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Porson's Law Extended

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

L. P. E. Paker
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle upon Tyne

Extract

Paul Maas extended the law still further: ‘The following rule applies to several metres which contain the rhythm : no word can end after a long anceps, except at the caesura in the middle of the line.’ He lists the types of metre to which the rule applies as the stichic iambic trimeters and trochaic tetrameters of the early iambographers and the Attic tragedians, the dactylo-epitrites of Bacchylides, the trochaic trimeters and dimeters of Alcman's Partheneion, the end (but not the beginning) of the iambic tetrameters of Sophocles' Ichneutae, and ‘certain rare metres, whose conformity to this rule may be due to accident’

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1966

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