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Simonidea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

H. W. Garrod
Affiliation:
Merton College, Oxford

Extract

The notes which follow are concerned almost entirely with questions of metre and rhythm; and since the lyric forms of Simonides are, nearly every-where, ‘systematic’ and not stichic, it is not easy to speak of these without involving oneself—and the reader—in problems of a nature somewhat controversial. In particular, it is impossible to avoid the use of the terms ‘logaoedic’ and ‘dactylo-epitritic’; and it is impossible to use these without explaining what sense one attaches to them. I will begin, therefore, by discharging this necessary, but tiresome, duty. I call it tiresome, because in the country of Bentley and Porson and Elmsley and Gaisford no one any longer cares to scan Greek verse. The history of metrical study in England in the last century begins with Jebb's Sophocles (which popularized a German metric already discredited in Germany), and ends with chapter VI. of Mr. Norwood's Greek Tragedy. People ask why the classics are dying. It is because the wrath of God is coming upon the children of Jebb and Mr. Norwood.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1922

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References

page 65 note 1 Hephaestion, VIII. ad fin., mentions only the bacchius. That is because the bacchius characterizes always the only form of logaoedic verse in which Hephaestion is interested, the type which he calls the πισƞμτατον that employed by Archebulus. But the scholiasts are aware that the bacchius here is a catalectic diiambus: εὑρσɛται ον πρς τῷ τλει ἴαμβος μα συλλαβ, να ᾖ καταλƞκτικν εἰς δισλλαβον. πε χαρει τῷ ἰμβῳ νπαιστος, ὡς π βραχεας ρχομνῳ, ὥσπερ δκτυλος τῷ τροχαῳ (Consbrush, p. 136: cf. Trichas, p. 384: Mar. Vict., p. 75).

page 67 note 1 By asynartete verses, I am oblied to explian, Hephaestion means verses in which either (a) cola of two unlike metrical genera are brought into juxtaposition, but not into true conjunction: they are kept in disjunction by making the end of the first colon correspond invariably with the end of a word; or (b) cola of two like metrical genera (as the two parts of the elegiac line) are juxtaposed.

page 67 note 2 There can, I think, be no doubt that the colon ––∪∪–∪∪– was known in antiquity as ‘prosoiac.’ That the enhoplian was different from the prosodiac there is little evidence. The Scholia given by Consbruch, pp. 293, 340, 351, identify –∪∪–∪∪–– with the enhoplian: enhoplian will then be to prosodiac as dactyl to anapaest; and this distinction, certainly convenient, is maintained by some modern writers, and I have employed it, without prejudice, in this paper. On the other hand, I find it difficult to think that it was known to Heliodorus, who, in analyzing the dactylo-epitritic measures of Aristophanes, calls ––∪∪–∪∪– prosodiac, but –∪∪–∪∪–– consistently hemiepes.

page 68 note 1 The second half of the second metron replacing anapaest with spondee. It seems probable from Hephaestion VIII. ad fin. that this substitution was excluded from the verse in stichic composition, though found, he tells us, in Alcman. Bassus, Caesius says, more generally, that the verse ‘recipit spondeos’ (p. 236)Google Scholar. Pindar, Frag, 140b, 70, offers an example, I think, of a spondee in the first half of the second metron (see below, p. 76). Compare also what Hephaestion says of the ‘middle spondees’ in the prosodiac tetrameter in chap. xv., and the note upon Frag. 30 below.

page 69 note 1 This paper was written before the appearance of Wilamowitz' Griechische Verskunst. I observ from that work that its author is now aware that there was a species of anapaestic verse known to the ancients as ‘Archebulian.’ But he seems not to know what this in fact was. That is to say, he seems to know only the trimeter—which does not exhaust Archebulians—and he does not always know that; for he calls Bacchylides V. ep. 3,

ὑμνεῖν κυανοπλοκμου θ' ἕκατι νκας,

an Archebulian (p. 428), and says that ‘bei Pindar ist es mir nicht begegnet.’ If this be true, Wilamowitz has read Pindar with curious inattention, as may be seen from what I have to say of the Pindaric Archebulians on pp. 75, 76 (most of the Archebulians there spoken of are, as will be seen, not true Archebulians; but they are so for Wilamowitz). A good deal of the rubbish of Isyllos has disappeared from the chapter on Ioniker. But I note with surprise 3, that Wilamowitz states, p. 339, that that work ‘behandelt richtig’ the fragment which we have just been considering.

page 71 note 1 I would call attention here to Pindar, , Pyth. VIII. ep. 7Google Scholar, where

θβαις υἱοὺς αἰνἰξατο παρμνοντας αἰχμᾷ (40)

seems to be a spondaizing experiment with the metre of Ἐρασμονδη Χαρλαε. But the line appears also with initial iambics:

Πηλεῖ τε κγαθῷ Τελαμνι σν τ' Ἀχιλλεῖ (100).

The scholiast calls it an anapaestic dimeter + ithyphallic. Anapaestic dimeter+iambic dimete would be more plausible.

page 72 note 1 Wilamowitz does, p. 428.

page 74 note 1 (b) 2 μ' οὖν scripsi: μου, μοι.codd.

page 75 note 1 He cites it as an example of asynartete verse, describing it, however, at the same time as the inverse, νεστραμμνον of the Platonicum. The two descriptions are inconsistent with one another, though the inconsistency does not seem to trouble the editors of Hephaestion. If the verse were the νεστραμμνον of the Platonicum it would divide into three penthemimers.

page 76 note 1 Line 10 of this fragment is still unmetrical in all the editions. It should, I have no doubt, read:

πρεμνν πώρουσαν χθονων, πικρνοις δ' ἄνσχεθον πτραν καμαντοπδιλοι.

I. ἂν δ' πικρνοις σχθον codd.

I see no reason to suppose a gap between the two parts of the fragment; but we should read ἦ γρ for ἦν γρ in 6, and ρχιτκοισ <σ'> πβαινεν in 8 (ρχιτκοις πβα νιν Porson).

page 76 note 2 See Wilamowitz, , Griech. Verskunst, pp 422 sqqGoogle Scholar. (though, as I have already noticed, Wilamowitz sometimes calls Archebulians verses which are nothing of the kind).