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haughty neck thou bendest; under thy forearm thou measurest off life, and ever thou turnest thy frowning gaze into men's hearts, with the scales in thy hand. Be gracious, blest dispenser of justice, Nemesis, winged one that tilts life's balance. |
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Of Nemesis we sing, undying goddess, stern Victory with spreading wings, infallible, seated by the throne of Justice; of thee that resentest man's arrogance and sweepest it down to Tartarus.) |
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In this hymn the tonic is g, with c' and d' as secondary foci. It is no doubt because of the higher tonic that the scale goes a little higher than in 18, to reach the fifth above g. Its lower limit is the same as in 18. The three lowest notes occur less frequently than the rest; the bottom one occurs only in rising figures at the start of the line (c d e or c d f). Over half the lines end on g; those that do not, end on d, f, a, or d'. No line begins from e, but all other notes of the scale appear at least twice in this role (a, however, only as a leading note to g). A diagram of first and last notes looks much more widely spread out than the diagram for 18 (see Ex. 10.2). |
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At least, it does so up to line 15, where the reprise of the first line gives the impression of an ending, and the following five lines look like a separate little hymn or an extension added afterwards. The diagram there flattens out noticeably. The desire for a descending final cadence on 15 overrides the accent of rhopa
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Multiple repetition of one note is a more conspicuous feature of this hymn than of its companion. A number of notes are missing in the only manuscript that gives notes for this poem, particularly in lines 6-8 and 19-20. |
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