ΑΝ INTRODUCTION TO THE PRINCIPAL GREEK TRAGIC AND COMIC METRES IN SCANSION, STRUCTURE, AND ICTUS; BY JAMES TATE, M.A. THE Introduction here offered to the use of young Students may claim one merit at least, that of being unquestionably the first attempt of the kind. If, with great truth, it be added that on the compilation and composition of the work a large measure of time and painful thought has been bestowed, that will be a farther plea for its candid and liberal reception with all intelligent readers. The Author is duly aware, that in the plan here (generally) adopted of stating the approved results of the inquiries of others, he has foregone several opportunities to recommend favourite researches and remarks of his own. Plain practical utility has been his leading object: he might else, in developing the present state of metrical knowledge, have interspersed some instructive and even amusing facts in its history and progress up to the present time. Many things now familiar to young Academics (thanks to the labors of Dawes and Burney and Parr and Porson and Elmsley) were utterly unknown to scholars like Bentley and to Scaliger before him and though it might seem an ungracious task, it would not be void either of pleasure or of profit to give select specimens of errors in metre and syntax committed by those illustrious men. : If Attic literature is even now in the process of being delivered from one of its greatest pests, the emendandi scabies, nothing could better illustrate the value of those critical labors by which the deliverance has been so far achieved, than to exhibit scholars otherwise so justly eminent, wasting their fine talents and erudition on emendations crude and unprofitable, which in the present day could not possibly be hazarded. 16 May, 1827. R. S. Y. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PRINCIPAL GREEK TRAGIC AND COMIC METRES IN SCANSION, STRUCTURE, AND ICTUS. THE principal verses of a regular kind are Iambic, Trochaic, and Anapestic. The Scansion in all of them is by dipodias or sets of two feet. Each set is called a Metre. The structure of verse is such a division of each line by the words composing it as forms a movement most agreeable to the ear. The metrical ictus, occurring twice in each dipodia, seems to have struck the ear in pairs, being more strongly marked in the one place than in the other. Accordingly, each pair was once marked by the percussion of the musician's foot. Pede ter percusso is Horace's phrase when speaking of what is called Iambic Trimeter. Those syllables which have the metrical ictus are said also to be in arsi, and those which have it not, in thesi, from the terms άpois and Oéois: the latter is sometimes called the debilis positio. I.-The Tragic Trimeter. 1. The Iambic Trimeter Acatalectic, (i. e. consisting of three entire Metres,) as used by the Tragic writers, may have in every place an Iambus, or, as equivalent, a Tribrach in every place but the last; in the odd places, 1st, 3d, and 5th, it may have a Spondee, or, as equivalent, in the 1st and 3d a Dactyl, in the first only it may have an Anapest. This initial Anapèst of the Trimeter is hardly perceptible in its effect on the verse: in the short Anacreontic, Μεσονυκτίοις ποθ ̓ ὥραις Στρέφεται ὅτ' Αρκτος ἤδη, κ.τ.λ. it evidently produces a livelier movement. Verses containing pure Iambi (a), Tribrachs in 1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, and 5th places (b, c, d, e, f), Spondees in 1st, 3d, and 5th (g), Dactyls in 1st and 3d (h, i), Anapest in 1st (j), are given by Gaisford in his Hephaestion, p. 241, or may be read in the following lines of the Edipus Rex: α. b. C. d. 8. ὁ πᾶσι κλεινὸς Οἰδίπους καλούμενος. 112. πότερα δ' ἐν οἴκοις ἢ ὂν ἀγροῖς ὀ Λάϊος. 26. φθίνουσα δ' ἀγέλαις βουνόμοις, τόκοισί τε. 568. πῶς οὖν τόθ' οὗτος ὁ σοφὸς οὐκ ηὔδα τάδε; 826. μητρὸς ζυγῆναι, καὶ πατέρα κατακτανεῖν. f. 1496. τί γὰρ κακῶν ἄπεστι; τὸν πατέρα πατήρ. 30. "Αιδης στεναγμοῖς καὶ γόοις πλουτίζεται. e. h. 270. μήτ' ἄροτον αὐτοῖς γῆν ἀνιέναι τινά. i. 2. The last syllable in each verse appears to be indifferently short or long and even where one line ends with a short vowel, a vowel is often found at the beginning of the next, as in Ed. R. vv. 2, 3; 6, 7; 7, 8. Sometimes, however, one verse with its final vowel elided passes by scansion into the next, as Ed. Col. vv. 1164, 5. σοὶ φασὶν αὐτὸν ἐς λόγους ἐλθεῖν μολόντ ̓ αἰτεῖν, ἀπελθεῖν τ ̓ ἀσφαλῶς τῆς δευρ' ὁδοῦ. The case is thus restricted by Porson, ad Med. 510. Vocalis in fine versus elidi non potest, nisi syllaba longa præcedat. (On this curious subject consult Hermann's Elementa Doctrinæ Metricæ, Lips. 1816. Glasg. 1817. pp. 36=22, 3.) 3. Besides the initial Anapest (restricted, however, as below1) in common words, in certain proper names, which could not else be introduced, the Anapest is admitted also into the 2d, 3d, 4th, and 5th places of the verse. év (2d.) Iph. Α. 416. ἣν Ιφιγένειαν ὠνόμαζες ἐν δόμοις. (sd.) (Ed. Col. 1317. τέταρτον Ιππομέδοντ' ἀπέστειλεν πατήρ. In all these the two short syllables of the Anapest are inclosed betwixt two longs in the same word, and show the strongest as well as the most frequent case for the admission of such a licence. (The nature of this licence will be considered in a note (C) ch. xvii. on the admission of Anapests into the Iambic verse of Comedy.) In the few instances where the proper name begins with an Anapest, as Mevéλaos, Пpiáμov, &c. those names might easily by a different position come into the verse like other words similarly constituted. Elmsley, in his celebrated critique on Porson's Hecuba, ed. 1808, considers all such cases as corrupt. (Vid. Edinburgh Review, Vol. xix. p. 69.) Porson's judgment seems to lean the other way.-At all events, the whole Anapest must be contained in the same word. (Vide Hecub. Porsoni, London. 1808. p. xxiii.= p. 18. Euripid. Porsoni a Scholefield, Cantabr. 1826. To these editions only any references hereafter will be regularly made.) II. The Comic Trimeter, besides the initial Anapest which it takes with less restriction, admits the Anapest of common words in all the other places but the last it admits also the Dactyl in 5th. Vesp. 979. κατάβα, κατάβά, | κατάβα, κατάβα, | καταβήσομαι. Plut. 55. πυθοίμεθ ̓ ἂν τὸν χρησμὸν ἡμῶν ὅτι νοεῖ. 1. This Anapest in the Tragics is generally included in the same word; except where the line begins either with an article or with a preposition followed immediately by its case. Monk, Mus. Crit. I. p. 63. Philoct. 754. τὸν ἴσον χρόνον Orest. 888. ἐπὶ τῷδε δ' ἠγόρευον Iph. Α. 646. παρ' ἐμοὶ |