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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Reading the Rhesus again the other day, I was struck by something strange in the rhythm of its trimeters. Whatever this was, it seemed to have nothing to do with metrical punctuation (caesura, diaeresis, and like); nor with the use of trisyllabic feet, though on that I shall have something to say. By listening hard I found a clue. The Rhesus is very spondaic at the beginning and the middle of the line.
page 206 note 1 P. L. G. ii.
page 206 note 2 Anth. Lyr.
page 206 note 3 Oxonii (preface dated 1899).
page 206 note 4 Cambridge, from 1892 to 1900
page 206 note 5 Oxonii (the 1st edition, undated).
page 206 note 6 Oxonii (preface dated 1900).
page 207 note 1 Especially, perhaps, in view of the statistics for the quantities of παΤρός, παΤρί, ΤΈκ,ν—, given by H. D. Naylor in C. Q. i. (1907) pp. 4 sqq.
page 207 note 2 The nearest integers are given. The sum of each pair of percentages falls short of 100 by the percentage of trisyllabic feet (within 1 per cent.).
page 207 note 3 “Les iambographes ń admettent guère qúun seul spondée par vers,” says P. Masqueray (Traité de Métrique Grecqve, § 142). As it happens, about half the trimeters of Archilochus have two spondees, and half-a-dozen more have three; nearly half the trimeters of Simonides have two spondees, and a dozen more have three; and even in Solon trimeters with two or three spondees are not much fewer than trimeters with one or none. Still bolder is A. E. Chaignet (Essais de Métrique Grecque, p. 181): “le spondée, dans ľiambe tragique, était pour ainsi dire obligatoire au cinquieme pied.” Had he no eyes or ears? The best of our recent composers, Jebb, Butcher, Verrall, Archer-Hind, Headlam, agree pretty well with the practice of tragedy, though their verse, and especially Archer-Hind's, is a little too fond of iambs. Whether any of them had consciously analysed the practice of tragedy, I doubt; I fancy they were guided only by a happy instinct and a sensitive ear.
page 207 note 4 Ars Poetica, 251 sqq.
page 208 note 1 A. S. Wilkins, ad loc.
page 209 note 1 One might expect that the same would be true of the first foot also, but it is not; at least not inAeschylus or Sophocles, in whom tribrachs have the better of dactyls there by about 4 to 1 and 3 to 1. Of the small and early group of Euripides three plays have only one such dactyl between them, though the fourth, the Hippolytus,has eleven, in deference to the hero's name; but in the rest of Euripides dactyls prevail over tribrachs in the first foot by more than 3 to 2.