Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/430

 404 ON THE LANGUAGE, .METRES AND PROSODY 1. In the first place, there is a well-known distinction in music betwixt common time and triple time. To this musical distinction there exists something confessedly analogous in the difference betwixt the time of Anapestic and Dactylic verse, and that of Iambic and Trochaic. Agreeably then to this analogy, we may be allowed for the sake of illustration to use the terms common and triple time in the pages which follow. 2. In the next place, the terms Anapest and Dactyl have been already used on two occasions palpably diflferent. Firstj as the names of the natural feet in the triple time of Ana- pestic and Dactylic verse, with their ictus thus, ww—, — v^w. 1 II t B Med. 167, 8. w Trarep, o> ttoXis, ujv aTrevacrOrjv, I II I II atcr^ws Tov ejxov Kxeivaaa KacrLV. Secondly, as the names of two short syllables before or after a long one, in the common time of Trochaic or Iambic verse, with a different vvw —, — ^Kj. ictus thus, I. II I i, i II CEd. R. 257. avSpos y apLcrrov ^acnXeo)'; r oXioXoto?. I II I II I ii I n Phoen. 621. Kat <tv [x-qrcp ; ov ^e/xis aot fxr}Tpo<s ovofJiat,€LV Kapa. In future, it may be safe and useful to call the first of these the natural, and the second the nominal, Dactyl and Anapest. 3. Thirdly, the terms Anapest and Dactyl have a different use still, to denote certain feet admissible in certain kinds of Iambic and Trochaic verse, as equivalent to the proper feet of each metre, being admitted not only into the Spondaic places of the dipodia, but into the Iambic and Trochaic likewise. In the pronunciation of those peculiar feet, it is probable there was something correspondent to the slurring, so called, of musical notes ; and since necessity demands a third name for a third character, it may justify our adoption of slurred Anapest and slurred Dactyl, as terms not inappropriate for that purpose. Let the marks then, v^ (v^) — and — (v^) w, be permitted to represent each of those peculiarities, when each requires to be separately repre- sented. But for reasons of convenience, which will be found very striking when we come to the practical part of the subject, we beg leave to introduce a more comprehensive method, equally suited to Iambic