Meter. Greek drama, comedy as well as tragedy, consists of spoken or recited parts, and sung parts, the “lyrics.” (The structural terms, “prologue,” “parodos,” “episode,” μέλη aka “lyrics,” etc., are Aristotle’s, in the Poetics.) Both modes are available to both chorus and characters, but when the “chorus” speaks in dialogue it was probably only the chorus leader who spoke, and only certain actors have singing roles. (Most if not all tragedies, including the Ajax, have only one actor who can sing. No doubt he was the highest paid.)
The difference between spoken and sung parts is reflected by the meters used. The normal meter for the spoken parts is the iambic trimeter, the closest to everyday speech, basically an alternation of light and heavy syllables but with a certain structural pattern effected by the caesura, word break within a metron. Trochaic tetrameter (properly troch.tet.catalectic) is also sometimes used, a longer line with the same basic rhythm. (Comedy uses a wider variety of meters too.) These are “stichic” meters, meaning that they proceed line by line, each line having the same basic structure. Each line is metrically self-contained, constituting a verse. This means that the final metrical slot is free to be occupied by a syllable that would be light if the meter ran continuously (in “synaphea”) on to the next line; but since it doesn’t, it scans as long. Stichic meters, spoken not sung, appear to have been without musical accompaniment.
An iambic “metron,” the repeated metrical unit, is basically x-u-, where
u = a metrical slot occupied by a light (aka short) syllable,
- = a metrical slot occupied by a heavy (aka long) syllable, and
x (“anceps”) = a metrical slot occupied by a syllable that does not have to be light but can be heavy instead (e.g. 2 πεῖράν τιν’ εχθρ-).
A trochaic metron is basically –u-x.
(A side-note on the anceps.The term was coined by Paul Maas and denotes a particular slot (metrical “element” or “position”) in the metrical scheme. A syllable in an anceps slot is either light or heavy [short or long], not somewhere inbetween, despite what Maas himself thought. So it seems the rhythm is not entirely uniform from line to line.)
So the metrical scheme of the iambic trimeter (notated “ia trim” or “3 ia”) is basically x-u-x-u-x-u-, but with a major or minor word break after x-u-x (i.e. within the 3rd foot, but the metron, not the foot, is the unit of analysis), or failing that two syllables later, after x-u-x-u. So as a rule the line does not fall into two metrical halves but into two not-quite-halves, with the two near-halves kicking off from anceps and long respectively. These internal dynamics are important. In reading trimeters, always aim for the caesura.
Example: 1-3
ἀεὶ μέν ὦ παῖ | Λαρτίου δέδορκά σε
πεῖράν τιν’ ἐχθρῶν | ἁρπάσαι θηρώμενον·
καὶ νῦν ἐπὶ σκηναῖς σε | ναυτικαῖς ὁρῶ …
Note enclitic σε in line 3, saving the line from breaking at the midway point and carrying it over to a 4th-foot caesura.
The break between ω παι and Λαρτιου in 1 is minimal, but enough to effect the structural caesura.
Various micro-level structural variations are permitted, e.g. “resolution,” where a double short (uu) substitutes for a long (-). (That’s why I keep saying “basically.”) But there are certain restrictions on these. In tragedy, unlike comedy, there aren’t terribly many of them, but they may throw you if you don’t know about them. (It’s a rather severe genre; Euripides loosens it up to some extent, and the New Comedy of Menander et al. follows the Euripidean trimeter, not the much freer form used in Old Comedy, Aristophanes etc.)
The first resolution I see is in verse 6,
ἴχνη τὰ κείνου νεοχάραχθ’ ὅπως ἴδῃς
where νεο- (uu) fills the long slot that starts the second part of the verse.
I see no other until 30
πηδῶντα πεδία σὺν νεορράντῳ ξίφει.
There’s often no special significance to resolutions, but a succession of light syllables (as here in 30, -τα πεδια) often gives an impression of rapidity, enhancing the image of Ajax “leaping the plains.”
The license provides poets with more flexibility than if the scheme had to be rigidly adhered to, but the tragedians, like earlier iambic poets but unlike the comic poets, don’t much avail themselves of it. The later plays of Euripides have the most, in conformity with his relaxation of the austerity of the genre.
[The Greek iambic trimeter corresponds to the Latin iambic senarius, where the foot is the unit of analysis: the metron has become the foot. The misleadingly named trochaic “septenarius” of Latin is basically the same as the Greek trochaic tetrameter.]
The trochaic tetrameter (“tr tetr” or “4 tr cat” or the like) is –u-x repeated 3 times for a total of 4, except that the final metron is not –u-x but just –u-. (The verse is “catalectic,” stopping short). And unlike the iambic trimeter it breaks not within the metron but after the second metron (“diaeresis” as distinct from “caesura” in the traditional terminology.). So the scheme is
-u-x-u-x|-u-x-u-. Viewed structurally, it’s an iambic trimeter with –u- in front of it. The two meters share the same patterns of internal articulation, so “iambo-trochaic” forms a single class of stichic meters.
—Now that I look, I don’t actually see any use of troch.tet. in the Ajax. So never mind. But in tragedies where it does occur it seems to convey a sense of quickened pace (hence “trochaic”, “running,” not that anybody actually runs to it) or slightly greater urgency or excitement. The default spoken meter is the iambic trimeter, and that’s the only(?) spoken meter used in the Ajax.
Both the iambic trimeter and the trochaic tetrameter have a fairly long antecedent history in the Ionic-Attic tradition. The sung parts, on the other hand, introduce choral lyric into Attic. Tragedy, and comedy in turn, are Attic genres, but are a melting-pot of originally discrete metrical traditions.
It’s not really known how closely the style of delivery approximated ordinary everyday speech, but I imagine that (at least in tragedy) it was to some extent stylized, especially in the earlier period (Aeschylus more than Euripides), to match the elevation of the language; certainly the articulation must have been clear. But it’s already “marked” speech simply by virtue of its being metrically regulated.
Iambic trimeter can cover a fairly wide range of affect, both in solo-speech and especially in dialogue, but if the emotional level gets too high there’s a shift to lyric. The meter of greatest emotional intensity is the dochmiac, resorted to at a tragedy’s emotive climax. A character who starts in iambics may get so worked up that (s)he has to shift gear, or you might have one character sticking to the restraint of iambics while the other is so impassioned (s)he can only break out into dochmiacs; so as a tragedy heats up you can get sung and spoken within a single scene.
— I was really meaning to discuss the lyric meters in this post, but that will have to be another post. This one’s already somehow become preposterously long. Some of it may be too cryptic, even so. The main point to note is that tragedy is very sensitive to form, and to the affective proprieties of the various meters. And if we don’t read metrically, we’re missing a helluva lot.
Lyrics in a follow-up post, then.
P.S. Avoid Jebb’s metrical analyses. They’re not to be approached “with caution,” they’re not to be approached at all. West is what we should all be using, in preference to Maas, whom West totally supersedes. I don’t agree with jeidsath’s criticism. There’s a shorter version of his Greek Metre called (I think) An Introduction to Greek Metre. I haven’t used it but it may be better for, well, introductory purposes.