Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/98

 80 HISTORY OF GREECE. in the sense, which thus came to be distributed with greater poim and effect. The elegiac verse, or common hexameter and pen tameter (this second line being an hexameter with the third and sixth thesis, 1 or the last halt' of the third and sixth foot, sup- pressed, and a pause left in place of it), as well as the epode (or iambic trimeter followed by an iambic dimeter) and some other binary combinations of verse which we trace among the frag- ments of Archilochus, are conceived with a view to such increase of effect both on the ear and the mind, not less than to the direct pleasures of novelty and variety. The iambic metre, built upon the primitive iambus, or coarse and licentious jesting, 2 which formed a pail of some Grecian 1 1 employ, however unwillingly, the word thesis here (arsis and thesis) in the sense in which it is used hy G. Hermann (" Illud tempus, in quo ictus est, arsln ; ea tempera, qua? carent ictu, thesin vocainus." Element. Doctr Metr. sect. 15), and followed by Boeckh, in his Dissertation on the Metres of Pindar (i, 4), though I agree with Dr. Barham (in the valuable Preface to his edition of Hephaestion, Cambridge 1843, pp. 5-8) that the opposite sense of the words would be the preferable one, just as it was the original sense in which they were used by the best Greek musi'-ril -vritcrs : Dr. Bar- ham's Preface is very instructive on the difficult subject of ancient rhythm generally. 2 Homer, Hymn, ad Ccrerem, 202; Hesychius, v, TeQvplf, Hcrodot. v, 83; Diodor. v, 4. There were various gods at whose festivals scurrility (ri?acrudc) was a consecrated practice, seemingly different festivals in different places (Aristot. Politic, vii, 15, 8). The reader will understand better what this consecrated scurrility means by comparing the description of a modern traveller in the kingdom of Naples (Tour through the Southern Provinces of the Kingdom of Naples, by Mr. Keppcl Craven, London, 1821, ch. xv, p. 287) : "I returned to Gerace (the site of the ancient Epizephyrian Lokri) hy one of those moonlights which are known only in these latitudes, and winch no pen or pencil can portray. My path lay along some cornfields, in which the natives were employed in the last labors of the harvest, and I was not a little surprised to find myself saluted with a volley of opprobri- ous epithets and abusive language, uttered in the most threatening voice, and accompanied with the most insulting gestures. This extraordinary custom is rf the most remote antiquity, and is observed towards all stran gers during the harvest and vintage seasons ; those who are apprized of it will keep their temper as well as their presence of mind, as the loss of cither would only serve as a signal for still louder invectives, and prolong lontest in which success would be as hopeless as undesirable."