Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/405

This page needs to be proofread.

OF THE GREEK DRAMATISTS. 379 In all these the two slioi*t syllables of the Anapest are inclosed betwixt two longs in the same word, and shoAv the strongest as well as the most frequent case for the admission of such a licence. (The nature of this licence will be considered in a note (C) ch. xvii. on the admission of Anapests into the Iambic verse of Comedy.) In the few instances where the proper name begins with an Ana- pest, as MeveAao?, Uptdixov, (fee, those names might easily, by a different position, come into the verse like other words similarly constituted. Elmsley, in his celebrated critique on Person's Hecuba, ed. 1808, con- siders all such cases as corrupt. (Vid. Edinburgh Review, Yol. xix. p. G9.) Person's judgment seems to lean the other way. At all events, the whole Anapest must be contained in the same word. (Yide Hecub. Porsoni, London, 1808, p. xxiii=p. 18; Euripid. Porsoni a Scholefield, Cantabr. 1826. To these editions only any references hereafter will be regularly made.) II. Tlw Comic TriDieter, besides the initial Anapest which it takes with less restriction, admits the Anapest of common words in all the other places but the last: it admits also the Dactyl in 5th. Vesp. 979. Kard/Sa, Kard^a, | Kara/Ja, Kara/Sa, ] KarafStjcTOixaL. Plut. 55. TTvOoLfxcO' av I Tov ^r)(Tfx6v "^l/awv otl voet. In the resolved or trisyllabic feet one limitation obtains : the concur- rence of — wv^ or wv^v-* and y^^— in that order never takes place. The necessity for this will hereafter be seen, note (A), ch. xv. A Table of Scansion for the Trimeter, both Tragic and Comic. I 2 3 4 5 6_ ^ — J — w — w — w — w w v^ww WV-/«W W WW www W'w'^W


— _ — WW — WW KJKJ — Proprii KJy — WW — WW- WW— Nominis. Apud — WW Comicos. WW — K^K^ — WW— WW — III. The Structure of the Iambic Trimeter is decidedly Trochaic. 1. The two principal divisions of this verse, which give the Trochaic movement to the ear, and continue it more or less to the close, take