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Polioi men hemin ede
krotaphoi kare te leukon |
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(PMG 395), we can at once read off the note values (1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2; 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2; etc.), seize the simple rhythmical scheme governing them, and recognize it as a common one for which we have a name. In fact we have names for most kinds of rhythm and rhythmical scheme that we encounter, because it is a characteristic of Greek verse and song that they are based on a limited number of metrical types. We can assume that each metre corresponds to a particular rhythm, even if the exact rhythmic interpretation of the metrical data may be subject to doubt at some points. |
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There are certain authors who speak of the natural quantities of syllables being sometimes distorted in the interests of rhythm. Plato insists that in his ideal republic melody and rhythm must follow the words, not vice versa, implying that it is not always that way round in contemporary music.9 According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, |
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Prose diction does not violate or change round the quantities of any word, but keeps the long and short syllables just as they have been handed down naturally; but music and rhythm alter them, diminishing or increasing them, so that often they turn into their opposites, for they do not regulate their time-values by the syllables but the syllables by the time-values.10 |
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Fortunately the musical fragments that we have provide an antidote to this alarming statement. They show us long syllables being occasionally protracted to the value of three or (in the later texts) four shorts. In a papyrus of the first or second century AD we find one example of a short closed syllable (final -on) being treated as long within the verse, and there are two or three instances of this happening at verse-end.11 We do not find any case of a long syllable being shortened.12 So it is safe to say that the distortions that Dionysius |
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9Resp. 398d, 400a, d. |
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10Comp. 64 (ii. 42. 15 U.-R.); similarly Longinus, Proleg. in Heph. p. 83. 14 Consbruch, Anon. Ambros. p. 231. 28 Stud., 'Mar. Vict.' (Aphth.) in Gramm. Lat. vi. 42. 3 (from a common source, cf. R. Westphal, Griechische Rhythmik (Leipzig, 1885), 210). |
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1130 POsl. 1413a 4; at verse-end, ibid. 18, 29 POxy. 2436 ii 4, 31 PMichigan 2958.13. More surprising lengthenings of what should be short syllables occur in 51 POxy. 1786; but this Christian hymn dates from a time when Greek had lost the original opposition of long and short syllables, and knowledge of the 'correct' quantities had ceased to be general. |
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12 Perhaps what Dionysius has in mind is epic correption, the shortening of a long vowel or diphthong at the end of a word when another vowel follows at the beginning |
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(Footnote continued on next page) |
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