The Lyric Metres of Euripidean Drama - Universidade de Coimbra

Introduction
καλά: the Colonus song (OC 668-80~681-93). Even Demetrius’ beautifying
nightingale bursts into song at 670-3.
The parodos of Phoenissae and the first stasimon of Bacchae also offer
significant information on the aesthetic of aeolo-choriambic in Euripides’
later lyric style. At Ph. 202~214 ff., we sense a marked difference in poetic
tone when we pass from beautifying imagery of the first strophic pair — the
exotic Phoenician island in the eastern Aegean; Parnassus covered in snow;
the Sicilian zephyr’s κάλλιcτον κελάδημα; the fountain of Castalia; the
typically Euripidean lyric wish to be elsewhere, 38 etc. — to the urgent, doomladen
νῦν δέ μοι πρὸ τειχέων | θούριοc μολὼν Ἄρηc | αἷμα δάιον φλέγει |
τᾶιδ’, ὃ μὴ τύχοι, πόλει (239-42). The shift is not only in poetic tone and
content. In metrical terms, the transition is equally sharp: the opulent lyric
imagery of the first strophic pair and epode is aeolo-choriambic at its most
‘hypnotic’ (cf. West 1982: 115); the anguished description of the besieged city
is in syncopated trochaic. In the first stasimon of Bacchae, the first strophic pair
— where the chorus has dramatically and even theologically relevant things
to say on important topics such as Ὁcία, ὕβριc, ἡcυχίαc βίοτοc, τὸ φρονεῖν,
τὸ cοφὸν δ’ οὐ cοφία and the like — is in ‘liturgical’ ionics; but the fanciful
dream-wish ἱκοίμαν ποτὶ Κύπρον is expressed in aeolic rhythm. 39
1.3. Note on Rhesus and Iphigenia at Aulis
Fraenkel’s magisterial review of Ritchie’s Authenticity of the Rhesus of
Euripides, more than anything else written in the past on the play, succeeded
in the opinion of most scholars in settling the ‘Rhesus question’ and it has since
been generally accepted that the play was written (probably in the 4th century)
by someone whose spoken trimeters oddly evoke Euripides’ restraint with
regard to resolution in the 430’s and at the same time his much later tolerance of
interlinear hiatus, features that are mutually exclusive if they are to be taken as
genuinely Euripidean. 40 The play does seem, on all accounts, too derivative to be
by Euripides. Fries puts it in a nutshell: ‘the greatest stylistic difference between
Rhesus and the rest of surviving tragedy lies in the manner and degree to which
it relies on other drama, epic and lyric poetry, ranging from more or less obvious
adaptations of scenes to scattered echoes of unusual words and phrases’ (2010:
346).
38 On which see Padel (1974) 227-41.
39 Seen in this light, Cassandra’s ‘hymeneal’ glyconics in Troades (cf. 314~331, 322~338,
323~339) — a play otherwise practically devoid of aeolic — take on an unexpectedly poignant,
bitter-sweet quality.
40 Mastronarde (2010: 26 n. 69) and Liapis (comm. Rh., pp. lxxi ff.) also agree that the play
was written in the 4th century.
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