Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

as in the case of dactylic rhythm, where one long syllable balances two short, (there are it is true other feet of which this statement is equally true, but the title of dactylic has been currently applied to all, [*]( For purely rhythmical purposes the term dactyl is arbitrarily used by the rhetoricians to include anapaests as well. See below. ) while even boys are well aware that a long syllable is equivalent to two beats and a short to one) or it may consist of feet in which one portion is half as long again as the other, as is the case with paeanic rhythm (a paean being composed of one long followed by three shorts, three shorts followed by one long or with any other arrangement preserving the proportion of three beats to two) or finally one part of the foot may be twice the length of the other, as in the case of the iambus, which is composed of a short followed by a long, or of the choreus consisting of a long followed by a short.

These feet are also employed by metre, but with this difference, that in rhythm it does not matter whether the two shorts of the dactyl precede or

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follow the long; for rhythm merely takes into account the measurement of the time, that is to say, it insists on the time taken from its rise to its fall being the same. The measure of verse on the other hand is quite different; the anapaest (u u _) or spondee (_ _) cannot be substituted at will for the dactyl, nor is it a matter of indifference whether the paean begins or ends with short syllables.

Further, the laws of metre not merely refuse the substitution of one foot for another, but will not even admit the arbitrary substitution of any dactyl or spondee for any other dactyl or spondee. For example, in the line

  1. Panditur snterea domus omnipotentis Olympi
Aen. x. 1. [*](Meanwhile Olympus' halls omnipotent / Are wide unbarred.)
the alteration of the order of the dactyls would destroy the verse.

There are also the following differences, that rhythm has unlimited space over which it may range, whereas the spaces of metre are confined, and that, whereas metre has certain definite cadences, rhythm may run on as it commenced until it reaches the point of μεταβολή, or transition to another type of rhythm: further, metre is concerned with words alone, while rhythm extends also to the motion of the body.

Again rhythm more readily admits of rests [*](i.e. in the musical sense. ) although they are found in metre as well. Greater license is, however, admitted when the time is measured by the beat of the feet or fingers, [*](i.e. in musio. ) and the intervals are distinguished by certain symbols indicating the number of shorts contained within a given space: hence we speak of four or five time ( τετράσημοι, or πεντάσημοι ) and others longer still, the Greek σημεῖον indicating a single beat.

In prose the rhythm should be more definite and

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obvious to all. Consequently, it depends on feet, by which I mean metrical feet, which occur in oratory to such an extent that we often let slip verses of every kind without being conscious of the fact, while everything written in prose can be shown by analysis to consist of short lines of verse of certain kinds or sections of the same.

For example, I have come across tiresome grammarians who attempted to force prose into definite metres, as though it were a species of lyric poetry. Cicero, [*]( See Or. xx. 67, sqq. ) indeed, frequently asserts that the whole art of prose-structure consists in rhythm and is consequently censured by some critics on the ground that he would fetter our style by the laws of rhythm.