whose literary sense has been tolerably developed. I will attempt to show by what method such results have been achieved, since it is not by spontaneous accident, but by some kind of artistic design, that this passage has acquired its characteristic form.
The first clause consists of four words—a verb, a connective, and two appellatives. Now the mingling and the amalgamation of the verb and the connective have produced a rhythm which is not without its charm; but the combination of the connective with the appellative has resulted in a junction of considerable roughness. For the words ἐν χορόν are jarring and uneuphonious, since the connective ends with the semivowel ν, while the appellative begins with one of the mutes, χ. These letters by their very nature cannot be blended and compacted, since it is unnatural for the combination νχ to form part of a single syllable; and so, when ν and χ are the boundaries of adjacent syllables, the voice cannot be continuous, but there must necessarily be a pause separating the letters if each of them is uttered with its proper sound. So, then, the first clause is roughened thus by the arrangement of its words. (You must understand me to mean by “clauses” not those into which Aristophanes or any of the other metrists has arranged the odes, but those into which Nature insists on dividing the discourse and into which the disciples of the rhetoricians divide their periods.)
The next clause to this—ἐπί τε κλυτὰν πέμπετε χάριν θεοί—is separated from the former by a considerable interval and includes within itself many dissonant collocations. It begins with one of the vowels, ε, in close proximity to which is another vowel, ι—the letter which came at the end of the preceding
1 λόγους ... τέχνης καὶ om. F || τινὶ δε P 3 δὲ καὶ F: καὶ PMV || χρησάμενον F 4 ἐγὼ PMV: ὃν ἐγὼ F 5 αὐτὸ F 10 καὶ ἀντίτυπον EF: ἀντίτυπόν τε PMV || εὐεπὲς EF: εὐπετὲς PMV 13 τῆι φύσει P, M in marg. F: om. F1: τῆ ῥύσει V 14 προτάττεσθαι F: προτετάχθε P, MV 15 οὐδὲ PMV: οὔτε F || ὅρια] ὄρια F: δύο (β̄ P) μόρια EPM: δύο τὰ μόρια V || συνάπτει] τύπτει F 16 γενέσθαι EF: γίγνεσθαι P: γίνεσθαι MV || μέσοιν EM 17 ἑκατέρων EF 18 με δέξαι PV: μ’ ἔδοξε FM 19 λέγειν F: νυνὶ λέγειν PMV 22 δὲ τούτω PV: δ’ επι τούτων F, M 23 θεοὶ FM: om. PV || διαβέβηκεν F: βέβηκέ τε PMV 24 αὑτῷ] Sch., αὐτῷ libri 26 ἔληγεν ὁ F: ἔληξεν τὸ P, MV
5. αὐτῷ: sc. in this author, or in this passage. Cp. [168] 1, [230] 29.
13. Dionysius’ general object is to show that there is a kind of intentional discord or clash in Pindar’s dithyramb.
17. ‘If each of the letters is uttered with its proper quality,’ viz. if we say ἐν χορόν and not ἐγ χορόν.
19. Ἀριστοφάνης: not, of course, the comic poet of Athens, but the grammarian of Byzantium.—From this passage, and from [278] 5 infra, it would appear that Aristophanes divided the text of Pindar and other lyric poets into metrical cola. Such cola are found in the recently-discovered Bacchylides papyrus (written probably in Dionysius’ own century—the first century B.C.), which is also the earliest manuscript in which accents are used.
21. ῥητόρων παῖδες: cp. [266] 8 ζωγράφων τε καὶ τορευτῶν παισίν, ‘the generation of painters and sculptors.’ So ζωγράφων παῖδες Plato Legg. 769 B, παῖδες ῥητόρων Luc. Anach. 19. The term will include pupils or apprentices, as well as sons: cp. Plato Rep. v. 467 A ἢ οὐκ ᾔσθησαι τὰ περὶ τὰς τέχνας, οἷον τοὺς τῶν κεραμέων παῖδας, ὡς πολὺν χρόνον διακονοῦντες θεωροῦσι πρὶν ἅπτεσθαι τοῦ κεραμεύειν; Earlier still we have the schools of the bards—the Ὁμηρίδαι or Ὁμήρου παῖδες, like ‘the sons of the prophets’ in the Old Testament. As used by later writers, the periphrasis with παῖδες may be compared with οἱ περί, οἱ ἀμφί (cp. note on [194] 20 supra).
26. “The passages relating to Ὀλύμπιοι ἐπί, and καὶ Ἀθηναίων (Thuc. i. 1), where the word in each case is said to end in ι, have led some persons to suppose that Dionysius pronounced οι and αι as real diphthongs of two vowels ending in ι. We know, however, that at this time αι was a single vowel ε prolonged, and that it was only called a diphthong because written with two letters, just as ea in each, great are often spoken of as a diphthong, in place of a digraph. We know also that ι subscript was not pronounced, and yet Dionysius speaks of ἀγλαΐᾳ as ending with ι. Consequently there is no need to suppose that οι was a real diphthong either. The language is merely orthographical. As to the amount of pause, we find similar combinations within the same Greek word: οι and ε in οἴεται, ν and δ in ἄνδρα, αι and α in Αἴας; while ν before τ is quite common as in ὄντων, and ν before π, κ becomes μ, γ, as in ἔμπορος, ἐγκρατής. Hence much of this criticism may be fanciful. But it is certain that there is a different feeling respecting the collision of letters which end and begin a word, and those which come together in the same word. Thus in French poetry open vowels are entirely forbidden. It is impossible to say ‘cela ira’ in serious French verse. Yet ‘haïr’ is quite admissible. Hence there may be some foundation for the preceding observations, which, however, like many others in the treatise, ride a theory very hard,” A. J. E. [The observations of the critic, himself, must obviously be accepted with considerable reserve: see, for example, the note on [230] 19 infra.]