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Interlinear Hiatus In Trimeters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

T. C. W. Stinton
T. C. W. Stinton
Affiliation:
Wadham College, Oxford
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Extract

In CQ 55 (1941), 22–5, E. Harrison noticed that hiatus between verses in the trimeters of dialogue was much less frequent in tragedy when the sense ran on from one verse to the next, than when there was a pause in sense at verse-end. He observed (i) that Aeschylus' Prometheus differed from the other plays of Aeschylus in this respect, the proportion of run-over hiatus to end-stopped hiatus being much higher, and more like that of comedy; (ii) that Sophocles had remarkably few verses with run-over hiatus in the Trachiniae (8) and Antigone (12), much less than Aeschylus in proportion to the number of non-stop trimeters in the play, though Oedipus Tyrannus had much the largest number in Sophocles (48), and no continuous chronological development was discernible; (iii) that in Euripides there was a general progression from relative strictness to relative freedom in the run-over hiatus allowed, though individual plays did not conform closely to this pattern; (iv) that in general comedy was freer than tragedy.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , May 1977 , pp. 67 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1977

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References

1 Herington, C.J., The Author of the ‘Prometheus Bound’ (1970), p. 39.Google Scholar

2 Dr. Mark Griffith, in a dissertation on ‘The Authenticity of the Prometheus Vinctus’, to be published shortly, makes the same point in his criticism of Herington's treatment.

3 Fraenkel, E., ‘Kolon und Satz’, NGG (1932), 197–213Google Scholar, ibid. (1933), 319–54 = Kl. Beitr. i (1964), 73–130Google Scholar; ‘Nachtrage zu “Kolon und Satz, ii”’, Kl. Beitr. i. 131–9Google Scholar; ‘Noch einmal Kolon und Satz’, SB München, 2 (1965)Google Scholar. Further material of the same kind may be found in Leseproben aus Reden Ciceros und Catos (1968), esp. pp. 201–3, 208–12.Google Scholar

4 Lauer, S., Zur Wortstellung bei Pindar (1959).Google Scholar

5 See pp. 27–36 of this volume. The language of lyrics had the special characteristic that individual words have more semantic weight than in prose or in trimeters (above, p. 35 n.25), so that pause may occasionally be omitted on grounds that do not hold for trimeters. In applying the categories to trimeters I have tried to observe this difference consistently; in any case it affects relatively few places.

6 This is the essential difference between my procedure and those of Harrison and Herington. Harrison's final column gives the proportion of non-stop hiatus to non-stop trimeters, but takes no account of the proportion of non-stop hiatus to all hiatus. Herington, on the other hand, takes no account of the proportion of non-stop trimeters to all trimeters. (N.B. Harrison's figures in Table I, col. 1, differ from mine in Table III, col. 1, because he counts some trimeters in lyric scenes which I do not.)

7 Cf. the brief survey of views about Sophoclean chronology given by Schwinge, E.R., Die Stellung der Trachinierinnen im Werk des Sophokles (1962), pp. 70–3. Harrison's method makes O. T. the least strict of all the plays, and the Electra almost as strict as the Trachiniae.Google Scholar

8 Reinhardt, K., Sophokles 3, (1947)Google Scholar, ch. i; Kamerbeek, J.C., The Plays of Sophocles, I. The Trachiniae (1959), p. 27–9Google Scholar; E.R. Schwinge, op. cit.

9 Kitto, H.D.F., ‘Sophocles, statistics and the Trachiniae’, AJP 60 (1939), 178–93.Google Scholar