Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/338

316 316 HISTORY OF THE majestic measure produced great effect.* The usual trochaic verses which were allied to dialogue admitted of a higher-toned recitation, and especially of a more lively gesticulation, like that used in dancing; as we have already had occasion to remark. § 15. We now come to the Epeisodia, where the predominant cha- racter is not, as in the parts we have hitherto considered, the feeling, but the intellect, which, by directing the will, seeks to render external things subject to itself, and the opinions of others conformable to its own. This was originally the least important element. The variety of forms of discourse which tragedy exhibits grew by degrees out of mere narration. Here also the chorus forms no contrast to the persons of the drama. It is itself, as it were, an actor. The dialogues which it holds with the. persons on the stage are, however, necessarily carried on, except in a few cases, f not by all its members, but by i!s leader. Rare examples, and those only in .ZEschylus, are to be found, in which the members of the chorus converse among themselves ; as in the Agamemnon, where the twelve choreutse deliver their thoughts as twelve actors might do;^ others, in which they express their opinions individually, in the form of dialogue with a person on the stage. § The arrangement of the dialogue is remarkable for that studious attention to regularity and symmetry which distinguishes Greek art. The opinions and desires which come into conflict are, as it were, poised in a balance throughout the whole dialogue; till at length some weightier reason or decision is thrown into one of the scales. Hence the frequent scenes so artfully contrived in which verse answers to verse, like stroke to stroke ; || and again, others in which two, and sometimes more, verses are opposed to each other in the same manner. Even whole scenes, consisting of dialogue and lyrical parts, are some- times thus symmetrically contrasted, like strophes and antistrophes.^ The metre generally used in this portion of ancient tragedy was, as we have already remarked, in early times the Trochaic tetrameter, which, in the extant tragedies, is found only in dialogues full of lively emotion, and in many does not occur at all. The Persians of JEs- chylus, — probably the earliest tragedy we possess, — contains the greatest number of trochaic passages. On the other hand, the Iambic trimeter, which Archilochus had fashioned into a weapon of scorn and ridicule, Dindurf.) f As ^Escll. Pers. 154. %ptcuv aurhv Truvra; y.iSoiiri 'X^oira.viior.t. /Esch. Agam. 1346 — 71. The three preceding trochaic verses, by which the consultation is introduced, are spoken by the three first persons of the chorus alone. § tEscIi. Agam. 1047—1113.
 * See Soph. Phil. 839. Eurip.Phaethon, fragm. e cod. Paris, v. 65. (fragm. 2. ed.
 * These single verses were called ffri%o/u,veitz.
 * }[ As in the Electra of Sophocles, v. 1398 — 1421, and v. "422 — 41, correspond.