Every living science, especially in its early stages, is compelled to devise fresh terms, either by coining new words or by giving new meanings to old ones. Unless and until these fresh terms become absorbed in the vocabulary of everyday speech, their unfamiliarity makes them a target for the shafts of the humourist. There can be no doubt that in the late fifth century B.C. literary criticism was still a new science. We can trace its beginnings in the treatises of (...) the Sophists, many titles of which have been handed down to us. Strepsiades' lesson in metric, though of itself amusing enough, would certainly gain in topical appropriateness if enacted at a time when such investigations were not only much in the air, but were still novel. And the whole ‘Agon’ of the Frogs, the character of which is forecasted in lines 796–802, depicts in the strongest colours the contrasted views of technician and inspirationist. We should therefore naturally expect a play of such a kind, written at such a time, to be full of technical jargon, barely understood by the ‘man in the street,’ and forming the object of his half-contemptuous amusement. That is, I believe, exactly what we do find, to an extent insufficiently recognized. Professor Radermacher, in his recent edition of the Frogs, has rendered valuable service by pointing out the frequent occurrence in that play of technical terms which meet us later in Dionysius of Halicarnassus and other critics. But I believe that technical language lurks unsuspected in many other passages, though the precise meaning may often be beyond recovery. (shrink)

In Vol. XXIIL, pp. 105–8, Mr. Lockwood criticizes some of the observations which I made in pp. 7–10 of the same volume. § 271. I ‘assume’ that τοτ' δετι δεινότητα explains ύπόκρισιν κα γνα and not τ διαλελυμένον, because ‘figures of speech in general’ cannot be said to ‘produce’ τ διαλελυμένον asyndeton, which is itself one of those figures; because, conversely, τ διαλελυμένον is not equivalent to δεινότης but a means of producing δεινότης. τ διαλελυμένον must, therefore, be nominative, not (...) accusative, and Professor Rhys Roberts' rendering, ‘lending especially the effect of abruptness, in other words of energy,’ cannot be right. The Professor himself is not happy with it, and adds in a note that ‘a better sense would be obtained by placing μάλιστα τ διαλελυμένον before πόκρισιν, i.e. “the figures of speech, and especially asyndeton.”‘ My excision gives the same sense. Orth, in his translation, omits the words τοτ' στι δεινότητα, and interprets as I do. (shrink)

In the tragic senarius the divisions of the sense normally coincide with the main divisions of the metrical structure. Punctuation is most frequently found at the end of the line, or at the penthemimeral or hephthemimeral caesura. There are few traces of any desire to produce a persistent clash between verse structure and sentence structure. Thus at Med. 446–50 and 709–13 five consecutive lines, at Med. 364–71 eight consecutive lines, are more or less self-contained in sense. But this principle, while (...) valid in some degree for all three tragedians, is not equally valid for all. Sophocles, as is well known, is far suppler in his iambic technique than Aeschylus and Euripides, and far more prone to write sentences which over-run the main metrical divisions. (shrink)