Institutio Oratoria

But the motions of the body also have their own appropriate rhythms, while the musical theory of rhythm determines the value of metrical feet no less for dancing than for tunes. Again, do we not adapt our voice and gesture to the nature of the themes on which

we are speaking? There is, therefore, all the less reason for wonder that the same is true of the feet employed in prose, since it is natural that what is sublime should have a stately stride, that what is gentle should seem to be led along, that what is violent should seem to run and what is tender to flow.

Consequently, where necessary, we must borrow the pompous effect produced by the spondees and iambi which compose the greater portion of the rhythms of tragedy, as in the line,

1. En, impero Argis, sceptra mi liquit Pelops.

From an unknown tragedian. [*](Lo, I am lord at Argos, where to me I Pelops the sceptre left.)

But the comic senarius, styled trochaic, contains a number of pyrrhics and trochees, which others call tribrachs, but loses in dignity what it gains in speed,