Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/403

 OF THE GREEK DRAMATISTS. 377 II. TRAGIC AND COMIC METRES The principal verses of a regular kind are Iambic, Trochaic, and Anapestic. The scansion in all of them is by dipodias or sets of two feet. Each set is called a Metre. The structure of verse is such a division of each line by the words composing it as forms a movement most agreeable to the ear. The metrical ictus, occurring twice in each dipodia, seems to have struck the ear in pairs, being more strongly marked in the one place than in the other. Accordingly, each pair was once marked by the per- cussion of the musician's foot. Fede ter percusso is Horace's phrase when speaking of what is called Iambic Trimeter. Those syllables which have the metrical ictus are said also to be in arsi, and those which have it not, in thesi, from the terms apa-Ls and Oeacs : the latter is sometimes called the debilis positio. I. The Tragic Trimeter. 1. The Iambic Trimeter Acatalectic (i.e. consisting of three entire metres), as used by the tragic writers, may have in every place an Iambus, or, as equivalent, a Tribrach in every place but the last ; in the odd places, 1st, 3rd, and 5th, it may have a Spondee, or, as equivalent, in the 1st and 3rd a Dactyl, in the first only it may have an Anapest. This initial Anapest of the Trimeter is hardly perceptible in its effect on the verse : in the short Anacreontic, MecrovvKTtotg ttoO^ wpats Srpe^erat ot "ApKTO's -^Sr}, k.t.X. it evidently produces a livelier movement. A Table of the Tragic Trimeter. I 2 3 4 5 6 v^ — W — w — w — K^ — w w K^^J ^y '^Vs^ ^ '^V^ v-/ ^^y^' <^ Ky^ — _ _ ' — _ K^K^ — Wo* V^V-/ — ^ [This account of the ordinary metres of the Greek drama was drawn up in 1827 by the late Rev. James Tate, for many years the earnest and successful master of Kichmond School, Yorkshire. If the student desires to see my views on the subject, together with all that I have to say respecting the choral metres of the Greeks, I can only refer him to the Sixth Part of my Greek Grammar. — J. W. D.]