On The Metres of Poetry and Related Matters According To Aristotle

On the Metres of Poetry and Related Matters According to Aristotle
A Collection of Witnesses
Bart A. Mazzetti
1
CONTENTS
I. Divisions Pertaining to Poetry Found in the Poetics.
II. Preliminary Divisions of the Poetic Art.
III. Outline of Aristotle on the Harmoniai.
IV. On the Impositions of Poiêsis.
V. On Differences In the Means of Imitation: Bare Speech Alone (i.e. Prose) or in Metre.
VI. On Rhythm and Metre.
VII. Two Kinds of Language Made Evident from the History of Tragedy.
VIII. Three Species of Metre Arranged According to Whether They Are Suitable to
Narrative Imitation, to Acting, or to Dancing.
IX. Three Species of Poetry or ‘Verse’ Made Evident According to the Types of Words
Suitable to Each.
X. Supplement: The Proper Use of the Kinds of Names According to the Peripatetic Work
On Style by ‘Demetrius’.
XI. Supplement: Parallel Translations of Rhet. III. 8.
XII. Aristotle on Lexis (‘Language’, ‘Locution’; ‘Diction’; ‘Verbal Expression’; Syn.

Dialektos).
XIII. On Rhythm and Related Matters.
XIV. Supplement: A General Account of Verse.
XV. Some Dictionary Definitions.
2
I. DIVISIONS PERTAINING TO POETRY FOUND IN THE POETICS.
By way of anticipation, the texts to be excerpted below will make manifest the following
subjects of concern underlying Aristotle’s account of those forms of the poetic art which
employ metre as a means of producing their imitation.
FORMS OF POIÊSIS OR ‘POETIZING’ USING METRE AS A MEANS.
From Poetics Chapter 1:
• epopoiia (epic poetry; also, to hêrôikon, heroic poetry [Chapter 22])

• tragôidias poiêsis (tragic poetry or tragedy)
• kômôidia (comedy)
• dithurambopoiêtikê (dithyrambic poetry or the dithyramb)
• nomoi (nomes)
• elegeiôn (elegiac poetry: elegeia, elegy)
• saturikê poiêsis (satyric poetry)
• to hêrôikon (heroic)
• iambeiois (iambic)
VERSE-FORMS OR METRES
Heroic (dactylic hexameter)

Iambic (iambic trimeter)
Trochaic (trochaic tetrameter)
BY THE METRE OR VERSE-FORM (WITH ITS STATED QUALITY).
Single:
dactylic hexameter: epopoiia or epic poetry (‘proud and stately’)

iambic trimeter: iambos or iambic poetry, developed tragedy, and comedy (‘conver-
sational’)
trochaic tetrameter: saturikos or satyric poetry and early tragedy (‘more suitable for
dancing’)
3
Mixed:
dactylic hexameter and pentameter: elegeia, or elegiac poetry (not discussed as such by
Aristotle in the Poetics)
KINDS OF POETRY LOOKING TO THE VERSE-FORM EMPLOYED
Epopoiia or epic poetry

Iambos or iambic poetry
Saturikos or satyric poetry and early tragedy
Elegeia or elegiac poetry
Rhapsodia or rhapsody (as with the Centaur of Chaeremon)
But their metres are either single or mixed:
SINGLE
Epopoiia
Iambos
Saturikos
MIXED
Elegeia (from two kinds)

Rhapsodia (from all kinds)
KINDS OF WORDS
Compound
Foreign (or Strange)
Metaphor (incl. the proper name, as well as metaphor and ornament)
TAKEN WITH RESPECT TO THE MANNER OF IMITATING
What is suitable for:
Narrating Heroic metre narrative imitation in the form of epopoiia

Acting Iambic metre dramatic imitation or dramata
Dancing Trochaic metre the arts of dancers, as in satyric poetry
IN SUM: THE PRINCIPAL DIVISIONS OF METRE, OF POETRY, AND OF FORMS

OF THE POETIC ART ACCORDING TO ARISTOTLE
The (fundamental, basic) metres of poetry Aristotle recognizes are three:
• heroic
• iambic
• trochaic
4
The species of ‘poetry’ characterized by each metre will be seen to be as follows:
• heroic, using the [dactylic] hexameter

• iambic, using the iambic [trimeter]
• dithyrambic or satyric, using trochaic [tetrameter]
Forms of the poetic art characterized by a given species of ‘poetry’:
• epopoiia, ‘epic poetry’, to which the heroic metre was proper

• tragôidias poiêsis (tragic poetry or tragedy) and kômôidia (comedy), to which the
iambic metre was proper
• dithurambopoiêtikê, ‘dithyrambic poetry’ and saturikê poiêsis, ‘satyric poetry’, to
which the trochaic metre was proper
It will be noticed that, with respect to the first two species of metre, Aristotle speaks of
‘heroic poetry’ and ‘iambic poetry’; but with respect to the third, rather than calling it
‘trochaic poetry’, he speaks, in ch. 4 (discussing the development of tragedy from the
dithyramb) of ‘poetry’ that is ‘satyric’, but also (now in ch. 22, with respect to the use of
the compound name) of ‘dithyrambic poetry’, a usage suggesting that, in his view, the two
forms of poiêsis amount to the same thing.
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II. PRELIMINARY DIVISIONS OF THE POETIC ART.
Cf. Aristotle, Poet. ch. 1 (1447a 13-18) (tr. B.A.M.):
Epic-making [epopoiia], therefore, and the making of tragedy [hê tês tragôidias poiêsis], as
well as comedy [eti de kômôidia] and the art of making dithyrambs [kai hê dithurambo-
poiêtikê], and the greater part of the [15] auletic and kitharistic arts [kai tês aulêtikês hê
pleistê kai kitharistikês],1 all, when each is taken as a whole, turn out to be ways of imitating
[pasai tunchanousin ousai mimêseis to sunolon]. But they differ from each other in three
things [diapherousi de allêlôn trisin]: for they imitate either in a certain thing different in
kind [ê gar tôi en heterois mimeisthai], or certain different things [ê tôi hetera], or in a
certain different manner and not in the same way [ê tôi heterôs kai mê ton auton tropon].
Cf. Aristotle, Poet. ch. 2 (1448a 1-8) (tr. B.A.M.):
But since those engaged in imitation imitate doers [i.e. ‘those doing something’, or
‘agents’], but these must be either men worthy of admiration or of no account—(for
characters nearly always follow after these alone; for by their badness or excellence men
differ according to characters, [being] either [5] better than us or worse or such <as we are>),
just as painters <imitate them>: for Polygnotus, in fact, made likenesses of better men,
Pauson, however, worse; but Dionysius, men who are like [us].
Now it is clear that each of the aforesaid ways of imitating will have these differences and
will imitate different things by different <means> in this way. [10] For these unlikenesses
come about both in dancing and in aulos- and kithara-playing; and with regard to speeches
and in bare metre-making <the same thing happens>, as Homer <imitates> better men, but
Cleophon <men who are> like; but Hegemon the Thasian (the first composing parodies), and
Nicochares in his Deiliad, worse men. Likewise with regard to dithyrambs and [15] nomes
[tous dithurambous kai peri tous nomous] <the same differences come about>, as someone
might imitate the Cyclops as Timotheus and Philoxenus did. But in <this> very difference
tragedy stands apart from comedy: for, indeed, the one now wishes to imitate worse, but the
other, better men than there are now.
Aristotle’s first division of species of the poetic art:
• epic-making (epopoiia)
• the making of tragedy (hê tês tragôidias poiêsis)
• comedy (kômôidia)
• the art of making dithyrambs (hê dithurambopoiêtikê])
• the greater part of the [15] auletic and kitharistic arts (tês aulêtikês hê pleistê kai
kitharistikês)
• [in dancing, in aulos- and kithara-playing]
A subsequent division:
• dithyrambs (tous dithurambous)

• nomes (tous nomous)
1
Note that the former melic art was integral to the dithyramb; the latter to the nome. See further below.
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A DIVISION OF MELOPOIIA IMPLICIT IN ARISTOTLE.
Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, II. 1 (993b 12-18) (tr. W. D. Ross, slightly rev. B.A.M.):
It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but
also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed
something, by developing before us the powers of thought. [15] It is true that if there had
been no Timotheus we should have been without much of our melopoeia [or ‘melic poetry’,
pollên an melopoiian ouk eichomen]; but if there had been no Phrynis3 there would have
been no Timotheus. The same holds good of those who have expressed views about the
truth; for from some thinkers we have inherited certain opinions, while the others have been
responsible for the appearance of the former.
3
Of Mytilene; he is referred to as still alive in Aristoph. Cl. 971. Both Phrynis and
Timotheus are criticized in the fragment of Pherecrates Chiron translated by Rogers in the
appendix to his ed. of the Clouds. (see Perseus online database)
Cf. Gregory Nagy, Pindar’s Homer: The Possession of the Lyric Past, ch. 3:
§32. In the same context, Aristophanes Clouds969-972, there is mention of a composer,

called Phrynis, who is ridiculed for modernizing the old conventions of harmoniâ. This
Phrynis belongs by our standards still to the Archaic period: he was a kitharôidos ‘lyre
[kitharâ] singer’ from Mytilene who won first prize in a contest at the Panathenaia of 456
(or possibly 446).1 He was primarily known for his virtuosity in the genre of the
kitharôidikos nomos ‘citharodic nome’ (Athenaeus 638c). According to “Plutarch” On
Music 1133b, he was the first to introduce the practice of modulating between harmoniai
within a single composition (apparently a citharodic nome: ibid.; see also Pherecrates F
145.14-18 Kock). Such testimony implies that the contemporaries of Phrynis, such as Pindar,
did not yet compose songs that modulated between harmoniai. We have already seen a
parallel on the level of meter: Pindar generally avoids modulating between the Aeolic and
the Doric or dactylo-epitrite meters. Moreover, we have seen that the Doric and Aeolic
meters of Pindar seem to be correlated respectively with self-references to the Dorian mode
on one hand and to the Aeolian or the various “foreign” modes on the other.
§32n1. Pickard-Cambridge 1962.43-44n4; on the date 446 see Davison 1968 [1958] 61-64.
Note that Timotheus and Phrynis were melic poets; the former being known for composing
dithyrambs; the latter, nomes. This division is exactly the sort Aristotle takes into consider-
ation when treating forms of the poetic art:
• the auletic and kitharistic arts, which were integral to the performance of
• the dithyramb and the nome; two poets of which were
• Timotheus the dithyrambic poet and Phrynis the nomic poet
The last coupling suggests a primary division of melopoiia, the art of composing ‘melic
poetry’, into that of the dithyramb and that of the nome; the former being a species of
choreia, the choral art, whereas the latter is monodic. In this regard, consider the following
analysis: Cf. Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Melic Poets (original ed. MacMillan, 1900; rpt.
Biblo and Tannen, New York: 1963) Introduction, pp. xx-xxii:
MONODIC AND CHORAL LYRIC
7
From one point of view Greek melic may be regarded as sacred or profane. Almost all of the
lyrics of the Greeks arose in connection with the cult of the gods, and in course of time, as
the artistic instinct was developed, were to a greater or less degree divorced from their
primitive ritualistic function. More clearly marked, however, is the division, in the literary
period, into monodic (to which some scholars would restrict the term melic) and choral
song.2 Originally almost all melic poetry was led by a single voice, [xx-xxi] while the chorus
sang only the refrain; and certain kinds became entirely choral at different times and places.
According to the instrumentation, melic was of two species: kitharoedic, when the words
were accompanied by the notes of a string instrument, and aulodic, when the flute, or rather
the clarinet, was employed. The two forms of musical accompaniment were occasionally
combined. The instrumentation (krou=sij) was subordinate to the text in the best melic
period. Between the music, rhythms, and musical modes of monodic and of choral song
there is no thoroughgoing distinction. Choral song was in unison except when an interval of
an octave was the result of the participation of men and boys or women in the same chorus.
This is the only form of modern ‘harmony’ that ancient Greek choral music has to show.
Monodic melic, or that which is sung by a single voice, is represented in the earliest stage
of Greek song by the nome; and this form remained monodic until the end of the fifth
century. The chief representatives of the monody are the Aiolians and the Ionic Ankreon. Its
stanzas were repeated without interruption and were of brief compass, usually consisting of
four or five simple verses, often arranged in regular succession ( kata\ sti/xon); the metre
was generally some form of logaoedic. The sphere of the monody is the sphere of emotion—
the deepest feelings of the individual, his joy and sorrow, hate and friendship; or his trifling
moods are equally the subject of this song that exists or itself alone because it is the
outpouring of the heart and unprompted by the requirements of a ritual. Its wealth of
emotion, unimpaired by the accidents
2
Plato in the Laws 700 B ignores this method of division when he classifies melic poetry according
to contents (ei)/dh) and form (skh/mata). If the ei)/dh are hymns, threnoi, paians, etc., and the skh/mata
are aulodic and kitharoedic, the nome would be both an ei)/doj and a skh/ma. In Pol. 8 7 Aristotle
records a division into ethical (h)qika/) melodies, melodies of action (praktika/), and passionate
melodies (e)nqousiastika/). These correspond to Aristoxenos’ h(suxastikh\, sustaltikh\, and
diastaltikh melopoii/a, and to Aristeides’ nomiko/j, tragiko/j, and diqurambiko\j tro/poj. [xxi-
xxii]
of time and place, makes it for us the most enduring of the relics of Greek song; whereas we
find it difficult to represent the occasions that gave birth to the choral ode, which, because of
its intimate association with the religious faith and cult of the Greeks, is stamped with the
distinctive qualities of the ancient world.
DIVISIONS OF LYRIC POETRY ACCORDING TO WEIR SMYTH:
melic (i.e. lyric) poetry

monodic
choral song
according to instrumentation
kitharoedic, when the words were accompanied by the notes of a string instrument
aulodic, when the flute, or rather the clarinet [= aulos], was employed
etc.
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ARISTOTLE’S DIVISION PERTAINING TO MELIC, OR LYRIC, POETRY AND
THEIR ANALOGUES IN ARISTOXENUS AND ARISTIDES.
“In Pol. 8 7 Aristotle records a division into ethical (h)qika/) melodies, melodies of action
(praktika/), and passionate melodies (e)nqousiastika/).
These correspond to Aristoxenos’ h(suxastikh\, sustaltikh\, and diastaltikh melopoii/a, and

to Aristeides’ nomiko/j, tragiko/j, and diqurambiko\j tro/poj.”
Aristotle’s division of melodies into:
• ethical
• practical
• passionate
Aristoxenus’ division of melopoiia into:
• hesukastikos (hesychastic)
• sustaltikos (systalic)
• diastaltikos (diastaltic)
Aristides’ division of tropoi into:
• nomikos (nomic)
• tragikôs (tragic)
• dithurambikos (dithyrambic)
Cf. Wikipedia, s.v. Mode (music):1
Melos
Some treatises also describe “melic” composition (μελοποιΐα), “the employment of the materials subject
to harmonic practice with due regard to the requirements of each of the subjects under consideration”
(Cleonides 1965, 35)—which, together with the scales, tonoi, and harmoniai resemble elements found
in medieval modal theory (Mathiesen 2001a, 6(iii)).
According to Aristides Quintilianus (On Music, i.12), melic composition is subdivided into three
classes: dithyrambic, nomic, and tragic. These parallel his three classes of rhythmic composition:
systaltic, diastaltic and hesychastic. Each of these broad classes of melic composition may contain
various subclasses, such as erotic, comic and panegyric, and any composition might be elevating
(diastaltic), depressing (systaltic), or soothing (hesychastic) (Mathiesen 2001a, 4).
According to Mathiesen, music as a performing art was called melos, which in its perfect form (μέλος
τέλειον) comprised not only the melody and the text (including its elements of rhythm and diction) but
also stylized dance movement. Melic and rhythmic composition (respectively, μελοποιΐα and
ῥυθμοποιΐα) were the processes of selecting and applying the various components of melos and rhythm
to create a complete work. Aristides Quintilianus:
1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(music) (10/16/19).
9
And we might fairly speak of perfect melos, for it is necessary that melody, rhythm and diction
be considered so that the perfection of the song may be produced: in the case of melody, simply a
certain sound; in the case of rhythm, a motion of sound; and in the case of diction, the meter. The
things contingent to perfect melos are motion—both of sound and body-and also chronoi and the
rhythms based on these. (Mathiesen 1983, 75). <…>
• Cleonides (1965). "Harmonic Introduction," translated by Oliver Strunk. In Source Readings in

Music History, vol. 1 (Antiquity and the Middle Ages), edited by Oliver Strunk, 34–46. New
York: W. W. Norton & Co.
• Mathiesen, Thomas J. (1983). Aristides Quintilianus. On Music. Translated by Thomas J.
Mathiesen. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
• Mathiesen, Thomas J. (2001a). "Greece, §I: Ancient". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan
Publishers.
Cf. Cheiron Hellenic Pagan site [® 1999, 2000]:1
Music.
The music of ancient Hellenes was a combination of melody and rhythm. The first beat
formed the basis of the rhythm. This, added to a combination of short and long beats, formed
famous basic rhythms. The latter included the iambus U-, the trochee -U, the dactyl -UU, the
anapaest UU-, the spondee -- and the paeon --U. The metres were formed by uniting the
basic rhythms. By uniting various metres, part of a phrase was formed, the kolon. A phrase
usually had two of these. The phrases comprised periods, the latter formed strophes (verses),
which were often repeated and then followed by the refrain. Hellenic lyrics were linguistic
and musical realities and the relation between language and music was the rhythm.
Melos consists of three elements, words, melody and rhythm. In so far as the words of a
poem have been set to music, the poem is a Melos. Hellenic Melic may be regarded as either
sacred of profane.
Almost all of the lyrics of the Hellenes arose in connection with the cult of the Gods and in
the course of time, as the artistic instinct was developed they were to a greater or less[er]
degree divorced from their primitive ritualistic function.
Hellenic Melic divisions
To the Gods
Hymn, Nome, Prosodion, Adonidion, Paean, Iovacchos, Jubilation, Hyporcheme
To Men
Enkomion, Hymenaios, Victory hymn, Sillos, Festive song, Threnos, Love song,
Epikedeion, Epithalamion
To Gods and Men
Partheneion, Oschophorikon, Daphnephorikon, Votive songs
1
http://www.oocities.org/athens/parthenon/6670/doc/musi.html [10/07/2019]
10
III. OUTLINE OF ARISTOTLE ON THE HARMONIAI.
Cf. Aristotle, Politics VIII. 7 (1341a 37 ff) (tr. B. Jowett):
“On the other hand, even in mere melodies there is an imitation of character, for the
musical modes differ essentially from one another, and those who hear them are differently
affected by each.”
The Mixolydian
(1) “Some of them make men sad and grave, like the so-called Mixolydian,”
The Lydian
(1) “others enfeeble the mind, like the relaxed modes,”
(2) “Two principles have to be kept in view, what is possible, what is becoming: at these
every man ought to aim. But even these are relative to age; the old, who have lost their
powers, cannot very well sing the high-strung modes, and nature herself seems to suggest
that their songs should be of the more relaxed kind. Wherefore the musicians likewise
blame Socrates, and with justice, for rejecting the relaxed modes in education under the
idea that they are intoxicating, not in the ordinary sense of intoxication (for wine rather
tends to excite men), but because they have no strength in them. And so, with a view also
to the time of life when men begin to grow old, they ought to practice the gentler modes
and melodies as well as the others, and, further, any mode, such as the Lydian1 above all
others appears to be, which is suited to children of tender age, and possesses the elements
both of order and of education.”
The Dorian
(1) “another, again, produces a moderate and settled temper, which appears to be the
peculiar effect of the Dorian;”
(2) “But, for the purposes of education, as I have already said, those modes and melodies
should be employed which are ethical, such as the Dorian, as we said before.”
(3) “All men agree that the Dorian music is the gravest and manliest. And whereas we say
that the extremes should be avoided and the mean followed, and whereas the Dorian is a
mean between the other modes, it is evident that our youth should be taught the Dorian
music.”
The Phrygian
(1) “the Phrygian inspires enthusiasm.”
(2) “The Socrates of the Republic is wrong in retaining only the Phrygian mode along with
the Dorian, and the more so because he rejects the flute; for the Phrygian is to the modes
1
At Rep. III, 398e, Plato considers the effects of “[t]he mixed Lydian,” … “and the tense or higher Lydian,
and similar modes.” (tr. Paul Shorey); that is, the Mixo- and the Hypo-lydian modes; while the Dorian and
the Phrygian are mentioned at 339a.
11
what the flute is to musical instruments—both of them are exciting and emotional. Poetry
proves this, for Bacchic frenzy and all similar emotions are most suitably expressed by the
flute, and are better set to the Phrygian than to any other mode.
The dithyramb, for example, is acknowledged to be Phrygian, a fact of which the

connoisseurs of music offer many proofs, saying, among other things, that Philoxenus,
having attempted to compose his Mysians as a dithyramb in the Dorian mode, found it
impossible, and fell back by the very nature of things into the more appropriate Phrygian.”
N.B. For a possible reason why Aristotle describes the auletic and kitharistic arts as being
imitative “for the greater part” rather than in toto, consider the following witnesses:
Cf. A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy (1927, rev. 2d ed. 1962)
ed. T.B.L. Webster:
From VI. The Later Dithyramb, pp. 40-1:
§ 2. …The principal change in the dithyramb which was ascribed to Melanippides was the
introduction of anabolai or lyric solos—at least they were probably always solos—in which
no antistrophic arrangement was observed. The change was doubtless designed to secure a
more realistic expression of emotion, which does not return to the same point antistro-
phically, as it were at fixed intervals: and Aristotle3 connects the abandonment of the
antistrophic form with the mimetic character of the new dithyramb. The words of Pseudo-
Plutarch de Musica4 which connect the rise of the flute-player [i.e. aulete] into undue
prominence with Melanippides are perhaps an interpolation as they stand; but they may have
had some basis in fact; and if he did elaborate the music of the flute [aulos], as he certainly
did with the lyre [kithara], his object may again have been the vivid portrayal of emotion,
since the emotional character of the flute [aulos] was strongly felt.
Of course there was criticism. A contemporary attack, probably, is recorded by Aristotle: 5
‘So also long periods turn into speeches and become like an anabole. The result was the jibe
made by Demokritos of Chios against Melanippides when he composed anabolai instead of
antistrophai: “a man [40-41] preparing ill for another prepares ill for himself, and the long
anabole is worst for the composer”.’
3
Probl. xix. 15: “Therefore also dithyramb, since they have become mimetic, no longer have
antistrophes; before they had.’ The context suggests that he refers to the introduction of
dramatic solo parts.
4
See above, p. 18.*
5
Rhet. III. ix. 1409b 25 ff.
* Cf. ibid, pp. 18-9:
…The Pseudo-Plutarch3 continues the passage of Lasos (quoted above):
In the same way Melanippides the later lyric poet did not adhere to existing music, nor did
Philoxenus or Timotheus. For he, although the seven-note lyre had lasted till the time of
Terpander of Antissa, gave it a wider range of notes. Flute-playing [aulos-playing] [18-19]
also changed from a simpler to a more varied kind of music. For before until the time of
Melanippides the dithyrambic poet it was the custom of flute-players to be paid by the poets,
because evidently the poetry was the more important part, and the flute-players served the
producers. Later this custom was corrupted.
12
3
de Mus. Chs. xxix, xxx (1141 c, d). [N.B. The preceding passage is cited as by another
author and is not relevant to the point under discussion, so it is passed over here.]
Cf. Aristotle, Probl., XIX. 15, In Andrew Barker, Greek Musical Writings, Vol. I: The
Musician and His Art (Cambridge: 1989), Ch. 14, The Aristotelian Problems, pp. 192-3:
169 Problems xix.15
Why were nomoi not composed antistrophically, while other songs, those for choruses,
were?16 Is it because nomoi were pieces for competitors,17 and since they were able to
perform imitatively and to sustain lengthy exertions, their song became long and multiform?
Like the words, then, the melodies followed the imitation in being continually varied. 18
There was even greater
16
On nomoi see 187 ps-Plut., Appendix A. Antistrophic composition involved the repetition
of rhythmic (and probably melodic) patterns: a strophe would be followed by an antistrophe
whose structure was identical. The form is normal in Pindar and in the choruses of tragic
drama. A freer rhythmic form, without strophic responsion, may have characterised the solo
nomos from an early period: it was introduced, notoriously, into the dithyramb by
Melanippides (see Ch. 7), where non-responding pieces became known as anabolai. It
should be noted that the latter part of the sentence does not mean ‘other choric songs’, as
Hett’s translation has it: that is not the sense of the Greek, and it suggests, falsely, that nomoi
could be something other than solo pieces.
17
Implying ‘trained professionals’: cf. 161 Ar. Pol. 1341a-b.
18
Cf. e.g. 149 Plato, Rep. 397a ff, 155 Laws 700d-e, Pherecrates ap. 187 ps.Plut. 1141d ff.
[192-193]
need for imitation in melody than in words. That is why the dithyrambs, when they
became imitative, no longer had antistrophes as they did before.19 The reason is that in
old times free men performed in the choruses themselves, and it was hard for a large group
of people to sing in the competitive manner:20 hence they sang songs within a single
harmonia.21 For it is easier for one person to execute many modulations22 than for many, and
easier for a competitive artist than for those who maintain the character.23 That is why they
composed simpler melodies for them.
Antistrophic composition is simple: there is just one rhythm, based on a single unit of
measurement.24 The same reason explains why the songs of performers on the stage are not
antistrophic, but those of the chorus are.25 For the actor is a competitive artist and an
imitator, while the chorus does less imitating.26
19
On developments in the dithyramb early in the fifth century see 29 Pindar, fr. 61. But the
reference here must be to the innovations introduced by Melanippides: see n. 16.
20
Cf. 154 Plato, Laws 666d-e, 670b-c.
21
Enharmonia mele. The expression could mean ‘songs in the enharmonic genus’, but that
seems scarcely to the point (unless, perhaps, restriction to the enharmonic is taken in the
sense contrasting with ‘coloured’ music, as suggested at n. 8 to 162, the Hibeh Musical
Papyrus). I take ‘enharmonic’ here to be the antithesis of ‘exharmonic’ at e.g. Pherecr. ap.
187 pd.-Plut. 1141e: ‘exharmonic’ there seems to mean ‘modulating outside the prevailing
harmonia’. The conjecture is supported by the next sentence.
22
Metabolai, ‘changes’, perhaps indicating variations of mood and feeling, without technical
implications. But metabole is the musicologists’ term of art for modulation of rhythm, genus,
harmonia, or tonos. In any case, variations in character and effect were normally taken to be
13
generated in accordance with changes in structural elements of these kinds, e.g. 149 Plato,
Rep. 397b-398d ff.
23
‘Maintain’, phylattousin; perhaps more directly ‘guard’, ‘watch over’. The contrast is
between the versatile professional who is required to maintain a steadiness of character
representing the ‘proper’ attitude to events. The subject under discussion is still apparently
the dithyramb, or more generally any musical component of religious ceremonial involving
both solo song and chorus: the special issues involved in the drama have not yet been raised.
Hence the chorus must preserve the ethos appropriate to upright citizens. On the imitative
versatility of the professional see e.g. 149 Plato, Rep. 397a-b; cf. 154, 155, Laws 669b-700a:
for the contrast with the steadiness proper to citizens, 149 Rep. 399a-e, 156, 157 Laws 799a-
800b, and many other passages.
24
Lit., ‘there is one rhythm, and it is measured by one thing’: that is, the rhythmic pattern is
repeated from stanza to stanza, and the pulse determining the tempo (agoge, see 149 Plato,
Rep. 400c) is constant. [A simpler explanation of Aristotle’s meaning is that the rhythm of
the piece is determined by the recurrence of a single ‘foot’.]
25
Here the writer has turned to the music of the drama. Those ‘on the stage’ are the actors
performing solo roles, as distinct from the chorus.
26
On the contrast between the music of actors and the chorus see also 185 Probs. XIX.48.
N.B. Presupposed to the proper understanding of ‘poetry’ in Aristotle is a correct grasp of

the meaning of poiêsis. In this regard, I give the following excerpt from my separate
treatment of this subject:
14
IV. ON THE IMPOSITIONS OF POIÊSIS.
(1) First it means ‘making’, which is a transitive activity; that is, one not remaining in the
agent but passing over into exterior matter; e.g. the activity of carpentry or shoe-
making, its matter being ‘contingent’, or ‘what is able to have itself otherwise’. Hence
‘making’ first means ‘imparting a form to contingent things in external matter’.
(2) Now among the contingent things made in external matter, some are imitations; that is,
things made to the likeness of what outwardly appears, which are the sensible forms of
things, their shapes, and colors, and sizes; i.e. proper and common sensibles.
(3) Then the word is extended to mean an action remaining in the agent, but still regarding
contingent matter; among the arts concerned with pleasure, it names the activity of
those arts which make an imitation; hence, it means ‘making contingent things in
interior matter, which contingent things are, in the first place, (a) verses: cf. Aristotle
on epic-makers, etc.; then (b) imitations of an action, by way of an imitation of per
accidens sensibles. But an imitation of an action is called a ‘plot’; and a plot is
composed of (or a composition of) pragmata, literally, ‘things done’, which we are
accustomed to call ‘incidents’. Hence poiêsis comes to mean ‘the making of an
imitation of an action—that is, of a plot—which is a composition of incidents’.
(4) But the poet also portrays character: hence poiêsis also names these two things: plot
construction and character portrayal; that is, it signifies both activities, but indistinctly.
Afterwards it is taken to name the principle activity of plot construction.
OUTLINE OF THE ARGUMENT DETERMINING THE MEANING OF POIÊSIS.
(1) As meaning ‘making’ (cf. St. Thomas Aquinas on the impositions of factio, see In
Meta. etc. texts contrasting making with doing), and names a transitive activity—that
is, an activity passing over into exterior matter.
(2) However, its polysemy is similar to our words ‘production’ and ‘work’: it can
designate both the activity of making and the result of that activity, as with the phrases
‘the production of a pair of shoes’ or ‘the work of a carpenter’.1
(3) But the thing made is a work of the poetic art, and that work is identified with the
construction of a plot: “and how plots should be constructed if the poiêsis is to be well-
disposed”.
(4) Hence poiêsis can mean ‘the construction of a plot’, ‘the plot so constructed (or ‘the
constructed plot’), or simply ‘plot construction’.
(5) Hence it is obvious that the word ‘poetry’ presents a problem when used to translate
poiêsis: for in ordinary discourse, the English word ‘poetry’ is NEVER used to mean
these things. In fact, the first meaning of the English word ‘poetry’ is the same as
Aristotle’s poiêma as defined in the Rhetoric and implied by his definition of lexis in
the Poetics. (On these definitions, see further below.)
1
But cf. my note following this section.
15
[Note that by the figure of speech called antonomasia, the name for ‘making’ is given to an
outstanding example of it, like calling Aristotle ‘the Philosopher’, or Rome ‘the City’.]
NOTE ON THE MEANING OF POIÊSIS IN POET. CH. 1
Cf. Aristotle, Poetics, ch. 1 (1447a 8-13) (tr. B.A.M.):
About the poetic art itself and its forms themselves, what power each one has, and how plots
[10] should be constructed if the making in which poetry consists is to be well disposed; and
further, from how many and of what sort of parts [each one] is; and likewise about whatever
else belongs to the same method let us speak, beginning according to nature first from first
things.
Cf. Leonardo Tarán, Dimitri Gutas, Aristotle Poetics: Editio Maior of the Greek text with
Historical Introductions and Philological Commentaries. Mnemosyne supplements.
Monographs on Greek and Latin language and literature, 338. Leiden; Boston: Brill,
2012, Notes to the Text, p. 224:
4) As for h( poi/hsij in l. 10, most interpreters have rightly taken it to mean “the poem.”
Else, followed by Verdenius, thinks that here h( poi/hsij is active and means the act of
composing or the poetic process. But the context shows that Aristotle is interested in the
finished product, the poem, and not in the creative process as such. The quality of the poem
depends on the structure of the plot. Else’s interpretation neglects the fact that in the next
clause (e)/ti de\ e)k po/swn kai\ poi/wn e)sti\ mori/wn) h( poi/hsij is naturally the subject
of e)sti\, which could then hardly mean “composition.” Cf. Lucas ad loc.
Cf. D. W. Lucas, ed. Aristotle: Poetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 54:
47a10. poi/hsij: lit. the ‘making’, ‘composition’ of poetry. It sometimes preserves this literal
sense, as possibly at l. 14 below and, E.1 thinks, here. However, it early became a general
word for poetry (first in Herod. 2. 23, 82), and must be so used here if it is the subject of
e)sti in the next clause; if it is to mean ‘composition’, the subject of e)sti must be supplied
from poihtikh=j or ei)dw=n, which seems less natural.2 poi/hsij and poi/hma later acquired
narrower technical meanings, first perhaps in Theophrastus; see N. A. Greenberg, HSCP 65
(1961), 263 ff., and C. O. Brink, Horace on the Art of Poetry, pp. 62 ff.
It is important to remember that in the words poi/hsij, poi/hma, poihth/j, the idea of
making is completely dissociated from the idea of ‘creating’ with which it is frequently
combined in English. h( th=j trag%di/aj poi/hsij means the fashioning of tragedies by a
poet in a sense similar to h( th=j prapezw=n poi/hsij, the fashioning of tables by a carpenter.
A. began the elevation of the poet through revealing that poets gave significance to poems
by organizing their structure, by making stories into plots. ‘The very word poiei=n . . . means
“to create”’ (Gomme, Greek Attitude to Poetry and History, p. 54), is misleading: logopoio/j
means, among other things, ‘writer of prose’.
N.B. I take ei)dw=n to be the subject of e)sti, i.e. “and from how many and what sort of
parts each [form of the poetic art] is”; an interpretation which is quite natural, Lucas’ and
1
N.B. E. = Else 1967, pp. 8-9.
2
But see my reply following this excerpt.
16
Tarán’s objection to the contrary notwithstanding. Cf. Gerald F. Else, Aristotle’s Poetics:
The Argument (Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 8-9:
Thus the construction of a plot is not an incidental duty, it is the critical, the essential, part of
the poet’s ‘making’. The word poi/hsij is meant to convey this active meaning, yet the
translators almost unanimously miss it and translate poi/hsij “poem” (e.g., Bywater: “of the
structure of plot required for a good poem”).31 Later in the Poetics poi/hsij once or twice
verges on the sense ‘poem’; but in general, and particularly here, it keeps its full active
sense: poi/h-sij, mak-ing, composi-tion.32 The poi/hsij, the making or constructing of the
poem, is in fact the poetic art itself at work. It represents the shaping process as it guides the
poet’s mind, the a)rxh/ which will eventuate later in the finished poem.33 Art is an activity,
and Aristotle’s treatise is concerned primarily with that activity, only secondarily with its
product, the poem.1
31
Hardy is an exception: “Si on veut que la composition poétique sit belle.”
32
Poiei=n likewise is a thoroughly active and positive word throughout the Poetics, as we shall have
occasion to notice repeatedly. It is too bad that we have nothing for it in English but the used-up
native word ‘make’ and the still more colorless borrowings ‘compose,’ ‘construct.’ German schaften
is much more expressive. Again, ‘composition’ has suffered the fate of most of the –tion words: it has
tended to lose its verbal connotation, so that it suggests the product rather than the production
(‘production’ itself has gone the same way….)
33
[omitted]
On the several impositions of the word ‘poetry’, cf. Mortimer J. Adler, The Great Treasury
of Western Thought (R. R. Bowker Company, 1977), 16.3 Poetry and Poets:
With regard to poetry in general, it must be observed that this term, like the term “art,” has
gradually become more restricted in its meaning. The reader will find passages from Plato in
which “poetry” has the same generality as “art,” signifying making and things made. The
Greek word for making is poiesis. Less general than that, yet much less restricted than its
current usage, is its employment by the ancients to refer to any form of imaginative writing,
whether in verse or prose—the telling of stories, in either the epic or dramatic form of
narration, as well as the singing of songs. It is in this sense of the term that poetry is
contrasted with history and with philosophy or science, especially with respect to its mode of
truth. Only in the last few centuries has “poetry,” like the word “art,” been narrowed down to
one type of imaginative literature—lyric poems, usually written in verse.
The foregoing claims invite us to ask the following questions: How exactly did the
word poi/hsij, the common term for ‘making’ in Greek, come to be the proper name for a
work of the poetic art? And what is the appropriate word or words by which it should be
translated in English? To begin with the second question, it should be noted that, in
keeping with Aristotle’s practice of respecting the usage of the many as far as it is possible,
we should translate the word by the most common rendering found in English, which, in
my experience, is the name ‘poetry’, a fact which must be kept in mind in view of the
argument which follows.
As may be seen from many passages of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas concern-
ing the definition and division of the arts, poiêsis first means ‘making’ (or ‘production’) in
1
The treatise, in fact, is concerned with both, inasmuch as poi/hsij can mean both (or either) the activity
and the product of that activity, a point I have endeavored to show in the present discussion.
17
the sense of a transitive activity; that is, one not remaining in the agent but passing over
into exterior matter; e.g. the activity of carpentry or shoe-making; its matter being
‘contingent’, or ‘what is able to have itself otherwise’, with poiêma meaning ‘the thing
made’. Hence ‘making’ first names an exterior operation understood as a transitive action
imparting an accidental form to contingent matter existing outside the agent—that is, the
activity belonging to art [technê], properly speaking. But it is also possible to make
something in interior matter, such as a sentence or a speech, as when one composes words
into a pithy remark in his imagination before saying it out loud; and it is in accordance
with this usage that the word comes to mean the imparting of an accidental form to
contingent matter existing within the agent, which is an immanent rather than a transitive
action.
With respect to speech, one can also ‘make’ verses by composing ‘feet’ according
to certain ratios of long and short syllables, as, for example, the epic poet Homer (as a rule)
composed the line of verse called the ‘hexameter’ out of five dactyls and a trochee (a
‘dactyl’ being “a metrical foot consisting of a long syllable followed by two shorts”, OED,
s.v. dactyl; while a ‘trochee’ is “a metrical foot consisting of a long followed by a short
syllable”, ibid., s.v. trochee). And it is in view of this activity (namely, ‘the making of
metres’ or ‘verses’) that the name poi/hsij first comes to mean ‘poetry’ and its maker a
poihth/j or ‘poet’, as Aristotle indicates below (cf. 1447b 13ff., where he explains that
“some men by joining to poiein [sc. to make] to the metre name the ones elegiac-poets
[‘elegiac makers’, or ‘makers of elegiacs’, elegeiopoious], but the others epic-poets [‘epic
makers’, or ‘makers of epe’, epopoious]; naming them poets not according to the imitation
they make, but commonly, according to the metre”). (It should also be noted that, in
accordance with this usage, poi/hma comes to mean ‘poem’, a sense found in the Poetics at
48b 29; 51a 21; 59b 28; and 62b 10.)
Hence, while it is not wrong to name them thus (for to do so is merely to name
them ‘commonly’ or ‘in common’), it is, nevertheless, not proper to do so; for, properly
speaking, they are poets according to the imitation they make. That this is so is evident
from experience, inasmuch as some men (to take an example) use verses to make a likeness
of something, while others do not (as Homer the poietês made his Iliad and Odyssey
imitations, as opposed to Empedocles the phusiologos who, in his work On Nature and his
Purifications, did not; cf. note on 1447b 18). But to make a likeness of something, using
certain means, in a certain manner, is to produce an imitation. Now a transformation of this
sort can take place either in exterior matter, such as marble or bronze, or in paint and
canvas, as is the case with the so-called ‘plastic’ or ‘visual’ art or arts; or it can do so in
interior matter, such as is furnished by the imagination, as happens in the ‘poetic’ art or
arts. In the latter case, what is primarily imitated is an action; such a thing being
understood as a ‘plot’, as of an epic poem or a tragedy.
Hence, bearing these considerations in mind, we are in a position to understand
Aristotle’s usage in this matter. For it is in virtue of works of this sort that the Philosopher
speaks of poiêsis not as ‘versification’, but as ‘plot construction’ or ‘the constructing of a
plot’ (as is the case in the present text), as well as ‘the plot so constructed’ (as will be clear
in what follows)—that is to say, as either the activity of making in this sense, or as the
result of that activity, just as is the case with the English words ‘work’ or ‘production’.
And it is in this regard that he extends the word to ‘the entire poetic work’ of which the
plot is the principal part, as when he says that “‘poetry’ is more philosophical, and more
serious than history” (cf. ch. 9, 1451b 6), a usage to be found throughout the Poetics.
18
Since, then, the poet is both a maker of verses (in certain cases) as well as a maker
of imitations, one can see the importance of Aristotle’s statement that he will consider the
poetic art itself, and its species or forms themselves: for it is in virtue of itself that the
poetic art is an art of imitating; but it is in virtue of a certain means employed by several of
its species that it is an art of versifying. Hence the poet is to be defined as a maker of
imitations rather than of verses, as Aristotle will afterwards state (cf. ch. 9, 1451b 27-28).
Consequently, it is clear that the various impositions of poiêsis relevant to the present
discussion are to be understood according to whether the medium in which the making
takes place is within the maker or outside him (interior matter versus exterior), and
whether the thing made is an imitation or not, as well as according to whether the thing
made is the per se effect of a certain activity or not, as verse is the result of the art of
versifying as such, but the likeness of something the per se effect of an art of imitating.
Now, so far as I am aware, there is no one word in English which means ‘making’
in the sense of ‘plot construction’, but which also is equivalent in its usage to the word
‘poetry’ (as the words ‘work’ and ‘production’ clearly are not). Hence, I have adopted the
expedient of translating the first occurrence of poiêsis by the phrase ‘the making in which
poetry consists’ in order to bring out the order of meanings discoverable in the word, as
well as to respect English usage. In what follows however, I will usually render it as
‘poetry’ without further ado, assuming the reader to have grasped its intended meaning.
With these preliminaries in hand, I now turn to the body of this paper.
19
V. ON DIFFERENCES IN THE MEANS OF IMITATION: BARE SPEECH
ALONE (I.E. PROSE) OR IN METRE.
Cf. Aristotle, Poetics, ch. 3 (1447a 28-1447 b 29) (tr. B.A.M.):
[B]ut the arts which imitate by bare speech alone [monon tois logois psilois], or by metres
[metrois], either mixing [1447b] these with each other or using some one kind of metre,
happen to be without a name up to now. For we [10] have no common name [onomasai
koinon] for the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic discourses; nor would we
even if anyone were to make an imitation of such kinds out of <epe,>1 or out of elegiacs, or
out of any other such [metres], except that some men by joining to poiein [sc. to make] to
the metre name the ones elegiac-poets, but the others epic-poets, not naming them poets
according to the imitation they make, but commonly, [15] according to the metre. For they
are accustomed to name them in this way, even if they produce out of verses something on
medicine or natural science. But there is nothing common to Homer and Empedocles beyond
the metre, on account of which it is right indeed to call the one a poet, but the other a natural
philosopher rather than [20] poet. Likewise, if someone mixing all the metres2 were to
make an imitation (as Chaeremon made his Centaur a rhapsody mixed from all the metres),
he also ought to be named a poet.3 Let these things,4 then, be determined about in this way.
But there are some <arts> which use all of the [25] aforesaid <means> (like rhythm and
melody and verse [rhuthmôi kai melei kai metrôi], I mean), as in the composing of the
dithyramb [tôn dithurambikôn poiêsis] and the nome [tôn nomôn], as well as tragedy and
comedy; but these differ because the former actually <use these means> all at the same time;
but the latter only in part.5 I speak, therefore, about these differences of the arts in which
they make their imitation.
Notes.
1
Reading dia\ e)\pwn rather than dia\ trime/trwn after E. Lobel, “A Crux in the Poetics
[1447a28-b9]”. CQ 23 (1929) 76-9, to make the text consistent with the examples of the
elegiac- and the epic-poet which Aristotle immediately supplies (elegiac verse being mixed
from dactylic hexameter and iambic pentameter; whereas epopoiia employs hexametric
verse alone).
2
And who thus cannot be named a “maker” or “poet” from any one metre.
3
From the foregoing argument it also follows that if someone were to imitate without
metres, as Plato and others did in their Socratic dialogues, he, too, would deserve the name
of poet.
4
I.e. the genus of imitations in speech without harmony, whether with metre or without, etc.,
according to these differences in means.
5
I.e. because tragedy and comedy use rhythm and melody only in the part where the chorus
imitates by dancing and singing, i.e. in the hymn.
In sum:
One may imitate in bare speech alone or in metres:
In bare speech alone (as in the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus, and the Socratic
discourses [as with certain dialogues of Plato])
In metres, either
20
mixing these with each other (as in elegeia), or
using some one kind of metre (as in epopoiia)
mixing all the metres (as the rhapsody the Centaur of Chaeremon)
in epe (one kind of metre, namely, dactylic hexameter)

in elegiacs (mixing dactylic hexameter and pentameter)
in a mixed rhapsody (using all the metres)
TWO FURTHER REFERENCES TO ELEGIES IN ARISTOTLE.
Of Solon.
Cf. Aristotle, Rhet., I.15 (1375b 31) (tr. W. Rhys Roberts):
…tois Solônos elegeiois…. …by quoting the elegiac verse of Solon….
Of Dionysius the Brazen.
Cf. Aristotle, Rhet., III.2 (1405a 32) (tr. W. Rhys Roberts):
…Dionusios…ho chalkous en tois elegeiois…. …Dionysius the Brazen3 in his elegies calls
poetry ‘Calliope’s screech’….
3
[Poet and rhetorician of the 5th cent.]
ON ELEGY AND ELEGIACS.
Cf. the following, via an article called SAPPHO AND LYRIC POETRY taken from the
Internet:
Elegy is always in Ionic dialect, and is composed in two unequal lines, couplets or distichs
(stichos is a line), a dactylic hexameter, typical of epic, followed by a pentameter, rather like
a broken or paused hexameter line. The name comes from elegos, a lament and in modern
English elegiac refers to a mournful or, at least, nostalgic tone. However, ancient elegies
were, apparently, typically sung to the aulos and the poems cover the wide range of tones
and subject matter associated with that instrument [cf. M. West, Ancient Greek Music
(Oxford, 1992), Peter Wilson, ‘The aulos in Athens’ in R. Osborne, S. Goldhill eds.,
Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 96-122], not only
mourning, but the erotic, the martial (Tyrtaeus) and the generally exhortatory. They can be
very brief poems or quite long, cf. Solon’s Salamis (Perseus link), Simonides papyrus (see
‘Athenians at Plataea?’) on the victory at Plataea, from Oxford’s P.Oxy. The aulos is
associated above all with action and tends to be addressed outwardly. Epigram (‘writing on’)
is often written in the same metre, and is distinguished from elegy inasmuch as it was,
originally, a written or inscribed, rather than sung form of poetry.
ON CHAEREMON AND RHAPSODY.
Cf. The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization, vol. 1. ed. Alfred
Bates. London: Historical Publishing Company, 1906. p. 333:
21
Of those whose works were intended rather for private recitation than for the stage,
Chaeremon was the most popular, on account of the brilliance of his descriptive powers.
Especially admired was his Centaur, a mixture of drama with the epic and lyric poetry then
in fashion, in which, as Aristotle says, he employed every possible form of metre. His
maxim, “Luck, not wisdom, rules the affairs of men,” was adopted by Plutarch as the text of
one of his essays.
Cf. Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed., 1911), s.v. “Chaeremon”:
CHAEREMON, Athenian dramatist of the first half of the 4th century B.C. He is generally
considered a tragic poet. Aristotle (Rhetoric, iii. 12) says his works were intended for
reading, not for representation. According to Suidas, he was also a comic poet, and the title
of at least one of his plays (Achilles Slayer of Thersites) seems to indicate that it was a
satyric drama. His Centaurus is described by Aristotle (Poet. i. 12) as a rhapsody in all kinds
of metres. The fragments of Chaeremon are distinguished by correctness of form and facility
of rhythm, but marred by a florid and affected style reminiscent of Agathon. He especially
excelled in descriptions (irrelevantly introduced) dealing with such subjects as flowers and
female beauty. It is not agreed whether he is the author of three epigrams in the Greek
Anthology (Palatine vii. 469, 720, 721) which bear his name.
See H. Bartsch, De Chaeremone Poeta tragico (1843); fragments in A. Nauck, Fragmenta

Tragicorum Graecorum.
Cf. Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed., 1911), s.v. “Homer, Recitation of the Poems”:
The recitation of epic poetry was called in historical times “rhapsody” ( r(ays%dia). The
word r(ay%do/j is post-Homeric, but was known to Pindar, who gives two different
explanations of it— “singer of stitched verse”…), and “singer with the wand”…. Of these
the first is etymologically correct (except that it should rather be “stitcher of verse”); the
second was suggested by the fact, for which there is early evidence, that the reciter was
accustomed to hold a wand in his hand—perhaps, like the sceptre in the Homeric assembly,
as a symbol of the right to a hearing.
Cf. Richard Janko, Aristotle, Poetics I, with the Tractatus Coislinianus, a hypothetical
reconstruction of Poetics II, the fragments of the On Poets (Indianapolis/Cambridge:
Hackett, 1987), p.70:
47b21 “Centaur” The early to mid fourth-century tragedian Chaeremon composed this
dramatic work in mixed metres, for recitation not acting; this is why it is literally called a
“rhapsody”, which was normally a part of an epic recited at one performance (A “rhapsode”
was a reciter of epic: see Plato, Ion). It certainly contained hexameters. Even though
Chaeremon adheres to no single verse-form in his Centaur, whose very title alludes to its
hybrid form, he is still a composer of representational literature, like Sophron and Plato, who
use no verse-form at all. See also 60a2 and Rhetoric III 12.1413b8ff., where Chaeremon is
praised for being highly effective when read.
Cf. The Suda On Line Search:
22
Headword: Chairêmôn1
Adler number: chi,170
Translated headword: Chairemon, Chaeremon
Vetting Status: high
Headword: Χαιρήμων
Adler number: chi,170
Translated headword: Chairemon, Chaeremon
Vetting Status: high
Translation:
A comic poet.[1] His plays are as follows: Wounded Man, as Athenaeus says,
and Oineus and Alphesiboia and Centaur and Dionysos and Odysseus and Thyestes and Mi
nyai.[2] [There is] also another [sc. Chairemon], who wrote Hieroglyphics.[3]
Greek Original:
Χαιρήμων, κωμικός. τῶν δραμάτων αὐτοῦ ἐστι ταῦτα: Τραυματίας, ὡς Ἀθήναιός φησιν,
καὶ Οἰνεὺς καὶ Ἀλφεσίβοια καὶ Κένταυρος καὶ Διόνυσος καὶ Ὀδυσσεὺς καὶ Θυέστης καὶ
Μινύαι. καὶ ἕτερος Χαιρήμων, γράψας Ἱερογλυφικά.
Notes:
[1] A tragic poet, rather. For the two homonyms covered by this entry see OCD(4) p.303,
s.v. Chaeremon(1) and (2).
[2] Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 13.608A-F (13.87-88 Kaibel). For another title see omega
237.
[3] Cross-referenced at iota 175.
Keywords: biography; definition; historiography; mythology; tragedy
Translated by: David Whitehead on 1 January 2004@09:12:47.
Vetted by:
Catharine Roth (cosmetics, status) on 1 January 2004@23:19:27.
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Summary of verse-forms:
Cf. Gregory Nagy, Pindar’s Homer. The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past, Ch. 1, §7-9:
§7. The basic forms of ancient Greek poetry are traditionally classified in terms of metrical
types:
1
https://www.cs.uky.edu/~raphael/sol/sol-cgi-
bin/search.cgi?login=&enlogin=&db=REAL&field=adlerhw_gr&searchstr=chi,170 [09/26/19]
23
• dactylic hexameter (Homeric epic and hymns,1 Hesiodic wisdom- and catalogue-
poetry)2
• elegiac distich = dactylic hexameter + “pentameter” (as in Archilochus, Callinus,

Mimnermus, Tyrtaeus, Theognis, Solon, Xenophanes, and so on)
• iambic trimeter (as in Archilochus, Hipponax, Semonides, Solon, and so on; also as in
fifth-century Athenian tragedy and comedy).
§8. In each of these metrical types of Greek poetry, I propose that the format of performance
was recitative as opposed to melodic. This is not to say that such forms of poetry had no
prescribed patterning in pitch. But patterns of pitch in poetry were formally and functionally
distinct from the patterns of pitch that we, on the basis of our own cultural conditioning,
recognize as melody in song. On the level of form, the difference is not as drastic as
suggested by the contrast of monotone with song. I find the term recitative more suitable
than monotone, to the extent that it does not necessarily convey the absence of melody. I use
the term recitation to indicate either the absence or the reduction of melody. The contrast
between not-sung (or recitative) and sung (or melodic) is attested most clearly in fifth-
century Athenian tragedy, where the iambic trimeter of dialogue was “spoken” by actors
while a wide variety of other meters were sung and danced by a khoros ‘chorus’, to the
accompaniment of an aulos ‘reed’.1 It bears emphasis that khoros ‘chorus’ in Greek is a
group that sings and dances, to the accompaniment of wind or string instruments, and that, in
Greek traditions, the concept of song is fundamentally connected with the concept of the
chorus.2
§9. In the claim just made for the iambic trimeter of Athenian tragedy, the argumentation is
relatively secure. What follows, however, is a matter of controversy. I am proposing that an
absence or at least a reduction of melody—and an absence of instrumental accompaniment
and dance—eventually developed not only in the iambic trimeter of dialogue in Athenian
drama but also in the iambic trimeter of the old iambic poets (Archilochus, Hipponax,
Semonides, Solon, and so on), in the elegiac distich of the old elegiac poets (Archilochus,
Callinus, Mimnermus, Tyrtaeus, Theognis, Solon, Xenophanes, and so on), and in the
dactylic hexameter of Homer and Hesiod. This proposition may at first seem startling, in
view of such internal testimony as Homer’s bidding his Muse to sing the anger of Achilles
(Iliad I 1) or Archilochus’ boasting that he knows how to ‘lead a choral performance’
(verb exarkhô) of a dithyramb (F 120 W).1 The significance of this evidence, however, is
not what it may first appear, and we must examine it more closely. To begin, the internal
evidence of Homeric and Hesiodic diction tells us that the word aeidô ‘sing’ (as in Iliad I 1)
is a functional synonym, in contexts where the medium refers to its own performance, of the
word e(n)nepô ‘narrate, recite’ (as in Odyssey i 1), which does not explicitly designate
singing.2 For some, the functional synonymity of aeidô ‘sing’ and e(n)nepô ‘narrate, recite’
is proof that the narrative format must be song—that the Homeric (and presumably
Hesiodic) poems were sung and accompanied on the lyre.3 For others, however, the equating
of a word that refers to strategies of narrating Homeric and Hesiodic poetry with a word that
refers to the format of singing to the accompaniment of a lyre proves only that such poetry
had such a format in some phase of its evolution.4 Self-references in Archaic Greek poetry
may be diachronically valid without being synchronically true.5 This phenomenon may be
designated as diachronic skewing.
§7n1. For the moment, I shall include under the rubric “Homer” not only the Iliad and
Odyssey but also the Homeric Hymns and the poems of the Epic Cycle, such as the Aithiopis
and Destruction of Ilion attributed to Arctinus of Miletus (Proclus, p. 105.21-22 and p.
107.16-17 Allen, Suda s.v.), the Little Iliad attributed to Lesches of Mytilene (Proclus, p.
24
106.19-20; Phaenias F 33 Wehrli, in Clement Stromateis 1.131.6), and so on. I reserve for
Ch.2§38 a discussion of the patterns of differentiation between Homeric and Cyclic Epic. As
we see in that discussion, as also later in Ch. 14, the patterns of attribution to Homer become
progressively more exclusive as we move forward in time, from the Archaic to the Classical
period and beyond.
§7n2. I use the term wisdom poetry to encompass both the Theogony and the Works and
Days.
§8n1. As the discussion proceeds, we shall see that some types of meter that are performed
by the chorus are transitional between not-sung and sung, such as the so-called parakatalogê,
with reduced rather than full melody (Ch.1§19) and with reduced dancing (Ch.1§53n9).
§8n2. Details in Ch.12, where I also reckon with various lines of argumentation that have
been invoked to challenge the notion of an inherited correlation of song and dance in the
khoros.
§9n1. The meter in which this utterance is composed is trochaic tetrameter catalectic,
on which see Ch.1§54, Ch.1§53, Ch.1§53n2; also Ch.13§30. Also in the same meter is
Archilochus F 121 W, where the description ‘leading the choral performance’ (again,
verb exarkhô) applies to the choral leader of a paean. Further discussion of the
concepts of dithyramb, paean, and choral performance (verb exarkhô) in Ch.3 and
Ch.12. For more on Archilochus F 120 W, see N 1979.252n.
§9n2. Thus for example the aoidê ‘song’ of the Muses at Hesiod Theogony104 is in the
context of the poet’s bidding them to ‘narrate’ (espete: Theogony114) and to ‘say’ (eipate:
Theogony115). On ennepô as ‘recite’, see N 1974.11n29.
§9n3. See for example West 1981, who makes this additional observation at p. 113: “We
cannot make a distinction between two styles of performance, one characterized as aeidein,
the other as enepein.”
§9n4. Again, N 1974.11n29.
§9n5. I am using the terms diachronic and synchronic, on which see Intro. §11n1, not as
synonyms for historical and current respectively. It is a mistake to equate diachronic with
historical, as is often done. Diachrony refers to the potential for evolution in a structure.
History is not restricted to phenomena that are structurally predictable.
Cf. idem, Ch. 13, §30:
§30. In the Poetics 1449a9ff, Aristotle says that both tragedy and comedy had a beginning
that is autoskhediastikê ‘improvisational’ (ap' archês autoschediastikês),1 and that tragedy
was derived from the exarkhontes ‘choral leaders’ of the dithurambos ‘dithyramb’ (apo tôn
exarchontôn ton dithurambon).2 Aristotle may have had Archilochus’ passage in mind.3
In Archilochus F 120 W, the persona of the composer declares that he knows how to be
the exarkhôn ‘choral leader’ of the dithyramb, while his mind is thunderstruck with
wine.4 Else remarks: “Archilochus’ impromptu, drunken dithyramb is closer than any other
dithyramb we know of to being autoskhediastikê [improvisational].”5 Else notes that
Archilochus’ meter in F 120 W is indeed trochaic tetrameter catalectic.6 According to
Aristotle the meter of dialogue in early tragedy, before it was replaced by iambic
trimeter, was trochaic tetrameter catalectic (Poetics 1449a22ff). In short what Aristotle
says about the evolution of comedy and tragedy implies that he thought that
Archilochus was a typical exarkhôn of dithyramb, which he understood as
characterized by trochaic tetrameter catalectic, typical of both comedy and tragedy.
25
§30n1. Cf. Else 1957.149.
§30n2. Cf. Else, pp. 155 and following.
§30n3. Else, pp. 157-158.
§30n4. Cf. N 1979.252
§30n5. Else, p. 158.
§30n6. Ibid. Cf. Ch.1§9, Ch.1§39n5.
26
VI. ON RHYTHM AND METRE.
Cf. Aristotle, Rhet., III. 8 (1408b 23–1409a 20) (tr. W. Rhys Roberts):
The form of a prose composition should be neither metrical nor destitute of rhythm. The
metrical form destroys the hearer’s trust by its artificial appearance, and at the same time it
diverts his attention, [25] making him watch for metrical recurrences, just as children catch
up the herald’s question, ‘Whom does the freedman choose as his advocate?’, with the
answer ‘Cleon!’
On the other hand, unrhythmical language is too unlimited; we do not want the limitations of
metre, but some limitation we must have, or the effect will be vague and unsatisfactory. Now
it is number that limits all things; and it is the numerical limitation of the forms of a
composition that constitutes rhythm, of which metres are definite sections [30]. Prose,
then, is to be rhythmical, but not metrical, or it will become not prose but verse. It should not
even have too precise a prose rhythm, and therefore should only be rhythmical to a certain
extent.
Of the various rhythms, the heroic has dignity, but lacks the tones of the spoken language.
The iambic is the very language of ordinary people, so that in common talk [35] iambic lines
occur oftener than any others: but in a speech we need dignity and the power of taking the
hearer out of his ordinary self.
The trochee is too much akin to wild dancing: [1409a] we can see this in tetrameter verse,
which is one of the trochaic rhythms.
There remains the paean, which speakers began to use in the time of Thrasymachus, though
they had then no name to give it.
The paean is a third class of rhythm, closely akin to both the two already mentioned; it has in
it the ratio of three to two, [5] whereas the other two kinds have the ratio of one to one, and
two to one respectively. Between the two last ratios comes the ratio of one-and-a-half to one,
which is that of the paean.
Now the other two kinds of rhythm must be rejected in writing prose, partly for the reasons
given, and partly because they are too metrical; and the paean must be adopted, since from
this alone of the rhythms mentioned no definite metre arises, and therefore it is the least
obtrusive of them. [10]
At present the same form of paean is employed at the beginning a at the end of sentences,
whereas the end should differ from the beginning. There are two opposite kinds of paean,
one of which is suitable to the beginning of a sentence, where it is indeed actually used; this
is the kind that begins with a long syllable and ends with three short ones, as
“Dalogenes | eite Luki | an,” [15] and
“Chruseokom | a Ekate | pai Dios.”
The other paean begins, conversely, with three short syllables and ends with a long one, as
“meta de lan | udata t ok | eanon e | oanise nux.”
27
This kind of paean makes a real close: a short syllable can give no effect of finality, and
therefore makes the rhythm appear truncated. A sentence should break off with the long
syllable: the [20] fact that it is over should be indicated not by the scribe, or by his period-
mark in the margin, but by the rhythm itself.
We have now seen that our language must be rhythmical and not destitute of rhythm, and
what rhythms, in what particular shape, make it so.
THE THREE SPECIES OF RHYTHM IN SUM.
Cf. Aristotle, Rhet., III. 8 (1408b 32–1409a 1) (tr. George A. Kennedy;1 rev. B.A.M.):
Of rhythms,
[those rhythms which are also ‘metres’]
• the heroic [= dactylic hexameter] is solemn and not conversational [semnês all’ ou
lektikês], and needs musical intonation [harmonias deomenos].
• The iambic [= iambic trimeter] by itself is the language of the many [hê lexis hê tôn
pollôn] (thus, all people most often speak [35] in iambics) [malista pantôn tôn
metrôn iambeia phthengontai legontes]; but [formal speech] should be dignified
and moving [semnotêta genesthai kai ekstêsai].
• The trochaic metre [= trochaic tetrameter] is rather too much of a comic dance
[kordakikôteros; lit. “more suited to the kordax”], as is clear from tetrameters
[1409a]; for they are a tripping [trocheros] rhythm.
[the only rhythm that is not also a metre]
• What remains is the paean, the which came into use beginning with Thrasymachus,
though at the time people did not recognize what it was. The paean is a third kind
of rhythm, related to those under discussion. For it has the ratio of three to two
[three short syllables and one long, the latter equal in time to two beats], whereas
the others are one to one [i.e. the heroic, with one long syllable and two shorts], or
two to one [i.e. iambic, a long and a short; and trochaic, a short and a long]. And
one-and-one half [i.e. the ratio of three to two] is the mean ratio, and this is the
paean. The other rhythms should be avoided for the reasons given, and because
they are [poetic] metres. And the paean should be adopted, for it alone of the
rhythms mentioned is not a metre, and thus its presence most escapes notice [10].
As it is, only the opening paean is in use, but it is necessary to distinguish the
opening from the closing.
N.B. The paean is called the third rhythm because Aristotle takes the iambic and the
trochaic as the same qua rhythm, although they differ qua metre.
The three rhythms:
1
Aristotle On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse (Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 237. See further
below for this text placed in parallel with that of Roberts.
28
• heroic
• iambic/trochaic (iambus: 1 : 2; trochee: 2 : 1)
• paeonic
The rhythms in sum:
• The heroic (solemn and not conversational, needs musical intonation)

• The iambic (the language of the many, not dignified and moving as is the heroic)
• The trochaic (rather too much of a comic dance, …a tripping rhythm)
• The paeonic (not a metre, and so escapes notice when used)
SUPPLEMENT: ON THE KORDAX AND RELATED STYLES OF DANCING.
To understand Aristotle’s reference to the form of dance called the kordax, cf. Athenaeus,
Deipnosophistai, 628c-f (tr. ed. Eric Csapo & Walter Slater, The Context of Ancient
Drama, Sec. IV, “The Chorus”, no. 325, slightly rev. B.A.M.):
Music contributes to the exercise and the sharpening of the intellect…. The students of
Damon the Athenian put the case well when they say that songs and dances necessarily
result when the soul is somehow in motion and those (souls) that are freeborn and noble
produce similar (songs and dances), and the opposite produce the opposite…. For in dance
or movement in general, decency and good order are beautiful, disorder and vulgarity ugly.
This is why from the very beginning the poets arranged dances for free men and made use of
dance-figures only to represent what was being sung, taking care always to preserve nobility
and manliness in their movements, which is why they called these dances hyporchemata
(“dances subordinate to”). But if anyone arranged the dance movements beyond measure or
in writing the songs said something that was not expressed in the dance, he suffered
disgrace. Thus, according to Chamaeleon (fr. 42 Wehrli), Aristophanes or Plato [Comicus]
in Costumes (Skeuai) spoke in this way (Plato [Comicus], PGC F 138): “so that if anyone
danced well (in the old days), it was a good show, but now they don’t do anything but stand
stock-still as if stunned and howl.” Back then the kind of dance performed by the choruses
was decorous and dignified and like an imitation of the movements of men in arms, and
Socrates in his poems says that the finest dancers are the best warriors. He writes: “Those
who honor the gods most beautifully with choruses are best in war.” For dancing is virtually
like military maneuvers and a display both of discipline in general and of a concern for
bodily health.
From Csapo and Slater’s Headnote.
Written ca. 200. This passage gives us some insight into the historical development of the
dance in drama and how conservative theorists interpreted these changes. Damon was a
music theorist of the second half of the 5th c. B.C., whose moral interpretation of dance and
music in terms of a binary class division between “noble” and “base” souls had a powerful
influence on…music and dance theory, and particularly upon Plato. Chamaeleon wrote in
the late 4th or early 3rd c. B.C., Plato (the comic poet) in the late 5th or early 4th c. B.C.
Socrates the philosopher, compose his poems while in prison in 399 B.C.
On the forms of dance, cf. C. Blasis, The Code of Terpsichore. The Art of Dancing,
Comprising Its Theory and Practice, and a History of Its Rise and Progress, From the
Earliest Times, Note. 4:
29
The ancients gave a proof of their taste and judgment in making the distinctions that subsist
between the various styles of theatrical dancing; of this Lucian1 has informed us. They saw
that it was requisite to have different kinds, and they accordingly divided them in the
following manner: the Cordax, the Sicinnis , and the Emmeleïa .
The Emmeleïa was a sort of tragic movement or ballet, of which the elegance and majesty
were greatly celebrated by Plato, and other eminent men who make mention of its use.
The Sicinnis was a dance so called from the peculiar shaking of the body, and violent motion
of the limbs, practised in it. (Vide Athenæus.) This dance must be considered of the
grotesque style.
The Cordax was a loose kind of dance introduced into comedies, performed by persons
elevated with wine. (Vide Ath.) This dance was void of all dignity and decorum; its
movements were gross and ridiculous; those who executed it made the most indecent
motions with their backs, hips, and loins. This exhibition, therefore, I suppose, may be
compared to the Dithyrambic dance of the Bacchanals. In short, certain songs of a
violent and infuriated character were sung in honour of Bacchus, and, at the same
time, accompanied by dances of the above description.
Besides these three sorts of dances, there was also another, called the Pyrrhic or warrior
dance.
(Vide Meursius Antiq. Graec. de Salt. verbo . IIIPPIXH. - “Pyrrhicam. Ea Saltationis species
est, nomen ab inventore sortira, quem alii Pyrrhum Achillis filium, alii Pyrrhum quemdam
Cretensem, vel etiam à ratione Saltandi quod Pyrrichii pedis modulo soleret agitari, de quo
pede, Quint. Lib. IX. Cap. 14. Háec fuit Saltatio, ut plures existimanto armat, pro juvenibus
ad militarem disciplinam exercendis: varii enim illius morns et flexus, vitandu vel in
ferendáe plagae reddebant idoneos.” - Casaub.)
This dance imitated those movements and positions of the body, by the aid of which the
wounds or darts of any enemy were avoided, that is, by bending. Vide Plat. de Leg.)
Cf. Alfred Bates, Greek Drama, vol. 1, Chap. II, “Choral Dances”, p. 18.:
From the paean were developed three kinds of choral dancing, the first of which, named
gymnopaedia, or festival of naked youths, was held in great esteem at Sparta, the motions
being in imitation of a wrestling match. The pyrrhic was a military dance by boys in armor,
who were trained to move with all the agility required of the Greek hoplite, or heavy-armed
foot-soldier. The hyporchema, as its name implies, was a dance expressing by gesticulations
the sentiments of the accompanying poem. It was first connected with the religious rites of
Apollo, and later with those of Dionysus and Athena. In early times its leader sat in the
middle of the chorus, singing to the accompaniment of his lyre, while the youths and
maidens danced around him, two of the chief performers, sometimes called “tumblers” from
their violent motions, regulating the movements of the rest.
All three were dances of lyric poetry, and those of the drama were in a measure fashioned
after them, being named the tragic, comic and satyric.
1
For this reference see further below.
30
Cf. The Deipnosophists of Athenaeus of Naucratis. Book XIV. Translated by Charles
Burton Gulick for the Loeb Classical Library, 1937, XIV. 630-631 (excerpts on dance), pp.
401-2:
Now the satyr dance, as Aristocles saysa in the first book of his treatise On Choruses, is
called sikinnisb and the satyrs, siknnistai. Some say that a barbarian named Sicinnus was its
inventor, others assert that Sicinnus was a Cretan by birth. The Cretans are given to dancing,
as Aristoxenus says.c But Scamon,in the first book of his work On Inventions, saysd that the
dance is called sikinnis from the verb seio (shake), and that the first to dance the sikinnis was
Thersippus. Movements of the feet were invented before those of the hands. For the men of
old used to exercise their feet more in the public games and in hunting. Now the Cretans are
given to hunting, hence they are swift of foot. Yet again there are some who say that sikinnis
is a name made imitatively from kinesis (movement),e for the satyrs’ dance is a movement
very swift. For this dance has no depth of feeling,f for which reason it never slows up. All
satyric poetry in ancient times consisted in choruses, like the tragedy of those days; hence it
had no actors either. There are three kinds of dancing in poetry for the stage — tragic,
comic, and satyric. Similarly there are three in lyric poetry, the war-dance, naked-boy-dance,
and hyporchematic.g To be sure, the war-dance (pyrrichê) bears a similarity to the satyric,
since both are characterized by speed. Yet the pyrrichê it is agreed, is warlike; it is danced
by boys in armour. War needs speed for the pursuit, and also, in the case
a F II. G. iv, 331; see p. 343 note a.

b Satyr-whirl, above, 618 c, 629 d, and vol. I, p. 88.
c F II. G. ii, 284.
d F H.G. iv. 489.
e i.e. sikinnis is an anagram for kinesis.
f Or “pain,” as in Aristot. Poet. 1453 b 18. The conjecture ethos “character ” gives no clearer
meaning than the mss. pathos.
g Below, 631 c, and 628 d (p 389 note d). [401-402]
of the vanquished, “they may fly, and stay not, nor feel shame at being cowards”. a The
naked-boy-dance resembles the tragic dance called emmeleiab; in both may be seen the grave
and solemn quality. But the hyporchematic is closely related to the comic dance called
kordax, both of them are full of fun.
b Above, 62 9 d (p. 394 and note d)
Cf. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 630c-8 (tr. ed. Caspo/Slater, The Context of Ancient
Drama, Sec. IV, “The Chorus”, n. 318, in part):
There are three dances for theatrical poetry: the tragic, the comic, and the satyric. In the
same way there are three dances for lyric poetry: the pyrrhiche, the gymnopaidike, and the
hyporchematike.
The pyrrhiche is like satyric dancing because both are danced very quickly….
The gymnopaidike is something like the tragic dance that is called emmeleia (“harmonious”);
in both, gravity and solemnity is visible.
The hyporchematike resembles the comic dance that is called kordax; both are playful.
31
Cf. Lucian of Samosata, De Saltatione (‘Of Pantomime’) (tr. Fowler), nn. 22, 26:1
22
As to the rites of Dionysus, you know, without my telling you, that they consisted in dancing
from beginning to end. Of the three main types of dance, the cordax, the sicinnis, and the
emmelia, each was the invention and bore the name of one of the Satyrs, his followers.
Assisted by this art, and accompanied by these revellers, he conquered Tyrrhenians, Indians,
Lydians, dancing those warlike tribes into submission.
26
I think you forget, when you advocate the claims of tragedy and comedy, that each of them
has its own peculiar form of dance; tragedy its emmelia, comedy its cordax, supplemented
occasionally by the sicinnis. You began by asserting the superiority of tragedy, of comedy,
and of the periodic performances on flute and lyre, which you pronounce to be respectable,
because they are included in public competitions. Let us take each of these and compare its
merits with those of dancing. The flute and the lyre, to be sure, we might leave out of the
discussion, as these have their part to play in the dance.
N.B. Further evidence of the primary nature of the foregoing division into tragic, comic,
and satyric is furnished by the case of skenographia:
Cf. Eric Csapo and William Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama, University of Michigan
Press, 1995, Sec. IV. Actors and Audience, esp. p. 273 (Stage Decoration, and State
Machinery):
80C. Vitruvius, On Architecture 5.6:

There are three categories of scene painting: one called “tragic,” the second “comic,” the
third “satyric.” Now, of these, the subjects are completely different. The tragic are laid out in
columns, pediments, statues, and other royal accoutrements. The comic have the appearance
of private houses and balconies and projections fitted with windows in the manner of
ordinary houses. The satyric are painted with trees, caves, mountains, and features of the
countryside formed in the manner of a landscape painting.
1
SOURCE: The Works of Lucian of Samosata. Translated by Fowler, H W and F G. Oxford: The Clarendon
Press. 1905.
32
VII. TWO KINDS OF LANGUAGE MADE EVIDENT FROM THE
HISTORY OF TRAGEDY.
THE LANGUAGE OF TRAGEDY (= TRAGIC, AND THEREFORE, DRAMATIC
POETRY).
Cf. Aristotle, Poet. ch. 4 (1449a 19-26) (tr. B.A.M., based on Theodore Buckley):
Moreover, with respect to size, from slight plots and [20] ridiculous language, on account
of it changing from satyric [poetry], it was late before it acquired dignity, and the metre from
[trochaic] tetrameter became iambic [trimeter]. For at first they were accustomed to using
tetrameter on account of the poetry being satyric, and more suitable for dancing, but when
spoken language was introduced, nature herself found the appropriate metre. For [25] the
metre most suitable for speaking is the iambic. A sign of this is that in conversing with one
another we speak for the most part in iambs, but only rarely in hexameters, and [then only]
when departing from the intonation adapted to conversation [or ‘from a conversational
tone’].1
KINDS OF POETRY.
• satyric
• tragic (early, which resembled the satyric, out of which it grew, and developed)
KINDS OF METRE MADE EVIDENT FROM THE LANGUAGE OF TRAGEDY.
• [trochaic] tetrameter
• iambic [trimeter]
N.B. In sum, in its earliest stages, tragedy grew out of ‘poetry’ which was ‘satyric’ in its
original form, possessing slight plots, ridiculous language, and a trochaic tetrameter more
suited to the dance, the presence of which made tragedy undignified. But later in its
development, the plots of tragedy increased in size, the language no longer remained
ridiculous, and the dance-oriented trochaic tetrameter changed to iambic trimeter, which
was suitable for speaking, the result being that “it was late before [tragedy] acquired
dignity”.
Note the implication that the “satyric poetry”2 out of which early tragedy developed must
have belonged to the improvisational dithyramb whose leader (the exarchon) was
1
ek mikrôn muthôn kai [20] lexeôs geloias dia to ek saturikou metabalein opse apesemnunthê, to
te metron ek tetrametrou iambeion egeneto. to men gar prôton tetrametrôi echrônto dia to
saturikên kai orchêstikôteran einai tên poiêsin, lexeôs de genomenês autê hê phusis to oikeion
metron heure: malista gar [25] lektikon tôn metrôn to iambeion estin: sêmeion de toutou, pleista
gar iambeia legomen en têi dialektôi têi pros allêlous, hexametra de oligakis kai ekbainontes tês
lektikês harmonias. eti de epeisodiôn plêthê. kai ta all' hôs [30] hekasta kosmêthênai legetai estô
hêmin eirêmena: polu gar an isôs ergon eiê diexienai kath' hekaston.
2
Cf. Lucas, Aristotle: Poetics (Oxford, 1968) note ad loc.: “…this may mean that tragedy, in A.'s view,
developed from the satyr-play. A connexion between the two forms is suggested by the fact that satyr-plays
were produced in conjunction with tragedies…. The account here given implies that the dithyramb was a
ludicrous form with a chorus of satyrs.” N.B. The satyr-play was actually a later development from the
33
responsible for the first step in the development of tragedy.1 See further below in the
discussion of compound names.
THE LANGUAGE OF TRAGEDY AS IT ACQUIRED DIGNITY IN ITS

DEVELOPMENT.
Early tragedy (‘ridiculous language’ in changing from satyric poetry):
• trochaic tetrameter
• ‘more suitable for dancing’
Developed tragedy:
• spoken language
• iambic trimeter
• ‘most suitable for speaking’ (using hexameters only occasionally, as a departure
from a conversational tone)2
Cf. Aristotle, Rhet., III. 1 (1404a 12-29) (tr. W. Rhys Roberts):
When the principles of delivery have been worked out, they will produce the same effect
as on the stage.1 But only very slight attempts to deal with them have been made and by a
few people, as by Thrasymachus in his ‘Appeals [15] to Pity’.2 Dramatic ability is a natural
gift, and can hardly be systematically taught. The principles of good diction can be so taught,
and therefore we have men of ability in this direction too, who win prizes in their turn, as
well as those speakers who excel in delivery—speeches of the written or literary kind owe
more of their effect to their direction than to their thought.
[20] It was naturally the poets who first set the movement going; for words represent
things, and they had also the human voice at their disposal, which of all our organs can
best represent other things. Thus the arts of recitation and acting were formed, and
others as well. Now it was because poets seemed to win fame through their fine language
when their thoughts were simple enough, that the [25] language of oratorical prose at first
took a poetical colour, e.g. that of Gorgias.3 Even now most uneducated people think that
poetical language makes the finest discourses. That is not true: the language of prose is
distinct from that of poetry. This is shown by the state of things to-day, when even the
language of tragedy has altered its [30] character. Just as iambics were adopted, instead of
tetrameters, because they are the most prose-like of all metres, so tragedy has given up
all those words, not used in ordinary talk, which decorated the early drama and are
still used by the writers of hexameter poems. It is therefore [25] ridiculous to imitate a
poetical manner which the poets themselves have dropped; and it is now plain that we have
not to treat in detail the whole question of style, but may con-
satyric dithyramb, which is Aristotle’s concern here, and which Lucas accurately describes in the second
remark I have excerpted here.
1
By becoming what was in effect the first actor? So Pickard-Cambridge (Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy,
Oxford, 1927) who argues strenuously against the historical reliability of Aristotle’s history of tragedy, a
subject that cannot be pursued here; but cf. T.B.L Webster’s replies to the contrary vindicating Aristotle’s
account in the Second Edition (1962) of this work, pp. 96-97, as well as the passages excerpted from Gregory
Nagy above on the witness of Archilochus as exarchon of a dithyramb the verse-form of which was trochaic
tetrameter catalectic.
2
Cf. Poet. 22 (1459a 9-14), excerpted below.
34
1
[A rendering now favoured is ‘when the principles of style have been worked out they will
produce the same effect as delivery.’]
2
[Thraysmachus of Chalcedon, sophist and teacher of rhetoric, sharply criticized by Plato]
3
[Another leading teacher of rhetoric in the 5th cent.]
fine ourselves to that part of it which concerns our present subject, rhetoric. The other—the
poetical—part of it has been discussed in the treatise on the Art of Poetry.1
1
Poetics, cc. 20-2.
Rhet., III. 1 in sum:
• first, a poetical manner; later, a prosaic manner; tragedy used tetrameter,

• then changed to iambics because they were the most conversational of all the
metres; it also used words not used in ordinary talk, then gave them up, words that
decorated the early drama and are still used by writers of hexameter poems
• the use of tetrameter (tragic diction) and unusual words (epic diction)
ON READING IN RELATION TO THE ART OF DELIVERY.
Cf. William G. Rutherford, A Chapter in the History of Annotation, Being Scholia Aristo-
phanica III (London: Macmillan, 1905; rpt. New York: Garland Pub., 1987). Dionysius
Thrax, Tekhne grammatike (excerpt):
Reading is the unfaltering enunciation of verse or prose. We should read with correct
dramatic expression, render correctly the musical side of the words employed, mark
correctly the intervals. If we so read, then by virtue of dramatic expression we discover the
author’s genius [arete], by rendering his music his skill as an artist, by marking the intervals
the sense contained between them. Tragedy should be read in a tone befitting the heroic age,
comedy in an ordinary tone of voice, elegies in a high-pitched and clear monotone, epic
poetry with vigorous intonation, lyrical poetry musically, and commiserations in subdued
and plaintive tones.
To read without observing these rules is on the one hand to debauch the genius of the
poets, and on the other to put the reader’s habit of mind in a ridiculous light.
35
VIII. THREE SPECIES OF METRE ARRANGED ACCORDING TO
WHETHER THEY ARE SUITABLE TO NARRATIVE IMITATION, TO
ACTING, OR TO DANCING.
THE LANGUAGE OF EPIC (= NARRATIVE POETRY).
Cf. Aristotle, Poet. ch. 24 (1459b 32—1460a 1) (tr. B.A.M.):

As for the metre, the heroic has proved its fitness by the test of experience. For if someone
were to make a narrative imitation in some other metre or in more than one, its unfitness
would be obvious. For the heroic is the most unmoving and [35] most weighty of the metres
(and for this reason it most readily admits foreign words and metaphors, and [in this
respect]1 narrative imitation surpasses2 the others); but the iambic [trimeter] and the
[trochaic] tetrameter are full of movement, the latter indeed being suited to dancing, the
former to acting.3 [1401a] Moreover, it would be still more out of place [sc. in epic poetry] if
someone were to mix together [all the metres],4 as Chaeremon did. Hence, no one has ever
composed a long poem in any other [metre] than the heroic; but as we have said, the nature
itself [of narrative imitation] teaches what is fitting to choose [with respect to the metre].
In sum, metres may be heroic, iambic, or trochaic:
• the heroic is the most unmoving and the weightiest, for which reason it most
readily admits foreign words and metaphors [as well as lengthened and otherwise
altered names etc.]
• the iambic and trochaic are full of movement, with the latter being suited to
dancing, but the former to acting
And recall here that trochaic tetrameter is proper to satyric poetry.
1
Cf. James Hutton, Aristotle. Poetics (New York: W.W. Norton, 1982, p. 109: “Reading tau\t$ (tautêi) with
Twining. According to Chapter 22 (1459 a10), for-eign words befit epic and metaphors dramatic dialogue; it
is thought that in the present passage Aristotle may refer to the Homeric simile, since he regards the simile as
a form of metaphor (Rhet. 3.4, 1406b20)”.
2
In what way does narrative imitation ‘surpass’ the other forms? Consider Poet. ch. 22 (1458a 21-23) (tr.
B.A.M.):
A dignified [language, semnê], however, and one departing from the ordinary [exallattousa to
idiotikon], uses [names] that are unfamiliar [tois zenikois]; by ‘unfamiliar’ [zenikon], however, I mean
‘foreign’ [glottan] and ‘carried over’ [metaphoran] and ‘lengthened’ [epektasin]—all, that is, beside
the current [to kurion].
Again, in the next paragraph, Aristotle goes on to list besides “expansions [epektaseis]” (= ‘lengthened’) also
“contractions [apokopai] and alterations [exallagai] of names” (1458b 1-2). Hence, in addition to the ‘length-
ened’, he also understands ‘shortened’ and ‘altered’ names. But “all beside the current” would also include
the ‘made up’ [pepoimenon] and the ‘double’ or ‘compound’ name [duploun] and its related forms. In accor-
dance with the foregoing texts, it may perhaps be inferred that narrative imitation ‘surpasses’ the other kinds
by ‘departing from the ordinary’ in its use of such names as the foreign and the carried over, where the later
means the epic simile in the case of Homer.
3
That is, to dramatic imitation, or drama simply.
4
That is, Chaeremon mixed together the heroic, iambic, and trochaic metres, as Aristotle states at 1447b 21:
“…as Chaeremon made his Centaur a rhapsody mixed from all the metres”.
36
IX. THREE SPECIES OF POETRY OR ‘VERSE’ MADE EVIDENT
ACCORDING TO THE TYPES OF WORDS SUITABLE TO EACH.
Cf. Aristotle, Poet. ch. 22 (1459a 9-14) (tr. Theodore Buckley):
But of words, the compound are chiefly suited to dithyrambic verse, the foreign to heroic,
and metaphors to Iambic verse. And in heroic verse, indeed, all the above-mentioned words
are useful; but in Iambics, because they specially imitate common discourse, those words are
adapted which may be also used in conversation. And words of this description are, the
proper, the metaphorical, [and the ornamental.]
The three species of poetry in sum:
• Dithyrambic
• Heroic
• Iambic
The kinds of words appropriate to each species of ‘verse’ or poetry:
• compound words are chiefly suited to dithyrambic poetry [cf. ‘mountain-

roaming’]
• foreign to heroic poetry
• metaphors to iambic poetry (but in iambics, because they specially imitate
common discourse, those words are adapted which may be also used in
conversation. And words of this description are, the proper, the metaphorical, [and
the ornamental.])
Cf. Aristotle, Rhet., III. 3 (1405 b 34)—1406b 19 (tr. W. Rhys Roberts):
Bad taste in language may take any of four forms:—

(1) The misuse of compound words. Lycophron,2 for [35] instance, talks of the “many-
visaged heaven” above the “giant-crested earth,” and again the “strait-pathed shore”; and
Gorgias2 of the “pauper-poet flatterer” and [1406a] “oath-breaking and over-oath-keeping.”
Alcidamas uses such expressions as “the soul filling with rage and face becoming flame-
flushed,” and “he thought their enthusiasm would be issue-fraught” and “issue-fraught he
made the persuasion of his words,” and “sombre-hued is the floor of the sea.” The [5] way
all these words are compounded makes them, we feel, fit for verse only. This, then, is one
form in which bad taste is shown.
(2) Another is the employment of strange words. For instance, Lycophron talks of “the
prodigious Xerxes” and “spoliative Sciron”; Alcidamas of “a toy for poetry” and “the
witlessness of nature,” and says “whetted with the [10] unmitigated temper of his spirit.”
(3) A third form is the use of long, unseasonable, or frequent epithets. It is appropriate
enough for a poet to talk of “white milk,” in prose such epithets are sometimes lacking in
appropriateness or, when spread too thickly, plainly reveal the author turning his prose into
poetry. Of course we must use some epithets, since they
2
[Lycophron, Gorgias, Alcidamas, authoritative teachers of rhetoric in the 5th and 4th cent.]
[15] lift our style above the usual level and give it an air of distinction. But we must aim at
the due mean, or the result will be worse than if we took no trouble at all; we shall get
37
something actually bad instead of something merely not good. That is why the epithets of
Alcidamas seem so tasteless; he does not use them as the seasoning of the meat, but as the
meat itself, so numerous and swollen and [20] aggressive are they. For instance, he does not
say “sweat,” but “the moist sweat”; not “to the Isthmian games,” but “to the world-
concourse of the Isthmian games”; not “laws,” but “the laws that are monarchs of states”;
not “at a run,” but “his heart impelling him to speed of foot”; not “a school of the Muses,”
but “Nature’s school of the Muses had he [25] inherited”; and so “frowning care of heart,”
and “achiever” not of “popularity” but of “universal popularity,” and “dispenser of pleasure
to his audience,” and “he concealed it” not “with boughs” but “with boughs of the forest
trees,” and “he [30] clothed” not “his body” but “his body’s nakedness,” and “his soul’s
desire was counter-imitative” (this is at one and the same time a compound and an epithet, so
that it seems a poet’s effort), and “so extravagant the excess of his wickedness.” We thus see
how the inappropriateness of such poetical language imports absurdity and tastelessness into
speeches, as well as the obscurity that comes from all this [35] verbosity – for when the
sense is plain, you only obscure and spoil its clearness by piling up words.
The ordinary use of compound words is where there is no term for a thing and some
compound can be easily formed, like “pastime” (xronotribei=n); but if this is much done, the
prose character disappears entirely.
[1406b] We now see why the language of compounds is just the thing for writers of
dithyrambs, who love sonorous noises; strange words for writers of epic poetry, which is a
proud and stately affair; and metaphor for iambic verse, the metre which (as has been
already1 said) is widely used to-day.
(4) [5] There remains the fourth region in which bad taste may be shown, metaphor.
Metaphors like other things may be inappropriate.
5
[iii, c. 1, 1404a30.]
Some are so because they are ridiculous; they are indeed used by comic as well as tragic
poets. Others are too grand and theatrical; and these, if they are far-fetched, may also be
obscure. For instance, Gorgias talks of “events that are green and full of sap,” and says “foul
was the deed you sowed and evil the harvest you [10] reaped.” That is too much like poetry.
Alcidamas, again, called philosophy “a fortress that threatens the power of law,” and the
Odyssey “a goodly looking-glass of human life,” talked about “offering no such toy to
poetry”: all these expressions fail, for the reasons given, to carry the hearer with them. The
address of Gorgias to the swallow, [15] when she had let her droppings fall on him as she
flew overhead, is in the best tragic manner. He said, “Nay, shame, O Philomela.”
Considering her as a bird, you could not call her act shameful; considering her as a girl, you
could; and so it was a good gibe to address her as what she was once and not as what she is.
The kinds of words in sum:
• compound
• strange (or ‘foreign’)
• long, unseasonable, or frequent epithets
• metaphor
With respect to the use of language in the consideration of rhetoric:
• ‘the language of compounds is just the thing for writers of dithyrambs, who love
sonorous noises’;
38
• ‘strange words for writers of epic poetry, which is a proud and stately affair’;
• [‘long, unseasonable, or frequent epithets’]1
• ‘and metaphor for iambic verse, the metre which (as has been already said) is
widely used to-day’.
Comparison of texts:
(Poet. ch. 22, 1459a 9-14) (Rhet. III. 3, 1406a 36—1406b 4)
[In sum: Poetry may be dithyrambic, heroic, or [In sum: With respect to the use of language in
iambic:] rhetoric:]
compound words are chiefly suited to dithy- the language of compounds is just the thing for
rambic poetry [cf. ‘mountain-roaming’] writers of dithyrambs, who love sonorous
noises;
foreign to heroic poetry strange words for writers of epic poetry, which
is a proud and stately affair;
metaphors to iambic poetry (but in iambics, and metaphor for iambic verse, the metre which
because they specially imitate common dis- (as has been already said) is widely used to-day.
course, those words are adapted which may be
also used in conversation. And words of this
description are, the proper, the metaphorical,
[and the ornamental.])
N.B. Note that Aristotle does not recognize a type of name proper to satyric poetry as
such, but rather to the dithyramb, offering further support to our conjecture above, namely,
that he had in mind the exarchon of the dithyramb, understanding the later to have
involved a chorus of satyrs. In this regard, consider the remark from ch. 3, sec. 143 of the
work of ‘Demetrius’ which I excerpt in the next section.
1
Passed over by Aristotle in this summary.
39
X. SUPPLEMENT: THE PROPER USE OF THE KINDS OF NAMES
ACCORDING TO THE PERIPATETIC WORK ON STYLE BY
‘DEMETRIUS’.
Cf. ‘Demetrius’, Peri Lex. (= Demetrius On Style: The Greek text of Demetrius De
Elocutione edited after the Paris manuscript with introd., translation, facsimiles, etc. by
W. Rhys Roberts [Cambridge, at the University Press: 1902]):
From Ch. 2:
78. In the first place, then, metaphors must be used; for they impart a special charm and
grandeur to style. They should not be numerous, however; or we find ourselves writing
dithyrambic poetry in place of prose. Nor yet should they be far-fetched, but natural and
based on a true analogy. There is a resemblance, for instance, between a general, a pilot, and
a charioteer; they are all in command. Accordingly it can correctly be said that a general
pilots the State, and conversely that a pilot commands the ship.
<…>
91. Compound words should also be used. They should not, however, be formed after the
manner of the dithyrambic poets, e.g. ‘heaven-prodigied wanderings’ or ‘the fiery-speared
battalions of the stars’ (Lyric. Fragm. Adesp. 128, Bergk4). They should resemble the
compounds made in ordinary speech. In all word-formation I regard usage as the universal
arbiter, usage which speaks of ‘law-givers’ and ‘master-builders,’ and with sure touch
frames many other compounds of the kind.
<…>
116. In diction Aristotle says that frigidity is of fourfold origin, arising from [(1) ‘strange
terms’; (2) ‘epithets’]...as when Alcidamas speaks of ‘moist sweat’ (Alcid.); (3)
‘composites,’ when words are compounded in a dithyrambic manner, as with the expression
‘desert-wandering’ which someone uses, and with other pompous expressions of the kind;
(4.) ‘metaphors,’ e.g. ‘a crisis pale and trembling’ (Scr. Inc.). Frigidity of diction may,
therefore, arise in four ways.
From ch. 3:
142. Many other examples of graceful language might easily be cited. It is attained, for
instance, by choice of words or by metaphor, as in the passage about the cicala:
From ‘neath his wings he pours
A strain of piercing notes:
Far up that fiery vapour-veil it soars
Which o’er the landscape floats.
(Alcaeus, Fragm, 39, Bergk.)
143. Another source is dithyrambic compounds such as:

O Pluto, lord of sable-pinioned things,
This do thou – ‘twere more dread than all their wings!
(Lyric. Fragm. Adesp. 126, Bergk4)
40
Such freaks of language are best suited for comic and satyric poetry.
From ch. 4:
190. In the case of the plain style, we can no doubt point to subject-matter which is homely
and appropriate to the style itself, e.g. the passage in Lysias, ‘I have a cottage with two
storeys, the one above corresponding exactly to that below’ (Murder of Eratosthenes 9). The
diction throughout should be current and familiar. An expression is homelier the more
familiar it is, while the unusual and metaphorical is elevated.
191. Compound words should not be admitted (since they are appropriate to the opposite
variety of style), nor yet newly-coined words, nor any other words which contribute to
elevation. Above all, the style should be lucid. Now lucidity involves a number of things.
275. Compound words also lend vigour, as is seen in those which usage often forms so
forcibly, e.g. ‘earthward-hurled,’ ‘slant-shelving,’ and the like. Many equally good examples
may be found in the orators.
41
XI. SUPPLEMENT: PARALLEL TRANSLATIONS OF RHET. III. 8.
Cf. Aristotle, Rhet., III. 8 (1408b 23–1409a 20):
(tr. W. Rhys Roberts): (tr. George A, Kennedy, supra, pp. 237-239)
The form of a prose composition should be The figure of the expression should be neither
neither metrical nor destitute of rhythm. metrical nor unrhythmical.
The metrical form destroys the hearer’s trust The former is unpersuasive (for it seems to have
by its artificial appearance, and at the same been formed) and at the same time also diverts
time it diverts his attention, [25] attention. [25]
making him watch for metrical recurrences, For it causes [the listener] to pay attention to
just as children catch up the herald’s when the same foot will come again—as when
question, ‘Whom does the freedman choose children anticipate the call of heralds (in the law
as his advocate?’, with the answer ‘Cleon!’ courts): “Whom does the freedman choose as
his sponsor?” “Cleon!”
On the other hand, unrhythmical language But what is unrhythmical is unlimited. And
is too unlimited; we do not want the there should be a limit, (for the unlimited is
limitations of metre, but some limitation we unpleasant and unknowable), but not by the use
must have, or the effect will be vague and of metre.
unsatisfactory.
Now it is number that limits all things; And all things are limited by number.
and it is the numerical limitation of the In the case of the figure of the expression,
forms of a composition that constitutes number is rhythm, of which metres [30] are
rhythm, of which metres are definite parts.
sections [30].
Prose, then, is to be rhythmical, but not Thus, speech should have rhythm, but not
metrical, or it will become not prose but metre. For the latter will be poetry.
verse.
It should not even have too precise a prose The rhythm should not be exact; this will be
rhythm, and therefore should only be achieved if it is [regular] only up to a point.
rhythmical to a certain extent.
Of the various rhythms, the heroic has Of rhythms, the heroic [dactylic hexameter] is
dignity, but lacks the tones of the spoken solemn and not conversational, and needs
language. musical intonation.
The iambic is the very language of ordinary The iambic by itself is the lexis of the many.
people, so that in common talk [35] iambic Thus, all people most often speak [35] in
lines occur oftener than any others: but in a iambics. But [formal speech] should be
speech we need dignity and the power of dignified and moving.
taking the hearer out of his ordinary self.
The trochee is too much akin to wild The trochaic metre is rather too much of a
dancing: [1409a] we can see this in comic dance, as is clear from [trochaic]
42
tetrameter verse, which is one of the trochaic tetrameters [1409a]; for they are a tripping
rhythms. rhythm.
There remains the paean, which speakers What remains is the paean. It came into use
began to use in the time of Thrasymachus, beginning with Thrasymachus, though at the
though they had then no name to give it. time people did not recognize what it was.
The paean is a third class of rhythm, closely The paean is a third kind of rhythm, related to
akin to both the two already mentioned; it those under discussion. For it has the ratio of
has in it the ratio of three to two, [5] whereas three to two [three short syllables and one long,
the other two kinds have the ratio of one to the latter equal in time to two beats], whereas
one, and two to one respectively. the others are one to one [i.e. the heroic, with
one long syllable and two shorts], or two to one
[i.e. iambic, a long and a short; and trochaic, a
short and a long].
Between the two last ratios comes the ratio And one-and-one half [i.e. the ratio of three to
of one-and-a-half to one, which is that of the two] is the mean ratio, and this is the paean.
paean.
Now the other two kinds of rhythm must be The other rhythms should be avoided for the
rejected in writing prose, partly for the reasons given, and because they are [poetic]
reasons given, and partly because they are metres. And the paean should be adopted, for it
too metrical; and the paean must be adopted, alone of the rhythms mentioned is not a metre,
since from this alone of the rhythms and thus its presence most escapes notice [10].
mentioned no definite metre arises, and
therefore it is the least obtrusive of them.
[10]
At present the same form of paean is As it is, only the opening paean is in use, but it
employed at the beginning a at the end of is necessary to distinguish the opening from the
sentences, whereas the end should differ closing.
from the beginning.
There are two opposite kinds of paean, one There are two species of paean opposite to each
of which is suitable to the beginning of a other, of which one [called the first paean] is
sentence, where it is indeed actually used; suitable for an opening, as it is now used. This
this is the kind that begins with a long is the one that begins with a long syllable and
syllable and ends with three short ones, as ends with three shorts:
“Dalogenes | eite Luki | an,” [15] and Dalogenes eite Lukian, [15] and
“Chruseokom | a Ekate | pai Dios.”’ Chruseokoma Hekate pai Dios;
The other paean begins, conversely, with the other [called a fourth paean] is the opposite,
three short syllables and ends with a long where three shorts begin and a long ends:
one, as
“meta de lan | udata t ok | eanon e | oanise meta de gan hudata okeonon ephanise nux.
nux.”
This kind of paean makes a real close: a This makes an ending, for a short syllable [at
short syllable can give no effect of finality, the end] makes the expression seem cut short.
43
and therefore makes the rhythm appear
truncated.
A sentence should break off with the long It should instead be cut off with a long syllable
syllable: the [20] fact that it is over should be and [20] be a clear termination, not through the
indicated not by the scribe, or by his period- action of a scribe or the presence of a marginal
mark in the margin, but by the rhythm itself. mark [paragraphe], but through the rhythm.
We have now seen that our language must That lexis therefore should be rhythmical and
be rhythmical and not destitute of rhythm, not unrhythmical, and what rhythms will make
and what rhythms, in what particular shape, it eurythmic [well-rhythmed], and what they are
make it so. like has been stated.
44
XII. ARISTOTLE ON LEXIS (‘LANGUAGE’, ‘LOCUTION’; ‘DICTION’;
‘VERBAL EXPRESSION’; SYN. DIALEKTOS).
Cf. Aristotle, Rhet., III. 1 (1430b 30-31) (tr. B.A.M.):
As for the configuration [or ‘form’, or ‘shape’; schema] of the language [lexis], number is
rhythm, of which metres [or ‘verses’] are a part. Thus, speech [logos] should have rhythm,
but not metre. For then it will be poetry [poiêma].
In the foregoing text, Aristotle says that speech will be ‘poetry’ (poiêma) when the
language in which it consists is so configured as to have metre, a configuration, as is
explained elsewhere, resulting from a certain ordering of long and short syllables. Note
that the Sophist Gorgias had defined poiêsis as “speech having metre” (Enc. Hel. II. 9).1
Here the definition is through genus, ‘configuration’, and difference, ‘language’.
Cf. Aristotle, Poetics, ch. 6 (1449b 35) (tr. B.A.M.):
[35] But by ‘language’ [lexis] I mean the composition itself of the metres [or ‘verses’, ten
ton metron sunthesin]….
In this text Aristotle gives another definition of poiêma, although he does not use the name,
the definition here being through form (‘composition’), and matter (‘metres’).
Cf. Aristotle, Poetics, ch. 6 (1450b 12-15) (tr. B.A.M.):
But fourth is the language consisting in speech [ton men logon he lexis]: but I mean (as was
said before), language is that interpretation which is by naming [lexin einaiten dia tes ono-
masias hermeneian],2 which has the same power in metres [or ‘verses’] as in speech.
Here the definition is by that for the sake of which and the means thereto: ‘by naming’ is
the cause of ‘interpretation’.
Definitions applicable to poiêma:
poiêma
• by genus and difference: language (lexis) in the form of speech (logos) so config-
ured as to have metre (cf. Rhet., III. 1, 1430b 30-31)3
lexis
• by form and matter: “the composition itself of the metres” (Poet. ch. 6, 1449b 35)
• by that for the sake of which and the means thereto [looking to the signification]:
“that interpretation which is by naming” [or ‘which takes place through naming’;
1
“All poetry [poiêsis] I regard and name as speech having metre [logon ekhonta metron].” (tr. Malcolm
Heath)
2
That is, which takes place through naming.
3
Note that in the Poetics Aristotle never uses the word in this sense: rather, in every occurrence it names the
result of the activity of the poetic art, as in the ‘poems’ of Homer.
45
lexin einaiten dia tes onomasias hermeneian], when, e.g., the names are disposed in
metre (Poet. ch. 6, 1450b 12-15)
dialektos
• by that for the sake of which and the means thereto [looking to the signifier]:
“…and language is the articulation of vocal sounds by the instrumentality of the
tongue”. (Hist. Animal., IV. 9, 535a 29-30)
poiêma
• by causal predication: that configuration of language which is effected by the pos-

session of metre (B.A.M.)
Cf. Aristotle, Hist. Animal., IV. 9 (535a 29-30):
…[A]nd language is the articulation of vocal sounds by the instrumentality of the tongue.
ARISTOTELIAN DEFINITIONS OF LEXIS AND DIALEKTOS.
LEXIS (‘LANGUAGE’, ‘LOCUTION’; ‘DICTION’; ‘VERBAL EXPRESSION’). (1)

Articulate vocal sound understood quantitatively, according as it is measured by long and
short syllables (B.A.M., after Aristotle); that is, (ii) the distinguishing of speech by words
and a word by syllables by means of diverse percussions of the air by (= at the command
of) the soul (cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, In II De Anima, lect. 18, n. 4); (2) in the sense of
poiêma or ‘poetry’, “the composition itself of the metres” (Aristotle, Poet. 6, 1449b 35, tr.
B.A.M.); or again (ii), “that interpretation which is through naming” (ibid., ch. 6, 1450b
14).
DIALEKTOS (‘DIALECT’; ‘IDIOM’; ‘LANGUAGE’). Articulate vocal sound understood

qualitatively, according as it is composed of vowels and consonants—that is, “the
articulation of vowel sounds by means of the tongue and of non-vowels or consonants by
means of the tongue and the lips” (cf. Aristotle, Hist. Animal., IV, 9, 535b 29—535a 3).
The order of meanings:
1. articulate vocal sound (lexis, = locutio)

2. articulate vocal sound signifying something by itself (hermeneia, = interpretatio)
3. articulate vocal sound going to make up ‘speech’ (logos, oratio):
(a) considered as being measured by the long and the short syllable
(‘language’ understood as lexis, which is ‘connected verbal
expression’)
(b) considered as being composed of vowels and consonants (‘language’
understood as dialektos, which is a ‘tongue’ or ‘idiom’)
Note that lexis/locutio can name either “connected verbal expression” or a part of it, such
as a word, whereas in English, the word ‘language’ can only translate the former.
46
In sum, in English, “connected verbal expression” is ‘language”, but a part of it is a
‘word’.
47
XIII. ON RHYTHM AND RELATED MATTERS.
Cf. Aristotle, Prob., XIX. 38:
We delight in rhythm because it has a recognizable and regular number, and makes us move
in an ordered fashion.
Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, In X Meta., lect. 2, n. 15 (tr. B.A.M.):
LB10LC-2N.15
similiter etiam voces quibus etiam Likewise also the vocal sounds by which we
mensuramus, plures sunt. measure are many.
quantitas enim unius metri vel unius pedis, For the quantities of one metre or of one foot
mensuratur ex diversis syllabis, quarum aliae are measured by different syllables, of which
sunt breves, et aliae longae. some are short and others long.
similiter etiam est diameter circuli vel quadrati, Likewise also there is the diameter of the circle
et etiam latus quadrati: and also the side of the square:
et quaelibet magnitudo mensuratur duobus: and any other magnitude measured by two
non enim invenitur quantitas ignota nisi per things: for an unknown quantity is not found
duas quantitates notas. except through two known quantities.
On the definitions of rhythm and metre.
Order is in the before and after of things; but the before and after in movement
gives rise to a number; hence in bodily movement rhythm is the number of bodily motion
according to a before and after; not just any number, but some ratio.
A definition of rhythm can be induced according to an analogy with the definition

of consonance given by St. Thomas, commenting on Aristotle (In II Post. Anal., lect. 1, n.
8): “Consonance is a ratio, i.e. a proportion in numbers of the high and low”. 1 Now since
harmony is a consonance of sounds, it follows that harmony is the ratio or proportion in
numbers of the high and low in sound. But rhythm in speech is constituted by a number of
long and short syllables in its pronunciation or expression, as is clear from the following
text of St. Thomas (In V Meta., lect. 4, n. 5): “Now a ‘letter’ is divided according to the
time of its pronunciation, inasmuch as a long ‘letter’ is said to have two times, but a short
(letter), one (time).”2
Again, at In X Meta. V, lect. 2, n. 15, St. Thomas says: “For the quantities of one
metre or of one foot are measured by different syllables, of which some are short and
others long.”3 This understanding is also evident in the account Aristotle gives of the
several kinds of rhythm: “The paean is a third kind of rhythm, related to those under
1
Consonantia est ratio, idest proportio in numerum secundum acutum et grave.
2
Dividitur autem litera secundum tempora prolationis, prout litera longa dicitur habere duo tempora, brevis
vero unum.
3
quantitas enim unius metri vel unius pedis, mensuratur ex diversis syllabis, quarum aliae sunt breves, et
aliae longae.
48
discussion. For it has the ratio of three to two [i.e. three short syllables and one long, the
latter equal in time to two beats], whereas the others are one to one [i.e. the heroic, with
one long syllable and two shorts], or two to one [i.e. iambic, a long and a short; and
trochaic, a short and a long]. And one-and-one half [i.e. the ratio of three to two] is the
mean ratio, and this is the paean.” (Rhet., III. 8, 1409a 3-6, tr. W. Rhys Roberts) Hence,
rhythm may be defined as a ratio in numbers of the long and short in syllables; or more
simply as the ratio in syllables of the long and short.
Now a given metre is a species of rhythm differing from it by the regularity of the
recurrence of its characteristic foot, creating in the listener an expectation of its immediate
return. So, then, metre may be defined as a rhythm the regularity or recurrence of whose
characteristic foot creates in the listener an expectation of its immediate return.
DEFINITIONS.
RHUTHMOS (‘RHYTHM’). According to its first imposition, (1) numbered number;

properly speaking, (2) the number of the configuration of the language (cf. Aristotle, Rhet.,
III. 1, 1430b 30-31); (3) (by analogy with Aristotle’s definition of harmonia) the ratio in
numbers of the long and short in syllables—that is, the configuration of the words
according to the long and short in syllables; or more simply, (ii) the ratio in syllables of the
long and short; also, (4) a system of durations (‘times’ or chronoi) arranged in ‘feet’; or
otherwise, (5) an order which follows the melos of the harmonia.
N.B. On the foregoing matters, see also my paper On Sound and Voice.
49
XIV. SUPPLEMENT: A GENERAL ACCOUNT OF VERSE.
Cf. Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed., 1911), s.v. “Verse”:
VERSE (from Lat. versus, literally a line or furrow drawn by turning the plough, from
vertere, and afterwards signifying an arrangement of syllables into feet), the name given to
an assemblage of words so placed together as to produce a metrical effect. The art of
making, and the science of analysing, such verses is known as Versification. According to
Max Müller, there is an analogy between versus and the Sanskrit term, vritta, which is the
name given by the ancient grammarians of India to the rule determining the value of the
quantity in vedic poetry. In modern speech, verse is directly contrasted with prose, as
being essentially the result of an attention to determined rules of form. In English we
speak of “a verse” or “verses,” with reference to specific instances, or of “verse,” as the
general science or art of metrical expression, with its regulations and phenomena. A
verse, which is a series of rhythmical syllables, divided by pauses, is destined in script
to occupy a single line, and was so understood by the ancients (the στίχος of the
Greeks). The Alexandrian scholiast Hephaestion speaks distinctly of verses that ceased to be
verses because they were too long; he stigmatizes a pentameter line of Callimachus as στίχον
ύπέρμετρον. There is no danger, therefore, in our emphasizing this rule, and in saying that,
even in Mr Swinburne's most extended experiments the theory is that a verse fills but one
line in a supposititious piece of writing.
It is essential that the verse so limited should be a complete form in itself. It is not,
like a clause or a sentence in prose, unrecurrent and unlimited, but it presents us with a
successive and a continuous cadence, confined within definite bounds. There has been a
constant discussion as to what it is in which this succession and this continuity consist, and
here we come at once to the principal difficulty which makes the analysis of the processes of
the poets so difficult. To go back to the earliest European tradition, it is universally admitted
that the ancient Greeks considered the art of verse as a branch of music, and as such co-
ordinated it with harmony and orchestral effect. This appears from definite statements
preserved in the fragments of Aristoxenus of Tarentum, a grammarian who lived in the age
of Alexander the Great, and whom we shall see to have been the first who laid down definite
laws for prosody as a department of musical art (μονσική). It was found necessary, in
order to compose a work of musical value, to work out a system of disciplined and
linked movement. This system, or arrangement, was called rhythm, and this is common
to all the arts of melody. Harmony, consisting in the reproduction of the sound of
human voices or of musical instruments, and orchestrics, dealing with the movements
of the human body, were expressed in metrical art by that arrangement of syllables
which is known as rhythm. The science of metre is the teaching of those laws on
which depends the rhythmical forms of poetry. This science has been, from the earliest ages
of criticism, divided into a study of the general principles upon which all these forms are
builded, and upon the special types into which they have gradually developed.
In considering ancient versification, it is necessary to give attention to Latin as well as to
Greek metre, because although the Roman poets were in the main dependent upon the earlier
tradition, there were several points at which they broke away, and were almost entirely
independent. Roman verse, though essentially the same as Greek verse, was modified by the
national development of Italian forms of poetry, by a simplified imitation of Greek
measures, and by a varied intensity in the creation of new types of the old Greek artistic
forms (Volkmann). In later times there was a tendency to consider the laws of metre as
superior to, and almost independent of, the native impulse of the poet; and this is where the
study of the old poetry itself is most salutary, as checking us in our tendency to bow too
slavishly to the rules of the grammarians. No doubt, in the archaic times, theory and practice
went hand in hand. The poet, held in constant check by the exigencies of music, was obliged
50
to recognize the existence of certain rules, the necessity of which was confirmed by the
delicacy of his ear. These he would pass down to his disciples, with any further discoveries
which he might himself have made. For instance, what we are somewhat vaguely told of the
influence of a poet like Archilochus, to whom the very invention of trochaic and iambic
metre is, perhaps fabulously, attributed, points to the probability that in Archilochus the
Ionian race produced a poet of extraordinary daring and delicacy of ear, who gathered the
wandering rhythms that had existed, and had doubtless been used in an uncertain way before
his time, into a system which could be depended upon, and not in his hands only, to produce
certain effects of welcome variety. His system would engage the attention of theorists, and
we learn that by the time of Plato schools of oral metrical education Were already in
existence, where the science of sounds and syllables was already beginning to be recognized,
as may be seen in the Cratylus. Before long, the teachings in these peripatetic schools would
be preserved, for safety's sake, in writing, and the theoretic literature of versification would
begin. In fact, we read in Suidas of a certain Lasus of Hermione who wrote an Art of Poetry,
and the age of this, the earliest of recorded authorities on the formal laws of verse, is fixed
for us by the fact that he is spoken of as having been the master of Pindar. Of the writings of
Lasus and his followers, however, nothing remains, and the character of their teaching is
problematical. In the 3rd century B.C., however, we come upon a figure which preserves a
definite character; this is Aristoxenus, the disciple of Aristotle, who gave his undivided
attention to rhythm, and who lives, unfortunately only in fragments, as the most eminent
musical critic of antiquity. The brief fragments of his Elements of Rhythm (ρυθμικά
στοιχεία) originally written in three books, are of unsurpassed value to us as illustrating the
attitude of classical Greece to the interrelation of verse and music. The third book of
Aristoxenus dealt specifically with λέξις, or the application of rhythm to artistically
composed and written verse.
It is certain that, after the time of Alexander the Great, the theories of verse tended
somewhat rapidly to release themselves from the theories of music, and when, in the
successive ages of Greek criticism, much attention was given to the laws of versification,
less and less was said about harmony and more and more about metre. Rules, often of a
highly arbitrary nature, were drawn up by grammarians, who founded their laws on a
scholiastic study of the ancient poets. The majority of the works in which these rules were
collected are lost, but an enchiridion of Greek metres, by Hephaestion, a scholiast of the 2nd
century A.D., has been preserved. First printed in 1526, editions and translations of
Hephaestion's manual have not been infrequent.
It is from Hephaestion that most of our ideas on the subject of classical prosody are
obtained. His work, as we possess it, seems to be a summary, made by himself, for use in
schools, of an exhaustive treatise he had published on the Greek metrical system as a whole,
in 48 books. The pre-eminent importance of Hephaestion was exposed to the learned world
of Europe by Th. Gaisford, in 1810. A contemporary of Hephaestion, Herodian, who was
one of the most eminent of Alexandrian grammarians, gave close attention to prosody, and
was believed to have summed up everything that could be known on the subject of verse by
critics of the 2nd century A.D., in his Μεγάλη πρoσωδία, in twenty books. As Herodian,
throughout his life, seems to have concentrated his attention on the study of Homer, it is
supposed that he started with a consideration of the metre and accent of the Iliad. The almost
complete loss of his treatises is regrettable. Philoxenus was the author of a very early work,
Περί μέτρων; but this is entirely lost. In the musical cyclopaedia of Quintilian, there was
included a chapter on the elements of the rhythmic art, and in this the metres recognized at
the time were recorded and described. Among the Latin authorities on versification, the
leading place is taken, in the 1st century B.C., by Terentius Varro, whose systematic
treatment of metre in his works De sermorie latino and De lingua lalina is often referred to
But we know more of Terentianus Maurus, who flourished in the second half of the 2nd
century A.D., since we possess from his hand a handbook to metre, written in verse, in
which, in particular, the Horatian metres are carefully analysed. He follows Caesius Bassus,
51
the friend of Nero, who had dedicated to his imperial patron a work on prosody, of which
fragments exist. Three tracts, attributed to the rhetor C, Marius Victorinus (one entitled De
ratione metrorum), belong, to the 4th century, and are still quoted by scholars. Another early
authority was Flavius Mallius Theodorus, whose De Melris has been frequently reprinted.
The metrical theory of the Byzantine grammarians was entirely in unison with the old
tradition of the Alexandrian schools, and depended on the authority of Hephaestion. Michael
Psellus, in the 9th century, wrote abundantly on the subject, and towards the close of the
Empire the verse-handbooks of Isaac Tzetzes (d. 1138) and of his brother Joannes were in
general use. A large number of other Byzantine scholiasts and theorists are mentioned in this
connexion by Gleditsch. “Very little attention was paid to metrical science in medieval and
even Renaissance days. It is much to the honour of English scholarship that the earliest
modern writer who made a rational study of ancient metre was Richard Bentley, in
his Schediasma de metris Tereniianis, printed at Cambridge in 1726. He was soon followed
by the Germans, in particular by Hermann, Boeckh and J. A. Apel. To this day, German
scholarship easily leads in the rational and accurate study of classical versification.
The chief principle in ancient verse was quantity, that is, the amount of time involved
in the effort to express a syllable. Accordingly, the two basal types which lie at the
foundation of classical metre are “longs” and “shorts.” The convention was that a long
syllable was equal to two short ones: accordingly there was a real truth in calling the
succession of such “feet” metre, for the length, or weight, of the syllables forming them
could be, and was, measured. What has to be realized in speaking of ancient metre is
that the value of these feet was defined with exactitude, not left uncertain, as it is in
modern European verse, when accent is almost always made the guiding principle. In
Greek verse, there might be an ictus (stress), which fell upon the long syllable, but it
could only be a regulating element, and accent was always a secondary element in the
construction of Greek metre, The “feet” recognized and described by the ancient
grammarians were various, and in their apparent diversity sometimes difficult to
follow, but the comprehension of them is simplified if the student realizes that the
names given to them are often superfluous. The main distinction between feet consists
in the diversity of the relation between the strong and the weak syllables. There are
naturally only two movements, the quick and the slow. Thus we have the anapaest (‿ ‿
— , short-short-long) and the dactyl ( — ‿ ‿ , long-short-short), which are equal, and
differ only as regards the position of their parts. To these follow two feet which must be
considered as in their essence non-metrical, as it is only in combination with others that they
can become metrical. These are the spondee ( — — , long-long) and the pyrrhic ( ‿ ‿ ,
short-short). Of more essential character are the two descriptions of slow feet, the iamb ( ‿
— , short-long) and the trochee ( — ‿ , long-short). Besides these definite types, the
ingenuity of formalists has invented an almost infinite number of other “feet.” It is, perhaps,
necessary to mention some of the principal of these, although they are, in the majority of
cases, purely arbitrary. There is a foot of four syllables, the choriamb ( — ‿ ‿ —, long-
short-short-long), which is the fundamental foot in Aeolic verse — very frequently
mentioned, but very seldom met with.
It must not be forgotten that the prosodical terminology of the Greeks, which is often
treated by non-poetical writers as something scientific and even sacrosanct, dates from a
time when ancient literature had lost all its freshness and impulse, and was exclusively the
study of analysts and grammarians. Between the life of Pindar, for instance, and that of
Hephaestion, the great metrical authority, there extends a longer period than between
Chaucer and Professor Skeat; and to appreciate the value of the rules of Greek prosody we
must recollect that those rules were invented by learned and academic men to account for
phenomena which they observed, and wished to comprehend, in writings that had long been
classical, and were already growing positively archaic. The fact seems to be that the
combination of long and short syllables into spondees, iambs, dactyls and anapaests,
forms the sole genuine basis of all classical verse.
52
Metre is a science which pays attention to all the possible regular arrangements which can
be made of these four indispensable and indestructible types. Of the metres of the ancients
by far the most often employed, and no doubt the oldest, was the dactylic hexameter, a
combination of six feet, five successive dactyls and a spondee or trochee:
/— ‿ ‿ /— ‿ ‿ /— ‿ ‿ /— ‿ ‿/— ‿ ‿ /— ‿^
This was known to the ancients as “epic verse,” in contrast to the various lyrical measures.
The poetry of Homer is the typical example of the use of the epic hexameter, and the
character of the Homeric saga led to the fashion by which the dactylic hexameter,
whatever its subject, was styled “heroic metre.” The earliest epics, doubtless, were
chanted to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument, on which the pulsation of the verse
(επη) was recorded. It was the opinion of W. Christ that the origin of the hexameter was to
be sought in hieratic poetry, the fulness of the long dactylic line attracting the priests to its
use in the delivery of oracles, from which it naturally passed to solemn tales of the actions of
gods and heroes. It is more difficult to see how, later on, it became the vehicle for comic and
satiric writing, and is found at last adopted by the bucolic poets for their amorous and
pastoral dialogues. The Homeric form of the dactylic hexameter has been usually taken,
and was taken in classical times, as the normal one, but there have been many
variations. A hexameter found in Catullus consists exclusively of spondees, and deviation
from the original heroic type could go no further. This concentration of heavy sounds was
cultivated to give solemnity to the character of the line. In the whole matter, it is best to
recognize that the rules of the grammarians were made after the event, to account for the fact
that the poets had chosen, while adhering to the verse-structure of five rapid beats and a
subsidence, to vary the internal character of that structure exactly as their ear and their
passion dictated. This seems particularly true in the case of the caesura, where the question is
not so much a matter of defining “male” caesura or “female” caesura, “bucolic” caesura or
“trochaic,” as of patiently noting instances in which the unconscious poet, led by his
inspiration, has varied his pauses and his emphasis at his own free will. The critics have
written much of “prosodical licence,” but verse in the days of Homer, like verse now, is
simply good or bad, and if it is good it may show liberty and variety, but it knows nothing of
“licence.”
We pass, by a natural transition, to the pentameter, which is the most frequently
employed of what are known as the syncopied forms of dactylic verse. It was used with the
hexameter, to produce the effect which was early called elegiac, and its form shows the
appropriateness of this custom: —
“Cynthia | prima fu- | it, || Cynthia | finis e- | rit.”
A hexameter, full of energy and exaltation, followed by a descending and melancholy

pentameter, had an immediate tendency to take a complete form, and this is the origin of
the stanza. The peculiar character of this two-line stanza has been fixed for all time by a
brilliant epigram of Schiller, which is itself a specimen of the form: —
“Im Hexameter steigt des Springquells fliissige Saule,

Im Pentameter drauf fallt sie melodisch herab.”
Such a distich was called an elegy, as specially suitable to an ελεγιον or lamentation. It is

difficult to say with certainty whether the distich so composed was essential as an
accompaniment to flute-music in the earliest times, or how soon there came to be written
purely literary elegies towards which the melody stood in a secondary or ornamental
relation. It has, however, been observed that even when the distich had obviously come to be
a purely intellectual or lyrical thing, there remained in the sound of the pentameter the trace
53
of lamentation, in which its primitive use at funeral services was clearly preserved. Other
grammarians, however, among whom Casar, in his work on the origin of elegiac verse, is
prominent, — do not believe in the lugubrious essence of the pentameter, and think that the
elegiacal couplet was originally erotic, and was adapted to mournful themes by Simonides. If
we may credit a passage in Athenaeus, it would seem that the earliest-known elegists, such
as Callinus and Solon, wrote for recitation, pure and simple, without the accompaniment of
any instrument.
Trochaic verse is called by the ancient grammarians head-less (ake/falon), because it
really consists of iambic verse deprived of its head, or opening syllable. The iambic measure
(‿— ‿ — ‿ — ) becomes trochaic if we cut off the first “short,” and make it run — ‿ —
‿ — . The pure trochaic trimeter and tetrameter had a character of breathless speed, and
sometimes bore the name of choric (ruqmo)j xori=koj), because it was peculiarly
appropriate to the dance, and was used for poems which expressed a quickly stepping
sentiment. It is understood that, after having been known as a musical movement, it was first
employed in the composition of poetry by Archilochus of Paros, in the 7th century B.C.
Iambic metre was, next to the dactylic hexameter, the form of verse most frequently
employed by the poets of Greek antiquity. Archilochus, again, who seems to have been a
great initiator in the arts of versification, is credited with the invention of the iambic trimeter
also, but it certainly existed before his time. Murray believes the original iambic measure, in
its popular familiarity, to have sprung from the worship of the homely peasant gods,
Dionysus and Demeter. It was not far removed from prose; it gave a writer opportunity for
expressing popular thoughts in a manner which simple men could appreciate, being close to
their own unsophisticated speech. In particular, it presented itself as a heaven-made
instrument for the talent of Euripides, “who, seeing poetry and meaning in every stone of a
street, found in the current iambic trimeter a vehicle of expression in some ways more
flexible even than prose.” <…>(E. G.)
Cf. Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed., 1911), s.v. “Heroic Verse”:
HEROIC VERSE, a term exclusively used in English to indicate the rhymed iambic line or
HEROIC COUPLET. In ancient literature, the heroic verse, [Greek: hêrôikon metron],
was synonymous with the dactylic hexameter. It was in this measure that those
typically heroic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey and the Aeneid were written. In English,
however, it was not enough to designate a single iambic line of five beats as heroic verse,
because it was necessary to distinguish blank verse from the distich, which was formed by
the heroic couplet. This had escaped the notice of Dryden, when he wrote “The English
Verse, which we call Heroic, consists of no more than ten syllables.” If that were the case,
then Paradise Lost would be written in heroic verse, which is not true. What Dryden should
have said is “consists of two rhymed lines, each of ten syllables.” In French the alexandrine
has always been regarded as the heroic measure of that language. The dactylic movement
of the heroic line in ancient Greek, the famous [Greek: rhythmos hêrôos] of Homer, is
expressed in modern Europe by the iambic movement. The consequence is that much
of the rush and energy of the antique verse, which at vigorous moments was like the
charge of a battalion, is lost.
It is owing to this, in part, that the heroic couplet is so often required to give, in translation,
the full value of a single Homeric hexameter. It is important to insist that it is the couplet,
not the single line, which constitutes heroic verse. It is interesting to note that the Latin poet
Ennius, as reported by Cicero, called the heroic metre of one line versum longum, to
distinguish it from the brevity of lyrical measures. The current form of English heroic verse
appears to be the invention of Chaucer, who used it in his Legend of Good Women and
afterwards, with still greater freedom, in the Canterbury Tales. Here is an example of it in its
earliest development:--
54
“And thus the longë day in fight they spend,
Till, at the last, as everything hath end,
Anton is shent, and put him to the flight,
And all his folk to go, as best go might.”
This way of writing was misunderstood and neglected by Chaucer’s English disciples, but
was followed nearly a century later by the Scottish poet, called Blind Harry (c. 1475), whose
Wallace holds an important place in the history of versification as having passed on the
tradition of the heroic couplet. Another Scottish poet, Gavin Douglas, selected heroic verse
for his translation of the Aeneid (1513), and displayed, in such examples as the following, a
skill which left little room for improvement at the hands of later poets:--
“One sang, ‘The ship sails over the salt foam,

Will bring the merchants and my leman home’;
Some other sings, ‘I will be blithe and light,
Mine heart is leant upon so goodly wight.’”
The verse so successfully mastered was, however, not very generally used for heroic
purposes in Tudor literature. The early poets of the revival, and Spenser and Shakespeare
after them, greatly preferred stanzaic forms. For dramatic purposes blank verse was almost
exclusively used, although the French had adopted the rhymed alexandrine for their plays.
In the earlier half of the 17th century, heroic verse was often put to somewhat unheroic
purposes, mainly in prologues and epilogues, or other short poems of occasion; but it was
nobly redeemed by Marlowe in his Hero and Leander and respectably by Browne in his
Britannia’s Pastorals. It is to be noted, however, that those Elizabethans who, like
Chapman, Warner and Drayton, aimed at producing a warlike and Homeric effect, did so in
shambling fourteen-syllable couplets. The one heroic poem of that age written at consider-
able length in the appropriate national metre is the Bosworth Field of Sir John Beaumont
(1582-1628). Since the middle of the 17th century, when heroic verse became the typical and
for a while almost the solitary form in which serious English poetry was written, its history
has known many vicissitudes. After having been the principal instrument of Dryden and
Pope, it was almost entirely rejected by Wordsworth and Coleridge, but revised, with various
modifications, by Byron, Shelley (in Julian and Maddalo) and Keats (in Lamia). In the
second half of the 19th century its prestige was restored by the brilliant work of Swinburne
in Tristram and elsewhere. (E. G.)
Cf. Dr. R. Dean Anderson, “Prophetic Singing in the Corporate Worship of the Church”,
from footnote 96:1
…The Greeks themselves were quite able to distinguish poetical prose from poetry proper.
For example, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (end of the first century BC) in his treatise on
composition (Comp. 11) distinguishes between carefully crafted musical prose and (metred)
song. This distinction is especially worked out at 25 where he insists that composition in
regular metres and rhythms is called verse and song and designated to be in rhythm and
metre. Poetic prose is distinguished from song by the fact that, although it has rhythms and
metres, these are irregular. It cannot be scanned as poetry. It is poetical but not a poem,
musical but not a song, cf. Aristid. Or. 1.1; 8 p.49; Lib. Or. 5.2. Similarly Maximus of Tyrus
(second century AD) states that the only principal difference between rhetoric and poetry is
(quantitative) metre (Max.Tyr. 7.7). See also Isoc. 9.9-11 for similar treatment.
1
Via (SHARING REFORMED CHRISTIAN RESOURCES AROUND THE WORLD), but no longer on
the Internet.
55
Cf. Expansive Poetry & Music Online Review:1
Timothy Steele’s
Missing Measures
from University of Arkansas Press, 1990, 349 pp.
review by Jan Schreiber
A great deal of foolishness has been written over a wide swath of history regarding the
composition of poetry. Much of the critical legacy is judiciously reviewed in Timothy
Steele’s book Missing Measures, which was published several years ago but never given
adequate critical notice. With the advent of our own century the foolishness rises to a
crescendo that may seem louder because of proximity. Perhaps we are being deafened by the
hullabaloo, but it is more than sound and fury. The last hundred years have witnessed a
striking transformation in the notion of what constitutes a respectable poem, and the result
has been a radically changed practice.
In Missing Measures Steele traces ideas about the writing of poetry–in fact about the
definition of poetry— from the early Greeks to the present. He shows how closely
entwined the notions of poetry and metrical composition are, and he offers thoughtful and
convincing explanations for this intimate relation. The book could be a treatise on English
prosody, but it is not. Such treatises have been written by others. Instead it is an intellectual
history, covering changing philosophies of literature that sometimes stray far from questions
of metrics but always come back to that central issue.
Briefly and simplistically, there was a time when the writing of prestige was metrical
writing, whether the matter was imaginative literature or more prosaic stuff. Although
both dramatic and lyric poetry were always written in meter, mere metrical
composition was not automatically accorded the status of poetry. Verse, that is, was
seen as a necessary but not sufficient condition of poetry. Over the centuries, the province
of metrical writing became progressively narrower. The first territory to be claimed by prose
was factual narrative, i.e. history. Then came fictional narrative (with the rise of the novel)
and drama. Near the end of the nineteenth century, the notion that verse was necessary to
poetry began to dissolve, and in the early years of the twentieth century several writers, the
self-styled revolutionaries, propounded the heresy that verse was not only unnecessary to
poetry but inimical to it.
1
www.expansivepoetryonline.com/journal/rev0498.html [09/27/03].
56
XV. SOME DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS.
Allen and Greenough, New Latin Grammar.
PROSODY
VERSIFICATION
Scansion and Elision
612,n1. The word Verse (versus) signifies a turning back, i.e. to begin again in like
manner, as opposed to Prose (prorsus or prôversus), which means straight ahead.
FORMS OF VERSE
613. A verse receives its name from its dominant or fundamental foot: as, Dactylic,
Iambic, Trochaic, Anapæstic; and from the number of measures (single or double) which it
contains: as, Hexameter, Tetrameter, Trimeter, Dimeter.
NOTE.--Trochaic, Iambic, and Anapæstic verses are measured not by single feet, but by
pairs (dipodia), so that six Iambi make a Trimeter.
614. A Stanza, or Strophe, consists of a definite number of verses ranged in a fixed order.
Many stanzas are named after some eminent poet: as, Sapphic (from Sappho), Alcaic (from
Alcæus), Archilochian (from Archilochus), Horatian (from Horace), and so on.
verse
verse,
a single line of metrical composition; more broadly, the metrical composition itself or the
poetic technique of a particular poem. Although verse is sometimes used as a synonym for
poetry, it is usually understood to be metrical composition that ranks in artistic quality
below the level of poetry. Verse may be technically skillful, or even dazzling, but lacking
in depth or imaginative power. Verse also refers to the shortest division of chapters of the
Bible.
© 1999-2000 Britannica.com and Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
POEM:
“A metrical composition; a composition in which the verses consist of certain

measures, whether in blank verse or in rhyme: a composition in which the language is that
of excited imagination” –Webster’s.
POET:
57
In England poets were formerly often called ‘makers’. The author of a poem...one
distinguished for poetic talents. One possessing high powers of imagination and
expression. –Webster’s & Concise Oxford.
POETRY:
“That one of the fine arts which exhibits it’s special character and powers by means
of language; the art which has for it’s object the creation of intellectual pleasure by means
of imaginative and passionate language, generally in verse; the language of the imagination
or emotions rhythmically expressed,...especially that creative writing which is divided into
lines, each containing a determined number of sounds, the sounds being accented
according to a determined and regular rhythmical pattern...whatever appeals to the
emotions or the sense of beauty.” –Webster’s.
OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY
POEM. ‘The work of a poet, a metrical composition’ (Johnson); ‘a work in verse’

(Littre); a composition of words expressing facts, thoughts, feelings in poetical form; a
piece of poetry.
POESY. 1. = POETRY. a. Poetical work or composition; poems collectively or

generally; poetry in the concrete, or as a form of literature. (In early use sometimes
including composition in prose, esp. works of imagination or fiction. 2. A poetical
composition; a poem.
POETRY. 3. The art or work of the poet; a. With special reference to its form:
Composition in verse or metrical language or in some equivalent patterned arrangement of
language; usually also with choice of elevated words and figurative uses, and option of a
syntactical order, differing more or less from those of ordinary speech or prose writing. b.
The product of this art as a form of literature; the writings of a poet or poets; poems
collectively or generally; metrical work or composition, verse. 4. pl. Pieces of poetry;
poems collectively.
DR. JOHNSON, JOHNSON'S DICTIONARY (1756)
POEM. n. s. [poema, Lat. ; (Gr.)] The work of a poet; a metrical composition. B. Jonson.
POESY. n. s. [poesie, Fr.; poesis, Lat. (Gr.)] The art of writing poems. B. Jonson. Poem;
metrical composition; poetry. Shakespeare. A short conceit engraved on a ring or other
thing. Ibid.
prosody
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913):
58
Prosody \Pros”o*dy\, n. [L. prosodia the tone or accent of a syllable, Gr. ? a song sung to,
or with, an accompanying song, the accent accompanying the pronunciation; ? to + ? song,
ode: cf. F. prosodie. See {Ode}.] That part of grammar which treats of the quantity of
syllables, of accent, and of the laws of versification or metrical composition.
From WordNet (r) 1.6:
prosody
n 1: the patterns of stress and intonation in a language [syn: {inflection}]
2: a system of versification [syn: {poetic rhythm}, {rhythmic pattern}]
3: the study of poetic meter and the art of versification
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.
verse1
SYLLABICATION:
verse
PRONUNCIATION:
NOUN :
1. a. A single metrical line in a poetic composition; one line of poetry. b. A division of a
metrical composition, such as a stanza of a poem or hymn. c. A poem. 2. Metrical or
rhymed composition as distinct from prose; poetry. 3. a. The art or work of a poet. b. A
group of poems: “read a book of satirical verse.” 4. Metrical writing that lacks depth or
artistic merit. 5. A particular type of metrical composition, such as blank verse or free
verse. 6. One of the numbered subdivisions of a chapter in the Bible.
TRANSITIVE & INTRANSITIVE VERB:

Inflected forms: versed, vers·ing, vers·es
To versify or engage in versifying.
ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English vers, from Old English fers, and from Old French vers, both from Latin
versus from past participle of vertere, to turn. wer-
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright
© 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All
rights reserved.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.
59
verse1
SYLLABICATION: Verse
PRONUNCIATION
:
NOUN : 1. a. A single metrical line in a poetic composition; one line of poetry. b. A

division of a metrical composition, such as a stanza of a poem or hymn. c. A
poem. 2. Metrical or rhymed composition as distinct from prose; poetry. 3. a.
The art or work of a poet. b. A group of poems: “read a book of satirical verse.”
4. Metrical writing that lacks depth or artistic merit. 5. A particular type of
metrical composition, such as blank verse or free verse. 6. One of the numbered
subdivisions of a chapter in the Bible.
TRANSITIVE & Inflected forms: versed, vers·ing, vers·es

INTRANSITIVE To versify or engage in versifying.
VERB :
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English vers, from Old English fers, and from Old French vers, both
from Latin versus from past participle of vertere, to turn. wer-
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by
Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
PROSODY (DWL)
James Craig La Drière
From The Dictionary of World Literature, ed. J. T. Shipley (New York: The Philosophical
Library, 1943) 455-460.
The most convenient general name for analysis of the rhythmic structure of sound in
speech, especially in verse.
The elements out of which spoken rhythms are constructed are of course those of the
physical constitution of speech, a flow of vocal sound against silence in time, in which
differentiation is produced on the one hand by the interruption of sound by silence, and on
the other hand by variations in the sound as to character or quality, pitch, length or
temporal duration, and intensity or force of utterance.
All these elements are emphasized and different relations are established among them.
These distinctive characteristics of utterance are in any language the immediate potential
material of verse, which simply carries further (prompted, it may be, by an extraneous
influence like that of accompanying music or dancing) the natural emphases of a language
by making rhythmic patterns of the obvious recurrences and contrasts that they afford.
60
Rhythm may be generally defined as recurring alternation in temporal series of perceptual
data, of an element or elements relatively more conspicuous for perception with elements
relatively less conspicuous. In all but the simplest rhythms as such, and the pattern created
by their disposition in relation to each other three factors are involved:
(1) the recurring alternation of stronger and weaker elements
(2) a division more or less marked of the whole series into sections occasioned by this
recurrent alternation and disposition of the elements and by the tendency of weaker
elements to group themselves for perception around stronger elements, and
(3) the temporal relations among all such perceived divisions within the series.
The first of these may conveniently be referred to as the cadence, the second as the
grouping, and the third as the measure.
These affect and involve each other so that they are at times distinguishable only by
difficult abstraction. Yet this abstraction must be made, for as D.S. MacColl has said of
two of them, “Till these separate entities are distinguished, there will be confusion in
prosody.” (What is Art? Pelican ed., p. 148.) [remainder omitted]
(c) 2019; 2024 Bart A. Mazzetti
61

On The Metres of Poetry and Related Matters According To Aristotle

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On The Metres of Poetry and Related Matters According To Aristotle

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On the Metres of Poetry and Related Matters According to Aristotle

I. Divisions Pertaining to Poetry Found in the Poetics.

II. Preliminary Divisions of the Poetic Art.

III. Outline of Aristotle on the Harmoniai.

IV. On the Impositions of Poiêsis.

VI. On Rhythm and Metre.

XI. Supplement: Parallel Translations of Rhet. III. 8.

XII. Aristotle on Lexis (‘Language’, ‘Locution’; ‘Diction’; ‘Verbal Expression’; Syn.

XIII. On Rhythm and Related Matters.

XIV. Supplement: A General Account of Verse.

XV. Some Dictionary Definitions.

FORMS OF POIÊSIS OR ‘POETIZING’ USING METRE AS A MEANS.

From Poetics Chapter 1:

• epopoiia (epic poetry; also, to hêrôikon, heroic poetry [Chapter 22])

From Poetics Chapter 2:

From Poetics Chapter 3:

• elegeiôn (elegiac poetry: elegeia, elegy)

From Poetics Chapter 4:

• saturikê poiêsis (satyric poetry)

From Poetics Chapter 22:

Heroic (dactylic hexameter)

BY THE METRE OR VERSE-FORM (WITH ITS STATED QUALITY).

dactylic hexameter: epopoiia or epic poetry (‘proud and stately’)

KINDS OF POETRY LOOKING TO THE VERSE-FORM EMPLOYED

Epopoiia or epic poetry

But their metres are either single or mixed:

Elegeia (from two kinds)

TAKEN WITH RESPECT TO THE MANNER OF IMITATING

What is suitable for:

Narrating Heroic metre narrative imitation in the form of epopoiia

IN SUM: THE PRINCIPAL DIVISIONS OF METRE, OF POETRY, AND OF FORMS

The (fundamental, basic) metres of poetry Aristotle recognizes are three:

• heroic, using the [dactylic] hexameter

Forms of the poetic art characterized by a given species of ‘poetry’:

• epopoiia, ‘epic poetry’, to which the heroic metre was proper

Cf. Aristotle, Poet. ch. 2 (1448a 1-8) (tr. B.A.M.):

Aristotle’s first division of species of the poetic art:

• dithyrambs (tous dithurambous)

§32. In the same context, Aristophanes Clouds969-972, there is mention of a composer,

MONODIC AND CHORAL LYRIC

DIVISIONS OF LYRIC POETRY ACCORDING TO WEIR SMYTH:

melic (i.e. lyric) poetry

These correspond to Aristoxenos’ h(suxastikh\, sustaltikh\, and diastaltikh melopoii/a, and

Aristotle’s division of melodies into:

Aristoxenus’ division of melopoiia into:

Aristides’ division of tropoi into:

Cf. Wikipedia, s.v. Mode (music):1

• Cleonides (1965). "Harmonic Introduction," translated by Oliver Strunk. In Source Readings in

Cf. Cheiron Hellenic Pagan site [® 1999, 2000]:1

Hellenic Melic divisions

Hymn, Nome, Prosodion, Adonidion, Paean, Iovacchos, Jubilation, Hyporcheme

To Gods and Men

Partheneion, Oschophorikon, Daphnephorikon, Votive songs

(1) “others enfeeble the mind, like the relaxed modes,”

(1) “the Phrygian inspires enthusiasm.”

The dithyramb, for example, is acknowledged to be Phrygian, a fact of which the

From VI. The Later Dithyramb, pp. 40-1:

* Cf. ibid, pp. 18-9:

…The Pseudo-Plutarch3 continues the passage of Lasos (quoted above):

169 Problems xix.15

N.B. Presupposed to the proper understanding of ‘poetry’ in Aristotle is a correct grasp of

OUTLINE OF THE ARGUMENT DETERMINING THE MEANING OF POIÊSIS.

NOTE ON THE MEANING OF POIÊSIS IN POET. CH. 1