On Reading Homer Aloud: To Pause or Not to PauseAuthor(s): Stephen G. DaitzSource: The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 112, No. 2 (Summer, 1991), pp. 149-160Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/294714Accessed: 12/11/2009 23:33

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AMERICAN

JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY

ON READING HOMER ALOUD: TO PAUSE OR NOT TO PAUSE'

There are two basic assumptions that underlie this article. My first assumption is that poetry is akin to music in having as its esthetic basis patterns of sound and rhythm. There is a further kinship between mu- sic and poetry. When Schubert composed his songs and when Ho- mer composed his poetry, it is certain that their primary intention was that the compositions be performed. (Because of its oral nature, it is probable that the processes of composition and performance of Ho- meric poetry occurred simultaneously.) It is equally certain that har- monic and rhythmic analysis of the musical work, that translation, rhythmic and literary analysis of the poetic work, important as these may be for modern students of music and poetry, were not part of the creative intentions of either Schubert or Homer. To paraphrase Hamlet, the performance is the thing! A poem, like a work of music, cannot be fully experienced unless it is heard.

My second assumption is that in order for the esthetic experience of a poem to be genuine, it is necessary that its performance be as linguistically and metrically accurate as possible. In music, a song of Schubert performed consistently with wrong notes and faulty rhythm will not give the listener a true experience of Schubert's music. Like- wise, a performance of Homer with consistent mispronunciation of vowels and consonants, accents, and rhythm will not give the listener a true experience of Homeric poetry.

This article will consider one aspect of the performance of Ho- meric poetry, the question of pause at various points in the recitation

This article is a revised version of a paper delivered at the 1989 annual meeting of the American Philological Association in Boston.

American Journal of Philology 112 (1991) 149-160 ? 1991 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

STEPHEN G. DAITZ

and the possible effects that pause can produce on the listener's percep- tion of the poetic rhythm.2

If one were to read aloud the first line of the Odyssey following the punctuation marks of Nicanor, the second century Greek grammarian, there would be a pause of four morae before the word Mooaa, there would be a pause of four morae after the word Moioa, and a pause of one mora before the word 6g.3 The line would be rendered:

avbQa tIot evvemne .Movoca - -- T- xokQoov

- 6g ttaka jnokka

Now while such a rendition perhaps produces grammatical clarity, it certainly produces poetic travesty. Rhythmical regularity and recogni- tion in such a reading are so distorted as to be virtually obliterated. It is unfortunately this type of grammatical and rhetorical punctuation that has completely permeated our classical texts down to the present day.4

A preliminary survey of the Oxford Classical Text of Homer re- veals that at least 50% of the printed punctuation in this text is wrong or misleading. (The same would be true of any standard text of Homer.) I say "wrong or misleading" from the viewpoint of the original medium of performance of the Homeric poems, the oral medium. If, in reading Homer aloud from our printed text, we follow the performance prac- tices that we have been taught to use at commas, semi-colons, periods, and question marks, namely, to make a pause, and, conversely, not to

2By "pause," I mean a temporary interruption of phonation by the performer which is perceived by the listener as a temporary silence. "Pause" does not mean a "catch breath," which is normally not perceived by the listener. In this article, the terms "verse" and "line" are used synonymously.

The actual nature of Homeric delivery has been widely discussed. In the earlier performances of Homeric poetry, the performer clearly accompanied himself with a lyre or with a similar stringed instrument. In the classical period, the Homeric rhapsode recited the poetry with a staff in his hand rather than a lyre. Presumably the delivery had changed from singing or from an instrumentally reinforced chanting to a more declama- tory style. In addition to Plato's Ion, see M. L. West, "The Singing of Homer," JHS 101 (1981) 113-29; J. Herington, Poetry Into Drama (Berkeley 1985) 10-15; G. Danek, "Sing- ing Homer," WHB 31 (1989) 1-15.

3See D. L. Blank, "Remarks on Nicanor, the Stoics, and the Ancient Theory of Punctuation," Glotta 61 (1983) 48-67.

4Nicanor (quoted by T. Stinton, CQ 27 [1977] 30) recommends the following deliv-

ery of II. 2.498 (/ = pause): Zxolv6v I xT? / xoXiXVRv6v ' / o v 6v ' / 'ETEOv. Such a

delivery, apart from doing metrical violence to the verse, ignores the metrical impos- sibility of pause after elided T'.

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ON READING HOMER ALOUD: TO PAUSE OR NOT TO PAUSE 151

pause where there is no punctuation, we will in many instances distort the poetic rhythm and violate basic phonetic principles of the Greek language. We will, in other words, be giving an inaccurate and un- authentic rendition of Homer.

Even in English, printed punctuation can often be misleading from the viewpoint of actual performance. A simple sentence like "Tell me, John, when did you arrive?" is printed with commas before and after the word "John" to indicate the vocative case, but no native speaker of English would say, "Tell me (pause) John (pause) when did you arrive?" All native speakers of English will make no pause before "John," few will pause after "John," because our instinctive feel for the sound pat- terns of English makes us ignore these commas, which serve the pur- pose of grammar, not of performance.5 But with ancient Greek, where few of us can claim to possess within ourselves the linguistic instincts of native speakers, we must seek help on the question of pause from exter- nal sources. Fortunately, such sources do exist.

There are two basic questions concerning pause in the oral rendi- tion of the Homeric hexameter. 1) Should the reader always make a pause at the end of the verse (what I term an "external pause"), even when there is no sense boundary at the end of the verse, i.e., in a situation of enjambement? (Such enjambement can be found at the end of the first verse of the Odyssey, printed at the end of this article.) 2) Should the reader ever make a pause within the verse (what I term an "internal pause"), even when there is a sense boundary within the verse, a situation referred to as a "break" or a "stop"? Should there be an automatic pause at caesura? (An example of such a break can be found in the first verse of the Odyssey before the word Mooaa; an example of a break combined with caesura occurs after the word Mo0oca.)

Evidence that a pause was originally made at the end of each hexameter is quite strong. First, the quantity of the last syllable of the verse is indifferent, i.e., it may be long, or it may be short, as it is at the end of the first line of the Odyssey (nrokKa). Quintilian, whose metrical observations apply to Greek as well as to Latin poetry, specifically

5Likewise in song, despite the printed punctuation, no American singer of the "Star-Spangled Banner" will sing "Oh, (pause) say can you see" any more than a French- man will begin the "Marseillaise" by singing "Allons, (pause) enfants de la patrie." (In the latter case, the liaison between "allons" and "enfants" occurs precisely because there is no pause.)

STEPHEN G. DAITZ

explains that a short syllable at verse end is in effect lengthened by the external pause (vacans tempus), so that a final trochee in effect becomes a spondee.6 Secondly, many verses that end with a vowel are followed by a verse that begins with a vowel, e.g., Od. 1.8/9 'E oioLo / ao0Lov. If there were no external pause, we would often have hiatus at verse junc- ture. Third, the normal coda of the dactylic hexameter in the fifth and sixth measures has the rhythmic pattern of - - - -. If external pause was not normally practiced by the performer, the coda by itself would be insufficient to mark the end of verse since the rhythmic pattern of the coda can occur earlier in the verse. It is the combination of the coda rhythm with pause that gives to the listener the unmistakable signal of verse end.

A well-known passage of Cicero (De Or. 1.61.261) indirectly as- sumes, I believe, the normal practice of external pause:

. . . et coniectis in os calculis, (Demosthenes) summa voce versus multos uno spiritu pronuntiare consuescebat....

.. and with pebbles inserted into his mouth, he (Demosthenes) grew accustomed to declaim, at the top of his lungs, many verses on a single breath.... (trans. Daitz)

Cicero is here describing several unusual procedures that Demos- thenes supposedly employed in order to improve his oratorical delivery. Just as Cicero implies that practicing declamation with pebbles in the mouth and at maximum volume were unusual procedures, so does he also imply that reciting more than one verse on a single breath was unusual. It therefore seems reasonable to infer that the usual mode of poetic delivery was to recite the verses without pebbles in the mouth and at moderate or varied volume. Should we not equally infer that the usual practice was to recite, not many verses on a single breath, but a single verse on a single breath? This in turn implies a pause for breath at the end of each recited verse.

Finally, it should be recalled that in Homer, unlike Vergil, there are

6Quint. 9.4.93 ".. . in fine pro longa accipi brevem, quia videtur aliquid vacantis temporis ex eo quod insequitur accedere." "... A concluding short syllable is usually regarded as equivalent to a long because the time-length which it lacks appears to be supplied from that which follows" (trans. Butler).

152

ON READING HOMER ALOUD: TO PAUSE OR NOT TO PAUSE 153

no hypermetric verses, a phenomenon which requires the elimination of external pause. (There are twenty hypermetric verses in Vergil.)

I should like to conclude this discussion of external pause with one general consideration. If, in an oral reading of poetry, there origi- nally was no regular pause at the end of each verse, there would be no reason, when writing the verses, to start each verse on a new line. If dactylic hexameters were written continuously as prose, i.e., not begin- ning each verse on a new line, this would not alter the dactylic rhythm of the words. But it would obscure the identity of the six measures of the hexameter. For the visual reader, the fact that each verse begins on a new line visually establishes the identity of the hexameter. For the lis- tener, the pause at the end of each verse in performance accomplishes the same purpose aurally. However, in chronological terms, it is the earlier performance practice of pausing at the end of each verse which comes first, and this is then later reflected in the written practice of beginning each verse on a new line.

It is true that the Timotheus Persians fragment, found in a fourth- century B.C. papyrus, although poetry, was written continuously as prose. But in this document there is omitted not only verse separation, but also word separation, accents, and breathing marks. In other words, this written document was not intended to reflect completely what the listener heard. But written documents never do. Even moder written texts reveal nothing about the dynamics, the tempo, the pitch changes, and emphases that the performer should use. It is for this reason presumably that Aristophanes of Byzantium introduced the sep- aration of verses (colometry) along with the accent and breathing marks. He wished to make the written text reflect somewhat more accu- rately the oral performance.

The question of internal pause is more complex. Since ancient Greek rhythm is based upon patterns of syllabic quantity rather than patterns of syllabic stress (as in English poetry), we have in Greek poetry a form of rhythm which, like that of sung music, is dependent for its effect upon the patterned time duration of long and short syllables. As in music, a pause or silence of one or more morae alters the rhyth- mic pattern of the verse as perceived by the listener. An internal pause of one or more morae after a short syllable in order to accommodate punctuation, will in effect render the short syllable long, and thereby dislocate the rhythm. Such rhythmic distortion, transforming a dactyl (- -) into a palimbacchius (- - -) or into a cretic (-- -), would pre-

154 STEPHEN G. DAITZ

sumably not have been tolerated by keen-eared ancient audiences.7 Quintilian, in discussing the metrics of clausulae, clearly corroborates his former statement that a short syllable is lengthened by a pause (inane, mora, intervallum) after that syllable.8 Cicero, in the Orator, implies that poetry was normally read without internal pause, (inter- vallum), even at sense boundary.9 And so the clear inference is that, contrary to the printed punctuation and contrary to the recommenda- tion of Nicanor, we should read the first line of the Odyssey without pause before or after Moioa.

Perhaps more important even than the testimonia of Cicero and Quintilian is the linguistic and metrical evidence of the poetry itself for limiting internal pause. This evidence involves the phenomena of syl- labic liaison, of elision, and of epic correption.

It is an accepted linguistic principle of Greek and Latin that in syllabic division, a syllable must begin with a consonant if there is an available consonant preceding the vowel of that syllable. If, however, we pause at printed punctuation, this principle of syllabic liaison will

7Cf. Cic., De Or. 3.196: "si paulum modo offensum est ut aut contractione brevius fieret, aut productione longius, theatra tota reclamant." "If even a small mistake is made, e.g., (a syllable or vowel) made too short by cutting it off, or too long by prolonging it, the whole theater shouts its disapproval" (trans. Daitz).

Cf. also the scornful reaction of the Athenian audience to the actor Hegelokhos' mispronunciation in Eur., Or. 279. For details, see S. G. Daitz, CQ 33(i) (1983) 294-95.

In English poetry, where rhythm is based upon stress patterns, internal pause does not necessarily upset the rhythm since a pause does not affect the number of stresses per line or their position in the line.

8Quint. 9.4.108: "Sed hic est illud inane quod dixi: paulum enim morae damus inter ultimum atque proximum verbum (turpe duceret), et 'turpe' illud intervallo quodam pro- ducimus." "This example also illustrates the 'inane' I spoke of above, since we put a brief

pause between the last two words (turpe duceret) and lengthen the last syllable of 'turpe' by a kind of pause or delay in utterance" (trans. Cunningham).

9Cic., Or. 66.222: "Ex hoc genere illud est Crassi: 'missos faciant patronos; ipsi prodeant'-nisi intervallo dixisset 'ipsi prodeant', sensisset profecto se fudisse sena- rium." "An example of this type may be cited from Crassus: 'missos . . . prodeant'. If he had not paused before (the words) 'ipsi prodeant', he would have immediately recognized that he had produced a senarius" (trans. Cunningham).

The clear implication of this passage is that the only element which identified Crassus' words as prose rather than poetry was the internal pause (intervallum) he had made at sense boundary. Hence we may conclude that in Cicero's time, poetry was

normally not recited with internal pause at sense boundary. If avoidance of internal pause was the normal practice of Cicero's day, I think it is safe to assume that this was the traditional Greek practice, since we know that the Romans adopted Greek poetics vir-

tually in toto.

ON READING HOMER ALOUD: TO PAUSE OR NOT TO PAUSE 155

often be violated. This can be seen in line 9 of the Odyssey after the first word, iao0Lov. If there is a pause at the punctuation, not only does the last syllable of the word in effect become long through closure, making the rhythm - - , i.e., a cretic instead of a dactyl, but also, the follow- ing syllable cannot begin with a consonant.10

We know that both Greek and Latin poetry tend to avoid or to minimize hiatus. Homeric poetry, probably as a concession to the prac- tical difficulties of oral, improvised composition, compromised on hi- atus by normally, in the case of short vowels, entirely eliminating hiatus through the process of elision, and, in the case of long vowels and diphthongs, by diminishing the hiatus through the process of correption (the reduction of the long element from two morae to one). The practi- cal function of elision and correption from the viewpoint of poetic com- position was to eliminate an extra syllable or mora from the verse, and so maintain the regular quantitative pattern, a pattern which would have been distorted by an extra syllable or mora at vowel juncture. This is also the function of the less frequent phenomena of synizesis and krasis.

There are many cases in Homer where elision occurs at a full stop (period or semi-colon), e.g., 11. 1.52 PSa&X' acie 6i. .... If the line is to be read with the correct rhythm, the performer can make no pause at the elided sense boundary. A pause of one mora after p3akk' will have the effect of adding a syllable to the line, defeating the purpose of the elision.

In the case of epic correption, the poet's aim is to reduce the quantity of a long syllable to that of a short syllable. But if we make a pause for punctuation after syllabic correption, the syllable is in effect lengthened, nullifying the correption. This can be seen in line 2 of the Odyssey after the first word, 3takyx0Oq. The second syllable is shortened by correption, but if we pause for the comma, we lengthen the syllable, making the rhythm a palimbacchius (---) instead of a dactyl

'?In those cases where we have a sequence of final consonant + punctuation + initial vowel, it is possible to pronounce this sequence in such a way that a word boundary is perceived after the final consonant (i.e., pronounced with external transition), but without making a rhythmically distorting pause. This can be accomplished by making a glottal stop between the final consonant and the initial vowel.

"The same phenomenon is found not infrequently in Vergil, e.g., Aen. 1.48 ... ger(o). et....

STEPHEN G. DAITZ

A careful examination of the rhythmic and linguistic effects of internal pause at sense boundary suggests the following conclusions: 1) There are relatively few situations where internal pause is recom- mended. Such recommended pauses would be made primarily to avoid hiatus or to handle brevis in longo.'2 (There are, however, numerous examples of hiatus and of brevis in longo that occur where there is no sense boundary.) 2) There are a somewhat larger number of situations where internal pause may be considered optional. Such optional pauses could come after certain long syllables and could be used for expressive purposes. (An example of such an optional pause can be seen in the tenth line of the Odyssey after the word 0ea.) 3) There are by far the largest number of situations where internal pause, despite sense bound- ary and despite the printed punctuation, is to be avoided. These include primarily pause after a short syllable, after elision, or after a long vowel affected by correption or syllabic liaison, e.g., Od. 1.1 EvvwEE, Movaa (short syllable); II. 1.52 3akk'. aiei 6e (elision); Od. 1.2 ktxayX0r, FTei

(correption); 11. 1.4 rQ(@xov, actToviS (syllabic liaison). I believe that these observations concerning internal and external

pause in the hexameter are applicable to other poetic meters in Greek and Latin literature.

At this point, someone might ask, given the necessity of regularly making an external pause, and of sharply limiting the number of internal pauses, does this not mean that an oral rendition of Homer would drone on monotonously, somewhat like metronomic doggerel? My answer is, absolutely not, particularly if we remember the testimony of Plato's rhapsode, Ion, about the powerful emotional effects his recitations of Homer aroused amongst his listeners. First of all, the external pause will vary from a relatively short to a relatively long pause, depending upon whether the verse ends with enjambement or with a sense bound- ary. Secondly, in addition to the variety produced by the occasional recommended and optional internal pauses, the oral reader has at his disposal variations of dynamics, of tempo, and of tessitura to achieve his individual interpretive goals. For example, the performer can effec- tively signal a sense boundary to the listener by subtly slowing the tempo of his delivery just before reaching the sense boundary, a pro- cedure comparable to musical rallentando. This rallentando can be combined with a lowering of the pitch (a procedure that Quintilian fre- quently refers to as deponere vocem). By using rallentando and pitch

'2Avoidance of hiatus: II. 23.727 E(o?UZWo. EJ/ Brevis in longo (= ^) II. 16.269 Mvpti66v?g, etaEoo

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ON READING HOMER ALOUD: TO PAUSE OR NOT TO PAUSE 157

modulation, the performer can convey the effect of sense boundary without interrupting the rhythmic flow. The listener in turn can follow the sense of the words without being rhythmically jarred.13

One might reasonably wonder, given the frequent incompatibility of rhetorical punctuation with poetic rhythm, how it happened that this rhetorical punctuation so thoroughly invaded our poetic texts and ulti- mately affected their oral rendition. While a general discussion of an- cient punctuation is beyond the scope of this article, a few basic consid- erations may provide a tentative answer.14

Punctuation in the classical period of Greece was apparently both scarce and irregular. With the systematic inquiry into language begun by Aristotle and his followers, accompanied by the increasing influence of rhetorical studies, punctuation gradually emerged as one of the im- portant subjects treated by Hellenistic grammarians such as Dionysios of Thrace (II cent. B.C.). The marks of punctuation used by these gram- marians (oTIy[tli, dtooxtyPil) were intended as separators: they sepa- rated sentences, clauses, phrases (and even words where there might be confusion, e.g., EOTLV- &alog vs. E'ol. NatLog). In other words, the original aim of punctuation was syntactical analysis and semantic clar- ity, and had nothing to do either with poetic rhythm or with poetic performance. 15

This is made abundantly clear by Dionysios of Halikarnassos (De Comp. 26, ed., trans. Roberts) who distinguishes sharply between rhythmical colometry and rhetorical colometry. In discussing Simoni- des' Danae poem, Dionysios says:

avayivooxr xara 6laoroXag, xaiL e ito' o6TL ocrTa oE 6 Ogu6 QV0 Tig (6rig xal ou/X e8Lg oTZLtPaXeLV OVlTE oTQO(YV o0re aVTLICOTo4oV OUT' rJcp- 66v, &XXa avlaoTcai OL Xyo; g elg E6AQ?vog.

. . . read the piece carefully by (rhetorical) divisions: you may rest as- sured that the rhythmical arrangements of the ode will escape you, and you will be unable to guess which is the strophe or which the antistrophe

13G. Nussbaum, in private correspondence, aptly terms the effect of rallentando a "trompe-l'oreille." The effect of tempo and pitch modulation in indicating a sense bound- ary to the listener is reinforced by the large number of connectives in ancient Greek (particles, conjunctions, relatives, etc.), each of which immediately sends a signal to the experienced listener that a sense boundary has been or is being crossed.

4 An informative summary on the subject of ancient punctuation, with additional references, can be found in E. G. TLrner, Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, 2 ed., revised by P. J. Parsons (London 1987) 8-10.

5 For the Stoic influence on punctuation, see D. L. Blank (note 3 above).

STEPHEN G. DAITZ

or which the epode, but you will think it all one continuous piece of prose. 16

Dionysios then quotes the Simonides text, dividing it into rhetori- cal divisions corresponding to grammatical clauses or phrases, pre- sumably with a pause at the end of each division (i.e., at each sense boundary). Since Dionysios states that an oral rendition of the poem according to the rhetorical divisions (with a presumed pause at the end of each division) will obscure the poetic rhythm, it is difficult not to conclude that rhythmic divisions will have pauses (presumably at verse end) which are frequently different from those of the rhetorical divi- sions. The inescapable conclusion of Dionysios' testimony here is that the rendition of a poem according to rhetorical divisions (i.e., rhetorical punctuation) robs the poem of the most defining feature of its poetic form, its recognizable rhythm.17 Unfortunately, Dionysios does not tell us whether such rhetorically punctuated renditions were usual or un- usual in his day, or whether he was just making a theoretical point in his discussion of how verse can resemble prose.

Somewhere, however, in the transmission of poetic texts and po- etic performance, the marks of punctuation, which were originally in- vented to aid rhetorical analysis and pedagogy, gradually came to be used also for the performance of poetry in disregard of the rhythmic consequences. Rhetoric overcame rhythm, with the poetically disas- trous results noted by Dionysios. Exactly when this development oc- curred is uncertain, but there is some indication that it may have hap- pened between the age of Cicero and that of Quintilian. We saw above (note 9) that in the time of Cicero (fl. 60 B.c.), poetry was usually read without internal pause. We have also seen that Dionysios of Halikar- nassos (fl. 20 B.c.) speaks of the possibility of reading poetry with inter- nal (rhetorical) pause. Quintilian (fl. 75 A.D.), however, clearly recom- mends an internal pause (distinctio) at Aen. 1.3 after the first word, litora, because he feels that there is a sense boundary at this point (11.3.37). This distinctio is clearly a mark of rhetorical punctuation. It is not unique among Quintilian's recommendations for pauses in the read-

16In De. Comp. 22, Dionysios had already drawn attention to the distinction be- tween the metrical colometry of Aristophanes of Byzantium and the syntactical colome- try of the rhetoricians.

17Cf. Gorgias, Enc. Hel. 9: TTIv JTIOioLV a&joav xai volItO) xai Ovolaco X6yov EXovTa ETxQov. "I consider and define all poetry as (prose) speech with meter" (trans. Daitz).

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ON READING HOMER ALOUD: TO PAUSE OR NOT TO PAUSE 159

ing of poetry aloud, and is similar to the rhetorical punctuation given by Dionysios in the Simonides poem and by Nicanor for Homer (see note 4). Quintilian has apparently ignored his own previous statements (see notes 6, 8) that a pause after a short syllable (here the last syllable of litora) lengthens that syllable. We are thus presented with an anomalous contradiction between Quintilian's prosodic theory and his oral prac- tice. As with Dionysios' remarks on the rhetorical reading of Simoni- des, it is not clear whether Quintilian's rhetorically punctuated rendi- tion of Vergil was idiosyncratic or was, by his time, a common practice, thus representing a radical departure from the practice of Cicero's day.8 What is clear is that the rhetorical punctuation of poetry, originat- ing in Hellenistic Greece, then adopted by the Roman grammarians and rhetoricians, was eventually transmitted to our medieval and moder texts. What began as a scholarly procedure for semantic and grammati- cal analysis was imperceptibly and unhappily transformed into a perfor- mance practice for Homer and for later classical poetry.

And so the diverse elements of the picture seem to cohere. In the Homeric hexameter we have a form of poetry in which each verse was originally felt to be an integrated unit, centripetal in nature, knit to- gether by the procedures of elision, correption, consonantal assimila- tion, and syllabic liaison. This poetry was normally read without pause from the first to the last syllable, but with a pause after the last syllable of each verse, and with sufficient flexibility of tempo and pitch to clearly convey meaning and expression without distortion of the rhythm. The overall aural effect would come closer to the rhythmic regularity and strictness of music than we are used to hearing in modern renditions of poetry. It would therefore be further removed from the rhetorical ca- dences of prose which we are accustomed both to hear and to see reflected in the printed punctuation of our texts, and which we uncon- sciously and erroneously tend to employ in our reading of ancient po- etry. 9

18W. S. Allen has suggested in private correspondence and has also implied in his book, Accent and Rhythm (Cambridge 1973) 335-42, that Latin poetry, and particularly the hexameter, was read aloud as prose. This would accord with Quintilian's suggestions for reciting Vergil with pauses appropriate to prose, but would be at variance with Cic- ero's observation (see note 9).

19This polemic against the misuse of printed punctuation does not necessarily mean that I advocate that all punctuation be summarily expunged from our printed Greek and Latin texts. It does mean that the modern oral reader of classical poetry must reso- lutely ignore printed punctuation that distorts the rhythm of the poetry.

STEPHEN G. DAITZ

At this point it would be proper to put the above theoretical views to the aural test of performance. Unfortunately, most scholarly journals are not yet accompanied by recordings. I therefore offer below a text of Odyssey 1.1-10, marked with my performance suggestions. (Of the ten internal punctuation marks, nine are ignored, while one, in line 10, 0ea, is considered optional.) Readers are invited to read these verses aloud, rhythmically, in two ways: first according to the printed punctuation, and then in accordance with the suggested markings. To readers who have been willing to accept this invitation, I can only then conclude with Lysias: axxx6aT ... . X. . e &xe. Te.

= no pause = relatively short pause

I = relatively long pause

'Av6gta [o01 EVvE, MoViot,,oXv'-roJoO6v 05 ,taa nokka' Jk&aYX0q.FeTn? TQoioTg lEoQv jTroi,e0Qov EEQjooe- 3tockVDv 6' &v0Q@gcJrv l6ev aoTeCa Xa vOov yvoW,' ToXXa 6' 6 y' Ev t6OVTq) Jta0ev a,kyEa 6v xaTCta OuO6v,'

&aQV1[evVOg Yv TE ipVXUXv xal v6ooov E?TiQov. I a&X' ou6' (g TaGoQovSg eQaJocazO,FeLRevg e@Q- I Ct1UTOv y&LQ oE?TF'QnoLV aTlao0aXiToLV O6ovzo,'

VTtOiOL, OL xaTaXX 3oug 'YeAQiovog 'HeX?ioo' iaoOi6v- avlaQ 6 TOLOIoV &aeielTO v6oriitov I[taQ. I TCOV a&160ev y0Ea &,' 0VyatEQ ALog,, etrit xai, X iv.I

(Oc

5

10 tyssey 1.1-10)

STEPHEN G. DAITZ THE CITY COLLEGE AND GRADUATE CENTER

CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

160