CHAPTER 9
Armand D’Angour
Most ancient Greek lyric poetry was composed to be sung to melody, and was regularly accompanied by the poets themselves on stringed instruments such as lyre, barbitos, and kithara, or by fellow-performers playing double-pipes (aulos). Something of the melodic element may be conjectured on the basis of theoretical expositions of the tunings (harmoniai) used in archaic times, and from musical documents from later times that employ notation systems devised around the fifth century BC. Spoken Greek was inherently musical, with rises and falls in pitch on the syllables of words, as indicated from the third century BC by the system of accents (acute, grave, and circumflex) placed over vowels; and this feature, taken together with the principles of ancient harmonics expounded in ample detail in surviving ancient musical writings, allows for tentative conjectures about the melodic form of at least some lyric poetry, of which I will say more below.
Much better known, however, are the rhythms of ancient song which, in that they are based on the syllabic units of the words, are largely derivable from the texts of surviving lyric poems. Greek words were heard as consisting of long and short syllables that could be arranged to form varied patterns of rhythm. These were subject to analysis and description from as early as the fifth century BC, when terms such as “dactyl,” “iamb,” “foot,” and “colon” were devised to describe the shapes and structures of repeated rhythmical units and sections of verse. The fact that long syllables were heard as taking simply twice the length of short ones (the relationship indicated by modern musical signs for crotchet ♩ and quaver ♪) makes this a system of meter: the rhythms are analyzed in terms of the measure (metron) of verbal elements, each with a standard relative duration.
Many of the regularly found patterns of meter were assigned names for the purpose of description and analysis. Long-short-short (♩♪♪), for instance, was named “dactyl” from Greek daktulos, finger, its visual equivalent consisting of a long element adjoining two short ones which together equal the length of the long. Thus the verse of Homeric epic, dactylic hexameter, consists of six regular measures (metra, also called “feet”) of dactyls; this meter is used for the first verse of the couplets of Greek elegy (the form used by Tyrtaeus, Mimnermus, and Solon), while dactyls in other formations are also found in other lyric meters.
Modern technical notation generally employs the scansion symbols ⏑ for short and – for long syllables, and di and dum are often used in spoken English to indicate these elements; thus a dactylic foot is notated – ⏑ ⏑ and may be vocalized as dum-di-di. Since quantitative meter strictly requires, however, that dum should take twice as long to enunciate as di, ancient practice differs from English, which relies on dynamic stress rather than duration to mark rhythm. This key difference is illustrated if one seeks to analyze the rhythm of Blake’s “Tiger! Tiger! burning bright” (dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum) as follows:
– ⏑ – ⏑ – ⏑ –
In spoken English, the verse is not in fact enunciated to the notated durations ♩ ♪ ♩ ♪ ♩ ♪ ♩ but as a series of syllables of more or less equal duration marked by a dynamic stress that falls in alternating positions:
> > > >
♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
Tíger! Tíger! búrning bríght
> > > >
♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
Ín the fórests óf the níght.
The rhythm of four equidistant stresses is preserved, even if the number of syllables in the line is multiplied as in the second line of this version:
Tíger! Tíger! búrning bríght,
Térribly sílent in the dépths of the níght.
While the English reader shortens the unaccented syllables in the second line above to retain the stress rhythm, the syllables of Greek poetry must retain their durations as ♩ or ♪ for the meter to preserve its identity.
In Greek metrical terminology, familiar sequences of long and short elements (usually between five and eight syllables) were generically called “cola” (from kōlon, limb) and given specific names. The colon consisting of eight alternating long and short syllables as above is called in metrical terminology a lekythion. The name is derived from a passage in Aristophanes’ comedy Frogs with the repeated jokey phrase lēkuthion apōlesen (scanned – ⏑ ⏑⏑ ⏑ – ⏑ –, “lost his bottle of oil, ’e did!”). The basic form of the colon is symbolized as – ⏑ – × – ⏑ –, since in practice it admits either a long or short in the fourth element. In addition, two short elements may be substituted for any of the long elements apart from the final one (“resolution”). In the second line of the English couplet shown earlier, however, some “long” elements are substituted by more than two “short” ones. The difference in pattern and quantity would mean that its equivalent in Greek would take more time to enunciate, and would be identified as consisting of different cola from the first line.
Rhythmical units consisting of identifiable sequences of long and short positions form the meters of all Greek lyric poetry. Just as in some systems two short syllables (⏑⏑) may be substituted, as we saw in the lekythion above, for a long one by resolution (the long syllable is “resolved” into two shorts), so a long syllable may sometimes be substituted for two short ones by “contraction.” Where a pattern permits either a long or short syllable in a position, that position is called anceps (“variable”) and is indicated by the symbol ×. Units smaller than cola, such as spondee (– –), trochee (– ⏑), dactyl (– ⏑ ⏑), bacchius (⏑ ⏑ –), and so on, are more or less artificial subdivisions, devised purely for the purpose of metrical analysis; no poet composed, nor did any performer sing, by adding small units of meter together.
The names of metrical systems and cola, assigned in both ancient and modern times, relate to features such as their shape (e.g., “dactyl,” finger), structure (e.g., hendecasyllables have eleven, hendeka, syllables), effect (e.g., “trochaic” from trochaios, “running,” “dochmiac” from dochmios, “askew”), and provenance (e.g., the Ionic meter is related to Ionia, and Aeolic meters are found in poetry composed in Aeolic dialect). Some specific sequences were identified by names derived from poets with whom the meters were particularly associated, e.g., Sapphics from the poetess Sappho, Alcaics from Alcaeus, and glyconics from the obscure Glycon. Metricians also applied terms for ways in which poets were heard to manipulate and vary the meters, such as correption for the shortening of naturally long syllables under certain circumstances, anaclasis for the swapping around of certain long and short elements within a colon, and catalexis for the subtraction of the final syllable in a metrical sequence.
This method of analyzing metrical forms has led to a proliferation of technical terminology that tends to divorce the study of meter from its originally musical and rhythmical raison d’être. In focusing on identification of quantities, cola, and other features, metrical analysis also tends to leave aside questions about the sonic and aural realities of the sung poetry that the designations were originally devised to record. In this chapter, I will aim to demystify some of the technicalities by employing a sound-based approach (including rhyming mnemonics) that uses rhythmical approximations in English that seek to mimic, (if only to a degree and for purposes of memorizing) the rhythms and formal effects of various ancient metrical systems. While these equivalents may be used as convenient mnemonics, it is important to remember that they do not properly reflect the quantitative nature of Greek meter; and they are an essentially Anglophone resource, in that they rely on standard aspects of English verse (such as stress and rhyme) that are not features of ancient Greek poetry.
Archaic Lyric Meters
ὡς Διωνύσοι᾽ ἄνακτος καλὸν ἐξάρξαι μέλος
οἶδα διθύραμβον οἴνωι συγκεραυνωθεὶς φρένας.
Sing the song of Dionysus – hear me lead the chorus-line – Well I know the dī-thu-ram-bos when my mind’s ablaze with wine.
This lyric fragment (fr. 120 W) of Archilochus (seventh century BC) proclaims its mode of performance as the inebriated poet “leading” an exchange with a chorus. It is identified as a “song” (melos), but it may have been chanted in the quasi-melodic style called parakatalogē (“recitative”) allegedly invented by Archilochus himself.1 If so, the melos resides principally in the catchy, repetitive rhythm of the verse form, represented in modern notation (with metrical symbols below) as follows:
♩♪♩♩ ♩♪♩♩ ♩♪♩♩ ♩♪♩
♩♪♩♪ ♩♪♩♩ ♩♪♩♩ ♩♪♩
– ⏑ – × – ⏑ – × – ⏑ – × – ⏑ –
Each line of verse here consists of four metra, so is a “tetrameter” made of three sets of ♩ ♪♩♩ or ♩ ♪♩♪ (hence symbolized with final anceps – ⏑ – ×) followed by a final ♩ ♪♩. The pattern – ⏑ – × is a “trochaic metron” (a reduplicated form of the so-called “trochee,” – ⏑); two in sequence would form a trochaic dimeter – ⏑ – × – ⏑ – × (mnemonic: “Here a trochee, there a trochee”). The Greek word trochaios (“running”) suggests that the meter was associated with a brisk tempo. For the last measure of each line, ♩ ♪♩, the final syllable is omitted (“catalexis”); so the technical description of this meter is “trochaic tetrameter catalectic.” What this forbidding term represents, however, is a vigorous and rumbustious rhythm, well suited to the early form of the dithyramb, a revel-song for the god Dionysus involving an exchange between a leader and chorus.2 Something of the effect is captured by the translation of Archilochus above and by the associated mnemonic:
Sing a song for Dionysus, hear the chorus answer back!
Here a trochee, there a trochee, every line a “tetra-pack.”
In addition to trochaic meters, Archilochus was known for his “iambic” verses, a term used to designate his invective style generally (iambos connotes “missile”), but also associated specifically with the iambic meter.3 Like the trochee, an iambic metron is at base a four-element measure, but with the reverse pattern: × – ⏑ – (di DUM di DUM or dum DUM di DUM). Iambics were heard as more steadily paced than trochees (Aristotle characterizes iambics as “most like speaking”) and iambic trimeters were later to be used for the speeches and exchanges of Greek drama:
× – ⏑ – × – ⏑ – × – ⏑ –
In Greek iambics, every verse is simply spun:
A shorter section intersects a longer run.
Archilochus intersperses iambic trimeters with other cola to create long repeated structures; where units alternate in this way, the term epode is used to describe the result. In his “Cologne epode” (fr. 196a) he uses three different successive cola, as in this section:
⏑ – ⏑ – ⏑ – ⏑ – ⏑ – ⏑ –
καλὴ τέρεινα παρθένος · δοκέ͜ω δέ μιν
– ⏑ ⏑ – ⏑ ⏑ –
εἶδος ἄμωμον ἔχειν ·
– – ⏑ – – – ⏑ –
τὴν δὴ σὺ ποίησαι φίλην.
A lovely tender maiden she, who seems to me
faultless in every regard:
well, she’s the girl for you to love!
(Archilochus 196a, 6-8)
Here the iambic trimeter is followed by a dactylic “half-line” (hemiepes – ⏑ ⏑ – ⏑ ⏑ –, the same colon as the one that opens the Iliad, Mῆνιν ἄειδε θεά), and then an iambic dimeter (× – ⏑ – × – ⏑ –, equivalent to the rhythm of Belloc’s “The nicest child I ever knew/was Charles Augustus Fortescue”).
While the meters of Archilochean epodes are presented as a repeated cycle of end-stopped (i.e., non-continuous) lines (end-stopped lines may be technically notated with the sign ||, indicating “pause”) those named after the poets of Lesbos, Sappho, and Alcaeus, are normally presented as discrete four-line stanzas (or strophes). In both cases, the last two lines are so closely connected as to form a continuous rhythmical unit: the technical term for this continuity is synapheia. The pattern of lines for Sapphics is AAAB, i.e., three essentially identical lines consisting of – ⏑ – × – ⏑ ⏑ – ⏑ ⏑ – (a Sapphic hendecasyllable) followed by a short final colon – ⏑ ⏑ – – named adonaean after the rhythm of the phrase sung in lament for the dying youth Adonis, ὦ τὸν Ἄδωνιν (“oh for Adonis”). The resulting rhythm of the Sapphic strophe may be suggested as broadly three 3-beat lines followed by the 2-beat coda. The “beats” naturally fall on long syllables, as underlined in this mnemonic:
Who can hope to capture the voice of Sappho?
Unsurpassed, she sings of a world of heartache.
Lengths of artful verse cannot hope to match her
beautiful music.
This Greek text may similarly be articulated on the syllables underlined here (fr. 31 Campbell, 1-4):
φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θέοισιν
ἔμμεν’ ὤνηρ, ὄττις ἐνάντιός τοι
ἰσδάνει καὶ πλάσιον ἆδυ φωνεί-
σας ὐπακούει.
The structure of the Alcaic stanza is slightly different, opening with two identically-patterned lines followed by two of different patterns (AABC). The following mnemonic is humorously based on a recipe for “all cakes” (chosen as a homophone of “Alcaics”):
× – ⏑ – × – ⏑ ⏑ – ⏑ –
All cakes depend on metrical expertise:
spoon out the flour, use accurate estimates:
× – ⏑ – × – ⏑ – ×
fold in the egg white, then the egg yolk –
– ⏑ ⏑ – ⏑ ⏑ – ⏑ – –
baking a cake is a task for experts!
The pattern of the first two lines (× – ⏑ – × – ⏑ ⏑ – ⏑ –) mixes long slow elements at the start (the iambic shape × – ⏑ –) with a faster double-short center (× – ⏑ ⏑) and a slow close (– ⏑ –). The sequence ⏑ – at the end of the line is technically known as a “blunt” ending, whereas endings of the form ⏑ – ⏑ – – are called “pendent” because the final long element is felt to “hang off” (or echo) the penultimate long. The effect of the shorter third line of the Alcaic stanza, with its repeated, evenly balanced, long elements (× – ⏑ – × – ⏑ – ×), is to slow down the rhythm, as if gathering force to launch the last predominantly dactylic and therefore faster-sounding finale (– ⏑ ⏑ – ⏑ ⏑ – ⏑ – –) .
In most of the cola of Sapphic and Alcaic stanzas, a characteristic rhythmical element of Aeolic verse is found: the invariable dum-di-di-dum shape found within each line (– ⏑ ⏑ –, e.g., “capture the voice,” “sings of a world,” etc.) is called a choriamb (mnemonic: “down to the shore”). Many of the other metrical systems used by the poets of Lesbos (as well as Anacreon of Teos and others), of which some fragments survive, may be heard as based around a choriambic core. In some cases a simple colon such as the glyconic (“we’ll go down to the shore today,” × × [– ⏑ ⏑ –] ⏑ – with the choriambic element here picked out in square brackets) may be expanded by the addition of one or more choriambs internally to create new and longer cola, e.g., × × [– ⏑ ⏑ –] [– ⏑ ⏑ –] ⏑ – (“let’s go down to the shore, down to the shore today”). Another form of the line involves expansion by the addition of dactyls, e.g., × × [– ⏑ ⏑] [– ⏑ ⏑] [– ⏑ ⏑ –] ⏑ – (“let’s go down to the beautiful shore of the sea today”).
Meters of less variable or extendible patterns include ionics (⏑ ⏑ – –) which, composed in characteristic dimeters (⏑ ⏑ – – ⏑ ⏑ – –), give the effect of a repeated drumbeat, di di DUM DUM, di di DUM DUM. In some contexts ionics are suggestive of ominous or exotic Asian rhythms, such might be used in ecstatic worship, as later found in the choral lyrics of Euripides’ Bacchae (e.g., lines 64–72). The meter is attributed to lyrics of Anacreon, here (PMG 352) as tetrameters:
⏑ ⏑ – – ⏑ ⏑ – – ⏑ ⏑ – – ⏑ ⏑ – –
ὁ Μεγιστῆς δ᾿ ὁ φιλόφρων δέκα δὴ μῆνες ἐπεί τε
στεφανοῦταί τε λύγωι καὶ τρύγα πίνει μελιηδέ͜α.
Anacreon also varies the basic ionic form by swapping short and long elements (technically anaclasis, “chopping up”) within the dimeter so as to create a version known after him as anacreontics, ⏑ ⏑ – ⏑ – ⏑ – – (mnemonic: “As a word, ‘anacreontics’/Has a ring of orthodontics”):
⏑ ⏑ – ⏑ – ⏑ – –
πολιοὶ μὲν ἡμὶν ἤδη
κρόταφοι κάρη τε λευκόν…
(fr. 395.1–2)
A metrical trope of Anacreon’s is to compose a string of such anacreontics before inserting in the final two lines of a verse a standard ionic dimeter as the penultimate line of the series (“for the last lines of a version/look, a neatly-turned recursion!”) as here (fr. 395.5–6):
⏑ ⏑ – – ⏑ ⏑ – –
γλυκεροῦ δ᾽οὐκέτι πολλὸς
⏑ ⏑ – ⏑ – ⏑ – –
βιότου χρόνος λέλειπται.
Classical Lyric Meters
While the above examples of metrical cola exhibit a relatively simple regularity of structure and repetition, by the sixth century BC Stesichorus, Simonides, Pindar, and others, composing more often for choral than solo performance, were creating considerably more complex metrical structures and setting them to music. Cola are conjoined by these poets into longer sections of verse, and different metrical elements such as dactylic, iambic, and Aeolic units are combined in new and inventive ways. Pindar adopts entirely new patterns of rhythm for most of his odes, preserving an internal regularity by the virtuosic repetition of sections (called “periods”) of the complex freshly-minted structures, which in some cases extend over very long passages of text.
The incorporation of mixed meters proceeds further in the lyric choruses of fifth-century Attic tragedy, where furthermore the repetition of meter from strophe to antistrophe eventually comes to be abandoned in favor of metrically free (monostrophic) composition, as found in the arias of late Euripidean tragedy and the lyrics of the late fifth-century avant-garde musician Timotheus of Miletus. Deviation from note-for-syllable melodic accompaniment was notoriously attested for Euripides, whose prolonged setting of the first syllable of heilissete (“twirl”) is repeatedly parodied by Aristophanes.4 Under these circumstances, the identification of metrical cola can be vexed and uncertain; and often little is to be gained by debating whether a particular run of long and short elements should be described by one set of terms rather than another. Testimonies indicate that poets’ emphasis turned increasingly from rhythmical to melodic and harmonic virtuosity. A first-century BC grammarian later observed how this change affected the way words were set to music, making metrical identification less secure than in former times:
Prose diction does not violate or change round the quantities of any word, but keeps the long and short syllables just has they have been handed down naturally; but music and rhythm alter them, diminishing or increasing them, so that often they turn into their opposites, for they do not regulate their time-values by the syllables but the syllables by the time-values.
(Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On Literary Composition 64)
In the fifth century some new identifiable cola arose, notably the dochmiac, a favorite of Attic dramatists. This colon is named from a Greek word meaning “askew,” because of the jerky sequence of short and long syllables, di DUM DUM di DUM. Dochmiacs are regularly found in the lyric choruses of Greek tragedies, and always associated with agitation or distress (virtually all other meters have no such emotional or “ethical” associations, but are used for a variety of emotional expression), indicating that they were sung at a lively tempo (though no firm tempo indications survive).
The following mnemonic for dochmiacs, of which ⏑ – – ⏑ – is the basic form of the colon, is commonly used: “The wise kangaroos/prefer boots to shoes.” An English-speaker would tend to utter the above using a 4-beat rhythm as follows: “The wíse kángaróos ˊ/prefér bóots to shóes ˊ .” Here the fourth and eighth stress-marks fall on a silent beat (as would be marked by a rest in a musical score); but there is no evidence that sequences of Greek cola admitted silent beats of this kind. The little evidence we by chance possess (of which more will be said below) indicates that a dochmiac colon might in practice have been heard as having essentially two principal beats (or dynamic stresses) falling on the second and fourth elements (here underlined), i.e., ⏑ – – ⏑ –, for which a preferred mnemonic might be “That ól’ man ríver,/he jús’ keeps róllin’…”5
The dochmiac colon shows a variability found in few other meters, in the license it allows for the two short elements of the basic sequence to be lengthened and for the resolution of longs into two shorts. Thus all three long elements of the colon may be resolved into two shorts, and either short element may be replaced by a long (“dragged”)—which may in turn be resolved. With just the last long of the basic dochmiac resolved, for instance, one gets the rhythm ⏑ – – ⏑ ⏑⏑ (e.g., “The Regius Professor”); with all three long syllables resolved, we get eight short syllables ⏑ ⏑⏑ ⏑⏑ ⏑ ⏑⏑; and with both short elements of the basic form dragged we get five longs – – – – – . A series of dochmiacs might therefore be vocalized in English as “The Regius Professor/prefers boots to shoes/in any regular leather;/But not dark brown boots.”
From Meter to Music
The dochmiac colon happens to be represented on the earliest extended piece of notated melody on papyrus, and this virtually unique piece of ancient evidence for the music of classical lyric is worth dwelling on. It preserves a passage from a chorus of Euripides’ tragedy Orestes of 408 BC (lines 338–45), and the melody (which, as generally in drama, was accompanied by aulos) seems likely to be that composed by Euripides himself. In the passage, the Chorus voices alarm and pity for Orestes, who is being assailed by the avenging Furies of the murdered Clytemnestra. Some of the syllables of the text are marked with stigmai (points), apparently indicating a rising beat (arsis) on the first and third of the five elements of the dochmiac, with the unmarked second and fourth + fifth syllables heard (as noted above) heard as the alternating downbeat (thesis). This confounds the expectation that the “beat” of meter always coincided with the long elements of the basic metrical pattern.6
Recent analysis has also helped to reconstruct the sound of the original melody in a way that makes musical sense to modern ears.7 The melodic line, which is preserved with both vocal and some interspersed instrumental notation (both notations are recorded from ancient times and can be reliably interpreted), shows the influence of the so-called New Musical style that became fashionable in Athens between the middle and the end of the fifth century. One aspect of this style was the perceived violation of traditional settings for vocal expression, an eventuality that has been linked with the need for progressive musicians to create a suitable notation, such as had not thitherto existed, to record or disseminate their songs and instrumental sounds.8
The preserved passage, which comes from the antistrophe, is transcribed below (with square brackets marking the lacunae); it marks melodic prolongation over two syllables of the words ἐν (345) and ὡς, written ἐεν and ὡως on the papyrus. The translation matches the position of significant phrases, with bold print in both English and Greek to indicate moments where a high-pitched melody is notated, and italics where the notation indicates a falling melodic cadence:
ματέρος [αἷμα σᾶς, ὅ σ᾽ ἀναβ]ακχεύει;
ὁ μέγα[ς ὄλβος οὐ μόνιμο]ς ἐν βροτοῖς:
[κατολοφύρομαι κατολο]φύρομαι.
ἀνὰ [δὲ λαῖφος ὥς
τι]ς ἀκάτου θοᾶς τινά[ξας δαίμων
κατέκλυσεν δ[εινῶν πόνω]ν ὡ-ως πόντ[ου
λάβροις ὀλεθρ]ίοισιν ἐ-εν κύμα[σιν.
your mother’s blood – which makes you leap in frenzy!
Great good fortune is not lasting for mortals;
I lament, I lament.
Up like the sail
of a swift ship, some god shaking
overwhelms it in fearful troubles, as of the ocean’s
rough and deadly waves, in its billows.
The melody shows moderate conformity to Greek word accents, as found regularly in the surviving musical documents; but this cannot be wholesale, as it was evidently used to accompany both strophe and antistrophe. Consideration of how the earlier verses in the strophe (322–328) accord with the melody suggests another principle of composition, one that supports the testimonies to the way Euripidean musical practice sought to enhance the dramatic impact of words by being imitative or expressive of words and emotions. Such word-painting seems clear in the falling cadence to which the last three syllables of the word for “I lament” κατολοφύρομαι (341) are set (cf. “I beseech,” καθικετεύομαι, in the strophe, 324), emphasizing the lamentatory expression of the chorus, while a high note represents a melodic upward leap of a large interval (perhaps a fifth) to express the sense of “leap” (ἀναβ]ακχεύει, 339).9 The equivalent places in the strophe, which will have been melodized first, show a similar mimetic rationale. However, while the high-pitched syllables in the last two lines will simply have followed the melodization of the strophe, the corresponding words (signifying “alas” and “reaching out”) provide an obvious mimetic explanation for the melody.
While Euripides and the new musicians may have emphasized mimetic expression in their music, similar poetic devices were not unknown to earlier composers such as Simonides, in whose poetry we find the syllabic length of words extended for mimetic purposes: for instance, the lengthening of “pu-ur,” fire, seems to suggest a flickering flame, while kno-ōssōn, “snoring,” imitates the rise and fall of the snorer’s breathing.10 In general, however, the music of earlier lyric was said to have been simpler in form and effect than that of later lyric. It would have conformed to a set structure of notes (“mode” or harmonia) to which the 7-stringed lyre could be tuned, and would not availed itself of the possibilities of modulating into different modes. The most plausible hypothesis for the melodization of early lyric (as of the earliest orally composed epic) remains that it followed the natural pitches of Greek words in terms of melodic rise and fall, with the composer fitting the words (probably with some flexibility between performances) to a prearranged set of pitches.11
The relative lack of variety in the musical setting of early lyric may help explain why the transmission of the melodic element was not a pressing concern for the ancient Greeks, while the admired texts of the great poets were transmitted both orally and in written form. Nonetheless, the elements of both words and music—embracing rhythms and melody, meter and harmony, as well instrumental timbres and performance skills—would have been crucial contributors to the overall effect of the song-poetry; so we need not be surprised that an anecdote such as this would have been repeated (in this case by the second/third-century AD Roman author Aelian) some nine centuries after its dramatic date:
Solon the Athenian, the son of Exekestides, was overcome with pleasure when his nephew sang some song of Sappho’s at a drinking party, and asked the young man to teach it to him. Asked why he was so eager to be taught it, he replied, “So that I may learn it and die.”12
FURTHER READING
West (1982) is the standard comprehensive work on Greek meter, though not one that can be used with ease by beginners; Battezzato 2009 gives a condensed overview. A less forbidding approach to the subject may be found in Raven (1962), and a short exposition may be found in D’Angour (2006). A range of mnemonics for speakers of English as proposed in this chapter may be found online at https://www.armand-dangour.com/mnemonics-for-greek-metre.
Notes
1 See Moore 2008a.
2 See D’Angour 2015: 200–201.
3 See Lennartz (Chapter 14) in this volume.
4 Aristophanes Frogs 1314 (cf. 1348): see D’Angour 2017: 435.
5 The mnemonic was suggested by Gail Trimble: see D’Angour 2006b: 492.
6 The arsis sign here may represent a purely rhythmical convention indicating “upbeat” rather than aiming to record the movement of singers as, for instance, they raised up and brought down their arms or feet in the dance. However, our notion that a downbeat is the dynamically stressed element of a sequence may not have been shared by the ancient Greeks; and an important recent analysis by Lynch 2016 suggests that ancient notions of arsis and thesis were connected to alterations in melodic pitch from low to high.
7 See D’Angour 2016. A practical realization may be heard online: google “YouTube D’Angour Greek Music” (to reach https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hOK7bU0S1Y).
8 See D’Angour 2006a 283.
9 For a more detailed analysis, see D’Angour 2018a: 59–64.
10 See West 1992a: 200–201.
11 See D’Angour 2006a: 276–280.
12 Fr. 187 Herscher 1866; see D’Angour 2018b.