174

7. Two couplets called Pythiambic, from the name Пúdios,
given to the Hexameter as the metre of the Delphic oracles.

(1) The Dactylic Hexameter, followed by an Iambic
Dimeter, Epod. 14, 15.

(2) The Dactylic Hexameter, followed by an Iambic
Trimeter, Epod. 16.

The Iambic verse in this metre consists entirely of purc
lambics.

8. A couplet known as the Greater Sapphic, from the likeness
of the rhythm of both verses to the Common Sapphic verse.
The first line (which goes by the name of Aristophanes) is
a Sapphic without the initial trochees. The second is a Sap-
phic, with a choriambus inserted before the dactyl:—

The metre is described by Hephaestion, who takes as his
type an Ode of Alcaeus, of which the first line, which he quotes,
seems as if it may have been the original of Horace's Ode (sce
Introd. to Od. 3. 12). It is not, he says, as it may easily be
taken to be, an unbroken succession of similar feet, but broken
into periods of ten feet each. Bentley pointed out that Horace's
Ode consists of forty feet, i.e. four such periods, and held that
the arrangement in lines, which many editors debate, was
merely a necessity of the writer or printer, and not to be
elevated into a law of the metre.

§ 6. A few words may be added on what is called by some
editors Meineke's canon.' He noticed that, with two excep-
tions, all the Odes' of Horace contain a number of lines which
is a multiple of four. Of these, 3. 12 has just been discussed.
It has been arranged by some persons in stanzas of four lines
(scc Excurs. on it in Orelli's edition); but it might fairly be
contended, either that the nature of the metre consisting not of
verses, but of feet, exempted it from the common category, or
that, inasmuch as it consists of four periods of ten feet each, it
complies with the same conditions as other Odes. The other
It so
exception is Od. 4. 8, which contains thirty-four verses.
happens that this Ode already lay under some suspicion, on
account of the historical difficulty of v. 172. On these facts
Meineke laid down the general law that all the Odes conformed
to the type of the Alcaic, Sapphic, and third, fourth, and fifth
Asclepiad metres, and were to be broken into four-line stanzas.
Od. 4. 8 was to be rectified by the necessary amount of excision,
or by the supposition of some lines having fallen out. It will
be seen, on examination, that the difficulties of 4. 8. 17 have
been exaggerated; and, at any rate, in the absence of any indi-
cation of such a quaternary division, either in the pauses of
the Odes themselves, or in the grammatical and metrical
writers (who are usually keen-eyed for 'laws' in the greater
poets), the chief recent editors have not thought it necessary to
alter the Ode in obedience to the canon. Steiner pointed out
that, whatever may have been the case with the Odes which
are composed in couplets, there are but five other Odes besides
4. 8 (omitting, again, 3. 12) which are μovóorixa, or of uniform
metre, and that this is too small an area for such an important
induction.

The law is not applied to the Epodes, the very name of which pro-
bably implied an arrangement in couplets rather than four-line stanzas,
Bentley had complained of the same line, on account of the metrical
irregularity of the caesura; see above, § 1.