The metre of Olympian II is still a matter of some difficulty. It has commonly been recognized as differing from Pindar's other metres, but many opinions have been held of its character. An understanding of it is, however, not merely essential to any general theory of Pindar's metric but vital to the textual criticism of the poem. Without some coherent theory we cannot say where ‘Responsionsfreiheiten’ are allowed and some important cruces remain unsolved. In recent years three theories have (...) been put forward. In his Res Metrica pp. 153–5 W. R. Hardie put forward the view that it is an example of a μτρον μονοεδές composed in Cretic verse. He holds that it is written in Cretics or their recognized metrical equivalent, Paeons. This kind of verse is known from the Delphic Paean to Apollo and the Paean of Limenius, and so far as the equivalence of Cretics and Paeons is concerned, there is no difficulty in it. But as Hardie himself admitted, his theory does not account for all the facts. It may be said to suffer from the following defects. n In Str. 1, 3, 5, 7 and Ep. 1, 4, 5 he has to assume the existence of an extra single syllable at the beginning of the line. Since all attempts to defend ‘Anacrusis’ are extremely doubtful, this can hardly be maintained here. 2. The clausula of the Strophe cannot be reduced to Cretics or Paeons. 3. He has to admit that in Ep. 2 and 3 there is ‘some Trochaic movement’ and presumably he would have to admit that in Str. 3 there is either an Iambic, or, as he would prefer, a Trochaic movement with Anacrusis in το πσα μεν. There is certainly some truth in Hardie's theory, but since it does not consider all the facts or co-ordinate them into a whole, it is not really satisfactory. (shrink)

Metre and meaning intertwine in manifold ways. The aim of this paper is to discuss the interplay between the metric and semantic structures in poetry in the light of the work of a Finnish poet, Ilpo Tiihonen. Throughout his career, which started in the 1970s, he has been one of the few Finnish contemporary poets to make constant use of metric structures and rhyme. The article also aims to shed some light on questions that arise when metrical poetry is (...) translated from one language into another, in this case from Finnish into English. (shrink)

The poetical corpus of 11th-c. Christopher Mitylenaios, such as it is found in manuscript No. Z α XXIX (13th c.) of the Biblioteca della Badia Greca in Grottaferrata, consists of 145 poems and 2856 verses. Of these carmina 123 are written in jambic trimeters, 18 in dactylic hexameters, three in elegiac distichs, and one in an Anacreontic metre. In the first part of the article outer metric is discussed; among other things one learns that the Anacreontic poem 75 forms (...) metrically a case of its own as it consists of eight strophes of four verses each, whereby the even strophes are followed by two so-called koukoullia, that the dactylic hexameters use 28 out of 32 possible schemes, thus contrasting with the Callimachean and Nonnian types, and that in the dodecasyllables the so-called Binnenschluss after the 5th foot is overwhelmingly present while in no less than 16 hexameters the poet uses a caesura after the 3rd foot. In the second part (inner metric) the numerous transgressions of metrical laws are investigated, as well as verse end and accentuation, and prosody; this last item concerns long and short vowels, diphthongs and dichrona, correptio Attica and hiatus. The text ends with a twofold appendix about caesurae. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Wittgenstein is correct when he says of the Standard Metre stick that we can neither say that it is or is not a metre in length – despite what our intuitions may tell us to the contrary. Specifically, the paper deals with Kripke's criticism of Wittgenstein's claim in Naming And Necessity and with Salmon's attempt to arbitrate between the two views. I conclude that, not only is Wittgenstein correct, but that both Kripke (...) and Salmon (and possibly the majority of philosophers) simply do not understand the concept of measurement. (shrink)

Perhaps the most obvious and, for us, the most surprising stylistic feature of Xenophanes’ surviving fragments is the fact that they were written in verse. Whilst this general feature has received much comment and explanation, a more fine-grained analysis of his use of metre has been somewhat lacking. There are at least two factors which have contributed to this lack: first, the primarily philosophical focus of most modern scholarship on Xenophanes, which has been more interested in content than form; (...) and second, the dominance of New Historicism in archaic Greek literary scholarship of recent decades, which, with its emphasis on the ideological force and social role of early Greek hexameter and elegy, has also tended to eschew an analysis of precise formal features. When we do find detailed discussion of metre, it tends to be in the service of uncovering the composition-processes of poets, rather than elucidating the effects they aimed to generate. Consequently, the present contribution aims to fill a gap in Xenophanean scholarship by enriching our appreciation of his sometimes-maligned metrical artistry (M.L. West described him and Euenus as ‘the clumsiest versifiers’ out of the elegists and iambicists). It thus joins two trends in recent Greek literary scholarship: the renewed attempt to appreciate archaic texts as literature – rather than merely as documents for social history or historical anthropology; and the exploration of the significance of non-semantic formal features, which can convey as much ideological content as the claims, narratives and imagery of the text. (shrink)

An. 19 has a metrical form which is quite peculiar and anomalous if compared either with hemiambics or with anaclastic ionic dimeters, i.e. the metres of all the other Anacreontea.

In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein argues that we can neither say of the standard One Metre in Paris that it is a single metred length, nor that it is not. Kripke's reply to the puzzle is well known: the sentence expressing the assertion that the standard One Metre is one metre in length (at time t0) is a true, a priori and contingent sentence. In this paper, I would like to show the nature of the intuition that runs (...) behind Kripke's reply to the puzzle, and why, in the final analysis, it is not satisfactory, with respect to the point made by Wittgenstein. In addition, I will show that the case of the One Metre in Paris exemplifies the radical break Wittgenstein makes with traditional concepts of meaning. I then draw a general lesson that shows that the structure of concepts and functions (measures) in Wittgenstein is given by the idea of an arbitrary choice of "an object of comparison." Concepts and functions (measures) are materialised and internalised in the form of objects that are arbitrarily sampled from a sample space of same logical-type objects. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to protest against the opinion that Catullus' Elegiacs are careless and uncouth. It will be shown that in many details his metre resembles that of the Augustan Elegists, and then it will be argued that some of the points in which Catullus differs from the Augustans are signs not of incompetence or indifference but of a deliberate adjustment of metre to content.

The latest elaborate work on the Saturnian goes back definitely to the view that the metre is quantitative in character, not accentual, or halfaccentual. This theory then, which is at the same time the oldest, may at present be considered to hold the field, and the burden of proof will presumably lie on those who advocate a counter-theory. In putting forward such a theory I shall make two, as I think, justifiable assumptions: that that theory should be accounted the (...) best which throws most light on the origin of the Saturnian, and that the Saturnian is an exceedingly primitive metre, and that an explanation of a primitive metre need not be very complicated to be intelligible. (shrink)

Maximilian Voloshin turned to classical metres after he moved to Crimea that in his consciousness had associations with Hellas. Also, his friendship with Vyacheslav Ivanov became an important stimulus. Initially, Voloshin used the same metres that can be found in Ivanov’s collection of poems Кормчие звезды. However, their form shows that Voloshin was well familiar with classical poetry.

In 1798, the National Institute and the French minister of foreign relations invited European countries to send delegations of science practitioners to Paris to finalise the values of the metre and the kilogram. This article reads the event as part of a wider attempt to establish the political relevance of international scientific consensus and include scientific exchanges in the diplomatic culture of post-revolutionary Europe. At the end of the 18th century, the scope and methods of both the sciences and (...) diplomacy were being renegotiated. French academicians hoped that the new system of weights and measures would at once facilitate international scientific exchanges and advertise that new authority should be politically invested in savants. During the Directory, part of the political elite hoped to stabilise the Revolution and forge an international order where the Republic could coexist with old regime monarchies. This entailed focusing diplomatic negotiations on commercial development, something a shared metrological system could foster. The conference was the product of the alliance between the two groups. Foreign responses to the project reveal the novelty of the association between scientific discussions and diplomatic negotiations. Furthermore, European savants and governments did not agree that metrological reforms fell primarily under the expertise of science practitioners, rather than under that of trading actors or administrators. The conference did not produce consensus on the suitability of the metric system or on the feasibility of programmes for the unification of weights and measures. It was more successful at promoting precision and rationality as key parameters to assess metrological systems and science practitioners as main experts in the matter. (shrink)

In his explorations of time-consciousness, Edmund Husserl often draws upon the examples of a musical tone or melody to describe temporal experience. Yet, Husserl's arguments are not about music per se, and he never engages with the internal structures and dynamics of music. More specifically, Husserl does not discuss rhythm and metre, the principal temporal modalities of music. Nonetheless, Husserl's thoughts on time-consciousness have a direct bearing on the perception of musical metre, and particularly so with respect to (...) Christopher Hasty's ideas concerning metric projection. Hasty grounds his ideas on metric projection on the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead: my view is that he is better served by Husserl. This is because Husserl's understanding of the interrelationship between 'temporal fading' and 'temporal duration' enables us to account for the sense of the unfolding realization of a specific duration, a sense that is essential to the capacity to project musical metre. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that context sensitivity is crucial for a proper exegesis of Wittgenstein's remark that one can say of the standard metre rod neither that it is one metre long nor that it is not one metre long. I discuss cases in which we can meaningfully assert that the rod in question is one metre long and explain why these cases do not conflict with Wittgenstein's insight. I analyse Pollock's recent defence of Wittgenstein's (...) remark, as well as Kripke's objections to it, and show that, while their commentaries are helpful, blindness to context renders them unsatisfactory. (shrink)

The article introduces the results of a semantic analysis of Uku Masing’s (1909–1985) early poetry (1926–1943). The metres analyzed are syllabic-accentual trochaic tetrameter, trochaic pentameter, iambic pentameter and dactylic, logaoedic and polymetric hexameters. In each text the textual communicative perspective as well as motifs and tropes of each verse line were examined. The semantic differences and colourings of the metres are most evident in the way of expression, in the viewpoint.

Paragraph 50 of Wittgenstein'sPhilosophical Investigationsfamously says that there is one thing of which one can neither state that it is 1 m long nor that it isn't: the standard metre in Paris. Consensus appears to be that (1) exegetically speaking, Wittgenstein affirms this claim, and (2) systematically, whether or not one agrees with it, the practice of using a material artefact as a measurement standard has important philosophical consequences. In this paper, in contrast, we show that (1') Wittgenstein does (...) not affirm the standard metre claim and (2') historical facts about material length standards do not warrant deeper philosophical conclusions. References to material measurement standards in the literature gravely distort the actual metrological practices of developing and using such standards. (shrink)

On Virgil's statement that in honour of Bacchus ‘Ausonii … coloni versibus incomptis ludunt’, Servius remarks: ‘id est, carminibus Saturnio metro compositis, quod ad rhythmum solum vulgares componere consuerunt….’Obviously Servius is drawing a distinction between the Saturnian and other metres, as well as between the ordinary man and the man of letters. The unlettered compose their verses in the Saturnian metre, which is founded on rhythmus alone; the literary circles write theirs on some other basis.

The third volume in West's Hellenica trilogy is devoted to philosophy, and music and metre; however, it also contains essays on other literary texts and topics.

L’ouvrage que publie Valérie Beaudouin, tiré de sa thèse soutenue en 2000, se signale par de nombreuses qualités, parmi lesquelles on distinguera l’ampleur de la matière étudiée, l’originalité de la démarche et des méthodes, l’intérêt neuf et majeur de maints résultats, le renouvellement méthodologique qu’il apporte dans le domaine de la métrique française. L’auteur s’est proposé de décrire le vers du théâtre classique, en s’appuyant sur un corpus constitué de la totalité des pièces de Cornei...

Mr. Shewring's recent articles on ‘Prose-rhythm and the Comparative Method’ are gratifying in that they betoken a growing interest in the problems of a comparatively modern and fascinating study, and also an appreciation of the methods followed by different investigators. His estimate, however, of De Groot's services seems to me somewhat extravagant; his estimate of Zielinski's contributions unduly belittling ; while his references to my own work cause me to doubt whether he has grasped even the main contention of my (...) book. I shall deal with all these points presently. (shrink)

Readers of Phaedrus will have noticed that the rhythm of III. Ep. 34, Palam muttire plebeio piaculum est is unique. Nowhere else does he admit a molossus-word before the final metron of the iambic senarius, and he only admits it here because he is quoting a line from the Telephus of Ennius. Since a scholar whose opinion deserves respect proposes to introduce this rhythm into a reconstruction of a fragment of Laberius it seems worth while to examine its history in (...) order to see how and why it was used, before it was finally banned. For Seneca, like Phaedrus, banns it entirely. The question has already been considered by Klotz, Grundzüge Altrömischer Metrik, pp. 324 sqq.; W. M. Lindsay, Captiui , p. 66; Havet, Métrique, 276 ; and by T. Hingst in his inaugural dissertation De Spondeis et Anapaestis in antepaenultimo pede uersuum generis duplicis Latinorum, Leipzig, 1904. (shrink)

Nathan Salmon; XII*—How to Measure the Standard Metre, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 88, Issue 1, 1 June 1988, Pages 193–218.

In a notorious passage from his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein writes that one can state of the standard metre neither that it is one metre long, nor that it is not one metre long. While many commentators have rejected this claim, it has been commonly assumed that Wittgenstein himself endorsed it. In a recently published article, Thomas Müller not only provides a novel argument against Wittgenstein's claim about the standard metre but also claims that Wittgenstein did not (...) actually endorse that claim. In this paper, I argue that Müller's exegetical thesis is false and that his novel argument against Wittgenstein's claim about the standard metre is unsound. (shrink)