The elegiac couplet

The elegiac couplet belongs to the Ionian tradition of the eighth and seventh centuries, alongside epic and iambus.^[1] Its origins lie in Ionia, and Tyrtaeus at Sparta took over a form of Ionic with the metre.^[2] Archilochus, Tyrtaeus and a host of other archaic and fifth-century poets composed in it. From the middle of the sixth century it was more and more the metre of verse inscriptions.^[3] In the sixth century it rose to become the commonest metre of epigram.^[4] Kelly judges that the couplet already had a long history behind it when it first appears in Archilochus.^[5] In the later centuries it was one of the three stichic metres that came to dominate poetic literature, with the hexameter and the iambic trimeter.^[6] And it became the standard metre of epigram.^[7]

The archaic and classical poets

The last item is a small but telling witness to the couplet’s rigidity. The poet alters the name rather than the metre. In general, special licences are occasionally taken to fit essential proper names into the verse. In verse inscriptions, where the need to include names was especially pressing, the scheme sometimes gives way altogether under the pressure.^[13] Hephaestion’s other example is more drastic still: Parthenius, writing an elegiac lament for Archelaïs, made the final line an iambic trimeter instead of a pentameter, so as to get the name in.^[12] Critias had done the same in an elegy for Alcibiades. Merging two shorts into one, Hephaestion explains, is rare in epic verse, and so Critias thought the name could not be admitted. He put it in an iambic trimeter in place of the pentameter, and said why:^[14]

Bartol reads the substitution as a witty touch of mockery, typical of the metrical experiments of classical elegy.^[15]

Dialect

Elegy is an Ionic genre whatever the poet’s origin. Simonides of Ceos, an Ionic island, wrote melic poetry that is largely Doric, but elegies that are basically Ionic.^[16] The same generic pull is visible in Anacreon’s literary Ionic.^[10] Much later the Hellenistic poet-scholar Callimachus could carry Pindar’s rich lyric language over into non-lyric metres too, the hexameter and the elegiac couplet. Julia Balbilla, at Hadrian’s court, composed four epigrams for the Colossus of Memnon in East Aeolic. She deliberately echoed Sappho’s language while writing in elegiac couplets.^[17] The metre, that is, stayed fixed while the dialect became a matter of choice.

Epigram and the long elegiac poem

Hephaestion’s own examples of the pentameter’s four shapes are all from Callimachus,^[18] a sign of how far the Hellenistic poet had become the model. Epigram is normally written in elegiacs. Up to the first century AD poets often pick them for longer works too, above all for poems on sub-heroic legend or giving medical recipes.^[7] The couplet is the metre of verse inscriptions and literary epigrams.^[19] The sixth-century poets of Agathias’ Cycle went back to a far stricter technique, with Nonnian habits in their hexameters. Agathias’ own epigrams, though, are looser than the hexameters of his preface.^[20]

More poets. Callinus, Mimnermus, Solon, Xenophanes and the classical elegists, and what Bartol says about how elegy was performed, are on the tab Performance and poets.

The archaic rules

The hexameter of the couplet is the epic hexameter, but sparer with prosodic licences.^[1] The pentameter has its own constraints. The caesura between the two hemiepes is invariable, and contraction of the bicipitia is limited to the first colon.^[1] Within these limits the archaic poets allow themselves the following:

West’s example of a princeps freedom is the second line of the Theognidea:

Theognis 2, as West quotes it.^[1]

Here -μαι is correpted before ἀρχόμενος.^[2] The naturally short -νος of ἀρχόμενος stands in the princeps before the caesura, and is treated as long. This is lengthening by a final continuant, which occurs in epic, elegy, Pindar and Bacchylides.^[3]

Hephaestion’s rule is simpler and absolute. The ἐλεγεῖον has always to be divided at one of its two penthemimers. If it is not, it is faulty (πεπλημμελημένον). He does not hesitate to call a line of Callimachus faulty on this ground.^[4] West’s “separated invariably by caesura” is the same rule in modern dress.^[1]

Hellenistic practice

In the Hellenistic period versification in elegiacs is in general rather stricter than in the hexameter poets:^[5]

1. Hiatus is kept within narrow limits.
2. Words that would fit the verse without correption, those shaped (… ⏑ ⏑) — —, are correpted less often.
3. Before the feminine caesura of the hexameter the poets normally put a word that ends — ⏑ | by nature, not one that reaches that shape only through correption or elision.
4. From the late third century BC the syllable before the pentameter’s caesura tends noticeably to hold a long vowel or diphthong, rather than owing its length to the consonant that begins the next word. The growing preference dates from the second half of the third century BC.^[6]
5. More and more, the pentameter is kept from ending on an accented syllable. The same trend runs away from oxytone and perispomenon endings towards paroxytones.^[7]

The last point is one of the effects of the word accent on metre. From the Hellenistic period onward the accent acquired an element of stress, which began to erode the opposition of long and short in speech.^[8] Three of Hephaestion’s four Callimachean pentameters^[4] end on an unaccented syllable (ὀλίγη, φίλοι, Παρίῳ). The fourth ends in Διός. The tendency was not yet a rule.

After AD 50

Standards of versification become rather laxer after about AD 50. In the third and fourth centuries hiatus and brevis in longo at the pentameter’s caesura become surprisingly free. West compares this development to the failures of synapheia between cola found elsewhere in verse of the Imperial period.^[9] That is, the two hemiepes began to be treated as if each were a period on its own. In the sixth century the poets of Agathias’ Cycle tighten the technique a great deal. Their hexameters follow Nonnus’ tendencies, if less rigorously. Agathias is freer in his own epigrams than in the hexameters of his preface.^[10]

This is the first couplet of Callimachus’ epigram on his friend Heraclitus of Halicarnassus. Hephaestion draws on Callimachus for every one of his pentameter examples.^[1] West sees the Hellenistic hexameter at its most refined in Callimachus.^[2] So the couplet can be read against both.

The hexameter

Feet. 1 εἶπέ τις, dactyl. -τις is short because its final ς goes with the following vowel.^[3] 2 Ἡρα-, spondee. The syllable ρα- is long before κλ. The metre requires it, and within a word stop + liquid normally makes a long syllable in hexameter verse.^[4] 3 -κλειτε τε-, dactyl. 4 -ὸν μόρον, dactyl. -ὸν is a closed syllable before μ-, so it is long.^[5] 5 ἐς δέ με, dactyl, with ἐς closed before δ-. 6 δάκρυ: the syllable δακ- is long before κρ, and the free final position follows.

Caesura. Word-end after Ἡράκλειτε falls after the first short of the third foot. This is the feminine caesura, which Callimachus prefers in a high proportion of his lines.^[6] The word before it, Ἡράκλειτε, naturally ends — ⏑. That is exactly what Hellenistic practice wants in that place, rather than a word that attains the shape only by correption or elision.^[7]

Bucolic caesura. The fourth foot, -ὸν μόρον, is dactylic and ends with word-end. This is the bucolic caesura, which rises from 47% of lines in Homer to 63% in Callimachus.^[2] The sense-pause after μόρον falls at it.

Bridges and avoided rhythms. Hermann’s Bridge is respected: the fourth biceps, μό-ρον, lies inside a word (Maas counts a word-end after the fourth trochee about once in 390 lines of Homer and never in Callimachus’ Hymns and Hecale, where every line also has its third-foot caesura).^[8] Naeke’s Law does not arise, as the fourth biceps is not contracted.^[9] The second foot, Ἡρά-, is a spondee inside a word. So there is no word-end at the end of the second foot without one at the end of the first.^[10] There is no effective word-end after the fifth princeps. ἐς is a prepositive and δέ, με are postpositives, and appositives count with the word they lean on.^[11] Every one of the Callimachean rules West lists is kept in the line.

The pentameter

First colon. ἤγαγεν | ἐμνήσθην δ’, — ⏑ ⏑ — — —. The first biceps is uncontracted and the second contracted (-νή-), which is permitted only in this half of the line.^[12] In Hephaestion’s terms the first penthemimer here has a dactyl followed by a spondee. That makes the line one of his two thirteen-syllable shapes.^[13] -γεν is short because the ν is followed by a vowel.

Caesura. The invariable caesura falls after δ’, which is elided before ὁσσάκις. Elision at the caesura is admitted, as in Theognis 20.^[14] The syllable before it, -σθην, contains a long vowel, so its length does not depend on the word that follows. That is the preference that becomes perceptible in pentameters after the late third century BC.^[7]

Second colon. ὁσσάκις ἀμφότεροι, — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ —, is the pure hemiepes, two dactyls and a syllable in Hephaestion’s description, with no contraction.^[15] -κις is short before ἀ-. The final -οι is long, so there is no brevis in longo to show the period-end; the end of the couplet shows it instead. Pentameters in general shun a short open vowel in that last position. Allen cites Martin’s count of 98 in 1,512.^[16]

Accent. The pentameter ends on ἀμφότεροι, whose last syllable is unaccented, in keeping with the growing Hellenistic avoidance of an accented final syllable.^[7] The proportions fall from about 18% of couplets in early elegy to 12% in the Alexandrians.^[17]