hi guys,
i’ve just finished reading through two authorities on syllable division, the classic Smyth grammar (section 140) and the new 1994 book by Devine and Stephens, The prosody of Greek speech (Oxford Uni Press: 1994).
Both have left me confused… they both admit that the ancients divided syllables one way… but in their books, they prescribe different ways of doing it (for different reasons).
Smyth (in section 140.d) says that “compounds divide at the point of union, eg an.ago=”, but then says “(The ancients often wrote a.nago=)”. Smyth also says (in section 140.f) “The ancients divided ek toutou as e.ktou.tou. This practice is now abandoned.” Ie, the Greeks thought of their language as “open syllabled” wherever possible
(the consonant kappa does not “close” epsilon, but is pushed into the onset of the syllable tou), but Smyth prescribes “closing” syllables for a variety of reasons. Why??
Also, Devine and Stephens say (at pages 32 and ff) that “metrical evidence implies” that mutes followed by liquids or nasals are “split” between the coda of one syllable and the onset of the next if the first syllable is long, but that the consonants are both pushed into the second syllable’s onset if the first syllable is short. Eg, they say that in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, line 442,
[size=150]οἱ τοῦ πα.τρός, τῷ πατ.ρὶ δυνάμενοι, τὸ δρᾶν