Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/278

 260 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. strophe, were yet to be created. The history of Greek accentual hymns during the fifth century is obscure; but at its close they attain the climax of their glory in the work of Romanos. Before his time the accentual hymn had been reaching that stage where a great poet might bring it to its perfection, just as choral poetry had by the time of Pindar progressed to the point where he received and perfected it. There is a parallel between the culmination of the choral lyric in Pindar and the Greek hymn in Romanos ; as Pindar composed together words, metre, and music, Romanos composed music, words, and the accentual strophic forms, though sometimes he made repeated use of the same tunes and strophic forms, which was not Pindar's way. The structure of Romanos' hymns rested upon ac- cent and the number of syllables. Each hymn opens with a procemion of from one to three strophes. Then follows the body of the hymn, written in a different verse, the first strophe of which was called the hirmos. Every line in the hirmos differs from the others in rhythm and the number of syllables. The succeed- ing strophes, called troparia, correspond with the hir- mos line by line in accent and number of syllables. Thus these hymns fulfilled the requirements of songs to be sung to a tune, which extended through one strophe and was repeated in the next. Every strophe closes in the same words, making a refrain throughout op. cit., pp. 313 and 400; Bouvy, op. cit., p. 133; Christ, Anthol. Gr. Car. Chr. , p. 29. In the manuscripts of Gregory's writings these hymns are placed among his prose works, a fact of interest in con- nection with the origin of accentual and rhyming Greek Christian verse.