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in the recited type) as to avoid having four consecutive short notes. A pause was always marked in the recited type, and often in the sung type, by a bar of the form  or  . We have a late musical setting of an anapaestic passage in 30 POsl. 1413; there are pauses at three places, and in each case the expected crotchet rest is notated. Two other anapaestic pieces, 34 POxy. 3704 and 51 POxy. 1786, show a different technique, no doubt of late origin, in which some bars begin with rests,  or  . |
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Iambic, choriambic, trochaic |
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The name iambos was applied by the metricians to the foot  , and the rhythmicians took 'iambic' as the generic name for measures in which the ratio of arsis and thesis was 1 : 2. But in all the 'iambic' verse with which we are familiar the unit of measurement is not the single foot  but the so-called metron  with its several variants. Thus the very common verse of the pattern   was always called an iambic trimeter, not a hexameter.20 In musical terms this basic measure appears as a bar  . The first  formed the thesis and the second  the arsis.21 As the thesis and arsis were of equal duration, the measure fell into the rhythmicians' 'dactylic' category, not the 'iambic', and they in fact called it an 'iambic dactyl.22 |
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In spoken verse in iambic metre, the first position of each metron could be occupied by a long or a short syllable indifferently ( ). In sung verse too a long syllable was sometimes admitted in that place, but less often than in spoken verse, since it put more of a strain on the relatively strict rhythm of musical performance. It meant that the first short note of the bar had to be lengthened somewhat, presumably at the expense of the following long note, which nevertheless had to remain long enough to carry its own long syllable. If absolute regularity of beat was maintained, the rhythm of |
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20 Already in Hdt. 1. 12. 2, cf. 1. 174. 5. |
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21 Aristid. Quint. p. 38. 5; so marked in musical texts, 15 Song of Seikilos, 23 Anon. Bellerm. 97, 29 POxy. 2436 ii. 6-8, 31 POsl. 1413a. 19; but the other way round, 28 Anon. Bellerm. 104. |
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22Daktylos kat' iambon, POxy. 2687 ii 3, Aristid. Quint. loc. cit. The rhythmicians' terminology here differs strikingly from that of the metricians, who called the measure an iambic dipody or tautopody, or a diiambus (Heph. p. 12. 7, 14. 2, etc.; Anon. Ambros. p. 229. 9 Stud.). |
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