The Lyric Metres of Euripidean Drama - Universidade de Coimbra

Parte I
necessarily possessed crucial knowledge that we do not. The evidence points
rather in the opposite direction’ (Parker 1997: 95; see further Parker 2001,
Itsumi 2007 and Battezzato’s ideally balanced account of the problems in
Battezzato 2008 and 2009b: 14-18).
This leaves us with a dilemma. On the one hand, every Greek scholar
today would agree (I hope) that it would be pointless to return to the original
pre-Hellenistic format and simply print the lyrics of tragedy or comedy as
prose: for ‘colometry’ (whatever its faults) does help the reader understand
the rhythm of what (s)he is reading. Parker herself, in her edition of Alcestis
(2007), neither prints the lyrics as prose nor in Boeckh-style Pindaric periods,
but continues to divide them into cola. Finglass’s innovative colometry in his
brilliant Cambridge editions of Sophocles’ Electra (2007) and Ajax (2011) is
colometry none the less. But on the other hand, acceptance that the stasima
and other lyrics of tragedy are best read κεκωλιcμένα raises the uexata quaestio:
‘what is a colon?’
For the purpose of this book, ‘colon’ is defined quite simply as anything
that is printed as a lyric line in West’s Aeschylus, Lloyd-Jones and Wilson’s
Sophocles, Diggle’s Euripides and Wilson’s Aristophanes, because the basic
rule of my study was to observe, describe and interpret (uncoloured by any
axe-grinding of my own) the very same phenomena that present themselves to
any other reader of the standard editions of Greek drama. But that, of course,
does not answer the question. What is a colon?
Admittedly, an answer that would allow consensus of opinion is difficult
to find. But some things seem certain. For instance a ‘glyconic’ (whatever
Euripides himself might have named it) is indoubtedly a real colon, because
even when there is a sequence of two or three of them and even when one
or more of them overlap into the following line it is a clearly defined length:
oo — ∪ ∪ — ∪ —. The same applies to several other cola, which (apart from
the issue of how best to name or classify them) are indisputably real lengths.
But in identifying and labelling cola in strings of repeated metra (anapaests,
dochmiacs, etc.), there is good reason to be sceptical of ‘cola’ created by the
traditional divisions. If we must carry on using labels such as ‘2δ’ or ‘2 an’, it is
best to make it clear at the outset that they are only shorthand for ‘δ δ’ or ‘an
an’: there is probably no such thing as dochmiac or anapaestic ‘dimeters’ (see
West 1977).
With regard to notation and terminology, in notating nameless cola I have
refrained from introducing coinages of my own and have instead culled what
seemed most useful from Maas’ ‘D/e’ and Dale’s ‘ds’. Generally, I have been
happy to call cola by their familiar names, taking comfort in Dale’s words: ‘with
all the defects of the received terminology, it is both practical and desirable to
use it...’ (1969: 45). Past attempts to ban traditional nomenclature have not
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