7rev6r]iJLLiiepes)'

(d) The syllables -v^w-, sometimes reckoned as a 'chori-
ambus', are also a dactylic dimeter catalectic.

(e) — v^ v_/ — v^ — may be described as an Aeolic tripody. In
Odes i. 8, it is longer by a syllable :

1 The ^epitritus' in Pindar is regularly used in metres of the
* Parian ' type. The name ' epitritus ' comes from measuring the length

of its component parts, — w and (y>Kj\j and v-/ o* w v.y), 3:4.

Adjectives compounded with kiri- express the ratio of « + 1 to n
{knoySooSf 9 : 8, &c.).

R 2

244 THE LYRIC METRES

Lydia die per omnes,

a line or group which originally and musically was probably
a tetrapody, — wv^ — w i— — a. Here it occurs at the begin-
ning and end of a couplet, with (b) + (d) intervening

hoc deos ve;re Sybarin, — v^ |~^ ^■~•

These are nearly all the elements that are required for the
construction of Horace's non-Parian metres, (e) may be
thought of as a kooXov, but for other and shorter groups
of syllables Caesius Bassus, who wrote on metre not long after
Horace's time, supplies another convenient word, Ko/x/ia,
incisum ; KOfM/xa is a block or cut-off portion — (c) is a portion
of an iambic trimeter. It is probable that Horace himself
thought of such commata and that he was guided in so doing
by a metrical theory to which Varro had given currency at
Rome. According to this theory the primary metres were the
dactylic hexameter, the iambic trimeter, and the trochaic tetra-
meter. Other metres were supposed to have been arrived at
by combining portions of these. Thus the 'hendecasyllabic'
line, which Catullus uses and Horace does not use, could be
regarded as consisting of a part of a hexameter + part of
a trimeter :

cui dono lepidum

novum libellum.

But if this was its nature, the first two syllables should both
be long, for an iambus or a trochee cannot form part of
a hexameter. Hence, perhaps, Horace's regular spondaic
'basis'; so, too, in Martial and Statius a hendecasyllabic line
always begins with two long syllables. It can hardly be
doubted that the influence of this theory is one of the causes
why a Horatian line is often so different in effect from the
corresponding line in Sappho or Alcaeus. The Greek line
runs lightly as a single whole, whereas Horace's line is made
up of two co7?i??iata.

OF HORACE 245

The metres that we have now to consider fall under the
three heads of Alcaic, Sapphic, and Asclepiadean, the last
of these carrying with it the similar but shorter Glyconic and
Pherecratean lines.

i. The Alcaic Stanza.

The Alcaic stanza is constructed, out of the elements
specified above, in the following way : The first two lines
consist of (c) + (e); the third line of (c) + (b) ; while the last
line is an extended form of (e), beginning with two dactyls
instead of one, and completing its last foot, instead of being
catalectic. The effect of the whole becomes more apparent
if instead of (c) we write (b) with anacrusis. The stanza
then runs

^ (b) + (e)
^ (b) + (e)
^ (b) + (b)
E

The fourth line is a larger form of (e), without anacrusis.
Thus the third and fourth lines repeat on a larger scale the
movement which is found in each of the first two lines ; using
simpler symbols we may describe the stanza as ab ab AB.
It is this structure that gives to the third line its peculiar
weight and significance ; it has often been observed that the
effect of a Horatian Alcaic stanza depends largely on that line.
It is a weighty line, similar to Pindar's ' epitrite '^ with the fifth
syllable always long. In the first two lines, we may say, this
movement maintains itself for about half the line ; then a
dactyl breaks in upon it, but without maintaining itself—
a trochee follows ; in the third line the ' epitrite ' movement
holds out twice as long, the dactylic invasion is staved of!
longer ; then in the fourth line the dactyl rushes in in greater
force — this time there are two dactyls instead of one, and then

246 THE LYRIC METRES

trochees reappear in a somewhat fuller form than in the first
and second lines.

To recognize this as the real movement of Horace's stanzas
involves ruling out certain views of it which have sometimes
been held. We must refuse to believe that the first and
second lines end in two dactyls.^ And we shall not be
inclined to accept a ' choriambic ' or ' Ionic ' scansion, which
makes the stanza end thus :

sacerdos

— W W I — v»/v_^— j w — —

virginibus puerisque canto.

The chief features of Horace's stanza, as compared with
Alcaeus's, are that in the first two lines he has a diaeresis
at a fixed place, and that he makes the fourth syllable of the
group - w - J^ regularly long.^ The first two lines thus

^ If Horace himself thought that they did, which is perhaps not
impossible, he must have held also that a long final syllable could count
as short. But it is difficult to believe that he so thought or felt about
ne forte credas interitura, quae
longe sonantem natus ad Aufidum . . .
A syllaha anceps in the sense of a short syllable that counted as long
is common enough. The converse is more difficult and doubtful. A
final dactyl belongs properly to lines which are * hypermetric ', e. g. :

TToWaKL 5' ev KopvcpaTs opiojv oKci
Oioiaiv ddrj iroXixpafios kopra kt\. (Alcman.)
(Compare the verses of Ibycus quoted above, p. 123, where the final
dactyl occurs in a group of lines meant to be hypermetric, and not in
a contiguous group.) The view that a long could count as a short, put
jn circulation by Heraclides Ponticus or some other theorist, perhaps
misled Seneca into writing a cretic where he ought to have had a dactyl :
Oed. 449 f, in a passage of seventeen lines he has five heavy endings —

vivaces hederas remus tenet
summa ligat vitis carchesia.
2 From this rule Horace departs only once, in Odes iii :

si non perirSt inmiserabilis
captiva pubes.
So rare a thing has naturally caused editors to doubt about the text, and

OF HORACE 247

become more complex structures ; and an air of Roman
gravitas is lent to the whole, which makes the verse an
appropriate vehicle for the moral and patriotic reflections of
Odes iii. 1-4. The diaeresis gives to the first and second
lines an effect like that of the elegiac pentameter (which does
not necessarily have dactyls in its first part, only in the second).
Horace introduces it with great regularity ; there are only
two lines in which it is wholly absent (i. 37. 14 'mentemque
lymphatam Mareotico'; iv. 14. 17 ' spectandus in certamine
Martio'); in three others the diaeresis is marked by the slight
pause or division between the parts of a compound word
('antehac nefas deipromere Caecubum, i. 37. 5).

In certain types of verse, such as the elegiac pentameter,
the end of a kcoXov or Ko/i/ia or metrical section is regularly
marked by the end of a word. Apart from such structures,
a line or kcoXov usually tends to avoid any marked agreement
between words and metrical elements. Thus a hexameter has
its marked pause {caesura) within a metrical foot, not at the
end of it; and the parts of a pentameter illustrate the prin-
ciple, though the whole does not (e. g. ' lucida | sidera | nox '
is inadmissible). Coincidence between word and foot is
perhaps most frequent in trochaic tetrameters :

quaeque silvas quaeque lucos quaeque montes incolunt.

to suggest emendations (e. g. peri'res, followed by vocative). But it is
Horace's way to deviate now and again from a self-imposed rule, as if he
said to us, ' I know quite well that the metre as Alcaeus wrote it
admits something different, but I choose to make certain long syllables
regular because it suits the Latin language, and makes the verse more
uniform and therefore easier for the reader to appreciate'. Seneca
probably took the same view, and thought of this comma as ^ — v^ — i:^.
He has the fifth syllable short more often than Horace, when he uses
the phrase as a detached brick or tessera in piecing together a lyric :
Oed. 752 'effudit arma'; Agam. Q61 'Aurora movit ad solitas vices';
ibid. 916 ' latravit orS'.

248 THE LYRIC METRES

In the third and fourth lines of his stanza Horace usually
avoids it. A line like :

Alcaee | plectro | dura | navis (ii. ij. 27.)

is very rare, and Mr. Page points out that in five of the eight
instances the penultimate word is repeated at the beginning

of the next line :

dura navis ;

dura fugae mala, dura belli,

and that in one of the other three a special effect of sound
seems to be intended ('pronos relabi posse rivos'). The three
long syllables of the line are very frequently in one word :

audita Musarum sacerdos.
In the fourth line the prevalent caesura is shown in

virginibus | puerisque canto.

The ' trochaic ' division of the second dactyl is much rarer

— w I w
interiore nota Falerni.

One other question requires an answer — that of what is
called synapheia {crvj^d(p€La, from (rvua^rj^) or 'hypermetron ',
continuity of scansion between one line and the next. Virgil
admits this effect in hexameters, but not very frequently :

turres et tecta Latinorum
ardua cernebant iuvenes.

It was regular in anapaests ; and naturally frequent in any
group of short lyric lines, for a break coming at short intervals
would give to the whole an effect of disconnexion/ A line is

^ The continuity of utterance involved caused ' hypermetric ' systems
to have in Greek the name npiyos. A good example occurs in Eurip.
Ion 184-7 •

oiiK iv Tais ^a6eais 'A6a-
vais ei/ftioves ^crav av-
Xal Oca/v /.lovov^ ou5' d7i;i-
driScs Oepaneiai.

OF HORACE ' 249

detached from the line that follows it when it ends with a
syllaba anceps or when there is no elision between them.
On the other hand, the absence of elision and of a syllaba
anceps does not prove that a hypermetric effect was intended,
though, if they are absent throughout a whole poem, there is a
strong presumption that the poet wrote the piece or the stanzas
of it on the ' hypermetric ' principle. ' Hypermetron ' is posi-
tively revealed when there is elision or when a word runs on
into the second line. In the Alcaic stanza Horace does not
bind himself to a hypermetric structure. Mr. Page collects
eighteen instances of hiatus or the absence of elision (all in
the first three books— none in the fourth) ; there are about as
many instances of syllaba anceps in the first book alone, e.g.:

hie tibi copia | manabit

quanta laborabas Charybdi | digne puer, &c.

Unmistakable 'hypermetron' occurs chiefly between the third

and fourth lines of the stanza. There are only two instances

of elision :

nos in aetern|um exilium impositura (ii. 3. 27.)

delabentis Etrusc^um in mare. (iii. 29. 35.)

In one instance the third line ends in a preposition :

retusum in | Massagetas. (i. '^^. 39.)

In eight it ends with ei^ preceded by elision :

barbarorum et j purpurei. (i- 35- n-)

Similarly, but without elision (once) :

depone sub lauru mea nee | parce cadis, (ii. 7. 19.)
Thus there are twelve cases of unmistakable or all but certain
continuity ; to set against them, only one instance of a similar
thing between the first and second lines :

fuge quaerere et | quem Fors dierum. (i. 9. 13.)

Catullus has the similar ending :

saltuumque reconditorum

amniumque sonantum. (xxxiv. 11-12.)

2 50 THE LYRIC METRES

ii. The Sapphic Stanza,

The so-called 'longer Sapphic ' has already been explained
i^Odes i. 8 ' Lydia, die, per omnes '; see p. 244). We are now
concerned with the shorter and more familiar Sapphic, which
Horace uses very frequently and which had been attempted
by Catullus.

The Aeolian line written by Sappho may be thought of as
a line of five trochaic feet, light in its movement, in which the
writer exercises once the option of making the lighter part of
the foot consist of two syllables instead of one. This, as
we have seen, was perhaps a feature of very primitive verse,
but in Sappho's verse it is strictly regulated ; it occurs in the
third foot, and nowhere else. Its occurrence in the second
place gives a 'Phalaecean' line

(ptXTaB' ApfioSi', ov TL TTOV Tedi'rjKas.

The quadrisyllabic or choriambic scansion adopted by some
recent metricians divides a Sapphic line thus :

In either case it begins with a trochaic dipody, and here, as in
the Alcaic stanza, Horace makes the fourth syllable invariably

long, - w . At the end of the line also he obviously has

a preference for this effect. Most lines end with a completed

— w

spondee. An ending like ' diuque ] laetus intersis ' is infre-
quent.^

Sappho's verses now and again, but only now and again
have a pause -after the fifth syllable :

Kal yap at (pevyei \ radices Sido^ei.

^ And '-que' may be a syllaha anccps. Horace has no line like

Sappho's

rrvKi'a divevvres nrip utt' wpavoj aiOe-

pos dia jxioacv,
where the last foot can hardly be anything but a trochee.

OF HORACE 251

For reasons which can only be conjectured, not certainly
ascertained, Horace had a special liking for this type of line.
In the third book he has it throughout; in the first occasionally,
and in the second twice, he has a pause which answers to the
'trochaic' or 'Homeric' caesura in the hexameter, dividing a
dactyl thus, - w | v^ :

Mercuri, facunde | nepos Atlantis.

In the fourth book and in the Carmen Saec. he admits it
more freely. But even there the great majority of lines have
a caesura resembling the chief caesura of the Latin hexameter.
It may be that the hexameter was in his mind. The result
was to make the line a more complex thing, constructed of
two parts, just as the 'diaeresis' in the first two lines of the
Alcaic stanza gave an effect like that of the elegiac pentameter.
But, apart from the analogy of the hexameter, Horace was
probably influenced by the metrical theory already mentioned
(p. 244). According to this theory of the derivation of metres,
a Sapphic line consisted of the beginning of a trochaic line
(- v^ - ^ - , two and a half feet) and the beginning of an iambic

one (y^- ^ , again two and a half feet ; an anapaest is of

course admissible in the first place in a senarius). He may
have meant to make this structure obvious. Catullus followed
Sappho, and bound himself by no such rule. He has the
Horatian caesura quite frequently, but he also has lines without
either of Horace's pauses :

sen Sacas sagittiferosque Persas.*
After Horace, the Horatian caesura becomes normal and
invariable. Sapphic lines are regularly written with a caesura
after the fifth syllable. This can be seen in Statius {Silvae
iv. 7) and in the lyrical parts of Seneca's tragedies (e.g.
Medea 579-669). Further, in his freer lyric compositions,

1 Catullus, it will be observed, also admits a trochee in the second
place, ' seu Sacas sa-', ' pauca nuntiate ' ; but he does not have it very often.

252 THE LYRIC METRES

Seneca uses the two portions of a Horatian Sapphic separately; *
for him the two 'commata' are detachable metrical units or ,
phrases, which can be used like bricks for building a different
structure. Sometimes, for example^ he inverts their order :

niveique lactis | candidos fontes. {Oed. 495.)

Sometimes he repeats the first part :

nomen alternis ; stella quae mutat, {Agam. 820.)
or the second :

yetuitque coUo j pereunte nasci. [Ibid. 836.)

He deals with Alcaic commata in the same way, sometimes \
combining Alcaic and Sapphic :

procella Fortunae | movet aut iniqui. i^Ibid. 594.)

Further, the metrical theory seems to appear in the fact that

in place of the two short syllables in a Sapphic he admits

w or - :

roscidae noctis iussitque Phoebum

nullus hunc terror | nee impotentis

praebuit saevis tinxitque crudos

vicit acceptis | cum fulsit armis ;

for an iambic senarius does not necessarily, or even very
frequently, begin with an anapaest.

When the place of the caesura was once fixed, in a Latin
Sapphic, the incidence of accents was to a large extent deter-
mined :

quale portentum neque militaris

Dailnias latis alit aesculetis
nee lubae t^llus g^nerat le6num
arida nutrix.

'quale portentum', 'Daiinias latis' — the words may vary in
length, but the principles of Latin accentuation put the accent
on the same syllable. The regularity is interfered with only
when a word of one syllable occurs in certain positions, as is
seen in the third of these lines, 'nee Iiibae' (in 'p6ne sub

OF HORACE 253

ciirru ' there is no such disturbance). The ode to which the
lines belong (i. 22 'Integer vitae') has been set to music in
modern times on the basis of accent :

integer vi'tae sc^lerisque purus,

and, further, it has even been advanced as a theory that Horace
wrote with this accentual scheme in view. Conscious observa-
tion of accent in one of the many elaborate forms of Greek
lyric which Horace cultivates is not in itself a very probable
thing. Some feeling for Latin accent, it is true, seems to be
required to explain the modifications which certain Greek
metres underwent on being transferred to Latin. But it is
difficult to believe that the attention to accent was deliberate.

The line which closes a Sapphic stanza, known as Adoneus,
requires little discussion. Its scheme is - ^ v^ - — , dactyl and
spondee. It may be noted that its form resembles the end of
a Virgilian or Augustan hexameter; it consists usually of words
of two, or three, syllables (' terruit urbem', 'augur Apollo').
The exceptions are: ' Fabriciumque', 'Mercuriusque', 'mili-
tiaeque', 'est hederae vis', 'Bellerophonten', 'seu Genitalis',
and several lines of the type 'se quoque fugit', * te duce,
Caesar', 'cum bove pagus'.

In regard to synapheia or hypermetron, the facts are very
much the same as in Alcaic verse. Horace does not bind
himself to continuity of scansion, but has it not unfrequently.
It appears that when there is hiatus between one line and the
next, the final syllable is never a short vowel, but alwa)'s a
long one, or 7(m or eni (' insecutae ' Orphea silvae'; 'leonum |
arida nutrix'). Here we see again Horace's preference for

- w as compared with -w -v^. Close connexion between

the third and fourth line is indicated by effects like 'nigroquje
invidet Oreo' (though this occurs also in other places of the
stanza) and more clearly by division of a word between them,
'love non probante uxorius amnis' (not found in other places).

254 THE LYRIC METRES

iii. Asclepiadean Metres.

Glyconic and Pherecratean. The Lesser and Greater

Asclepiadean.

If we prefix to the 'Aeolic tripody' described above, the
usual disyllabic ' basis ', the result is a ' Glyconic ' line :
5^^|-v>"^— W-. This may be interpreted as trochaic,
with a rapid dactyl taking the place of one of the trochees
(-»^ I —\jKj I -w I -a). On the other or quadrisyllable
interpretation it is — — -^ | ^ - w- :

w — — ^

w — w —

VCCOp 0€

(Pindar, O/. i. i.)

(antispast + diiambus). But it is difificult to believe that the
two short syllables do not go together, and that they form part
of a dactyl is indicated by the occurrence in Greek of
shortenings which belong to dactylic verse (/ceiVo/xaf before
a vowel). The 'Pherecratean' line is shorter by a syllable;'
probably what happens is that a penultimate trochee takes the
form of a single protracted syllable :

This line was eminently suited to be the last of a group or
stanza, and a good example of the arrangement is preserved
from Anacreon :

1 The fifth-century comic poet Pherecrates devised a type of anapaestic

metre which coincided in syllables with the lyric verse we are

considering :

dv5p(9, iTp6a(rx.^Te tov vovv

e^€vpr)[.iaTi /caivu)

avfXTTTVKTOis dvavaiaTois.

This may have been ^ | — ' | '^ ^ — I ~ A- How the name came to be

given to the lyric verse is unknown.

OF HORACE 255

yovuovfjLaL a e\a(pr]^6\€
^avOr) iroL Al6<s, dypicou

Secnroiu', 'Apre/ii, Orjpcoi^.

Anacreon writes this verse with synapheia or hypermetrically
(e.g. k\a(f>r]P6\€ \ ^ai^drj). This stanza was used by Catullus
in his 'Hymn to Diana', and in his 'Epithalamium' (in the
former there are three Glyconic lines in the stanza, in the
latter four) :

silvarumque virentium

saltuumque reconditor-

um] amniumque sonantum.

The metre was also used by tragic and comic poets (e.g. the
passage from Euripides quoted above, p. 248, note). But
Horace would have none of it. Was he avoiding the tracks
of Catullus ?

libera per vacuum posui vestigia princeps,
non aliena meo pressi pede.

Not only does he avoid this stanza, but he uses the Phere-
cratean line not as the last of a group, but as the third of four.
With Horace, the Glyconic becomes a closing line ; in the
verse of

quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa,

Pherecratean precedes it, in other odes it follows a group of
three Asclepiadeans ; or, again (as in i. 3), it precedes, in
a dipody, a line which is not shorter than itself, like the
Pherecratean, but the lesser Asclepiadean, which is longer.

In all metres of this type Horace made the 'basis ' consist
regularly of two long syllables. Catullus did not. Following
the greater freedom of the early Greek poets he admits a
trochee or an iambus, and he gives rapidity of movement to
his 'Epithalamium' by making the initial trochee very frequent.
Horace's practice was probably due to a metrical theory which

256 THE LYRIC METRES

elicited from a single hexameter both the Glyconic and
Pherecratean lines :

cui non dictus Hylas puer
aut Latonia Delos

(when Virgil's hexameter is thus cut into two separate verses,
the last syllable of 'puer' can be taken as a syllaba anceps).

The ' Asclepiadean ' metres may safely be regarded as
extensions or expansions of the Glyconic.^ The x\eolic tripody
— KjKj — w — , duke decus meum, may be thought of as postponed
by the interposition of an incomplete form of it, thus :

O et [dulce decus] dulce decus meum

and the incompletion or postponement may occur twice :

nullam, Vare, sacra vite prius severis arborem,
that is

nullam severis arb- severis arb- severis arborem.

But this fictitious example introduces what Horace avoids,
the severance of a word at the end of the ' choriambus ' or
choriambic group of syllables, - ^ o- - . Horace's scheme is
illustrated rather by

quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare

converted into

quae nunc pumicibus pumicibus pumicibus mare.

In Alcaeus and Catullus the severance of a word is not
avoided :

fxrjSeu dXXo (j)VTev-(rrjs nporepou SevSpLov d/i7reX(o.

nee facta impia fal-lacum hominum caelicolis placent.

Whatever scheme of scansion Horace had in mind, he must

1 The name may be derived from Asclepiades of Samos, the elegiac
poet contemporary with Philetas. But there seems to be no other
evidence for his use of the verse. Presumably he, or another poet of
the same name, used it extensively, Kara arixov. But extant passages
of Alcaeus show that he also had written it Kara arixov.

OF HORACE 257

have felt that to carry a word over this point would involve
a prolongation of a syllable, a thing which is unnatural except
when verse is actually sung. The lyric poet is of course in
theory a singer throughout, but except in the Carmen Saeculare^
and perhaps in one or two other pieces, Horace is really writing
for readers. So he makes the end of a ' choriambus ' coincide
with the end of a word, so that instead of a prolongation there
may be a short pause.^ If such a difficulty was felt the
inference would seem to be that the choriambus, whatever
may have been the description of it in ancient metrical or
musical notation, was not simply — v^w — , but rather — v^v^ —
or — w v^ — A . Thus we seem to have a definite justification
for adopting the ' trochaic ' or modern or rationalizing method
of scansion. But it is not safe to say, ' This was the ancient
notation'. Probably it was not; quite possibly, however, if
we could put this notation before an ancient metrician or
musician he would say : ' I see ; that is a good method of
notation : it was not ours, but it seems in many ways better,
simpler, and more consistent.'

Horace observes with considerable strictness the rule which
he has adopted for the * choriambus ' in Asclepiadean verse.
In a few instances he admits, instead of the end of a word,
the end of a prefix or part of a compound word :

arcanique fides prodiga per-lucidior vitro.'^
dum flagrantia de-torquet ad oscula.

' It seems fairly clear that it is for the same reason that the first half
of an elegiac * pentameter' ends with the end of a word. Elegiac verse
was a metre which at an earl}' date came to be merely read and not
necessarily sung.

2 Pompeius (157. 5 k) declares that Horace's perlncidior vitro shows the
separable compound Wx'Ca.per ' very', e.g. 'per polsaepe peccas' s^Plaut.).
It is quite likely that this per was more detached or detachable than
other prefixes. But it is hardly credible that Horace intended it here.
To compare an adj. with the prefix per is a solecism. It is a virtual
superlative ; />^rbeatiss«w«s belongs to vulgar Latin.

1 887 S

2S8 THE LYRIC METRES

This resembles his deviations from the rule of the diaeresis in
Alcaic lines :

utrumque nostrum in|credibili modo
{supra, p. 247). In Alcaics he twice goes further than this :

mentemque lymphajtam Mareotico.
In Asclepiadeans the only similar thing occurs in iv. 8 :

non incendia Car|thaginis impiae.

The text of this ode has been a subject of much discussion,
but there is no good reason for denying this line to Horace.
Metrical rules were often stretched or relaxed when a proper
name had to be introduced. Further it may be said to be
Horace's general practice to break once or twice a rule which
he has imposed upon himself, as if he were saying, ' I reserve
my freedom ; I write as I do quite deliberately and I know
that the verse can be written otherwise '.

V. Schemes of Horace's Lyric Metres

(in the order in which they have been dealt with above).

I. Merpa iiovoeiSfj.
Dactylic.

(a) i. 7 and 28.

«^v^ I ^V_/ I KJ^^ I ^\J ' ^^

WO I -GG -^^ -

_ W 1

(b) iv. 7.

wo I wo i WW wo I '^^

— 00

OW - /v,

^ The last syllable may be marked '^ from the point of view of prosody.
It is often actually a short syllable. Metrically the last foot is .

A spondee in the fifth foot is so rare that it has not been indicated in
the scheme. It is rare also in the third foot of the second line (' men-
sorem cohibent, Archyta,' Odes i. 28. 2).

OF HORACE 259

Iambic.

(a) Epode xvii.

(b) Epodes i-x.

— v^ — \j — \u — A

(or ^ - I ^ - I ^ , - v^ 1 - v^ I ^ - a)

111. 12.

v^w W^ ^v_/ W^

^(>_/ \j y^ I \^ \^ wv^

2. Merpa kirLavi'd^ra.

(' Parian.')
[i) Epode xvi.

(2) Epodes xiv and xv.

v_/v_^ I v_;w I _ WW I _ v_/w I I

v=i^^(,^_^_Uy_

(3) Epode xiii.

_ WW I _ WW I _ WW • _ WW [ _ I 1

I I i I '

(4) Epode xi.

— WW — WW ~A|~~^~i~~

1 The fifth foot is twice a spondee (1. 17 and 1. 29) in Epode xvi, once
a spondee in Epode xiii (1. 9).

S 2

26o THE LYRIC METRES OF HORACE

(5) Odes i. 4.

^ - 1 w - I !^ - I v^ - 1 ^ - I -

(or^-|v^-|^|i -v^|-^|i-|-a)

3. Mir pa /ilkto,.

i. Tke Alcaic Sta?iza.

^ — w — v^v^ — w —

!^ — v_> — \j KJ — ^ —

v^w — \J\J — w — —

ii. 77^^ Sapphic Stanza.

- v^ v^ - ^ (Adoneus)
The longer Sapphic, Odes i. 8.

— v^ v^ — v^

— \^ I — \^ <^ — — <u yy — v^

iii. *• Asclepiadean ' metres (inchiding Glyconic and Pherecratean).
Horace uses the following forms :

(a) ^ w - ^ (Pherecratean)

(b) —^^ — \j - (Glyconic)

(d) — -^u^^~-^'u--'^^-^ — (Greater Ascle-

piadean)

(c) and (d) are written Kara (ttl\ov — the same line
throughout—in a few odes (i. i, iii. 30, iv. 8 : i. 11. i8, iv. 12) :
a) and (b) only in combination with other lines. The stanzas
used are as follows :

Odes i. 3, (b) + (c).
„ 5, (c) (c) (a) (b).
„ 6, (c) ter 4- (b).

^ Sometimes, but not often "* I

\U — W;W — V_/ — W.

APPENDIX

(A)
GLOSSARY OF SOME METRICAL TERMS

Accent is sometimes used in the sense of ictus. This is a
dangerous usage, which may lead to serious confusion of ideas.

Neither accent, in its proper sense, nor quantity is a merely
metrical phenomenon. They are things existing in actual speech,
outside metre altogether. Either may form the basis of verse.
The poet arranges words in such a way that accented syllables (or
long syllables) come at regular intervals, satisfying his sense of
rhythm. The metrician describes this when it has been done ; he
furnishes the outline or scheme of the verse. Sometimes the poet
is also a metrician, and tells us what scheme he had in mind ;
sometimes he is not, and we do not know for certain how he would
have described his work. In the words that the poet puts together
the accented or long syllables are already fixed by current usage.
Accent may mean that certain syllables are pronounced on a higher
note, differing in musical pitch (as was the case in Greek), or that
certain syllables are pronounced more loudly, with a greater effort
of the voice (a 'stress' accent, as in modern Greek and English).
When accent is the basis of verse, accent and ictus normally
coincide.

While it is substantially true that accent and quantity exist
already for the poet, it may be admitted that metrical study and
the practice of poets sometimes make a difference to the language
for an educated ear. Quantity may be regulated, emphasized,
elicited. The early poets, and Ennius in particular, did this for
the Latin language. They developed what was quantitative in it.
Mr. Bridges and others have tried to do this for English, with less
success. ' His pleasure In happiness ' is a hemistich that depre-
ciates the English accent and involves the rules for ' quantity by
position', that nh makes a syllable long, and/;^— a double conso-
nant—means a short syllable. Neither rule is altogether convincing
for the English ear.

Anacrusis (from drnfcporco, * strike up ', strike a preliminar>' note
on the lyre) : a term, unknown to the ancient poets, invented in
modern times to designate what is very familiar in modern music,
a note or syllable which precedes the first actual bar of the measure.
Whether such a syllable should be recognized is not an important
question for Latin versification ; in Horatian metre the question of
anacrusis arises only in the case of the first three lines of an Alcaic
stanza.

262 APPENDIX

Theoretically, a verse with anacrusis is also catalectic, and the
syllable which appears at the beginning is equal to the syllable
lost at the end, e. g. a trochaic line should, in theory, have a short
syllable as anacrusis: ^\—^—^ — ^ — /\. But there seem to
be undoubted instances of verses with anacrusis which are nol
catalectic, e. g. Aes. Profn. 135 :

(= the fourth line of an Alcaic stanza, with a short syllable pre-
fixed). If the third line of an Alcaic stanza has an anacrusis it has
it without catalexis.

The word, and the idea, seem to be required for certain forms
of strictly lyrical Greek verse. It is a mistake to apply the notion
to such verse as spoken senarii, and to construe these as trochees
with anacrusis. (The notion of anacrusis is not out of harmony
with ancient ideas. Trochaic and iambic verse were the same ' in
rhythm', the ratio of the parts of the foot was the same, 2: i.
What did occur to the ancients was the converse idea that an
iambic verse might be ' acephalous ', or lack its first syllable.)

Aphaeresis is used for the converse of elision : the following
vowel, not the preceding one, is 'taken away' {a(f)nipi'iTni), and has
no place in the metrical scheme, as in fxq '70) for fxi) iyu), Latin
elided a long vowel freely, and had practically no use for aphaeresis.

Arsis and Thesis. The Greeks meant by arsis the lifting of
the foot in the march or dance, and by thesis the downward move-
ment. In an anapaest the two short syllables accompany the
former movement, the long syllable the latter :

arsis thesis

Hence for the Greeks the long syllable in a dactyl, anapaest,
iambus, &c., is the thesis, the rest of the foot the arsis.

A different use of the terms grew up in Roman imperial times,
and after that yet another usage, which has been the prevalent
one with modern metricians— the voice and not the foot came to be
thought of, and hence arsis and thesis exchanged meanings. The
long syllable in the anapaest came to be called the arsis. ' Rise *
and 'fair in English, and ' Hebung ' and 'Senkung' in German,
have been adopted as terms answering to this use of arsis and
thesis. In view of these equivalents it would be a mistake to revive
the Greek use of the words.

Asynartete {aawapTrjros, awaprdv, fasten together) : Horace's
line:

w -w - ^^

reducet in sedem vice. | nunc et Achaemenio

is asynartete ; it would have been ' synartete ' if he had made it
a rule that the last syllable of the iambic part must always be an

APPENDIX 263

actual long syllable, and that it may not be followed by a hiatus.
An elegiac pentameter is * synartete *. In Horace's line there is
a rupture of continuity ; the two parts or kmXu are not ' fastened
together ' or closely attached. The short syllable of ' vic6 ' counts
as a long, with a pause after it.

Basis: (i) a step in march or dance, the lifting and lowering
of the foot, arsis + thesis. The term belongs chiefly to anapaests.
(2) Basis or 'basis Aeolica ' is used to designate what is something
not unlike an anacrusis, except that it consists of two syllables or
a whole foot. In Horace, and in poets after him who use metres
to which it belongs (e.g. Statius and Martial in hendecasyliabics),
it is always two long syllables or a spondee (one exception, Oi/es
i. 15. 36). In the early Greek poets it may be — v^ or w— , and
occasionally it is w v-/ — or >^ w (Catullus admits — ^ and ^ — ).

Brachycatalectic : it is doubtful whether this term has any
utility at all, and at all events it is of no use for Horace.

Bucolic : belonging to herdsmen {(BovkoXoi) or to the songs of
herdsmen (Pastorals, Bucolica). The hexameters of Theocritus
very frequently have a division at the end of the fourth foot, and
this was called the bucolic diaeresis :

r] Kara Ili]V€i(o KoXa re/xTrea | ^ Kara Ilivdu)
nam neque Parnassi vobis iuga, nam neque Pindi

(the end of a word is not enough. ' Peliaco quondam prognatae
vertice pinus ' is not a bucolic line. To make a line ' bucolic ' in
any useful sense of the term there must be a more or less marked
rhetorical pause or pause in the sense).

Caesura (ro/Ltr}) : a cutting or severance, a break or division of
a verse which does not coincide with the end of a metrical foot
(some writers use the word to include also a division which does
coincide with a metrical ending, but it seems expedient to call
that by a different name, diaeresis). A hexameter must have a
caesura, it may not fall into two equal parts. A line written by
Ennius :

spernitur orator bonus, horridu' miles amatur,

is defective, and not to be imitated. A senarius also must have
a caesura, a pause no^ at the end of the third foot, but in the third
or fourth foot. Aeschylus's line :

QpaKrjv nepdaavTes j /ioyiy TroXXca novco
may have been meant to depict a slow and halting march.

Catalexis, catalectic (/cnrnXi^yw, stop, come to an end, break
off) : catalexis takes place, and the line is catalectic, when instead
of a syllable or syllables uttered by the voice there is a pause of
silence answering to them in duration. The last foot is incomplete

264 APPENDIX

(in sound, not in time). Thus, when dactylic verse is catalectic,
two short syllables (= one long) are dropped (or are unrepresented
in sound) : — ww — \^ ^ — a. (See ' Pause.')

Colon {kmXov) : a ' phrase ' or coherent group of feet, sometimes
forming in itself a ' verse * {o-tIxos, versus), sometimes part of a
verse. A hexameter and a pentameter are 'verses' consisting of two
co/a. But sometimes the distinction between a ' colon ' and a
* verse ' is rather arbitrary or conventional. An ' asynartete ' verse

(reducet in sedem vice. | nunc et Achaemenio)

might appear as two lines or versus, if the poet or his editor so
determined :

reducet in sedem vice,
nunc et Achaemenio.

Comma (Ko/^/xa, indsuvi) : a term used in rhetoric for a group
of words shorter than a kmXou, and also used by Caesius Bassus in

metre.

It is convenient to use it for a group of syllables which have not
the length and independence of a kwXov, but yet do form a separable

group, e.g. the first five syllables of a Sapphic line, —y ,

which is a ' comma ' or severed portion of a trochaic line. But
the parts into which a hexameter is divided by the 'caesura'
should not be called commata. A dactylic hexameter is not one
KwXov made up of two commata, but a line, versus or o-ti;^o$-, made
up of two KooXa.

Crasis (xpao-iy, Kepawvyn) takes place when a vowel at the end
of a word is not elided before a following vowel, but fused with it.
Thus if /cat could suffer elision, kcu e-yco would be k' iyw («-^ — ; ; but
with Kai crasis is the rule, and the result is a spondee, not an
iambus (/cdyco, ——).

' Cyclic ' dactyl : a term which rests on a very doubtful passage
in Dionysius, where there is mention of a special kind of anapaest
' which they call kvkXios ' (if kvkXios is right, an anapaest belonging
to the dithyramb and its kvkXios x"pos would be meant : ' cyclic '
answers to kvkXikos, and would connect the foot with epic poetry).

It was used by J. H. H. Schmidt and other metricians of last
century to denote a dactyl shorter and more rapid than a normal
one, answering in time to a trochee, and capable of being combined
with trochees. The symbol -v/ w was used for it, and the time

was supposed to be J ^ J. The theory was that a normal long

syllable could be replaced by slightly shorter syllable with a very
short one attached to it, — w for — . (When a dactyl is divided by

caesura, as in the Horatian Sapphic, J J^ seems more probable.)

Such a dactyl could be described as a daKrvXos Tplxp'>vos or Tpiatjfxos.

APPENDIX 265

Diaeresis: a break, word-ending, or division whicli coincides
with the end of a foot or a metrical group. It is convenient to
have a term other than caesura for such a division as that in the
middle of an elegiac pentameter or a trochaic tetrameter :

Horace's break in the first two lines of an Alcaic stanza is also to

be described as a diaeresis. The syllables i=^ — w , with which

the line begins^ were perhaps thought of as part of an iambic
senarius ; but the break would be a ' caesura ' only if what followed
were the rest of an iambic verse — whereas a quite different effect
follows, beginning with a dactyl. The scansion * odi [ profan|um
vulg|us et arcjeo ' (iambic, of a kind, throughout) is not to be
thought of.

Diiambus and Ditrochaeus (dU) are terms sometimes used for
an iambic or trochaic dipody (^ — v^ — and — w— — ). (Cic. and
Quint, used * dichoreus ' for — <^ — — , and meant by trochaeus what
we call a ' tribrach'.)

Dimeter: a term used for a group oi four feet (tetrapody) in
certain kinds of verse : i. e. the unit of measurement is not one
foot, but a pair or dipody. Iambic and trochaic verse were so
divided and described by the Greeks (see p. 232). A line of four
anapaests also was called a dimeter ; but a line of four dactyls was
called a tetrameter.

Dipody, tripody, tetrapody, pentapody, he\apody arc words used
for a phrase or verse measured by the number of single feet that
it contains : dipody a group of two TrdSf?, tripody one of three.
Hexapody, if in use, would answer to senarius.

Elision {eltdere, force out, thrust out) : a vowel ' elided ' before
a following vowel was ' thrust out' of the metre or metrical scheme.
For metre 'elision' is a term that expresses the fact better and
more clearly than the Greek word awnXoKprj. The vowel did not
count metrically, though it is not to be supposed that it was alto-
gether inaudible or entirely omitted by the voice.^

In Greek it was chiefly the short vowels n, f, o that \yere treated
in this way. Latin went much further, and regularly elided vowels
long or short, and also final syllables in m. Thus in re^^io oberat
the long has no place in the metre, it is the following that
counts (— >^ w ^). See Hiatus.

Epitritiis (ttous- emrpLTos, a foot divided in the ratio 4 : 3) : a

name for the group of syllables — ^ (w v^ v^ | w w w v^),

a trochaic dipody or ' ditrochaeus ', ending with the heavier
syllable which was allowed in that place. Whether the time was
really 3 + 4 and the 'foot' enTaarjixos is a very disputable matter.

1 Forms like animadve/io, niagnopcre, dotnitio ( = dontiini itio, home-
coming seem to point to great attenuation of the vowel or oi' tint.

266 APPENDIX

The term is chiefly used for an element in those odes of Pindar
that are sometimes called * dactylo-epitrite ' (a form of metre used
also by the tragedians), where it is combined with what on one

theory is a dactylic KwXnv (usually — w w — w w ), and on

another a choriambic and Ionic group (— w w — ] w v^ ).

Hiatus : a verse /liaff there is a break or ' gap ' in it when
a vowel is not elided before a following vowel : ' Glauco | et
Panopeae 6t Inoo Melicertae.' ' Glauc' et, Panope' et' is the
normal, continuous scansion in Latin, but here the vowels stand
side by side ; between them, instead of a consonant, there is
nothing, a ' gap ' or ' rift '.

Hiatus is of two kinds, both exemplified in this line of Virgil.

(1) The preceding vowel retains its length, (2) it is shortened.

(2) is a regular practice in Greek dactylic verse, but it seems to
have also had some root in Latin. ' Ita mS | dl ament, leplde
accfplmur (Plautus), an qui amant ' (Virg. Eclogues\ probably
answering to actual facts of pronunciation.

Latin verse admitted both kinds very sparingly. Virgil's
' insulae lonio in magno ' is explained by the fact that a word of
Cretic form (— w — , Insulae) was not allowed to suffer elision in
heroic verse. In Greek epic verse hiatus is more frequent, and
when short syllables follow a long it is admitted very freely

(rir^Xj^iaSea) 'AxiX^oyj in //. i. l).

Hypercatalectic. See ' Brachycatalectic ' and ' Anacrusis '.
' Acephalous ' and ' Hypercatalexis ' were ancient terms used to
account for things which the modern notion of 'anacrusis' often
explains in a simpler way.

Hypermetron or synapheia : metrical continuity between one
line and the next {avvd(p€ia, contact, absence of any metrical
severance or interruption). This is found chiefly in anapaests and
in some Glyconic stanzas (see p. 248). The last syllable is not
a syllaba anceps, and elision takes place if the next line begins
with a vowel. The end of a line may fall within a word. In
Horace's lyrics, as in most metres, this effect is permissive, not
imperative. In some forms of verse it is very rare ; Sophocles
now and again has elision at the end of an iambic line, a-vv oh
r I ov xpnv ofxtXcbv, and Laevius in iambic dimeters writes :

saurae, inlices bicodulae, hin-
nientium dulcedines.

In an epigram of Simonides it is used to bring an intractable name
into an elegiac couplet :

^ fjLfy ^AdrjvoLoicn (jydos y€ve0\ fjviK* ^Apiarro-
ycLTCov "imrapxov Kveipe kgI 'Ap/LxoSio?.

Horace has it occasionally in this, the most unmistakable form of
it (' neque purpura velnale neque auro').

APPENDIX 267

It might be convenient to use ' hypermetron ' for metrical con-
tinuity between one line and the next, and ' synapheia ' for con-
tinuity between two kojXu which make up a line.

Ictus, 'beat'. Horace uses the word when he imagines himself
to be training a chorus :

Lesbium servate pedem meique
pollicis ictum.

In this sense it is a movement of the hand or foot, accompanying
the metre, but outside of it. In ' pavidumque leporem ' (p. 234)
the ictus of a resolved iambus is on the first syllable of * leporem '
(w ow taking the place ofw— ). On that syllable falls also the
ordinary accent of the Latin word ' leporem '. The ictus marks
the * arsis' of a foot. But very often it falls on a syllable which is
not accented. It is a matter of dispute what an ictus was. Was it
made audible ? Was it of the nature of a slight stress accent ? In
' arma virumque cano ' the first syllable of ' ciino ' is the syllable
on which the ordinary accent falls ; the ictus falls on the
second. How then was ' cano ' pronounced here ? How was
' Italian! ' pronounced in the next line ? That is a question to
which no very definite or certain answer can be given. To read
Latin verse well is a difficult thing, at all events for us. Perhaps
the following remarks may safely be made about it : [a) the
metrical structure must not be obscured, it must be felt, and made
sensible to the hearer, even if this sometimes involves dropping
or attenuating the ordinary accent ; {b) when the ictus falls on
a long syllable a reader or reciter whose native language is English,
with its tendency to make a strong stress accent the chief form of
emphasis, should endeavour to make the syllable really long (pro-
longed, not made loud), without thinking about an * ictus ' apart
from that ; [c] when the ictus falls on a short syllable he will find
that, in Latin, it usually coincides with an ordinary accent (as in
'pavidumque leporem'), so that he need not think about it in this
case either.

Lyric. The word 'lyric' is used in two senses, a wider and
a narrower one. In its wider sense (as in the title ' Bergk's Poetae
Ly?-ici Graeci) a lyric poem is any poem which does not narrate,
as an epic does, or put characters and action on the stage, as
a drama does, but gives expression to the feelings or thoughts of
the poet (or of the poet and his friends, or the poet and his
countrymen, as in a lament or a song of victory). In this wide
sense it includes elegiac and iambic (abusive or personal) poems.
In the narrower sense, which is the ancient one, it means a poem
to be sung to music, a song — for which ' melic ' poem is some-
times used.

Elegiac and iambic poems had at first a musical accompaniment,
but at a quite early date they came to be merely spoken or recited.
So they fall clearly within the sphere of ' metre ' or Mctrik ; no

268 APPENDIX

syllable has more than the time of an ordinary long. It is otherwise
with * melic ' poems. Some Greek lyrics were meant only to be
sung, not to be read at all. In dealing with these Metrik is really
encroaching upon, or borrowing ideas from, the province of rhythm
or music.

Metre, Metrik^ M^TpiKt] : fxtrpiKt] is a branch of pvBiiiKx], metre is
rhythm manifested in a particular medium or vKr], namely, articulate
syllables or speech. We may think of pvBpiKi) as a highly abstract,
central inquiry, which provides empty forms or time-spaces, of
a certain length and subdivided in one way or another, to be
rendered visible or audible by some kind of movement or sound,
e.g. opxn^T'TiKTj deals with rhythm as revealed by the movements of
a dancer (axrjpnra). Metrik deals with rhythm as it is worked out
in detail in spoken syllables. So Ouintilian remarks that dactyl
and anapaest are the same in rhythm : ' for rhythm it does not
matter whether the two short syllables precede or follow the long '.
Metre has sometimes meant a rather mechanical way of describing
certain groups of syllables, regardless of their rhythm. Thus

a dochmius {y w — ) can be described as consisting €^ avn-

(T7rd(TTov Ka\ avWa^rji, v_/ ^y \ — , but this is a purely metrical

description. For rhythm or music it had to be regarded as a novs
oKTacrrjpos {fiaivovrai §e ol pvdpoi, ra de perpa diaipelrai, ovxi (Baii'fTai).
In modern times writers on classical verse have usually not been
content with a merely descriptive or mechanical system.

Pause (Aflju/io, K€v6s xpovos) : the space or interval which is not
occupied by sound at the end of a catalectic verse. The symbol
in common use for a pause is the initial letter of Aei/xwa. Without
any addition this denotes a pause equal to a short syllable {Kevos
^piixvs). Longer pauses are denoted by adding a symbol of length :
thus A is a pause equal to w w or — {kcvos dixpovo^, or, in the
language of music, dicrrjpos), a a pause equal to w w w or — w (Kevos
Tplxpovos). Only A and a are required for Horatian metres (a in
the case of ' arboribusque comae ').

It is difficult to avoid using the word ' pause ' for another
thing, a slighter and less measurable pause, e. g. the ' bucolic ' pause
in 'omnia vel medium fiant mare, vivite, silvae'. This is a
rhetorical pause or pause required by the sense, and as such outside
metre ; but it determines the metrical type of line — the line is one
with a marked diaeresis after the fourth foot.

Prosody is a word which in its origin is not well suited to
express what is commonly meant by it ; the Greek word irpocrcodia
meant accent, and the Greek accent was a musical or pitch accent
[Trpos-adeiv).

' Prosody ' is now used in two ways :

(i) Sometimes it is used very widely and loosely, to include
much of what belongs to metre, Afeirik, or perpiKi].

(2) In relation to Latin and Greek it has a narrower meaning,
and a quite useful one. Metrik tells us how short and long

APPENDIX 269

syllables are arranged in the various kinds of verse ; prosody tells
us what actual syllables are short and long, or competent to occupy
these places. Thus the distinction between Mevis ' and Mevis'
belongs to prosody. So, again, it is a matter of prosody that the

final syllable of ' mihi, tibi, sibi' is either short or long. But if we
proceed to ask, ' When is it long ? ' the answer is no longer strictly
within the bounds of ' prosody '. Metre is involved, for the fact is
that the syllable was originally long, and the old quantity as it were
comes to life again when the metrical ictKS falls on the syllable.

Senarii {sc. versus) are (iambic) lines consisting each of six feet,
or which have se7ii pedes. A Greek trimeter does in fact contain
six feet, but it is convenient to reserve the name seiiarius for the
Roman type of verse, which does not, like the Greek, show dipodic
structure by excluding spondees from the second and fourth places.

o-iTov8eid^cov (sc. uTixf^s:) '. a hexameter which ends in two spondees :
'me quoque deAiexi rapidus comes Ononis' (Hor. Odes \. 28.21),
* sententia Phocaeorum' {Epode xvi. 17). Homer has such lines,
and the atticization of the Homeric text perhaps increased their

number, Ar/jtiSao becoming 'Arpei'Sao, and r]6a dlnv, rjco d'lav. In
Roman poetry this form of line was admitted by Catullus and his
contemporaries: ' moenia vexarentur', 'et decus innuptarum '.
Cicero rejects it, and thought it an affectation of the vtcjTfpm
{Att. vii. 2. i). In Augustan poets it is found chiefly when the
dispondeus is a Greek proper name [supra, p. 23).
o-rrovSctos {novs), spondee : a foot of two long syllables or a bar of

two long notes ( J J ), so called because it accompanied a libation
(o-novdrj). The notes were those of a flute, and no doubt they were often
slow or protracted ( li i_j or J J ) : Victorinus, 44. 22 K ' dictus-

a tractu cantus eius qui per longas tibias in templis supplicantibus
editur'.

Syllaba anceps. A syllable which is in the peculiar position of
standing at the end of a line is regarded as outside ordinary
principles of quantity, it is dubious (anceps), and if short may count
metrically as long (e. g. ' submovere litora ; reducet in sedem vicg ',
at the end of a KaXov), or if long as short. Cic. Orator 217:
' postrema syllaba brevis an longa sit, ne in versu quidem refert '
(*ne in versu quidem ', i.e. still less in a closing cadence of prose).
A short counting as a long is very common, and Terentianus
describes it clearly :

omnibus in metris hoc iam retinere memento,
in fine non obesse pro longa brevem.

Reckoning a long as a short is a more difficult and obscure matter
(see p. 246 ;/.).

270 APPENDIX

Synapheia or Synaphea (awdcf^nn) : see Hypermetron.

Syncope : what happens when a foot is ' cut down ' to one
syllable, or compressed into one syllable. Gr. tovt] : ' protraction '
of the syllable, is another name for the same thing. The foot as
a rhythmical unit is not really ' cut down ' ; the syllable becomes
longer than an ordinary long, equal to a trochee in trochaic verse
(— «^ = I—), or to a dactyl in dactylic verse (— o w = i_i ). The
effect belongs chiefly to Greek lyric verse. Roman poets did not
use metres in which it occurs in any obvious or certain way. It is
doubtful whether Horace anywhere intended it to be felt.

Synizesis (crvinOja-is, a ' sinking ' or ' settling ' together of two
vowels) is most conveniently used for what happens when two
vowels within a word, which usually are separate syllables, are
combined into one long, e.g. when 6e6s, Seal, is scanned as one

syllable (vimv fieV Bfnl doieu, II. i. i8). So too in compounds:
a word like Theodosius (v^ w w w ^ inadmissible in dactylic verse)
becomes Theudosius. When the vowels are in separate words the
term crasis is used.

Thesis : see Arsis.

(B)
CHRONOLOGIA METRICA

Pre-Homeric lays (Aeolian ?)

Epic — Homeric hexameter : Ionian : a verse intended for recitation.
Elegy— Callinus : Tyrtaeus (? date of Tyrtaeus uncertain).
(650) Archilochns of Faros, elegiac verse and iambi. Dactylic and
iambic cola combined. Music and poetry at Sparta. Terpander.
Alcman.
Lyric—

Stesichorus, Dorian lyric in Sicily.

' Epici carminis onera lyra sustinens ' (Quint, x. c. i).
Metre — many long dactylic cola.

600 Alcaeus,

(TTaaiojTiKa and avyLiroTiKo.
Sappho, kpojTurd

Lesbos.

Aeolian yric.

APPENDIX . 271

Mimnermus, erotic elegy. Solon, political verse ^^elegiac : iambic

and trochaic, Archilochian).
Hipponax : scazon or choliambus.
Thespis at Athens : beginning of tragedy : trochaic tetrameter

(Ar. Poet. c. iv).
Theognis of Megara : elegy, political and social.
Anacreon comes to Athens : Aeschylus gets from him 'Iwvikoi

dvaic\d>fxevoi.
500 Pratinas protests that the words are more important than the

music : rav dotSav KariaTaai Iliepls ^acriKaav.

Pindar : elaborate and varied lyric, measures both Dorian and

Aeolian.
Bacch3'lides, a professional verse-maker : simpler and more

mechanical stj'le.
Simonides : epigram, 9p7Jvoi, &c.
Tragedy : in metre, dochmii peculiar to it, for a tragic crisis,

a moment of tension and suspense.
Comedy : the iafx^iKT] Idea, abusive, personal and political f Ar. Poef.

c. iv : Crates opened a new^ vein).
Cratinus, Eupolis, Aristophanes : iambic verse much freer than

that of Archilochus
Gorgias and Thrasymachus begin to study rhythm in oratory.
Euripides : new developments in music (parodied in Frogs) : music

more complex and less subordinate to words. Tragic trimeter

freer and more conversational (resolution more frequent).
400 Timotheos : author of a vuj^os now known, JJepaai. Philoxenus.

dithyrambs.

Pluius of Aristophanes : choric parts slight and simple.
Rhetoric :

Rhythm and prose elaborated by Isocrates and others.
Tragedy becomes rhetorical.

Rhetoric invades history (Theopompus and Ephorus).
Decline of the chorus :

choric part very slight in comedy.

(fx^oXifJia in tragedy (Ar. Poef. c. xviii dp^avros 'AydOojvos'.
Isyllus of Epidaurus (hexr., troch. tetr. and Ionics in a paean

to Apollo).
Menander :' New' Comedy (^tjOiktj Idea) mainly in iambic trimeters

(with occasional passages in trochaic tetrameter).
Philetas of Cos, early Alexandrian elegy.

272

APPENDIX

GREECE
300 Asclepiades

/• lyric metres writ-

Ai J • ten Kard ariyov

Alexandria J ■^

hexameter preva-
I lent
Callimachus —

scazon for fables
elegiac verse in AjTm
(narrative^

Delphic hymn, cretics

Philosophy again expressed in
verse

Pure iambi (Stoics — Clean-
thes)

Scazons (Phoenix — Cyni-
cism and popular moraliz-
ing)

Herondas ] Mixed, prose with
M.ifiiajxl3oi verse intermixed

in Scazons ' (MenippusandBion)

Aratus Lycophron and

in Nicander

plainer style harsh and

obscure
Rhinthon, iXaporpaycvdia
iKapcvSiai and fxaycoblai
(Grenfell's Fragment)

200

ROME

Epitaph of Scipio (L. Corn.
Scipio Barbatus — Gnaivod
patre prognatus — consul in
298)

Epitaph of L. Scipio, consul
in 259

Odtsia of Livius Andronicus

240 plays produced by Livius

239 birth of Ennius
235 Comedy of Naevius

Plautus writing pallmiae — can-
tica from IXapq^blai?
204 Ennius comes to Rome

Naevius's ' Bellum Punicum '
in his old age — Saturnians

APPENDIX

273

GREECE

[This section (Greece, 200-Too)
was left by Prof. Hardie un-
written.]

100

ROME

Ennius flourished
Annales (hexameter)
Hedyphagetica (hexam.

looser, like Lucilius)
Saturae (elegiac and other
metres, written with con-
siderable finish and pre-
cision)
Tragedies
Terence — less canticum than in
Plautus (nearer Menander^
Togata - same metres as pal-

liata
Lucilius — iambi, troch., then

hexam. in Saturae
Volcatius Sedigitus
Porcius Licinus — literary mat-
ters discussed in verse
Accius — tragedies

also Sotadeans
Saturnians ?)

274

APPENDIX
ROME

Hexameter

Drama

63 Cicero

consul

Cicero, Aratea

Lucretius (rather more
archaic and more
akin to Enn. than his
contemporaries)

Atellana popular

Tragedy written as a
literary composition,
not for the stage
(Q. Cicero wrote four
tragedies in sixteen
days)

48 Pharsalus
42 Philippi
31 Actium

Augustus

Mimus popular
Laberius
Syrus

' Cantores Euphorionis' ;

hexameter smoother

and more finished
Ciris? I

Culex ? '

42-38 Ecloguesof Virgil , Varius, Th^^estes, 29 b.c.
Varro Atacinus |

Virgil (70-19
Horace : satires and

epistles) !

by rhetoric"!

' Trabeata ' written b\'
Melissus

-
A.D. 14 d. of Augustus

Manilhis, Astronomica

Tiberius, 14-37

Caligula, 37-41

Claudius, 41-54
Nero, 54-68

Calpurnius, Pastorals
Lucan

Seneca, Tragedies
(iambic verse, strict :
5th foot always a
spondee Lyrics —
Horatian verse,usually

Vespasian
Titus

Valerius Flaccus

Kara arixov)
Octavia, a praetexta

domitian

Nerva, 96-98
Trajan, 98-117

Statius
Silius

Hadrian

•

APPENDIX
ROME

Other forms of Poetry

Catulus, erotic epigrams

Laevius, Erotopaegnia : metrical experiments

Saturae of Varro: many metres, written witli considerable exactness
Elegy

Catullus

Catullus : Hendecas. (Phalaecei Kara arixov) : Scazon
(5th foot always an iambus, : experiments in Sap-
phics, Glyconics, Asclep., Galliambics

Callus
Tibullus

Propertius

Ovid

Catalepton ? (or some of the pieces in it ?)

Horace : metres of Archilochus Epodes), Alcaeus, and
Sappho (Odes)

Phaedrus, Fabulae i^in the senarius of comedy)

Caesius Bassus, lyric and iambic poet (and writer on metre ?

Persius, satirist (Stoic)

Petronius, Satyricon (prose, with occasional verse in various metres)

Seneca, Ludus de Morte Claudii (a Varronian or Menippean satire)

Juvenal : satire in regular and sonorous hexameter (rhetoric now

invades even satire)
Hadrian : iambic and trochaic dimeters. Epitaph on his horse in

Anacreontics
Florus

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