The Lyric Metres of Euripidean Drama - Universidade de Coimbra

Introduction
(Syllaba) breuis in (elemento) longo is a regular feature of Greek lyric poetry:
when a position which the metrical scheme requires to be long is occupied by
a short syllable at period-end, this short syllable is described as breuis in longo.
Some metricians (e.g. West, Willink) have maintained that only an open short
syllable at period-end can be named breuis in longo, because ‘closed syllables
such as –ον at period-end are long by definition’. 6 Barrett’s posthumous
Collected Papers (2007: 175-6) show him as also having come to this conclusion
sometime after 1982 (since he refers elsewhere in the same paper to West’s
Greek Metre); however, in his 1965 commentary on Hippolytus he had been
quite happy to classify Hi. 1125 (ἄλλαν ἐπ’ αἶαν ἱέμενον) as ending in breuis
in longo (comm. Hi., p. 369) and on p. 370 to speak of ‘relatively mild breuis in
longo’ (μᾶτερ) as opposed to ‘very harsh breuis in longo’ (πότμον). West’s and
Barrett’s (later) position, mainly concerning Pindar, was followed by Finglass
in his commentary on Pythian 11 (2007: 47 ff.), but not, it seems, by Itsumi in
his book on Pindaric metre (2009: 441-2), who lists instances of breuis in longo
which, on closer inspection, turn out to contain periods ending in short-vowel
closed syllables followed by a word beginning with a vowel or a diphthong in
the next line (e.g. κεκαδμένον, ἕλεν and πόρcιον ending line 5 – in its various
repetitions – of the epode in Olympian 1).
Barrett’s main argument for maintaining that syllables containing short
vowels ending in –ν were felt by Pindar to be long and not short rests on the
observation that Pindar studiously avoids the phenomenon ‘short open vowel
at verse end’. Finglass also draws attention to the fact that, twice in Pindar (Ol.
6. 77; P. 3. 6), a ‘short-vowel final-word syllable, ending in sigma and followed
by a word beginning in a vowel, is scanned as long within a period’ (2007: 49). 7
However, what is valid for Pindar does not necessarily have to be valid
for Euripides. On the one hand, I have been unable to find an example in
Euripides of a short-vowel final syllable ending in a consonant and followed
by a word beginning with a vowel or diphthong that is to be scanned as long
within a lyric period (were that a valid licence, Tr. 564 καράτομοc ἐρημία
might be scanned ∪ — ∪ — ∪ — ∪ — instead of ∪ — ∪∪ ∪ — ∪ —,
thus avoiding the freak bacchiac with resolved long, for which there is no
ὁ δὲ χρυcὸc αἰθόμενον πῦρ gives the sequence gl + ph ||, common in dramatic lyric (the so
called ‘priapean’). But it is only at its seventh repetition (str. 4) that the occurrence of breuis in
longo at cύνευνον || B ἔτεκε tells us that the opening gl + ph is in fact a self-contained period.
This shows that, when working with the at best two repetitions of dramatic lyric, understanding
of the phrasing has often to rely more on the flair and intuition of the metrician than on proof.
6 So Willink (ed. Or., p. xxi), who appeals to West (1982: 8; cf. 61). The opposite view
had already been expressed by Dale (1969: 191 n. 1) and Hill (1974). Hill’s intelligent and
illuminating article deserves to be better known.
7 For short vowels both open and closed scanned long within a period in Bacchylides, see
Hutchinson (2001: 348) and Maehler’s Leiden comm. (Vol. I/1), p. 14.
21