However this may be, the most singular feature of this fragment remains to be mentioned, viz. the agreement between the musical notes and the accentuation of the words. We know from the grammarians that an acute accent signified that the vowel was sounded with a rise in the pitch of the voice, and that a circumflex denoted a rise followed on the same syllable by a lower note—every such rise and fall being quite independent both of syllabic quantity and of stress or ictus. Thus in ordinary speech the accents formed a species of melody,—logôdes ti melos, as it is called by Aristoxenus [40]. When words were sung this 'spoken melody' was no longer heard, being superseded by the melody proper. Dionysius of Halicarnassus is at pains to explain (De Comp. Verb., c. 11), that the melody to which words are set does not usually follow or resemble the quasi-melody of the accents, e.g. in the following words of a chorus in the Orestes of Euripides (ll. 140-142):—
siga siga leukon ichnos arbylês
tithete, mê ktypeite;
apoprobat' ekeis' apopro moi koitas,
he notices that the melody differs in several points from the spoken accents: (1) the three first words are all on the same note, in spite of the accents; (2) the last syllable of arbylês is as high as the second, though that is the only accented syllable: (3) the first syllable of tithete is lower than the two others, instead of being higher: (4) the circumflex of ktypeite is lost (êphanistai), because the word is all on the same pitch; (5) the fourth syllable of apoprobate is higher in pitch, instead of the third. In Mr. Ramsay's inscription, however, the music follows the accents as closely as possible. Every acute accent coincides with a rise of pitch, except in hoson, which begins the melody, and in esti, for which we should perhaps read the orthotone esti. Of the four instances of the circumflex accent three exhibit the two notes and the falling pitch which we expect. The interval is either a major or a minor Third. In the other case (zês) the next note is a Third lower: but it does not seem to belong to the circumflexed syllable. All this cannot be accidental. It leads us to the conclusion that the musical notes represent a kind of recitative, or imitation of spoken words, rather than a melody in the proper sense of the term.
If any considerable specimen of the music of Euripides had survived, it might have solved many of the problems with which we have been dealing. The fragment before us extends over about six lines in dochmiac metre (Orestes 338-343), with the vocal notation: but no single line is entire. The key is the Lydian. The genus is either Enharmonic or Chromatic. Assuming that it is Enharmonic—the alternative adopted by Dr. Wessely—the characters which are still legible may be represented in modern notation as follows:
(katolo)phy-ro-mai; ma-te-ros (haima sas ho d' ana)bak-cheu-ei;
ho me-gas (olbos ou monimo)s en bro-tois;
a-na (de laiphos hôs ti)s a-ka-tou tho-as ti-na(xas daimôn)
kat-e-kly-sen (deinôn ponon) hôs pon-tou labrois k.t.l.
It should be observed that in the fragment the line katolophyromai katolophyromai comes before 338 (materos k.t.l.), not after it, as in our texts [41].