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tary vocabulary by which at least some of the standard rhythms might be identified. |
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It is not until the second half of the fifth century that we can trace any form of systematization or theory. Herodotus, in citing verses of Archilochus, the Delphic oracle, or inscriptions, sometimes observes that they are in a 'three-measure iambos' or in 'six-measure tonos', and we have the impression that he is showing off his knowledge of a modern art of metrical analysis.59 Metre and rhythm were distinguished as separate topics,60 but they could not be considered entirely independent of each other; interest in them developed in parallel. Among the many writings of Democritus there was one On Rhythms and Harmony, and the sophist Hippias of Elis also expounded these subjects.61 But the most important rhythmic theorist of the period seems to have been Damon, the teacher of Pericles. |
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From a passage in Plato's Republic we gather (in spite of the artistic vagueness characterizing Socrates' memory of the matter) that Damon classified rhythms according to whether the 'up' and 'down' parts of the measure were equal in duration or unequal. Socrates' interlocutor, who is Plato's brother Glaucon and a musician, says he knows from his own observation that there are three species of rhythm from which measured sequences are woven together. Socrates then introduces the name of Damon, and says |
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I dimly recall him specifying some 'enoplian' that was compound, and there was a 'dactyl' and a 'heroic', that's right, that he somehow analysed, making an equal up and down, and also one that divided into short and long. that he called (I think) iambus, and another one trochee, and he attached long and short durations to them.62 |
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Glaucon's three categories are no doubt those with the arsis/thesis ratios 1:1, 1:2, and 2:3. Socrates mentions the dactyl as the representative of the first, the iambus and trochee as representative of the second; the 'compound enoplian' probably represents not the 2:3 |
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59 Hdt. 1.12.2, 47.2, 62.4, 174.5; 5.60, 61.1; 7.220.3. For the terminology cf. Ar. Nub. 642. |
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60 Ar. Nub. 638ff., cf. Pl. Phlb. 17d. |
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61 Diog. Laert. 9.48; Pl. Hp. Mai. 285d, Hp. Mi. 368d. |
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62 Pl. Resp. 400ab, cf. U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Griechische Verskunst (Berlin, 1921), 65; Barker, GMW i. 133f.; and for the division of the measure into 'up' and 'down'. above, p. 133. |
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