Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/158

136 136 HISTOllY OF THE and rapidity. At the same time there is this difference, that the iambus, by proceeding from the short to the long syllable, acquires a tone of strength, and appears peculiarly adapted to impetuous diction and bold invective, while the trochee, which falls from the long to the short, has a feebler character. Its light tripping movement appeared peculiarly suited to dancing songs ; and hence, besides the name of trochueus, the runner, it also obtained the name of choreius, the dancer* : occasionally, however, its march was languid and feeble. Archilochus formed long verses of both kinds of feet, and in so doing, with the pur- pose of giving more strength and body to these short and weak rhythms, he united iambic and trochaic feet in pairs. In every such pair of feet (called dipodia), he left the extreme thesis of the dipodia doubtful (that is, in the iambic dipodia the first, in the trochaic the last thesis) ; So that these short syllables might be replaced by long ones. Archi- lochus, however, in order not to deprive the metre of its proper rapidity, did not introduce these long syllables so often as iEschylus, for example, who sought, by means of them, to give more solemnity and dignity to his verses. Moreover, Archilochus did not admit resolutions of the long syllables, like the comic poets, who thus made the course of the metre more rapid and various. He then united three iambic dipodias (by making the same words common to more than one pair of feet) into a compact whole, the iambic trimeter : and four trochaic dipodias, two of which, however, were divided from the other two by a fixed pause (called ditBresis), into the trochaic tetrameter. Without going more minutely into the structure of the verses, it is suf- ficiently evident from what has been said, that these metres were in their way as elaborate productions of Greek taste and genius as the Parthenon or the statue of the Olympic Jupiter- Nor can there be any stronger proof of their perfection than that metres, said to have been invented by Archilochusf, retained their currency through all ages of the Greek poetry; and that although their application was varied in many ways, no material improvement was made in their structure. The distinction observed by Archilochus in the use of them was, that he employed the iambic for the expression of his wrath and bitterness, (whence nearly all the iambic fragments of Archilochus have a hostile bearing,) and that he employed the trochaic as a medium between the iambic and the elegiac, of which latter style Archilochus was, as we have already seen, one of the earliest cultivators. As compared with the elegy, the trochaic metre has less rapidity and elevation of sentiment, •ffolnci;, but the iambic verse is most Xiktiho;. t Set> Plutarch de Musica, c. 28, the chief passage on the numerous inventions of Archilochus in rhythm and music.
 * According to Aristot. Poet. 4, the trochaic tetrameter is suited to an h^r.niKti