change everywhere; or rather, I should say, cannot all introduce change, and none as much as they wish. For instance, epic writers cannot vary their metre, for all the lines must necessarily be hexameters; nor yet the rhythm, for they must use those feet that begin with a long syllable, and not all even of these. The writers of lyric verse cannot vary the melodies of strophe and antistrophe, but whether they adopt enharmonic melodies, or chromatic, or diatonic, in all the strophes and antistrophes the same sequences must be observed. Nor, again, must the rhythms be changed in which the entire strophes and antistrophes are written, but these too must remain unaltered. But in the so-called epodes both the tune and the rhythm may be changed. Great freedom, too, is allowed to an author in varying and elaborating the clauses of which each period is composed by giving them different lengths and forms in different instances, until they complete a strophe; but after that, similar metres and clauses must be composed for the antistrophe. Now the ancient writers of lyric poetry—I refer to Alcaeus and Sappho—made their strophes short, so that they did not introduce many variations in the clauses, which were few in number, while the use they made of the epode was very slight. Stesichorus and Pindar and their schools framed their periods on a larger scale, and divided them into many measures and clauses, simply from the love of variety. The dithyrambic poets used to change the modes also,
8 ὑποθῶνται FE: ὑπόθωνται PMV 9 τε καὶ PMV (cf. l. 6 supra): καὶ EF 11 τὰς ἀντιστροφὰς PM: τοὺς ἀντιστρόφους F: ἀντιστροφὰς V 12 ἐπῳδὰς V || ταῦτά ἐστιν F 14 ἑκάστη συνέστηκεν περίοδος PMV: συνέστηκε περίοδος ἑκάστη E: συνέστηκε περίοδος F 15 αὐτοῖς secl. Usener 16 αὐταῖς PMV: αὐτοῖς EF || ἂν om. F 18 δὲ om. EF 20 εἰσῆγον τὰς PMV: εἰσῆγον EF
5. οὐδὲ τούτοις ἅπασι: e.g. not the cretic, and (strictly) not the trochee.
7. ἐναρμονίους ... χρωματικὰς ... διατόνους: the distinction between these scales is indicated in Macran’s Harmonics of Aristoxenus p. 6: “Was it then possible to determine for practical purposes the smallest musical interval? To this question the Greek theorists gave the unanimous reply, supporting it by a direct appeal to facts, that the voice can sing, and the ear perceive, a quarter-tone; but that any smaller interval lies beyond the power of ear and voice alike. Disregarding then the order of the intervals, and considering only their magnitudes, we can see that one possible division of the tetrachord was into two quarter-tones and a ditone, or space of two tones; the employment of these intervals characterized a scale as of the Enharmonic genus. Or again, employing larger intervals one might divide the tetrachord into, say, two-thirds of a tone, and the space of a tone and five-sixths: or into two semitones, and the space of a tone and a half. The employment of these divisions or any lying between them marked a scale as Chromatic. Or finally, by the employment of two tones one might proceed to the familiar Diatonic genus, which divided the tetrachord into two tones and a semitone. Much wonder and admiration has been wasted on the Enharmonic scale by persons who have missed the true reason for the disappearance of the quarter-tone from our modern musical system. Its disappearance is due not to the dulness or coarseness of modern ear or voice, but to the fact that the more highly developed unity of our system demands the accurate determination of all sound-relations by direct or indirect resolution into concords; and such a determination of quarter-tones is manifestly impossible.”
18. ἀρχαῖοι: as compared, say, with Pindar.
20. οἱ δὲ περὶ Στησίχορόν τε καὶ Πίνδαρον: the two possible senses of this and similar phrases may be illustrated from Plutarch, viz. (1) the man and his followers, e.g. οἱ περὶ Δημοσθένην (Plutarch Vit. Demosth. 28. 2); (2) the man himself, e.g. τοὺς περὶ Αἰσχίνην καὶ Φιλοκράτην (ibid. 16. 2: cp. 30. 2) = ‘Aeschines and Philocrates.’ So with οἱ ἀμφί and οἱ κατά. But sense (2) needs careful scrutiny wherever it seems to occur; the meaning may simply be ‘men like Aeschines,’ etc.—For the ‘graves Camenae’ of Stesichorus cp. Hor. Carm. iv. 9. 8, and Quintil. x. 1. 62 “Stesichorus quam sit ingenio validus, materiae quoque ostendunt, maxima bella et clarissimos canentem duces et epici carminis onera lyra sustinentem.”
21. Such long periods are particularly effective (cp. [196] 13) when they include clauses of various lengths and end with an impressive one: e.g. Cic. Catil. ii. 1. 1 “Tandem aliquando, Quirites, L. Catilinam, | furentem audacia, | scelus anhelantem, | pestem patriae nefarie molientem, | vobis atque huic urbi ferro flammaque minitantem, | ex urbe vel eiecimus, | vel emisimus, | vel ipsum egredientem verbis prosecuti sumus”; and similarly Bossuet Oraison funèbre de Henriette-Marie de France: “Celui qui règne dans les cieux | et de qui relèvent tous les empires, | à qui seul appartient la gloire, la majesté et l’indépendance | est aussi le seul qui se glorifie de faire la loi aux rois, | et de leur donner, quand il lui plaît, de grandes et de terribles leçons.”