Poetics. Aristotle. ed. Henry James Pye. London. 1792.
The Poetic of Aristotle (Henry James Pye, revised 1792) (OCR draft) (English) (Henry James Pye's revised 1792 English translation, corrected against the 1788 first edition, aligned to the Kassel reference edition, and supplied with a selective apparatus of substantive 1788 readings.)
Provisional text from uncorrected OCR; expect errors.
3.
mvp-aristotle-comment-715
ταύτης δὲ μέρη κτέ.:
Plato
Crat.424 C
ἆρ᾽ οὖν καὶ ἡμᾶς οὕτω δεῖ πρῶτον μὲν τὰ φωνήεντα διελέσθαι, ἔπειτα τῶν ἑτέρων κατὰ εἴδη τά τε ἄφωνα καὶ ἄφθογγα· οὗτωσὶ γάρ που λέγουσιν οἱ δεινοὶ περὶ τούτων· καὶ τὰ αὐ φωνήεντα μὲν οὖ, οὐ μέντοι γε ἄφθογγα;
-
Phil.18 в
ἐπειδὴ φωνὴν ἄπειρον κατενόησεν εἴτε τις θεὸς εἴτε καὶ θεῖος ἄνθρωπος, ὡς λόγος ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ Θεύθ τινα τοῦτον γενέσθαι λέγων, ὃς πρῶτος τὰ φωνήεντα ἐν τῷ ἀπείρῳ κατενόησεν οὐχ ἓν ὄντα ἀλλὰ πλείω, καὶ πάλιν ἕτερα φωνῆς μὲν οὖ, φθόγγου δὲ μετέχοντά τινος, ἀριθμὸν δέ τινα καὶ τούτων εἶναι· τρίτον δὲ εἶδος γραμμάτων διεστήσατο τὰ νῦν λεγόμενα ἄφωνα ἡμῖν· τὸ μετὰ τοῦτο διῄρει τά τε ἄφθογγα καὶ ἄφωνα μέχρι ἑνὸς ἑκάστου, καὶ τὰ φωνήεντα καὶ τὰ μέσα κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον, ἕως ἀριθμὸν αὐτῶν λαβὼν ἑνί τε ἑκάστῳ καὶ ξύμπασι στοιχεῖον ἐπωνό- μασεν.
Here
Plato's
μέσα are
Aristotle's
ἡμίφωνα. In later theory the
ἡμίφωνα and
ἄφωνα of
Aristotle come under the more general designation of 'consonants',
σύμφωνα:
Sextus Emp.
Adv. math.1. 100
τὰ μὲν γὰρ αὐτῶν [scil. τῶν στοιχείων] φωνάεντα προσαγορεύουσι τὰ δὲ σύμφωνα, καὶ φωνάεντα μὲν ἑπτά, αεηιουω, σύμφωνα δὲ τὰ λοιπά 102
των δὲ συμφώνων τὰ μὲν ἡμίφωνά ἐστι κατ᾽ αὐτοὺς .. τὰ δὲ ἄφωνα.
3.
mvp-aristotle-comment-716
φωνῆεν.
The word had been already used by
Euripides, fr. 578 ed.
Nauck
ἄφωνα φωνήεντα συλλαβὰς τιθεὶς ἐξηῦρον ἀνθρώποισι γράμματ᾽ εἰδέναι. It may be observed that both
Plato (
Theaet.203 B
) and
Aristotle (
Metaph.N 6, 1093 13
) recognize the vowels as being seven in number.
3.
mvp-aristotle-comment-717
ἄνευ προσβολῆς:
the opposite of μετὰ προσβολῆς in the next line.
The difference between the vowels and consonants is that the latter imply a certain προσβολή as the condition of their becoming audible, whereas no such προσβολή is required to make the vowels audible.
The sense of the word προσβολή as here used is far from clear.
It has been taken to mean
additio (
Valla),
adiectio (
Paccius),
ictus (
Victorius),
percussio (
Robortello), and
allisus (
Goulston);
Castelvetro, who renders it by percossa, confesses that he does not know what it means.
The idea of most interpreters is that the term refers in some way or other to the physical mechanism of speech;
to the impact of the tongue, for instance, on the parts within the mouth, or something of that sort.
Twining, who translates it by articulation (with
Batteux), tells us in a note that it is 'literally percussion: i. e.
of the tongue against the palate or teeth, the lips against the teeth or against each other, and all other modes of consonant articulation'.
In support of this physiological interpretation
Vahlen (
Beitr. 3 p. 224) quotes
De part. an.2. 16, 6608 2
ὁ λόγος ὁ διὰ τῆς φωνῆς ἐκ τῶν γραμμάτων σύγκειται, τῆς δὲ γλώττης μὴ τοιαύτης οὔσης μηδὲ τῶν χειλῶν ὑγρῶν οὐκ ἂν ἦν φθέγγεσθαι τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν γραμμάτων τὰ μὲν γὰρ τῆς γλώττης εἰσὶ προσβολαί, τὰ δὲ συμβολαὶ τῶν χειλῶν ; and argues to show that προσβολή may be used here in a sense wide enough to include the συμβολὴ τῶν χειλῶν, as well as the προσβολὴ τῆς γλώττης, of the De Partibus.
This view, however, is open to more than one objection.
( ) It is hard to see how, in the absence of some explanation in the context, προσβολή can stand for προσβολή γλώττης, or can be taken to include the notion of συμβολὴ χειλῶν.
(2) Such a reference to the physiology of articulation would be out of place in the definition;
the differences in the mechanism of articulation are a separate point, which
Aristotle recognizes apparently for the first time in another section further on in the chapter ( 31 ταῦτα δὲ διαφέρει σχήμασί τε τοῦ στόματος καὶ τόποις).
I think that
Valla was probably right in taking προσβολή in the sense of
additio or
adiectio, i. e.
as equivalent to προσθήκη-the word actually used by
Lucian in a very similar context to mark the distinction between the vowels and semivowels (
Iud. Voc. 5, 88 R.).
It may be observed, too, that προσβάλλειν and προστι- θέναι are synonyms in
Antiphanes fr. 206
Kock. The general sense, then, according to this view of
προσβολή, will be that the vowels are audible by themselves (
ἄνευ προσβολῆς); whereas the semivowels and mutes (the consonants) require the support or addition of a vowel (
μετὰ προσβολῆς) to make them audible. This was certainly the distinction in later grammar:
Dionysius Thrax
p. 11 Uhlig
σύμφωνα δὲ λέγονται ὅτι αὐτὰ μὲν καθ ἑαυτὰ φωνὴν οὐκ ἔχει, συντασσόμενα δὲ μετὰ τῶν φωνηέντων φωνὴν ἀποτελεῖ -
Sextus Emp.
Adv. math. 1. 102
ἄφωνα δέ ἐστι τὰ μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων συνεκφωνούμενα. -
Diomedes
418 P.
mutae dictae quod per se sine adminiculo vocalium non possunt enuntiari.
3.
mvp-aristotle-comment-718
ἡμίφωνον:
Aristoxenus (quoted below). -
Dionysius Thrax
p. 12 Uhlig
ἡμίφωνα δὲ λέγεται [ότι] παρόσον ἧττον τῶν φωνηέντων εὔφωνα καθέστηκεν ἔν τε τοῖς μυγμοῖς καὶ σιγμοῖς. -
Sextus Emp.
Adv. math. 1. 102
ἡμίφωνα μὲν ὅσα δι᾽ αὐτῶν ῥοῖζον ἢ σιγμὸν ἢ μυγμὸν τινα παραπλήσιον ἦχον κατὰ τὴν ἐκφώνησιν ἀποτελεῖν πεφυκότα.--
Diomedes
416 P.
Semivocales dictae quod dimidium eius potestatis habent: etenim per se enuntiantur, sed per se nec syllabam nec plenam vocem faciunt.
Plato only knows the semivowels as
τὰ μέσα (v. supra on
b24
).
3.
mvp-aristotle-comment-719
ἔχον φωνὴν ἀκουστήν.
Apart from the vowels the semivowels have some sort of sound as noises, not a distinctly audible voice-sound (
φωνὴ ἀκουστή) like the vowels; this it is that distinguishes them from the mutes, which have no sound at all by themselves. Comp.
Plato
Theaet. 203 Β
τό τε σίγμα τῶν ἀφώνων ἐστί, ψόφος τις μόνον οἷον συριττούσης τῆς γλώττης· τοῦ δ᾽ αὖ βῆτα οὔτε φωνὴ οὔτε ψόφος, οὐδὲ τῶν πλείστων στοιχείων. -
Aristoxenus ap.
Dion. Hal.
5 p. 72 R.
των μὴ φωνηέντων μὲν καθ᾽ ἑαυτὰ ψόφους ὁποίους δή τινας ἀποτελεῖν πέφυκε, ῥοῖζον ἢ σιγμὸν ἢ μυγμὸν ἢ τοιούτων τινῶν άλλων ἤχων δηλωτικούς, δέ ἐστιν ἁπάσης ἄμοιρα φωνῆς καὶ ψόφου, καὶ οὐχ οἷά τε ἠχεῖσθαι καθ' ἑαυτά· διὸ δὴ ταῦτα μὲν ἄφωνά τινες ἐκάλεσαν, θάτερα δὲ ἡμίφωνα.
3.
mvp-aristotle-comment-720
ἄφωνον.
In the definition
μετὰ προσβολῆς serves to distinguish the mute from the vowel; the idea of it, however, is repeated in a more explicit form in
μετὰ τῶν ἐχόντων τινὰ φωνὴν. The expression
τῶν ἐχόντων τινὰ φωνήν is wide enough to include the semivowels as well as the vowels. The semivowels are audible by themselves, though only as noises (comp.
Plato
Phileb. 18
έτερα φωνῆς μὲν οὖ, φθόγγου δὲ μετέχοντά τινος); and a semivowel is sufficient to make a mute audible, though only as a noise-not as a
φωνὴ ἀκουστή.
Aristotle carefully chooses his words, therefore, in saying
γινόμενον ἀκουστόν ; since
ἔχον φωνὴν ἀκουστήν, 'with an audible voice-sound', would have been true only of the combination of a mute and a vowel.
20.2.
mvp-aristotle-comment-82
20.3
BY ACUTENESS, GRAVITY, OR THE MEDIUM BETWEEN BOTH.
I HAVE no doubt of Mr. Twining being in the right in fuppofing that Aristotle, by ' the medium between both,' (τῷ μέσω) did not mean the circumflex. His reasoning on this is conducive. It is very obvious that in every word of more than three syllables, or even in words of three fyllables, whose first or last syllable is acuted, other fyllables are diftinguished by a stronger accent than the contiguous ones, though in a less degree than that which is peculiarly emphatic, and which regulates the accent of the others, in our language at least, and in the pronunciation which we give to Greek and Latin. There is no necessity to feek an illustration of this from the ancient languages, our own will afford sufficient examples which will have fo much more weight, as our prosody is allowed to be essentially regulated by accent, which is indeed the sole efficient cause of our verfification. It will appear from our verse, that this inferior accent has a force not only to distinguish itself in those syllables on which it is placed, but to anfwer the purpose of the strongest accent in the word as to the versification. There is no place in our heroic, or dramatic pentameter, in which ' ùn- • dertáke' would come in, that 'múltiply" would not equally do, as to the measure; though it is obvious that the principal accent is on the first fyllable in the one, and the last in the other [E]. In the burlesque [E] For the fake of perfpicuity I have diftinguished the strongest accent by the acute, and the weaker by the grave mark. 3 E 2 drama
drama of Crononhotonthologus, there is a character of the name of Äldiberòntephöfcophórnia, which is a complete verse in itself, containing one principal accent, to which I have given the acute mark; one inferior to this, but more emphatic than the rest, which has the grave mark; and three others fufficiently diftinguished from the others for the purposes of verfification, which are noticed by a double dot. This fubject has led me unawares into an investigation in which I am much interested. I mean the distinction between accent and quantity. My Greek quotations will shew my opinion on this matter to the learned reader. To him therefore I owe some reason for adopting this fide of the question, but to the mere English reader I am likewise bound not to employ too much of these notes on a subject which must be totally uninteresting to him. I shall confine myself therefore to two points only, and dispatch them both with as much brevity as possible. The arguments I use shall be drawn also from circumstances obvious to the fenfes, and appealing to them for support. The authority of antiquity, produced by Dr. Foster in his Essay on Greek Accent, and enforced and illustrated by Mr. Mitford in his Effay on the Harmony of Language, are and always must remain unanswered, because they are unanswerable. First then, the authenticity of the Greek accentual marks have been proved beyond controversy by the abovementioned treatises; but the pronunciation of them, as it is managed by modern voices, destroys that cadence to which modern ears are accustomed (F). In confequence of this [F] Some persons I know talk of marking both accent and quantity in Greek verse.. I pretend to no such power, but I am far from faying fuch a power did not exift among the Greeks. they
POETIC OF ARISTOTLE. they have been disused, and few Greek scholars from such disuse being able to write them accurately, it became necessary to get rid of them at any rate, and this was done by explaining away their utility when their authority was shewn to be unquestionable. They were to fignify mufical notation, tones unknown to the irreligious ears of the moderns; in short any thing but what we call accent. But if these kind of musical notes accompanied the common pronunciation of the Greek language ; if, as is suggested by Lord Monboddo in his letter on this subject to Mr. Steel, In Greek a man raised his voice upon certain fyllables and no other, whether he was speaking with paffion or without paffion, • whether he was haranguing or in ordinary conversation;' if this were the cafe, the most perfect language we know must have been totally deprived of the power on which the force of poetry and oratory moft essentially depends, that of exciting of the feelings of the hearer by congenial modulations of the speaker's voice. And if the ancients by προσωδία and ACCENTUS did not mean what we call accent, which is fo general a property of language, and so distinct from quantity, what word had they to express this property ? for we cannot suppose their languages were without it. This dificulty Dr. Beattie and Mr. Nares have tried to obviate by calling our accent EMPHASIS. But this is substituting the effect of a thing for the thing itself. A man in a red coat is eminently confpicuous among others in black or white, therefore one of the qualities of redness is confpicuity, but redness is not confpicuity itself, because there are other colors that are also comparatively confpicuous. So we know it is one of the properties of accent to make the syllable on which it falls emphatic, or confpicuous; but this property is not peculiar to accent, for, as will be shewn presently, there are cafes in which accent cannot
cannot be so employed, and then quantity produces the same effect. Among monosyllables if it be necessary to make one word emphatic, or confpicuous, it is done by accent, and sometimes with the addition of quantity, or rather the emphatic accent changes the short vowel found to a long one, when the voice is not stopped by a confonant. As in Milton. Know ye not ME? ye knew me once, no mate For you, there fitting where YE durft not foar.' Here in the first line, ME in the former part of the verse is emphatical, and supplies the place of an accented syllable where the verse requires one: the second ME is not emphatical, and is placed where the verse does not require an accent [G]; the vowel found of the first is long also and the second short. In the second line the pronoun ve is emphatical, but the natural vowel found of it is so short as not to be capable of the accent without altering its quantity, which is accordingly done, and the E lengthened, but without altering the accent as far as regards the structure of the verse. When it is required to make a particular fyllable [G] From this circumstance of the ductility of the accent, which is the essence of our verfification, our poets have the power sometimes of regulating the proper expreffion of the thought by the cadence; an advantage denied the ancients from the inflexibility of quantity in Greek and Latin. Of this the first line of the quotation from Milton is an example. A paffage in Thomson's Tancred and Sigifmunda will shew this more strongly from oppofition.
، I will give This scatter'd will in fragment to the winds, • Crush all who dare oppose me to the duft, And heap perdition on THEE.' Here the reciter is under the necessity of either spoiling the sense, or the verse. of
POETIC OF ARISTOTLE. ! of a word of more syllables than one confpicuous, or emphatic, which is not accented, it is never allowed to alter the accent, therefore this is a cafe when quantity must be employed. This I shall illustrate by two examples from Pope. • Curl'd or Uncurl'd fince locks will turn to grey.' The syllable UN is still confidered as unaccented in the verse, and is only made confpicuous by the quantity, not by lengthening the vowel found of u, for that the connected confonant forbids, but by marking more strongly the two following subsequent confonants by dividing them, and so rendering the length of the fyllable by [H] position more confpi- In this line from Pope's Iliad the length of the vowel is altered. • Turns and Returns him with a mother's care.' cuous. The affair of the accentual marks however, after all that has been faid and proved in their favour, has been finally decided as things of much greater consequence are often decided, by the majority of votes; their pronunciation and even their notation, where detached pieces of
[H] In scanning ancient verse it is usual to say a vowel is long by position, but this is not correct, it is the syllable not the vowel that is lengthened. For as Mr. Mitford justly obferves, • Ten confonants would not oblige even a Greek or Roman voice to give to a pre- ⚫ ceding epfilon or omicron the found of eta and omega, but two consonants distinctly pro- • nounced will necessarily retard any voice in pronouncing the syllable.' ESSAY ON THE Harmony of Language, Sect. IV. p. 55. Double confonants we pronounce as fingle, and the only effect they have is shortening the preceding vowel found, as Holy Holly, WRITING WRITTEN, and as we carry the fame pronunciation into the learned language, as in καλος καλλος, FERO FERRE, we always in this cafe make a false quantity. The ancients I suppose pronounced these double consonants diftinctly like the modern Italians, which perhaps requires a greater delay of the voice than to diftinguish between two different confonants. Greek
Greek are quoted, are entirely disused; and this leads me to the second observation I proposed to make, which I shall introduce by this question. What have we substituted in their place? How do we now read Greek ? I know the answer, and it will not be given without a contemptuous sneer at the ignorance of the querift and the abfurdity of the query. According to quantity to be sure! the only essential constituent of the structure of ancient verfification, and on which its cadence entirely depends. But let us enquire first what reading by quantity is, and if we really do it either in Greek or Latin verse. Do we mean by quantity what it only can properly mean, giving length to the syllables that are really long? (In fyllables long by position we cannot err if we pronounce all the confonants distinctly,) or do we mean giving the acute accent to all long syllables? Now let us try this on the two first verses of the Iliad. Do not we give the found of the eta to the epfilon in Θεα, and do not we lay the accent also on the same short vowel in this word, and in the omicron in Ουλομενην ? The fame in the first line of Virgil's Eclogues. Do we not pronounce the first fyllable of Tityrus as short as it is possible for a fyllable to be pronounced? and do we not accent the first syllable of PATULE ? Therefore if either of the abovementioned modes of reading be reading by quantity we follow neither of them, and if neither of these be what we mean by reading by quantity, I should like to know what is. But though I do not know what reading by quantity is if it is not marking the true time of every fyllable by the voice, I perfectly know what we substitute for the pronunciation of Greek according to the accentual marks, and CALL reading by quantity. It is in fact reading Greek according to rules of Latin accentuation, which naturally produces the fame cadence that we find in Latin verse, depending entirely
POETIC OF ARISTOTLE. tirely on accent; for though our judgment revolts at a false quantity our ear is much more offended by a misplaced accent, and the cadence of the verse is much more hurt by it [1]. That the rules of Greek and Latin accentuation were different we know from the authority of Quintillian. One of the canons of Latin accentuation is, that the accent of the penult in all polysyllables depends on its quantity; and I challenge any, the most partial advocate for the modern mode of reading Greek, to fhew me any other reason for laying the accent on the omicron instead of the epsilon, as directed by the accentual mark in the first word of the second verse of the Iliad. It does not even mend the accentual cadence of the verse, for in two lines that follow each other in Virgil's first eclogue,
' Ilius aram Sæpě těnēr noftris ab ovilibus imbuit agnum. • Illě měās errare boves ut cernis, &c.' The four first syllables are exactly, both in accent, quantity, and usual. pronunciation, like Ουλομένην, pronounced according to the Greek accentual mark. Whence this mode of reading Greek has been called. by way of eminence, and in oppofition to the other, reading by quantity, it is perhaps not very difficult to discover. The whole system of. Latin [1] To those critics who are not satisfied of the truth of the accentual cadence of Latin verse being different from the quantity, I would recommend it first to read, and then scan any line of Virgil they chuse. This must convince their ear, but if they chuse authority rather than the teftimony of their senses, I would advise them to read the conclufion of the eighth chapter of Dr. Foster's Treatise on Accent and Quantity, and especially the postscript to it; Mr. Harris's Philological Enquiries, Part 11. Chap. II. and Col. Mitford's Essay, Sect. vI. See also Note Iv. Chap. xxiv. of this commentary.. 3 F accentuation
accentuation in every polysyllable depends on the quantity of the penult. Dissyllables have always the first syllable accented, whether long or short; and all the other accents of polysyllables, which are always on alternate fyllables, depend on the accent, and confequently on the quantity of the penult. Therefore when we hear an error in the accent of this fyllable, as it is the (K) only place where an erroneous quantity is marked in pronunciation, we directly censure the speaker for making a false quantity, and for this reason when we carry this mode of regulating the accent into another language, we use the fame expreffion, and call it reading or pronouncing according to quantity. We can know nothing of the genuine pronunciation of ancient verse but from conjecture. I should imagine quantity was more marked, and accent less, in Greek than in Latin verse. How this was done we can no more judge than an Englishman who had learned to read and pronounced Italian like English could judge how it would found from the mouth of a Tuscan. We must suppose Greek verse to be the natural poetic language of the country, and in this case quantity, the constituent of it, must have been strongly marked by the voice, and that, as in English and Italian verse, scanning was only an exaggerated expreffion of its real cadence. But this might not be the cafe with the Romans, who borrowed their rules of profody from the Greeks. They might like the modern writers of Latin verse, while they regulated the quantity by the judgment, produce also an accentual modulation by the ear. When I fee such a poet as Virgil uniformly employing what I know from classical authority to be [K] Were I to say SIDERIS instead of SIDERIS, I should be immediately accused of a false quantity, but not at all for giving the first syllable one of the shortest possible founds and no accent, inftead of the proper long vowel and the strong accent, by which it is diftinguished in the nominative cafe SIDUS. the
POETIC OF ARISTOTLE. ، the genuine accentuation of his language, to produce a most delightful cadence, independent of the quantity, to which however he rigidly adheres, I cannot conceive it to be only accident, but that such accentual cadence must have been even essential to the beauty of the verse, especially as we find from the passage in the Philological Enquiries above cited (Note K) that when Latin began to be corrupted more attention was paid to this accentual cadence than to quantity. And does not this receive some support from the expression of Cicero quoted by Mr. Twining (note 5) that the poet was RATHER more confined by numbers than the ora- ' tor.' • Numeris adftrictior PAULO.' I certainly do not mean to infinuate that the quantity of fyllables was not fufficiently obvious to the ears of the Romans; they certainly did not, like us, pronounce the first syllable of VELIM long, or of VELLEM short, but that the verfification of Latin depended more on accentual cadence than that of Greek, may I think be traced in the corruption of both. When quantity. ceased to regulate Latin verse it still retained the accentual modification as the foundation of its cadence, as will appear from the lines of Commodianus, quoted Note 111. Chap. xxII. But when the fame thing happened to the Greek verse it entirely changed its form of verfification, and adopted a new and barbarous cadence, which was regulated by the accentual marks, as in the Chiliad of Tzetzes. See PHILOLOGICAL INQUIRIES, Part 11. Chap. 11. That the cadence of Greek verse depended so much, (not on Latin accentuation surely) but on the strict attention to quantity, as in the recital almost to fink the power of the accents which was forcibly marked in the delivery of prose, is obvious from a passage quoted from another work of Ariftotle in Note VIII.. Chap. xxv.. 3: F 2 I will
I will now release my reader from a subject which, however interesting to myself, may be little so to him. Those to whom it is interesting I congratulate on a prospect at least of the fubject being resumed, and treated of more at large than it has been already, by Col. Mitford.
3.
mvp-aristotle-comment-137
Ritter, cap. 20 § 3
ταύτης δὲ μέρη: per
ταύτης non singularis quaedam vox indivisa denotatur sed genus elementorum comprehenditur. quae statim sequitur
προσβολή, est vocis ictus quidam, quem allisum novo sed apto nomine consignavit Hermannus. paulo post nonnisi a paucis codicibus (vid. not. crit.) exempla vocalium litterarum
οἷον τὸ Α καὶ τὸ 2 exhibentur. fortasse personatus auctor in re manifesta supersedere se posse exemplo credidit, cum discrimen illud intersemivocale et non vocale (quod continuo memorat) ut exemplis illustraretur magis desiderare et flagitare eidem videretur.