Institutio Oratoria

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,

condemning the one as too slow and the other as too rapid; Aristotle [*](Rhet. iii. 8. ) may regard the heroic foot, which is another name for the dactyl, as too dignified and the iambus as too commonplace, and may damn the trochee as too

but for all they say, these feet will force themselves upon them against their will, and it will not always be possible for them to employ the dactyl or their beloved paean, which they select for special praise because it so rarely forms part of a verse rhythm. It is not, however, the words which cause some feet to be of more common occurrence than others; for the words cannot be increased or diminished in bulk, nor yet can they, like the notes in music, be made short or long at will; everything depends on transposition and arrangement.