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running but walking at a good speed, Aristophanes makes the rhythm iambic.65 |
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From the Archaic period to the Imperial age we find occasional texts composed entirely of long syllables.66 With one exception (a children's game-song) they are invocations of gods, especially in the context of libations, or otherwise expressive of religious solemnity. They bear witness to an enduring tradition of liturgical song in which the tempo was too slow to tolerate short syllables. |
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Because of the association with libations (sponde) the ancients gave the name 'spondee' (spondeios) to the foot consisting of two long syllables,67 and the metre of the texts in question is usually described as spondaic. In fact several different metres are represented, and it would be better to say that it is the tempo that is spondaic. |
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From the texts themselves we can see that the long syllables (notes) are organized in groups of ten, or in other cases three, five, or seven. From the Berlin Paean (40), which is furnished with melodic and rhythmical notation, we know that some of the long notes had twice the duration of others. In other words the contrast of short and long notes did not disappear in this slow music, but instead of being a contrast of monoseme and diseme ( ) it became a contrast of diseme and tetraseme ( ). Where we only have the words of the text, the pattern of contrast is concealed. The rhythm of the Paean is in fact slowed-down anapaestic (Ex. 5.18). |
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65Vesp. 230ff., Lys. 254ff., Eccl. 285ff., Plut. 257ff. |
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66 'Terpander', PMG 698, Anon. PMG 876(a), 941, 1027(c), cf. Eur. Ion 125-7, Ar. Av. 1058-64, 1067-8; 40 Berlin Paean; Mesomedes 2. 1-5 and 4 Heitsch; hymn to Attis ap. Hippol. Haer. 5. 9. 9 (Heitsch, Die griechischen Dichterfragmente der römischen Kaiserzeit, no. 44.3); Synesius Hymn 3. |
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67 'From the rhythm that is played on the auloi and sung to at libations', Anon. Ambros. p. 224. 10 Stud. It was this music that calmed the disorderly young man in the anecdote about Pythagoras (above. p. 31), and Cicero in telling the story refers specifically to the slow tempo of the tune. |
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