Alexandrian grammarians

Greek Learning Greek
1

I tried to find in Internet Dionysios of Halikarnassos’ famous instructions about ancient Greek poetry, his instructions that are so many times mentioned here in this forum by many people who use him ad nauseam to justify pitch pronunciation, but, alas, failed to find any link.

Can anyone please post a link for Dionysios’ or any other original instruction written by ancient Greeks about correct pronunciation of Greek and proper use of the acute, grave and perispomena signs?

I guess those Alexandrine grammarians who invented these signs must have written lot of papyri to justify the necessity of them.

2

I have never seen Dio.Halic.'s work online. For the fullest account of what the ancient grammarians had to say you’ll want to check out a copy of Allen’s Voc Graeca. It has the original texts quoted in an appendix. I tried entering a few quotes into google, but got no hits.

You can, however, ready Dio. Thrax’s quite terse summary.

Dio.Halic. actually taught in Rome.

3

hi thomas, i’ve read them in the loeb edition, volume 2. i’ve never found the whole essay(s) online.

there might be a few scattered quotes online but i think it’s worth reading the whole essays because they cover other useful things as well, e.g. he gives the only “ancient” scansion of prose i’ve ever seen: he scans the first few sentences of demosthenes’ de corona, some thucydides &c. there are some useful things you can take out of this, e.g. epic correption doesn’t seem to have applied in rhetorical prose at least. also he covers pronunciation of consonants &c.

one of the most interesting parts in the essay is how he actually describes how in lyric, the pitch was totally inconsistent with the accents! he actually describes how the pitch goes up and down or stays flat, syllable by syllable, for a part of euripides’ lyric.

it suggests to me that if we can reconstruct greek pitch even approximately, and even here i have doubts but i think it’s worth a try, we can only do it for non-lyric and other types of non-strophic verse and have to assume that the pitch for pindar, lyric in drama &c is lost. it’s a real question for me what genres the accents did apply to at all, i just haven’t done enough research into it and so i don’t know.

i actually don’t know if he was an alexandrian grammarian like zenodotus, aristarchus &c.

4

Is this a huge surprise? I expect singing to stray from speaking prosody. Not even tone languages match tone to the musical line. Well, in some like Cantonese the melody is constrained in particular ways, but they sure don’t reproduce the full tone system. Would a tipsy aristocrat quoting a line or two of Pindar at the symposium have sung or recited?

5

hi will, yes you’re right. it surprised me when i first read it though, it confirmed to me how much more work i’d need to do to understand the pronunciation even at a basic level.

the only clear thing about greek pronunciation to me is this: everyone i know who has actually researched ancient pronunciation has adopted the pitch pronunciation despite its flaws, and despite which system is “right” or “wrong” or “better”!

6

Alexandrine is a kind of verse, Alexandrian is someone from Alexandria. See how useful bards can be?

I happen to have a poem in alexandrines… maybe another time.

7

Times ago I wrote “Alexandrian” and someone was so nice to correct me.
Now I wrote “Alexandrine” and you corrected me as well, though never heard any “Alexandrine” verse.
OK, I’ll stick to my first choice. :slight_smile:

8

Alexandrine is the same as a 14 syllables verse. I wonder why did they put that name to it?

9

i’ve read that it comes from the metre of songs about alexander the great sung 100s of years after he died. (i don’t know if that’s true though, don’t hold me to it, i think i read it in wood’s “in the footsteps of a the g”). so both “alexandrian” and “alexandrine” (probably) trace back to him.

10

An alexandrine is an iambic hexameter. Its origin is French, from the romance (a medieval chivalric narrative) of the XII century Roman d’Alexandre. In French poetry it is a dodecasyllabic line. In Spanish poetry it is two heptasyllables slapped together (that’s 12-16 syllables).

Here’s the sample, Pablo Neruda’s Love Sonnet XVII:

No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio
o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.

Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.

Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,

sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.

(Lines 1, 4 and 11 are not alexandrines, mind you.)

Here’s a literal translation so that you don’t end up hating me:

I don’t love you as if you were salt-rose, topaz,
or an arrow of carnations that propagate the fire:
I love you the way one loves certain dark things,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries
inside, hidden, the light of those [unbloomed] flowers,
and thanks to your love lives darkly in my body
the tight scent that rose from the earth.

I love you not knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you straightforwardly without complications or pride:
this is how I love you because I don’t know how to love any other way,

but in this way in which neither I am or you are,
so close that your hand on my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my sleep.

(Hey, line 5 is an iambic hexameter! I’m lyrical without even trying!)


"... it suggests to me that if we can reconstruct greek pitch even *approximately*, and even here i have doubts but i think it's worth a try, we can only do it for non-lyric and other types of non-strophic verse ..." ~Chad

"Extant settings of ancient music prove that in non-strophic poetry the melody followed the accentual contours." From Danek and Hagel's _Homeric Singing - An Approach to the Original Performance_ at http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/sh/
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stro·phe (strō'fē) n.

1.a. The first of a pair of stanzas of alternating form on which the structure of a given poem is based.
1.b. A stanza containing irregular lines.

2. The first division of the triad constituting a section of a Pindaric ode.

3.a. The first movement of the chorus in classical Greek drama while turning from one side of the orchestra to the other.
3.b. The part of a choral ode sung while this movement is executed.

[Greek strophē, a turning, stanza, from strephein, to turn.]
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What is non-strophic verse?
What's the difference between extant ancient music and extant _settings_ of ancient music? If the extant music was composed following the Greek accentual contours, can't you use it to find out what those contours looked like?