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in the poetic text may be  melodically. The frequency of the different bar-forms is shown in Example 5.3. Any can follow any other. Quite often two or three consecutive bars have the same form, but a pleasant unpredictability and variety are maintained. |
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The latest surviving text in paeonic rhythm is a poem by Mesomedes from the age of Hadrian. Here we have not got the music (as we have for some of Mesomedes' compositions), but the verbal metre shows three new ways of disposing the longs and shorts in addition to all the old ways:  ,  , and  . We cannot be certain that they reflect musical bars with long and short notes in these patterns, because the long syllables may have been set to two short notes. But there would be little point in introducing these novelties at the verbal level only.40 |
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In the case of this rhythm, then, we can trace a gradual development across the centuries from a simple prototype to a set of seven interchangeable and equivalent variants. We have sights of it at four epochs. Table 5.1 shows the increasing variety of forms in use at each. |
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This rather complex rhythm is as characteristic of tragedy as paeonic is of comedy. But it does not enjoy so long a history. We cannot trace it before the fifth century, and after the fourth we find it only in one Hellenistic text, a concert aria which in this respect reflects the influence of Euripidean melodrama. |
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The measure contains the equivalent of eight short notes, divided unequally in groups of three and five. The paradigm form is  . In each group the first note was the arsis and the |
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40 Mesomedes 5 Heitsch, cf. Heph. p. 40. 4; Greek Metre, 170. |
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