He struck as he stood hard by, and the axe through the sinews shore
Of the neck.[117]
Surely a man who is about to drive his axe into a bull’s sinews should take his stand near it first!”
Still further: I imagined it the correct thing to put my substantives before my adjectives, appellatives before substantives, pronouns before appellatives; and with verbs, to be very careful that primary should precede secondary forms, and indicatives infinitives,—and so on. But trial invariably wrecked these views and revealed their utter worthlessness. At one time charm and beauty of composition did result from these and similar collocations,—at other times from collocations not of this sort but the opposite. And so for these reasons I abandoned all such speculations as the above. Nor is it for any serious value it
3 ἆλτο P 5 ἔρριψεν P 7 εἴ γε μὴ F: εἰ PM || καὶ ἄλλα PMV: οὐχ * F1: ἄλλα suprascr. F2 || ἦν πολλὰ F: πολλὰ ἦν PMa || οὕτως FP1 8 ἢ FV: ἦ M: ἦν P 9 πλῆξε δ’ F: πλῆξεν PMV: κόψε δ’ Hom. || ἣν λίπε] κάλλιπε P || κιών libri 14 προσῆκεν F: προσήκει PMV 16 τούτοις καὶ MVs || ἠξίου P 18 δὲ PMV || ἀντωνομασίας PF2M2: ὠνομασίας M1: ἀντωνυμίας F1V || ῥήμασιν P 19 ἐγκεκλιμένων PMV 20 ἀπαρεμφατικὰ PV || παρεμφατικῶν P 21 διεσάλευσεν MV 22 ἀπέφαινεν P: ἀπέφηνε MV 23 τότε δ’ F: τοτὲ δὲ PV: τὸ δὲ M 24 ἀλλ’] μηδ’ F || τοιαύτης F: om. PMV 25 δὲ PMV
1. In Homer αὖ ἔρυσαν should probably be printed as one word, αὐέρυσαν. Cp. note on [71] 21 supra.
7. All this passage is in close correspondence with Quintil. ix. 4. 24, as quoted in the note on [98] 7 supra.
9. Homer’s line actually begins with κόψε δ’ ἀνασχόμενος. Here Dionysius gives πλῆξε δ’ ἀνασχόμενος, while in Antiqq. Rom. vii. 62 he has κόψε δ’ ἀπαρχόμενος. In both cases he is, doubtless, quoting from memory.
10. The order actually adopted by Homer in these passages is that which the rhetoricians describe as πρωθύστερον, ὕστερον πρότερον, ὑστερολογία.
16. ἠξίουν τὰ μὲν ὀνοματικὰ προτάττειν τῶν ἐπιθέτων: the Greek adjective (unless emphatic) is usually placed after the noun. But it could easily be shown from the varying usage of the modern European nations that there is no ‘law of nature,’ one way or the other, on the subject. In general, however, these logical notions of grammatical order which Dionysius felt himself prompted to reject on behalf of Greek (which is synthetic in character) tally with the actual practice of the modern analytical languages.