Footnotes

[1] Regarded from this point of view, the Chronological Table given on page 50 is full of interest.

[2] Reference may also be made to pages 27 -29, 33 , 34 , 40 -55, 74 -85, 92 -95, 98 ff., 122 -127, 134 -137, 154 -167, 184 -193, 200 -207, 236 -241, 264 -281. Especially to be noticed is that warm praise of simplicity (pp. 76 -85, 134 -137) which should suffice to prove that Dionysius is not a ‘rhetorician’ in any invidious sense.

[3] See Glossary, s.v. σύνθεσις.

[4] de Isocrate c. 2, δουλεύει γὰρ ἡ διάνοια πολλάκις τῷ ῥυθμῷ τῆς λέξεως, καὶ τοῦ κομψοῦ λείπεται τὸ ἀληθινόν ... βούλεται δὲ ἡ φύσις τοῖς νοήμασιν ἕπεσθαι τὴν λέξιν, οὐ τῇ λέξει τὰ νοήματα.

[5] The Greek word (κεφάλαια, capita) corresponding to ‘chapters’ occurs several times in the C.V. (see Glossary, s.v.); and one (περιοχή) of the words corresponding to ‘paragraph’ is found in the de Thucyd. c. 25. The paramount importance and dignity of the πραγματικὸς τόπος is indicated in the C.V. 66 9-15, and in the de Demosth. c. 58 fin.

[6] Quintilian (Inst. Or. ix. 4. 23) applies the term naturalis ordo to such collocations as viros ac feminas, diem ac noctem, ortum et occasum. But even here the order, though perhaps natural, is certainly not necessary.

[7] A good example of the severance of χρόνος from its article by an adjectival phrase will be found in the C. V. itself, 222 22: ἡμιφώνῳ γὰρ ἄφωνον συνάπτεται τῷ ν̄ τὸ τ̄ καὶ διαβέβηκεν ἀξιόλογον διάβασιν ὁ μεταξὺ τοῦ τε προσηγορικοῦ τοῦ “πανδαίδαλον” καὶ τῆς συναλοιφῆς τῆς συναπτομένης αὐτῷ χρόνος. The convenience of this articular bracket is obvious.

[8] Cp. ὀρνίθων ... προκαθιζόντων, Hom. Il. ii. 459-63.

[9] Attention is called to the elaborate word-order by Mr. P. N. Ure in his edition of this portion of Thucydides. The extent to which prepositions can be parted from cases, in post-Homeric as well as in Homeric Greek, is worth notice as a somewhat different illustration of the freedom of Greek order. See, for example, the remarks in Liddell and Scott’s Lexicon on the position of εἰς.

[10] In Caesar B.G. ii. 25 more than a hundred words come between the subject, Caesar and the main verb processit.

[11] e.g. ‘A quarrel had arisen between a big and a little boy about a big and a little coat.’

[12] A good illustration of the freedom of order possible (at any rate theoretically) in Greek, even within the limits of verse, is supplied in a letter from Richard Porson to Andrew Dalzel: “There is a passage of Sophocles three times quoted by Plutarch, and always in a different order, but so as in the three variations to remain a senarian. Now the fragment consists of five words, and the sense is this: ‘(The physicians) wash away bitter bile with bitter drugs [πικροῖς πικρὰν κλύζουσι φαρμάκοις χολήν].’ The five words, you know, will admit of one hundred and twenty permutations, and what is extremely odd, these words will admit twenty transpositions [which Porson proceeds to indicate], and still constitute a trimeter iambic.”—Luard’s Correspondence of Richard Porson pp. 91, 92.

[13] Horace Ars Poetica 40,

cui lecta potenter erit res,
nec facundia deseret hunc nec lucidus ordo.

Can the obscure potenter here be a Latin translation of some such technical term (found by Horace or Neoptolemus in the Greek writers on literary criticism) as δυνατῶς or δεινῶς or πιθανῶς?

[14] Demetrius, for example, evidently expects to find more lucidity in the plain style (the ἰσχνὸς χαρακτήρ) of a Lysias than in the elevated style (μεγαλοπρεπὴς χαρακτήρ) of a Thucydides: see the summary in Demetrius on Style pp. 33, 34. And a principal reason for this is that the former keeps more closely than the latter to the normal order of words in Greek (de Eloc. §§ 191 ff.). For Herodotus as compared with Thucydides cp. de Imit. ii. 3. 1 τῆς σαφηνείας δὲ ἀναμφισβήτως Ἡροδότῳ τὸ κατόρθωμα δέδοται (quoted in the editor’s Dionysius of Halicarnassus: the Three Literary Letters p. 173).

[15] εὐαρίθμητοι γάρ τινές εἰσιν οἷοι πάντα τὰ Θουκυδίδου συμβαλεῖν, καὶ οὐδ’ οὗτοι χωρὶς ἐξηγήσεως γραμματικῆς ἔνια, de Thucyd. c. 51.

[16] οὐ γὰρ ἀγοραίοις ἀνθρώποις οὐδ’ ἐπιδιφρίοις ἢ χειροτέχναις οὐδὲ τοῖς ἄλλοις οἳ μὴ μετέσχον ἀγωγῆς ἐλευθερίου ταύτας κατασκευάζεσθαι τὰς γραφάς, ἀλλ’ ἀνδράσι διὰ τῶν ἐγκυκλίων μαθημάτων ἐπὶ ῥητορικήν τε καὶ φιλοσοφίαν ἐληλυθόσιν, οἷς οὐδὲν φανήσεται τούτων ξένον, de Thucyd. c. 50. A comprehensive condemnation of ἀσάφεια is found in the same essay, c. 52: ἡ πάντα λυμαινομένη τὰ καλὰ καὶ σκότον παρέχουσα ταῖς ἀρεταῖς ἀσάφεια.

[17] See, further, the Appendix headed “Obscurity in Greek.”

[18] In the same way, Dionysius must surely feel the loss both of clearness and of emphasis involved in transferring ἡ μόνη ἐλπίς ( 112 1 and 4) from the middle to the end of the sentence. χάρις and πάθος may cover these cardinal points: “no clearness no charm,” he might well say,—“no emphatic order no full expression of feeling.”

[19] Cp. Demetrius on Style p. 278 (Glossary, s.v. ἔμφασις).

[20] Cp. Lewis Campbell in the Classical Review iv. 301, and Goodell in the paper named on p. 33 infra. In the matter of emphasis, Greek sentences are usually constructed on a diminuendo, English sentences on a crescendo principle. The English of μὴ ’φευρεθῇς ἄνους τε καὶ γέρων ἅμα (Soph. Antig. 281) is, as Jebb gives it, “lest thou be found at once an old man and foolish.” As fuller examples, in prose and verse, Mr. L. H. G. Greenwood suggests the Phaedrus 230 B, C (Νὴ τὴν Ἥραν ... Φαῖδρε) and the Rhesus 78-85, 119-130.

[21] The views of Quintilian and Demetrius with regard to rhythm are applicable also to emphasis: Quintil. ix. 4. 67 “nam ut initia clausulaeque plurimum momenti habent, quotiens incipit sensus aut desinit: sic in mediis quoque sunt quidam conatus, iique leviter insistunt. currentium pes, etiamsi non moratur, tamen vestigium facit”; Demetrius (de Eloc. § 39) πάντες γοῦν ἰδίως τῶν τε πρώτων μνημονεύομεν καὶ τῶν ὑστάτων, καὶ ὑπὸ τούτων κινούμεθα, ὑπὸ δὲ τῶν μεταξὺ ἔλαττον ὥσπερ ἐγκρυπτομένων ἢ ἐναφανιζομένων.

[22] The initial emphasis is here reinforced by μέν and δέ: elsewhere by the chiastic arrangement, as in (10).

[23] Compare the occasional postponement of a relative pronoun with the same object: e.g. Thucyd. i. 77 βιάζεσθαι γὰρ οἷς ἂν ἐξῇ, δικάζεσθαι οὐδὲν προσδέονται.

[24] Our poets can, and do, imitate the emphatic position of a word placed at the beginning of a line with a stop immediately following (as βάλλ’ in Hom. Il. i. 52, κόπτ’ in Odyss. ix. 290, and haesit in Virg. Aen. xi. 803):—

And over them triumphant Death his dart
Shook, but delayed to strike.

Milton Paradise Lost xi. 491.

Or (still nearer to the ‘me, me, adsum,’ of Virgil):—

Me, though just right, and the fixed laws of Heaven,
Did first create your leader—next, free choice,
With what besides in council or in fight
Hath been achieved of merit—yet this loss,
Thus far at least recovered, hath much more
Established in a safe, unenvied throne,
Yielded with full consent.

Milton Paradise Lost ii. 18-24.

[25] Here τούτους is emphasized by καί as well as by its position well in front of the verb which governs it, while μισθοῦ depends for its emphasis on its position alone. ‘But even these hidden piles did divers (entering the water) saw off—for pay.’ Compare the analysis which Quintilian (ix. 4. 29) gives of Cicero’s “ut tibi necesse esset in conspectu populi Romani vomere postridie.”

[26] For the rhetorical and metrical effect Sandys (ad loc.) compares Milton Paradise Lost vi. 912, “Firm they might have stood, | Yet fell.”

[27] In this sentence the orator would probably pause slightly before γενναίως, and thus (1) emphasize it; (2) separate it from διδῷ. Other means (illustrated by various examples in this Introduction) of throwing a word into relief are: the interposition of a number of unemphatic words, the use of particles such as μέν and δέ, the placing of emphatic words in contrasted pairs near together or remote from one another.

[28] The order here (1) avoids the juxtaposition of too many accusative-terminations; (2) provides a conclusion which satisfies ear and mind alike.

[29] The position of τἄμ’ here may be compared with that of ἐμούς in Eurip. Med. 1045 ἄξω παῖδας ἐκ γαίας ἐμούς (‘for they are mine’). In English, too, both the end and the beginning may be emphatic: e.g. “silver and gold have I none.”

[30] Quoted by Dionysius (C.V. c. 3), though without any special reference to the point of emphasis.

[31] Quoted by T. D. Goodell School Grammar of Attic Greek p. 296. ἡμεῖς seems to owe some at least of its emphasis to its late insertion. If placed immediately after ηὐξήσαμεν, it would, surely, lose a little in weight. Goodell does right to include some treatment of the question of Greek word-order in a Grammar intended primarily for use in schools. It should be pointed out even to beginners that so simple a sentence as οἱ δ’ Ἀθηναῖοι ἐνίκησαν τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους can be arranged in half-a-dozen ways, each with its own separate shade of meaning. Compare the remarks of W. H. D. Rouse with regard to the teaching of Latin: “It is possible by question and answer to make clear from the first the essential structure of an inflected language, as depending for emphasis on the order of words; and this lies at the root of style. Thus a simple sentence may give matter for several questions. Take Caesar Labienum laudat. I may ask, Quem laudat Caesar? Answer: Labienum laudat Caesar. Question: Quid facit Caesar? Answer: Laudat Labienum Caesar. If all the texts read are treated in this way, the pupils become used to correct accidence, syntax, and order, and learn the elements of style” (Classical Review xxi. 130; cp. also W. H. S. Jones The Teaching of Latin p. 33). An instructive contrast might be drawn, with reference to the context in either case, between Romanus sum civis in Livy ii. 12, and Civis Romanus sum in Cicero Verr. II. v. 65, 66.

[32] With “verbi transgressio” cp. “verborum concinna transgressio” in Cic. de Orat. iii. 54. 207.

[33] A modern reader might be disposed to see an example of emphasis in the illustrative passage which “Longinus” here quotes from Herodotus vi. 11. In hyperbata the Treatise on the Sublime itself greatly abounds, being much influenced (in this as in other ways) by Plato. For examples of hyperbaton in Plato see Riddell’s edition of the Apology, pp. 228 ff. Among modern English writers, Matthew Arnold had a curious and perhaps half-humorous trick of securing emphasis by a “bold and hazardous” hyperbaton (cp. de Sublim. xxii. 4), which keeps back the verb till the end of the sentence: e.g. “And a good deal of ignorance about these there certainly, among English public men, is”; “the grand thing in teaching is to have faith that some aptitudes for this every one has”; “one thing that Protestants have, and that the Catholics think they have a right, where they are in great numbers, to have too, this thing to the Prussian Catholics Prussia has given.” Such oddities are, in English, usually of a playful and undress character: e.g. “it was really a party that one might feel proud of having been asked to; at least I might, and did, very” (Life and Letters of Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb p. 93; cp. J. D. Duff’s remarks, on the same page, with regard to the literary adequacy of the following English translation of a pathetic sentence in one of Demosthenes’ greatest speeches: “this woman in the first instance merely quietly to drink and eat dessert they tried to force, I should suppose”).

[34] The immediately preceding sentence in Quintilian is “venio nunc ad ornatum, in quo sine dubio plus quam in ceteris dicendi partibus sibi indulget orator.” This may be compared with Dionysius’ view that it is the accessory arts (such as the heightening of style) that best reveal the orator’s power: ἐξ ὧν μάλιστα διάδηλος ἡ τοῦ ῥήτορος γίνεται δύναμις (de Thucyd. c. 23). In this attitude there is always some danger (unless, like Dionysius himself, a writer has a saving belief in the virtue of simplicity) of falling into that vice of écrire trop bien, which, according to M. Anatole France, is the worst of all literary vices.

[35] If we were to say that in a Greek sentence there are two kinds of arrangement, viz. (1) grammatical arrangement which aims at clearness, and (2) rhetorical arrangement which aims at (α) emphasis, and (β) euphony; then it must be admitted that Dionysius’ real subject is (2) (β)

[36] The lines quoted from Homer in c. 16 are particularly telling.

[37] C.V. 244 23. Perhaps ‘spontaneous’ or ‘subconscious’ would be a better translation than ‘instinctive.’ Dionysius certainly does not intend to exclude training.

[38] The judgment of the ear appears to be indicated by the words τοῦ πυκνὰ μεταπίπτοντος κριτηρίου at the end of c. 24.

[39] Cp. C.V. c. 6.

[40] Cic. ad Att. xiv. 20. Dionysius Halic. Ant. Rom. i. 1 ἐπιεικῶς γὰρ ἅπαντες νομίζουσιν εἰκόνας εἶναι τῆς ἑκάστου ψυχῆς τοὺς λόγους. Buffon Discours de réception à l’Académie, 1753: “le style est l’homme même.” Cp. Plato Rep. iii. 400 D τί δ’ ὁ τρόπος τῆς λέξεως, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, καὶ ὁ λόγος; οὐ τῷ τῆς ψυχῆς ἤθει ἕπεται;

[41] Cp. p. 24 supra. The desire to avoid monotony of termination would seem to be the main explanation of such collocations as οὗ τοῖς ἄλλοις εἴργεσθαι προαγορεύουσι τοῖς τοῦ φόνου φεύγουσι τὰς δίκας and τῷ αὐτῷ χρῶνται νόμῳ τούτῳ [Antiphon v.]. Additional emphasis, too, falls on τοῖς ἄλλοις and τῷ αὐτῷ, as on σωτηρίαν ἀσφαλῆ in Demosthenes’ peroration.

[42] In describing the smooth or elegant style of composition (as practised by Isocrates and his followers, including Theopompus), Dionysius notes, as one of its characteristics, the avoidance of hiatus. This avoidance is to be noticed in the recently discovered Hellenica; and without basing any positive conclusion on the fact, Grenfell and Hunt point out that the author usually avoids hiatus “even at the cost of producing an unnatural order of words, e.g. ἐπηρμένοι μισεῖν ἦσαν τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους and ἴωμεν, ὦ ἄνδρες, ἔφη, πολῖται, ἐπὶ τοὺς τυράννους” (Oxyrhynchus Papyri v. 124).

[43] e.g. the greater tendency in Latin to place the principal verb at the end of the sentence. Cp. Quintil. ix. 4. 26 “verbo sensum cludere, multo, si compositio patiatur, optimum est. in verbis enim sermonis vis est. si id asperum erit, cedet haec ratio numeris, ut fit apud summos Graecos Latinosque oratores frequentissime. sine dubio erit omne quod non cludet, hyperbaton, et ipsum hoc inter tropos vel figuras, quae sunt virtutes, receptum est.” In Latin the words μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα οὐ πολλῷ ὕστερον Εὔβοια ἀπέστη ἀπ’ Ἀθηναίων would naturally run “haud multum postea Euboea ab Atheniensibus defecit” (J. P. Postgate Sermo Latinus p. 7).

[44] On the other side, the classical writers not seldom yield to the temptation to write long and rambling sentences, whereas the best English authors are stimulated by the very absence of inflexions to arrange their thoughts with great care and clearness within the sentence and the paragraph. By these and other means English prose becomes, in the hands of a great master, an instrument of surpassing force and beauty. As there are differences in word-order between Greek and Latin, so are there among the modern analytical languages, though (in a comparison) it may be legitimate to group those languages together. An order regarded as natural (i.e. customary) in one modern language will not be so regarded in another. Further, a language like German (though it is often unable to follow the Greek order without ambiguity: cp. Lessing’s Laocoon c. 18) possesses a greater number of inflexions than English or French. Welsh, too, has certain syntactical features which enable it often to reproduce the Greek order more faithfully than English can do. For example: in St. John’s Gospel xvii. 9 where the Greek has οὐ περὶ τοῦ κόσμου ἐρωτῶ, ἀλλὰ περὶ ὧν δέδωκάς μοι, ὅτι σοί εἰσιν, the Welsh version gives Nid dros y byd yr wyf yn gweddio, ond dros y rhai a roddaist i mi; canys eiddot ti ydynt. And Plato Apol. c. 33 καὶ ἐὰν ταῦτα ποιῆτε, δίκαια πεπονθὼς ἐγὼ ἔσομαι ὑφ’ ὑμῶν, αὐτός τε καὶ οἱ υἱεῖς: Welsh, Ac os hyn a wnewch, yr hyn sydd gyfiawn fyddaf fi wedi ei dderbyn oddiar eich llaw, myfi a’m meibion. [These Welsh instances are given on p. 38 of the present editor’s chapter on the Teaching of Greek, in F. Spencer’s Aims and Practice of Teaching.] In Appendix II. at the end of this volume will be found a few idiomatic modern renderings (in English, French, and German) from Greek prose originals.

[45] Lemaître Les Contemporains i. 205.

[46] Boileau L’Art poétique i. 133.

[47] Edinburgh edition of Stevenson’s works, iii. 236-61 (Miscellanies). “It is a singularly suggestive inquiry into a subject which has always been considered too vague and difficult for analysis, at any rate since the days of the classical writers on rhetoric, whom Stevenson had never read” (Graham Balfour’s Life of Robert Louis Stevenson ii. 11). S. H. Butcher (Harvard Lectures pp. 242, 243) regards the essay as “a pretty precise modern parallel to the speculations of Dionysius,” and quotes some passages in proof. The following is an example of such points of contact. Stevenson: “Each phrase in literature is built of sounds, as each phrase in music consists of notes. One sound suggests, echoes, demands and harmonizes with another; and the art of rightly using these concordances is the final art in literature.” Dionysius (C.V. c. 16): ὥστε πολλὴ ἀνάγκη καλὴν μὲν εἶναι λέξιν ἐν ᾗ καλά ἐστιν ὀνόματα, καλῶν δὲ ὀνομάτων συλλαβάς τε καὶ γράμματα καλὰ αἴτια εἶναι, ἡδεῖάν τε διάλεκτον ἐκ τῶν ἡδυνόντων τὴν ἀκοὴν γίνεσθαι. Compare p. 40 infra as to the music of sounds; and see Demetrius on Style p. 43, as to Stevenson and other English writers on style.

[48] Compare especially the speeches in Il. ix., and the warm eulogies they have drawn from Quintilian (x. 1. 47; cp. x. 1. 27, with reference to Theophrastus) and from many others since his time. Dionysius’ versification of Demosthenes, and prosification of Simonides, in c. 25 and c. 26, may not seem altogether happy, but one or two points should be remembered in his favour. He does not recognize merely mechanical conceptions of literature: such as are implied in the Latin-derived words prose and verse, or in literature itself. He would probably have agreed with Aristotle that “Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common but the metre, so that it would be right to call the one poet, the other physicist rather than poet” (Aristot. Poet. i. 9, S. H. Butcher). He might probably have also maintained that, in essentials, Theognis is less of a poet than Plato. And in modern times, if he had known them, he might have called attention to the rhymed rhetoric which often passed as poetry in eighteenth-century England, and have asked whether the elevation of thought and the measured cadences of Demosthenes did not entitle him to a higher poetic rank than that.

[49] Of Thucydides: ποιητοῦ τρόπον ἐνεξουσιάζων (de Thucyd. c. 24). Of Plato: ᾔσθετο γὰρ τῆς ἰδίας ἀπειροκαλίας καὶ ὄνομα ἔθετο αὐτῇ τὸ διθύραμβον, ὃ νῦν ἂν ᾐδέσθην ἐγὼ λέγειν ἀληθὲς ὄν. τοῦτο δὲ παθεῖν ἔοικεν, ὡς ἐγὼ νομίζω, τραφεὶς μὲν ἐν τοῖς Σωκρατικοῖς διαλόγοις ἰσχνοτάτοις οὖσι καὶ ἀκριβεστάτοις, οὐ μείνας δ’ ἐν αὐτοῖς ἀλλὰ τῆς Γοργίου καὶ Θουκυδίδου κατασκευῆς ἐρασθείς (Ep. ad Cn. Pomp. c. 2; de Demosth. c. 6. See further in Demetrius on Style p. 14, n. 1).

[50] It will be noticed that the only question here is about differences of form. But it is one of Dionysius’ great merits to have proclaimed so clearly the leading part which beauty of form (not simply verse, but expression generally) plays in all high poetry. Aristotle was by no means insensible to this essential element, but he is apt to dwell more fully (though we must remember the fragmentary condition of the Poetics) on the associations of ποιητής than on those of ἀοιδός. It is in connexion with prose rather than with poetry, that it seems necessary to lay most stress upon the intellectual and logical elements involved, and to pay heed not only to the nature of the subject matter itself but to the sustained argument in which it is presented. Reason in prose and emotion in poetry: these are perhaps the two leading elements, if any distinction of the kind is to be attempted.

[51] Aristot. Rhet. iii. 1. 9; 8. 1 and 3; 2. 1. Cp. Cic. Orat. 56. 187 “perspicuum est igitur numeris astrictam orationem esse debere, carere versibus; sed ei numeri poëticine sint an ex alio genere quodam deinceps est videndum”; 57. 195 “ego autem sentio omnes in oratione esse quasi permixtos et confusos pedes; nec enim effugere possemus animadversionem, si semper eisdem uteremur, quia nec numerosa esse, ut poëma, neque extra numerum, ut sermo vulgi, esse debet oratio: alterum nimis est vinctum, ut de industria factum appareat, alterum nimis dissolutum, ut pervagatum ac vulgare videatur.” Also ibid. 51. 172; 57. 194-196; 58. 198; 68. 227. Cicero’s correct attitude is the more noticeable that he is commonly supposed to have been swayed by Asiatic rather than by Attic influences.

[52] C.V. c. 25 χωρὶς δὲ τῆς Ἀριστοτέλους μαρτυρίας, ὅτι ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστιν ἐμπεριλαμβάνεσθαί τινας τῇ πεζῇ λέξει ῥυθμούς, εἰ μέλλοι τὸ ποιητικὸν ἐπανθήσειν αὐτῇ κάλλος, ἐκ τῆς πείρας τις αὐτῆς γνώσεται.

[53] The modern custom is to view with some suspicion these inversions when found in prose composition, though in German prose they are common enough. It would be interesting to take two such sentences of the New Testament as μεγάλη ἡ Ἄρτεμις Ἐφεσίων (Acts xix. 28, 34) and ἔπεσεν, ἔπεσεν Βαβυλὼν ἡ μεγάλη (Apoc. xiv. 8), and see how they have been rendered into various modern languages by translators generally (both in authorised and unauthorised versions). It would probably be found that the French language here has been true to what Dionysius would call its λογοείδεια, or essentially prose character. In English the justification of the inversion would be the emotional nature of the original passages, which may be held to raise them to the same plane as poetry. [It would, on the other hand, be not good but bad journalism to write, “Uproarious were the proceedings at yesterday’s meeting of the Grand Committee.”] For the effect of word-order in English verse see an extract from Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria in the notes, p. 79 infra. Coleridge was fond of offering, as a rough definition of poetry, “the best words in the best order.”

[54] See the notes on c. 25; particularly that on 256 11.

[55] The words “How art thou” are, it will be noticed, differently divided in these two lines with a kind of Dionysian freedom.

[56] Ruskin continually, and Carlyle often (e.g. Sartor Resartus bk. iii. c. 8), provides examples of iambic rhythm. So George Eliot Mill on the Floss bk. vii.: “living through again, in one supreme moment, the days when they had clasped their little hands in love, and roamed the daisied fields together.” And Blackmore, in Lorna Doone c. 3: “The sullen hills were flanked with light, and the valleys chined with shadow, and all the sombrous moors between awoke in furrowed anger.” [Blackmore sometimes falls also into the hexameter rhythm, as in the same chapter: “And suddenly a strong red light, cast by the cloud-weight | downwards, | spread like | fingers | over the | moorland, || opened the | alleys of | darkness, and | hung on the | steel of the | riders.”]

[57] Cicero’s conception of the requirements of rhythmical prose (as compared with those of verbal fidelity) is curiously illustrated by the way in which he is supposed to have recast the letter sent by Lentulus to Catiline. Sallust Cat. 44 “quis sim ex eo quem ad te misi cognosces: fac cogites in quanta calamitate sis et memineris te virum esse: consideres quid tuae rationes postulent: auxilium petas ab omnibus etiam ab infimis.” Cicero Cat. iii. 12 “quis sim scies ex eo quem ad te misi: cura ut vir sis et cogita quem in locum sis progressus: vide ecquid tibi iam sit necesse et cura ut omnium tibi auxilia adiungas, etiam infimorum.” Cp. A. C. Clark (reviewing Zieliňski) Classical Review xix. 172.

[58] Cp. C.V. 176 20 οὐ γὰρ ἀπελαύνεται ῥυθμὸς οὐδεὶς ἐκ τῆς ἀμέτρου λέξεως, ὥσπερ ἐκ τῆς ἐμμέτρου. With regard to the occasional presence in prose of metrical or quasi-metrical lines, the likely explanation seems often to be one which Dionysius does not favour (πολλὰ γὰρ αὐτοσχεδιάζει μέτρα ἡ φύσις, 256 19), rather than one which recognizes μέτρα καὶ ῥυθμούς τινας ἐγκατατεταγμένους ἀδήλως ( 254 3).

[59] D. B. Monro Modes of Ancient Greek Music p. 118.

[60] From the essay (already mentioned) on Style in Literature.

[61] de Demosth. c. 22.

[62] So that, in 126 15, τὸν ὀξὺν τόνον = ‘the high pitch’ = ‘the acute accent.’

[63] W. H. D. Rouse’s edition of Matthew Arnold on translating Homer Introd. p. 7.

[64] A. J. Ellis and F. Blass (in the publications mentioned later).

[65] Arnold and Conway Restored Pronunciation of Greek and Latin pp. iv. 3, 7, 20-26. Cp. also the pamphlet on the Pronunciation of Greek issued by the Classical Association in 1908 (pp. 348-51 infra). In the Contemporary Review of March 1897 the history of Greek pronunciation in England is ably sketched by J. Gennadius.

[66] Even the pronunciation of the poet’s name has changed with the lapse of centuries; and the spelling Shakspere is preferred by some authorities not only because it has excellent manuscript authority, but because it may serve to remind us that “he and his fellows pronounced his name Shahk-spare, with the a of father in Shahk, and with the French e (our a) in spare” (Furnivall).

[67] Quintil. i. 10. 17 “siquidem Archytas atque Aristoxenus etiam subiectam grammaticen musicae putaverunt,” etc.

[68] C.V. 68 7-11, ... τὴν περὶ τῆς συνθέσεως τῶν ὀνομάτων πραγματείαν ὀλίγοις μὲν ἐπὶ νοῦν ἐλθοῦσαν, ὅσοι τῶν ἀρχαίων ῥητορικὰς ἢ διαλεκτικὰς συνέγραψαν τέχνας, οὐδενὶ δ’ ἀκριβῶς οὐδ’ ἀποχρώντως μέχρι τοῦ παρόντος ἐξειργασμένην, ὡς ἐγὼ πείθομαι.

[69] Some reference to Quintilian’s own apparent indebtedness to the de Imitatione of Dionysius will be found in Demetrius on Style p. 25.

[70] de Sublim. xxxix. 1. In the editor’s article on the “Literary Circle of Dionysius of Halicarnassus” (Classical Review xiv. 439-42), an endeavour is made to view the literary life of Dionysius in relation to its Roman surroundings.

[71] The more recent writers on rhetoric (οἱ νέοι τεχνογράφοι, de Isaeo c. 14) would not greatly appeal to Dionysius.

[72] Cp. 254 23, 256 3, 164 22, 138 6.

[73] The quotations from Aristotle and other writers in the Notes will serve to indicate roughly the obligations of Dionysius to his predecessors.

[74] Among the shorter fragments preserved by him are one of Bacchylides (in c. 25), and another from the Telephus of Euripides (in c. 26). Two lines of the Danaë are, it should in strict accuracy be stated, quoted as follows by Athenaeus ix. 396 E:—

ὦ τέκος, οἷον ἔχω πόνον·
σὺ δ’ ἀωτεῖς, γαλαθηνῷ δ’ ἤτορι κνώσσεις.

[75] de C.V. 214 7. There is, perhaps, room for a book or dissertation on Quotation in Classical Antiquity: with reference to such points as the citation or non-citation of authorities, the employment of literary illustrations, the poetical quotations in the Orators or in the Ἀθηναίων Πολιτεία or in the Poets themselves; and so forth. On the question of verbal fidelity, something is said in the present editor’s brief article on ‘Dionysius of Halicarnassus as an authority for the Text of Thucydides’ (Classical Review xiv. 244-246); and such quotations as that from Odyss. xvi. 1-16 in c. 3 of the present treatise might be critically examined from the same point of view. A similar study of Translation in Classical Antiquity would also be a useful piece of work.

[76] de C.V. 94 4. Of Phylarchus as a historian Polybius himself gives an unflattering account.

[77] S. H. Butcher Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects p. 114. Cp. J. L. Strachan Davidson in Hellenica pp. 414, 416: “The Nemesis of his contempt for the form and style of his writing has come on Polybius in the neglect which he has experienced at the hands of the modern world.... He has not the genius, and will not take the trouble to acquire the trained sensitiveness of art which might have supplied its place; and thus his writing has no distinction and no charm, and we miss in reading him what gives half their value to great writers—the consciousness that we are in the hands of a master.” But, on the other hand, see J. B. Bury’s Ancient Greek Historians, e.g. pp. 196, 218, 220.

[78] Cicero (Or. 63. 212) says, with reference to the various ways of ending the period, “e quibus unum est secuta Asia maxime, qui dichoreus vocatur, cum duo extremi chorei sunt.” And Quintilian (ix. 4. 103) “claudet et dichoreus, id est idem pes sibi ipse iungetur, quo Asiani usi plurimum; cuius exemplum Cicero ponit: Patris dictum sapiens temeritas fili comprobavit.” The dichoree is condemned also in the de Sublim. c. 41 μικροποιοῦν δ’ οὐδὲν οὕτως ἐν τοῖς ὑψηλοῖς, ὡς ῥυθμὸς κεκλασμένος λόγων καὶ σεσοβημένος, οἷον δὴ πυρρίχιοι καὶ τροχαῖοι καὶ διχόρειοι, τέλεον εἰς ὀρχηστικὸν συνεκπίπτοντες ... ὡς ἐνίοτε προειδότας τὰς ὀφειλομένας καταλήξεις αὐτοὺς ὑποκρούειν τοῖς λέγουσι καὶ φθάνοντας ὡς ἐν χορῷ τινι προαποδιδόναι τὴν βάσιν. It is the constant recurrence of the same feet that is to be deprecated (cp. Aristot. Rhet. iii. 8. 1, and Theon. Progymn. in Walz Rhet. Gr. i. 169); a single dichoree would not be avoided even by Dionysius himself, e.g. νοῦν ἐχόντων ( 192 5). Cicero’s appreciation of Carbo’s patris dictum sapiens temeritas fili comprobavit may be instructively compared with Dionysius’ attitude towards the general question of good and bad rhythms. They both seem to allow too little for other considerations; one of them approves, and the other disapproves, the final dichoree; and both agree in the main point, that there should be plenty of variety: “hoc dichoreo (sc. comprobavit) tantus clamor contionis excitatus est, ut admirabile esset. quaero nonne id numerus effecerit? verborum ordinem immuta, fac sic: ‘comprobavit fili temeritas,’ iam nihil erit, etsi ‘temeritas’ ex tribus brevibus et longa est, quam Aristoteles ut optimum probat, a quo dissentio. ‘at eadem verba, eadem sententia.’ animo istuc satis est, auribus non satis. sed id crebrius fieri non oportet; primum enim numerus agnoscitur, deinde satiat, postea cognita facilitate contemnitur” (Cic. Orat. 63. 214). Hegesias’ lack of ear seems, further, to be shown in the awkward accumulation of disyllables; e.g. διὰ τῶν ποδῶν χαλκοῦν ψάλιον διείραντας ἕλκειν κύκλῳ γυμνόν ( 188 17), and τρόπῳ σκαιὸν ἐχθρόν ( 190 5). Cp. 132 3 μήτ’ ὀλιγοσύλλαβα πολλὰ ἑξῆς λαμβάνοντα.

[79] Modern parallels are dangerous, but the detractors of Macaulay might be disposed to compare his short detached sentences (so different from the elaborate periods of some earlier English prose-writers) with those of Hegesias.

[80] In this last extract, all the sentences end in dichorees. The fragments of Hegesias have been collected by C. Müller Scriptores Rerum Alexandri Magni pp. 138-144.

[81] With παραφθείρας cp. Cic. Brut. 83. 286 “atque Charisi [an imitator of Lysias] vult Hegesias esse similis, isque se ita putat Atticum, ut veros illos prae se paene agrestes putet. at quid est tam fractum, tam minutum, tam in ipsa, quam tamen consequitur, concinnitate puerile?” For the influence which Hegesias had on style as late as the time of Pausanias cp. J. G. Frazer’s Pausanias i. lxix. lxx., and Blass Die Rhythmen der asianischen und römischen Kunstprosa pp. 91 ff.

[82] e.g. καθάπερ 138 13; ἀναίσθιος, ὑποδεκτική, ἀκόμψευστον, ἔχοντα 212 21-24; see also 196 24, 25. The issue is often so perplexing that no editor can feel certain whether F’s reading or P’s should be placed in his text: he only knows that both readings must be recorded either in the text or in the critical footnotes. For the strong points of F see such passages as pp. 182, 184 in c. 18.

[83] Other examples of these variae lectiones, pointing perhaps sometimes to a sort of double recension, are such as οὐδέτερον μὲν εὔμορφον, ἧττον δὲ δυσειδὲς τὸ ε̄ ( 144 4: REF), compared with οὐδέτερον μὲν εὔηχον, ἧττον δὲ δυσηχὲς τὸ ο̄ ( 144 4: PMV), 66 2 νεωστὶ PMV, ἄρτι F; 100 23 ἐνταῦθα PMV, ἐνθάδε F; 198 18 and 244 28 πάνυ PMV, σφόδρα F. Continually F’s readings differ from P’s in such a way that either alternative is quite satisfactory and neither could well have originated in any manuscript corruption of the other. Under the same head will come minute variations (not always recorded in this edition) of word-order in the traditions represented by F and P. So, too, with such minutiae as the elision or non-elision of final vowels, and the insertion or non-insertion of ν ἐφελκυστικόν.

[84] F’s πλεῖστον κίνδυνον for πλείστους κινδύνους in 244 5 seems due to a desire to diminish the number of sigmas in the sentence, while some minute changes in word-order look like deliberate attempts to improve the flow and sound of the passage. Such discrepancies in the word-order of F and P occur in other parts of the treatise, and not simply in the quotations.

[85] Homer Odyssey xv. 125.

[86] Homer Odyssey xv. 126, 127.

[87] Bergk Poetae Lyrici Graeci, Fragm. Adesp. 85.

[88] Bergk ibid.; Philoxenus Fragm. 6.

[89] Homer Odyssey xvi. 1-16. The verse-translations, here and throughout, are from the hand of Mr. A. S. Way.

[90] Herodotus i. 8-10.

[91] Homer Iliad xii. 433-5.

[92] Euphorio Chersonesita; cp. Hephaest. c. 16.

[93] Homer Iliad xiii. 392, 393.

[94] Sotades Fragm.

[95] Euripides Fragm. 924 (Nauck).

[96] Herodotus i. 6.

[97] Thucydides i. 24.

[98] Hegesias Fragm.; cp. C. Müller Scriptores Rerum Alexandri Magni p. 138.

[99] Homer Odyssey xvi. 273, xvii. 202, xxiv. 157.

[100] Cp. Homer Odyssey vi. 230, 231; viii. 20; xxiii. 157, 158; xxiv. 369.

[101] Cp. Demosthenes de Corona 296.

[102] Homer Odyssey i. 1.

[103] Homer Iliad i. 1.

[104] Homer Odyssey iii. 1.

[105] Homer Iliad v. 115; Odyssey iv. 762, vi. 324.

[106] Homer Iliad ii. 484.

[107] Homer Iliad xxiv. 486.

[108] Homer Iliad xxi. 20.

[109] Homer Iliad xxii. 467.

[110] Homer Odyssey xxii. 17.

[111] Homer Iliad ii. 89.

[112] Homer Iliad xix. 103-4.

[113] Homer Iliad i. 459, ii. 422 etc.

[114] Homer Iliad iv. 125.

[115] Homer Odyssey vi. 115-6.

[116] Homer Odyssey xiv. 425.

[117] Homer Odyssey iii. 449-50.

[118] Demosthenes de Corona, init.

[119] Demosthenes de Pace 6.

[120] Demosthenes Aristocr. 1.

[121] Thucydides iii. 57.

[122] Demosthenes de Corona 119.

[123] Demosthenes de Corona 179.

[124] Demosthenes Philipp. iii. 17.

[125] Plato Menex. 236 E.

[126] Aeschines c. Ctes. 202.

[127] Sophocles Fragm. 706 (Nauck).

[128] Demosthenes Lept. 2.

[129] Euripides Orestes 140-2.

[130] Pindar Fragm. 79 (Schroeder).

[131] Homer Iliad xvii. 265.

[132] Homer Odyssey ix. 415-16.

[133] Homer Iliad xxii. 220-1.

[134] Homer Iliad xxii. 476.

[135] Homer Iliad xviii. 225.

[136] Homer Odyssey v. 402.

[137] Homer Iliad xii. 207.

[138] Homer Iliad ii. 209 (and 210).

[139] Homer Iliad xvi. 361.

[140] Homer Odyssey xvii. 36-7; xix. 53-4.

[141] Homer Odyssey vi. 162-3.

[142] Homer Odyssey xi. 281-2.

[143] Homer Odyssey vi. 137.

[144] Homer Odyssey xi. 36-7.

[145] Homer Iliad iv. 452-3.

[146] Homer Iliad xxi. 240-2.

[147] Homer Odyssey ix. 289-90.

[148] Homer Iliad ii. 494-501.

[149] Bergk P.L.G., Fragm. Adesp. 112; Nauck T.G.F., Fragm. Adesp. 136.

[150] Cp. Euripides Hecuba 163-4.

[151] Nauck T.G.F., Fragm. Adesp. 138.

[152] Archilochus Fragm. 66 (Bergk P.L.G.).

[153] Bergk P.L.G., Fragm. Adesp. 108.

[154] Nauck T.G.F., Fragm. Adesp. 139.

[155] Nauck T.G.F., Fragm. Adesp. 140.

[156] Euripides Hippolytus 201.

[157] Homer Odyssey ix. 39.

[158] Bergk P.L.G., Fragm. Adesp. 111; Nauck T.G.F., Fragm. Adesp. 141.

[159] Bergk P.L.G., Fragm. Adesp. 117; Nauck T.G.F., Fragm. Adesp. 142.

[160] Bergk P.L.G., Fragm. Adesp. 110; Nauck T.G.F., Fragm. Adesp. 143.

[161] Bergk P.L.G., Fragm. Adesp. 116; Nauck T.G.F., Fragm. Adesp. 144.

[162] Thucydides ii. 35.

[163] Here and elsewhere, no attempt has been made to secure metrical equivalence between the Greek original and the English version. A metrical analysis, or “scansion,” of the original Greek is given in the notes.

[164] Plato Menexenus 236 D.

[165] Homer Iliad xxiii. 382.

[166] Demosthenes de Corona init.

[167] Demosthenes de Corona init.

[168] C. Müller Scriptores Rerum Alexandri Magni p. 141 (Hegesiae Fragmenta).

[169] Homer Iliad xxii. 395-411.

[170] Homer Odyssey xi. 593-6.

[171] Homer Odyssey xi. 596-7.

[172] Homer Odyssey xi. 597-8.

[173] Pindar Fragm. 213 (Schroeder).

[174] Pindar Fragm. 75 (Schroeder).

[175] Thucydides i. 1.

[176] Thucydides i. 22.

[177] Sappho Fragm. i. (Bergk): translated by A. S. Way.

[178] Isocrates Areopagiticus §§ 1-5.

[179] Homer Iliad xxi. 196-7.

[180] cp. Demosthenes Chers. 48.

[181] Epicurus Fragm. 230 (Usener).

[182] Demosthenes Aristocr. 1.

[183] Fragm. Orphica, Mullach i. 166.

[184] Aristot. Rhet. iii. 8.

[185] Aristophanes Nubes 961.

[186] Callimachus Fragm. 391 (Schneider).

[187] Sappho Fragm. 106 (Bergk).

[188] Aristophanes Nubes 962.

[189] Euripides Archelaus; Nauck T.G.F., Eurip. Fragm. 229.

[190] Demosthenes de Corona § 1.

[191] Bergk P.L.G., Fragm. Adesp. 118.

[192] Bacchylides Fragm. 11 (Jebb).

[193] Plato Republic i. 1.

[194] Homer Odyssey xiv. 1-7.

[195] Euripides Telephus; Nauck T.G.F., Eurip. Fragm. 696.

[196] Euripides Telephus; Nauck T.G.F., Eurip. Fragm. 696.

[197] Simonides Fragm. 37 (Bergk): translated by A. S. Way.

[198] Homer Iliad xi. 514.

[199] ὁ σκοτεινός: cp. Dionys. Hal. de Thucyd. c. 46, Demetr. de Eloc. § 192, Aristot. Rhet. iii. 5. 6.

[200] A good practical recipe for brevity combined with clearness is given in the Rhet. ad Alex. c. 30: συντόμως δὲ [δηλώσομεν], ἐὰν ἀπὸ τῶν πραγμάτων καὶ τῶν ὀνομάτων περιαιρῶμεν τὰ μὴ ἀναγκαῖα ῥηθῆναι, ταῦτα μόνα καταλείποντες, ὧν ἀφαιρεθέντων ἀσαφὴς ἔσται ὁ λόγος.

[201] He illustrates from the Introduction (προοίμιον) of Thucydides—the passage quoted in C.V. c. 22. A good example of the εἰρομένη λέξις in Thucydides (who is an acknowledged master of the κατεστραμμένη λέξις) is furnished by Thucyd. i. 9. 2: cp. p. 119 supra.

[202] Earlier (vii. 9. 6) in his treatise, Quintilian has quoted ‘Aio te, Aeacida, Romanos vincere posse’; and these oracular ambiguities had been glanced at previously by Aristotle (Rhet. iii. 5. 4).

[203] In a passage of Aristotle (Eth. Nic. vi. 1142 b ἀλλ’ ὀρθότης τίς ἐστιν ἡ εὐβουλία βουλῆς) βουλῆς seems to be emphatic because so far separated from ὀρθότης. Cp. L. H. G. Greenwood in the Classical Review xix. 18, and the same writer’s translation (Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics Book Six p. 111), “But deliberative excellence is rightness in deliberation.”

[204] Short and simple as it is, this last sentence is a good example of effective word-order. τριήρης is put early, to contrast it with φρούριον in the previous sentence. Then the time is indicated. Next τῶν Ἀθηναίων (removed from Thucydides’ usual position for a dependent genitive) is put in expressive juxtaposition to ὑπὸ τῶν Συρακοσιών. Lastly, the reason or circumstance is given: ἐφορμοῦσα τῷ λιμένι. And the rhythm of the sentence is not unpleasant.

[205] Aristotle (Rhet. i. 15), in quoting the first line only, gives ταῦτ’ οὖν ἐγὼ κτλ.

[206] In English it would be interesting to test, by these criteria, such usages (for usages they may be called in so far as they rest on the authority of many good writers) as the ‘split infinitive,’ or the preposition coming at the end of a sentence.

[207] The authenticity of these portions of the Odyssey was suspected in antiquity. But compare Iliad xviii. 587-8 (quoted in Introduction p. 13 supra) or Odyss. xi. 160-1.

[208] The dates and stages of these changes cannot as yet be settled with precision. But the practical choice seems to be between the earliest and the latest values, though there is no doubt whatever that a distinct h was heard in all these sounds long after the fourth century B.C.

[209] It is not easy to determine precisely the sound of χθ, φθ (χθών, φθόνος) at the beginning of words, and the Committee therefore thinks it best to leave the option of (1) sounding the first consonants as κ and π respectively, and the θ as it is in other positions (this applies both to students who adopt the fricative and to those who adopt the primitive aspirate pronunciation of the letters in other positions), or (2) where the fricative pronunciation is adopted, of sounding χ and φ, in this position also, respectively as Scotch ch and English f.

[210] This had actually happened in spoken Greek by the second century A.D.

[211] This paragraph is taken from The Restored Pronunciation of Greek and Latin, 4th edition, Cambridge, 1908.