that the following passage in the Funeral Speech of Thucydides is composed with dignity and grandeur: “Former speakers on these occasions have usually commended the statesman who caused an oration to form part of this funeral ceremony: they have felt it a fitting tribute to men who were brought home for burial from the fields of battle where they fell.”[162] What has made the composition here so impressive? The fact that the clauses are composed of impressive rhythms. For the three feet which usher in the first clause are spondees, the fourth is an anapaest, the next a spondee once more, then a cretic,—all stately feet. Hence the dignity of the first clause. The next clause, “have usually commended the statesman who caused an oration to form part of this funeral ceremony,”[163] has two hypobacchii as its first feet, a cretic as its third, then again two hypobacchii, and a syllable by which the clause is completed; so that this clause too is naturally dignified, formed as it is of the noblest and most beautiful rhythms.
The third clause, “they have felt it a fitting tribute to men who were brought home for burial from the fields of battle where they fell,” begins with the cretic foot, has an anapaest in the second place, a spondee in the third, in the fourth an anapaest again, then two dactyls in succession, closing with two spondees and the terminal syllable. So this passage also owes its noble ring to its rhythmical structure; and most of the
2 ἤδη εἰρηκότων EP: ἤδη om. MV: εἰρηκότων ἤδη F (perperam: cf. vv. 6, 7) 3 τὸν (ante λόγον) om. F 9 κριτικός PM || πρῶτον FM: πρῶτον αὐτῶ PV 10 τοῦτο PMV 11 ὑποβακχείους ... αὖθις om. P 14 συγγενεστάτων P 21 δὴ PV: δὲ FM
3. τὸν προσθέντα κτλ.: viz. τὸν νομοθέτην, δηλονότι τὸν Σόλωνα (schol. ad Thucyd. ii. 35). Dionysius has this passage of Thucydides in view when he writes (Antiqq. Rom. v. 17) ὀψὲ γάρ ποτ’ Ἀθηναῖοι προσέθεσαν τὸν ἐπιτάφιον ἔπαινον τῷ νόμῳ, εἴτ’ ἀπὸ τῶν ἐπ’ Ἀρτεμισίῳ καὶ περὶ Σαλαμῖνα καὶ ἐν Πλαταιαῖς ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος ἀποθανόντων ἀρξάμενοι, εἴτ’ ἀπὸ τῶν περὶ Μαραθῶνα ἔργων.—Bircovius illustrates the rhythmical effect of the Greek by a similar analysis of the exordium of Livy’s History, “facturusne operae pretium sim, si a primordio urbis res populi Romani perscripserim, nec satis scio nec, si sciam, dicere ausim, quippe qui cum veterem tum vulgatam esse rem videam, dum novi semper scriptores aut in rebus certius aliquid allaturos se aut scribendi arte rudem vetustatem superaturos credunt.”
6. The first clause is clearly meant to be divided as follows:
– – – – – – ᴗ ᴗ – – – – ᴗ – οἱ μὲν | πολλοὶ | τῶν ἐν|θάδε ἤ|δη εἰ|ρηκότων.
The formation of the anapaest is noticeable, and in other ways the metrical division seems rather arbitrary. For ἐνθάδε ἤδη (without elision of the final ε) cp. n. on [180] 8. [Here and elsewhere, no attempt has been made to secure metrical equivalence between the Greek original and the English version.]
Goodell (Chapters on Greek Metric p. 42) says of the analysis which begins here: “It is incredible that the rhetor supposed he was describing the actual spoken rhythm, in the sense of Aristoxenus; he was giving the quantities of the syllables in the conventional way, and his readers so understood him.”
9. Cp. the metrical effect of
– ᴗ – ᴗ – ᴗ ᴗ – ᴗ ᴗ – – ᴗ – – “Who is this | that cometh | from Edom | with dyed garm(ents) | from Bozrah?”