is the beginning of Plato's R. metered?

[Tugodum]

Leo Strauss says so: "Let us see how it begins. It begins in this way, and here I give you a literal translation. “Down I went yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, in order to pray to the goddess; and at the same time desiring to see the festival and how they will do it, since they arrange it now for the first time.” The beginning incidentally is metrical. It begins like a drama, like a tragedy or comedy."
I know next to nothing about Greek meter and have no energy at this point for studying it; still I want to get as much as possible out of Plato's text. So I would be grateful should anyone tell me whether LS is correct on this point and, if so, what exactly the meter here is and how the text is to be arranged in accordance with it. Thanks in advance.
Κατέβην χθὲς εἰς Πειραιᾶ μετὰ Γλαύκωνος τοῦ Ἀρίστωνος προσευξόμενός τε τῇ θεῷ καὶ ἅμα τὴν ἑορτὴν βουλόμενος θεάσασθαι τίνα τρόπον ποιήσουσιν ἅτε νῦν πρῶτον ἄγοντες.

[Barry Hofstetter]

This really sounds like a question for MWH, but I find it interesting that the commentaries I have access to (both of them!) mention no such thing. It strikes me that if true, it would have been noticed and discussed fairly early on. Not definitive proof of course.

[jeidsath]

I think that "metrical" was perhaps just unfortunate word choice in a lecture (which this is from). He was making a point about its dramatic structure.

But maybe it's a (very) garbled echo of this story from Dionysius:

πᾶσι γὰρ δήπου τοῖς φιλολόγοις γνώριμα τὰ περὶ τῆς φιλοπονίας τἀνδρὸς ἱστορούμενα τά τε ἄλλα καὶ δὴ καὶ τὰ περὶ τὴν δέλτον, ἣν τελευτήσαντος αὐτοῦ λέγουσιν εὑρεθῆναι ποικίλως μετακειμένην τὴν ἀρχὴν τῆς Πολιτείας ἔχουσαν τήνδε ῾Κατέβην χθὲς εἰς Πειραιᾶ μετὰ Γλαύκωνος τοῦ Ἀρίστωνος.᾿

(IMO, the story originated from someone trying to explain manuscript variation in the Republic.)

[mwh]

It’s not in meter, it’s prose. Joel quotes the well-known anecdote that will lie at the bottom of Strauss’s distortive remark: “… the tablet that they say was found at his death with the beginning of the Republic variously transposed,” suggesting that Plato tried out different arrangements of the opening words before settling on the transmitted one. (There was never any manuscript variation.) It’s not to be taken as literally true, and it doesn't even claim to be, but it reflects admiration for Plato’s artistry and readers’ sensitivity in general to word order and rhythm in prose—something we modern readers tend not to be adequately attuned to.

Κατέβην | χθὲς | εἰς-Πειραιᾶ | μετὰ-Γλαύκωνος-τοῦαρίστωνος

Four units, the verb and three progressively longer adverbials. You can put them in any order you like and they’ll still mean roughly the same thing but with different nuance in each case. 24 possible permutations, if my arithmetic is correct (4x3x2), every one of them good Greek. Which one is best? Plato put the verb up front, a marked choice in Greek.
As to meter, κατέβην is an anapest (u u —), followed by an iamb (χθὲς εἰς, u —) and three more long syllables, then another anapest, and so on. It does have some affinity with the opening of a tragedy (an anapestic parodos) but not enough to make it sound much like verse, and it's unlikely that Plato was influenced by metrical considerations.

[Tugodum]

Thanks a lot!

[mwh]

Actually there’s a little more to it. Quintilian mentions the same tale (8.6.64, on “those four words” i.e. κατέβην χθὲς εἰς Πειραιᾶ) and interprets it in terms of rhythmicality.
"nec aliud potest sermonem facere numerosum quam opportuna ordinis per mutatio; neque alio ceris Platonis inventa sunt quattuor illa verba, quibus id illo pulcherrimo operum id Piraeeum se descendisse significat, plurimis modis scripta"
(“And the only way to make prose rhythmical [“numerosus”] is by artistic switching around [opportuna permutatio] of the word order; …”).
Plato was renowned for the artistry and mellifluousness of his prose. Aristotle is even reported as saying that his style was inbetween poetry and prose (Diog.Laert. 3.37).

Perhaps the most alluring thing about Plato’s dialogues is the beauty of the writing. It would be interesting to have Aristotle’s.

[Tugodum]

1. Very interesting! I'm wondering what it is precisely that makes these 4 words (in this order) sound "rhythmically". I am used to thinking of rhythmicality as implying a repetition of some pattern, which I do not see here.
2. "It would be interesting to have Aristotle’s."--Is the now prevailing view that what we have under Aristotle's name was not written by him?

[jeidsath]

None of Aristotle's dialogues survived. Only treatises. Here's a recent reconstruction of the Protrepticus:

http://blog.protrepticus.info/2015/01/n ... -text.html

[Tugodum]

OIC. Thanks, Joel.

[Tugodum]

Someone suggested to me that "numerosum" here might be refering to the exponential telescoping of the number of words in adverbial units:
χθὲς - 1
εἰς Πειραιᾶ -1*2=2
μετὰ Γλαύκωνος τοῦ Ἀρίστωνος - 2*2=4

[mwh]

1. Numerosus is not quite what we mean by rhythmical. Perhaps “harmonious” would be better than “rhythmical”; I see OLD uses both. Cicero’s Orator is the go-to text on this sort of thing, where he speaks of the importance of achieving apta et numerosa oratio. See for example c.44, beginning “conlocabuntur igitur verba, aut ut inter se quam aptissime cohaereant extrema cum primis eaque sint quam suavissimis vocibus, aut ut1 forma ipsa concinnitasque verborum conficiat orbem suum, aut ut comprehensio numerose et apte cadat. …” Also e.g. c.24 and elsewhere, and the De Oratore. There are Greek forerunners, and Quintilian following.
Certainly the progressively longer adverbial units, as I noted, contribute to the effect, but it’s not a matter of simply counting the number of words. The interrelations of the sounds and binary weighting of the syllables (the long:short patterning which in verse is strictly regulated) play a more significant role in producing an aesthetically pleasing effect.

2. We have a good number of Aristotle’s treatises (bk.1 of the Poetics, for example), but he also wrote philosophical dialogues (On Poets, for example), now lost. Unlike Plato’s they featured himself as the main speaker and unlike the treatises were intended for a general readership.