I was told that Greek poetry never rhymes like English poetry, but I noticed that this epigram by (or about?) the courtesan Lias leaving her mirror to Aphrodite seems to have an AABB ryhme scheme:
Betts, Gavin; Henry, Alan. Complete Ancient Greek: A Comprehensive Guide to Reading and Understanding Ancient Greek, with Original Texts (Complete Language Courses) (p. 212). John Murray Press. Kindle Edition.
These lines don’t really rhyme in the English sense, since in English rhyming is more than final vowel sound, but accent and quantity, too. It’s why in “Little Miss Muffett” the rhyme with “spider” is “beside her”.
Ancient Greek just doesn’t work in the same way. The end-rhyme functions more like assonance across lines than a true rhyming scheme.
Interestingly, the rhyme shifts up a foot on the last line of the scheme, perhaps signaling the end of the folk wisdom.
This isn’t very common, though. Perhaps because this is folk wisdom passage? Too much alliteration and assonance was frowned upon, so it’s little wonder that the name attached to the Lais epigram you quoted isn’t known for being a great poet.
Yes, that must be deliberate on Euripides’ part. I’ve written about this here before. In fact this is what I wrote:
Heracles’ little disquisition on mortality, strongly marked off by ἀλλ᾿ ἄκουέ μου (better ἄκου’ ἐμοῦ) at one end and ταῦτ᾿ οὖν ἀκούσας καὶ μαθὼν ἐμοῦ πάρα at the other, has a very striking feature in its uniformity of line endings:
This can’t be an accident. In fact I fancy that the last line should end not οὐδ᾿ ἁλίσκεται τέχνῃ but οὐδε τέχνῃ ἁλίσκεται, with the last two words slurred together (he is drunk, after all) and successfully achieving the triumphant close to the set of five.
Thanks for the clarification and example! It’s funny how too much assonance and rhyme are frowned upon, because that’s usually true of English prose but not poetry. The Greek idea of shifting the caesura to prevent equal hemistiches is also surprising in poetry.