Institutio Oratoria

Equal care must however be taken to avoid any phrase of a definitely metrical character, such as the following passage from Sallust: Falso queritur de natura sua. [*](Jug. I. The human race complains of its own nature without reason. Last five feet of iambic trimeter! ) For although the language of prose is bound by certain laws, it should appear to be free. None the less Plato, despite the care which he devotes to his rhythm, has not succeeded in avoiding this fault at

where we are met at the very outset with the opening of a hexameter, which is followed by a colon which can be scanned as an Anacreontic, or if you like, as a trimeter, while it is also possible to form what the Greeks call a πενθημιμερὲς (that is a portion of the hexameter composed of two feet and a part of a third): and all these instances occur within the space of three lines. Again Thucydides has allowed to slip from his pen a phrase of the most effeminate rhythm in ὑπὲρ ἥμισυ Κᾶρες ἐφάνησαν [*]( I, 8. Quintilian probably treats this as Sotadean or reminiscent of Sotadean rhythm. )

But, having stated that all prose rhythm consists of feet, I must say something on these as well. Different names are given to these feet, and it is necessary to determine what we shall call each of them. For my part I propose to follow Cicero [*](Or. ch. lxiv. 7. ) (for he himself followed the most eminent Greek authorities), with this exception, that in my opinion a foot is never more than three syllables long, whereas Cicero includes the paean [*]( For paean see § 96. The two varieties with which Quintilian is concerned are– u u u and u u u –. ) and the dochmiac (u – – u –), of which the former has four and the latter as many as five syllables.

He does not, however, conceal the fact that some regard these as rhythms rather than feet: and they are right in so doing, since whatever is longer than three syllables involves more than one foot. Since then there are four feet which consist of two syllables, and eight composed of three, I shall call them by the following names: two long syllables make a spondee; the pyrrhic or pariambus, as some call it, is composed of two shorts; the iambus of a short followed by a long; its opposite, that is a long followed by a short, is a choreus, for I prefer that term to the name of trochee which is given it by others.

Of

whereas, if the long syllables come first the foot is called a palimbacchius. Three shorts make a trochee, although those who give that name to the choreus call it a tribrach: three longs make a molossus.

Every one of these feet is employed in prose, but those which take a greater time to utter and derive a certain stability from the length of their syllables produce a weightier style, short syllables being best adapted for a nimble and rapid style. Both types are useful in their proper place: for weight and slowness are rightly condemned in passages where speed is required, as are jerkiness and excessive speed in passages which call for weight.

It may also be important to remark that there are degrees of length in long syllables and of shortness in short. Consequently, although syllables may be thought never to involve more than two time-beats or less than one, and although for that reason in metre all shorts and all longs are regarded as equal to other shorts and longs, they none the less possess some undefinable and secret quality, which makes some seem longer and others shorter than the normal. Verse, on the other hand, has its own peculiar features, and consequently some syllables may be either long or short.

Indeed, since strict law allows a vowel to be long or short, as the case may be, when it stands alone, no less than when one or

For both a and gres are short, but the latter lengthens the former, thereby transferring to it something of its own time-length. But how can it do this, unless it possesses greater length than is the portion of the shortest syllables, to which it would itself belong if the consonants st were removed? As it is, it lends one time-length to the preceding syllable, and subtracts one from that which follows. [*]( This theory involves the allotment of a time-value to consonants: gres gives the time-value of gr to a, and itself borrows an equivalent time-value from st. This view is more explicitly expressed by the fifth-century grammarian Pompeius (112. 26k), who allots the value of half a time-length to each consonant. Therefore to ă (= one time-length) are added the two half time-lengths represented by gr (see Lindsay, Lat. Language, p. 129). ) Thus two syllables which are naturally short have their time-value doubled by position.

I am, however, surprised that scholars of the highest learning should have held the view that some feet should be specially selected and others condemned for the purposes of prose, as if there were any foot which must not inevitably be found in prose. Ephorus may express a preference for the paean (which was discovered by Thrasymachus and approved by Aristotle) and for the dactyl also, on the ground that both these feet provide a happy mixture of long and short; and may avoid the spondee and the trochee,