Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/423

 OF THE GREEK DRAMATISTS. 397 10. It has heen truly asseited (ch. iii.) that the structure of the Iambic Trimeter is decidedly Trochaic. And though every principal point in the constitution of that verse has been here separately stated and explained, yet the corresjjondence betwixt the Iambic Trimeter and a certain portion of the Trochaic Tetrameter (as hinted above, § 4) may be advantageously employed to illustrate the common properties of both. With this ^-iew, then, to any Trimeter (except only those very few with Anapests initial) let the Cretic beginning S-qXaBij or dWd vvv be prefixed, and eveiy nicety of ictuation, more clear, as it is, and more easily ajDprehended in Trochaic vei*se, will be immediately identified in Iambic. For instance, the lines already quoted, (Ed. E. 112, Orest. 288, (Ed. R. 719, with the Cretic prefixed, become long Trochaics, and admit the Trochaic analysis : I II I ^ " I ^ B ^ M h-qXahr], irorepa S' ev otKOts r] V aypoL<5 6 Aato?. 1 ! IB, I ii 1 !l orjXaOr]. Kai wv avaKaXvTTT , o) KacnyxnqTov Kapa, I u I u lulu aAAa vvv eppLxj/ev aAXoJv xepaLV ci? a/Sarov opo<;. By a similar process, the identity of the Cretic termination in both vei^es (ch. in. § 2. R. and ch. vi. § 5) as subject to the same canon is instantly discovered : Orest. 762. Suvoi/ ol iroXXol, KUKovpyovs orav e^^ioai j 7rpo(JTa.Ta<i, 541 (XTreXOeToi 8r) rots X6yoL(rLV j eKTroSojv. The correspondence, however, of the Iambic Trimeter with that portion of the Trochaic Tetrameter is then only quite perfect when the former verse has the predominant division, M. (ch. in. § 1), as in the Senaiius quoted above. XIII. — Tlte Ictus of the long Trochaic verse of Comedy. 11. The scansion of the Comic Tetrameter agi-ees with that of the Tragic, except in one point, that it admits, though veiy rarely, the in the 6th before the wwo in the 7th; and the ictuation is the very same in both verses. Of that exception the line already quoted may afibrd a sufficient example : I II I u I I I ovT€ yap varayo?, av fxr] yqq Xtt/Sr/rat (^epo/xcvo?.
 * AAAa vvv OLTTcXOiriJi ^-q rots Xoyoicnv | ckttoScuv.