On Reading Homer Aloud: To Pause or Not to Pause Author(s): Stephen G. Daitz Source: The American Journal of Philology, Vol.

112, No. 2 (Summer, 1991), pp. 149-160 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/294714 Accessed: 12/11/2009 23:33
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AMERICAN

JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY
ON READING HOMER ALOUD: TO PAUSE OR NOT TO PAUSE' Thereare two basic assumptionsthatunderliethis article.My first assumptionis that poetry is akin to music in havingas its esthetic basis patternsof sound and rhythm.There is a furtherkinshipbetween music and poetry. When Schubert composed his songs and when Homer composed his poetry,it is certain that their primaryintentionwas that the compositions be performed.(Because of its oral nature, it is probable that the processes of composition and performanceof HoIt meric poetry occurred simultaneously.) is equally certain that harmonic and rhythmic analysis of the musical work, that translation, rhythmicand literaryanalysis of the poetic work, importantas these may be for modern students of music and poetry,were not part of the creativeintentionsof either Schubertor Homer.Toparaphrase Hamlet, the performance the thing!A poem, like a work of music, cannot be is fully experienced unless it is heard. My second assumptionis that in orderfor the esthetic experience of a poem to be genuine, it is necessary that its performancebe as linguisticallyand metricallyaccurate as possible. In music, a song of Schubertperformedconsistently with wrong notes and faulty rhythm will not give the listener a true experience of Schubert'smusic. Likewise, a performanceof Homer with consistent mispronunciationof vowels and consonants, accents, and rhythmwill not give the listener a true experience of Homeric poetry. This article will consider one aspect of the performanceof Homeric 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

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and the possible effects that pause can produce on the listener's perception 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 - -- TxokQoov 6g ttaka jnokka

Now while such a rendition perhaps produces grammatical clarity, it certainly produces poetic travesty. Rhythmical regularity and recognition 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 reveals 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 practices 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 declamatory 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, "Singing 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/ v I 6v '' / 'ETEOv. Such a ery of II. 2.498 (/ = pause): Zxolv6v xT? xoXiXVRv6v o delivery, apart from doing metrical violence to the verse, ignores the metrical impossibility of pause after elided T'.

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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 unauthentic renditionof Homer. Even in English,printedpunctuationcan often be misleading from the viewpoint of actual performance.A simple sentence like "Tellme, John, when did you arrive?"is printedwith commas before and after the word "John"to indicatethe vocative case, but no native speakerof Englishwould say, "Tellme (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 instinctivefeel for the sound patterns of English makes us ignore these commas, which serve the purnot But pose of grammar, of performance.5 with ancient Greek, where few of us can claimto possess withinourselves the linguisticinstinctsof native speakers,we must seek help on the questionof pause fromexternal sources. Fortunately,such sources do exist. There are two basic questions concerningpause in the oral rendition of the Homeric hexameter. 1) Should the reader always make a pause at the end of the verse (what I term an "externalpause"), even when there is no sense boundary at the end of the verse, i.e., in a situationof enjambement? can (Such enjambement be found at the end of the first verse of the Odyssey,printedat the end of this article.) 2) Should the readerever make a pause withinthe verse (what I term an "internalpause"), even when there is a sense boundary within the verse, a situationreferredto as a "break"or a "stop"?Shouldthere 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 hexameteris quite strong. First, the quantityof 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 printedpunctuation,no Americansinger of the Banner"will sing "Oh,(pause)say can you see" any morethana French"Star-Spangled manwill beginthe "Marseillaise" singing"Allons,(pause)enfantsde la patrie."(In the by lattercase, the liaisonbetween "allons"and "enfants"occurs preciselybecause there is no pause.)

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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 juncture. 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 assumes, I believe, the normal practice of external pause: . . . et coniectis in os calculis, (Demosthenes)summavoce versusmultos uno spiritupronuntiare consuescebat.... .. and with pebbles inserted into his mouth, he (Demosthenes)grew accustomedto declaim, at the top of his lungs, many verses on a single breath.... (trans. Daitz) Cicero is here describing several unusual procedures that Demosthenes 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,quiavideturaliquidvacantis temporisex eo quod insequituraccedere.""... A concludingshort syllable is usually regardedas equivalentto a long because the time-length which it lacks appearsto be suppliedfrom that which follows" (trans.Butler).

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no hypermetric verses, a phenomenonwhichrequiresthe eliminationof externalpause. (There are twenty hypermetricverses in Vergil.) I should like to conclude this discussion of external pause with one general consideration.If, in an oral readingof poetry,there originally was no regularpause at the end of each verse, there would be no reason, when writingthe verses, to start each verse on a new line. If dactylic hexameterswere writtencontinuouslyas prose, i.e., not beginning 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 thateach verse beginson a new line visually establishes the identity of the hexameter.For the listener, the pause at the end of each verse in performanceaccomplishes the same purpose aurally.However, in chronologicalterms, it is the earlierperformancepractice of pausingat the end of each verse which comes first, and this is then later reflected in the written practice of beginningeach verse on a new line. It is true that the TimotheusPersiansfragment,foundin a fourthcentury B.C. papyrus, although poetry, was written continuously as prose. But in this documentthere is omittednot 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 listenerheard. But writtendocumentsneverdo. Even moder written texts reveal nothing about the dynamics, the tempo, the pitch changes, and emphases that the performershould use. It is for this reasonpresumablythatAristophanesof Byzantiumintroducedthe separation of verses (colometry) along with the accent and breathing marks.He wished to makethe writtentext reflectsomewhatmoreaccurately the oral performance. The question of internal pause is more complex. Since ancient Greek rhythmis based upon patterns of syllabic quantityratherthan patterns of syllabic stress (as in English poetry), we have in Greek poetry a formof rhythmwhich, like thatof sungmusic, is dependentfor its effect upon the patternedtime durationof long and short syllables. As in music, a pause or silence of one or more morae alters the rhythmic patternof the verse as perceivedby the listener.An internalpause 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 rhythmicdistortion, transforming dactyl a
(-) into a palimbacchius (- - -) or into a cretic (-- -), would pre-

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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, (intervallum), even at sense boundary.9 And so the clear inference is that, contrary to the printed punctuation and contrary to the recommendation 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 syllabic 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 producimus." "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 senarium." "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 virtually in toto.

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often be violated. This can be seen in line 9 of the Odysseyafterthe first If word, iao0Lov. there is a pause at the punctuation,not only does the last syllable of the word in effect become long throughclosure, 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 minimizehiatus. Homericpoetry,probablyas a concession to the practical difficultiesof oral, improvisedcomposition, compromisedon hihiatus in atus by normally, the case of shortvowels, entirelyeliminating the process of elision, and, in the case of long vowels and through the diphthongs,by diminishing hiatusthroughthe process of correption reductionof the long element from two morae to one). The practi(the cal functionof elision and correptionfrom the viewpointof poetic composition was to eliminatean extra syllable or morafrom the verse, and so maintainthe regularquantitative pattern,a patternwhichwouldhave been distorted by an extra syllable or mora at vowel juncture. This is also the function of the less frequent phenomenaof synizesis and krasis. There are many cases in Homerwhere elision occurs at a full stop
acie (period or semi-colon), e.g., 11. 1.52 PSa&X' 6i. .... If the line is to

be read with the correct rhythm, the performercan make no pause at the elided sense boundary. pause of one moraafterp3akk' havethe A will 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 quantityof a long syllable to that of a short syllable. But if we make a pause for punctuationafter syllabic correption,the syllable is in effect lengthened, nullifyingthe correption.This can be seen in line 2 of the The Odysseyafterthe firstword, 3takyx0Oq. second syllableis shortened by correption,but if we pause for the comma, we lengthenthe syllable,
making the rhythm a palimbacchius (---) instead of a dactyl

'?In those cases where we have a sequence of finalconsonant + 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....

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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 recommended. 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 boundary 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 FTei (short syllable); II. 1.52 3akk'. aiei 6e (elision); Od. 1.2 ktxayX0r, (syllabic liaison). (correption); 11. 1.4 rQ(@xov,actToviS 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 boundary. 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 effectively signal a sense boundary to the listener by subtly slowing the tempo of his delivery just before reaching the sense boundary, a procedure comparable to musical rallentando. This rallentando can be combined with a lowering of the pitch (a procedure that Quintilian frequently 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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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 ultimately affected their oral rendition. While a general discussion of ancient punctuation is beyond the scope of this article, a few basic considerations 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 important subjects treated by Hellenistic grammarians such as Dionysios of Thrace (II cent. B.C.). The marks of punctuation used by these grammarians (oTIy[tli, dtooxtyPil) were intended as separators: they separated 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 clarity, 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 Simonides' Danae poem, Dionysios says:
avayivooxr xara 6laoroXag, xaiLe ito' o6TL ocrTa oE6 QV0 Tig Ogu6 OVlTE OUT'rJcpoTQO(YVo0re aVTLICOTo4oV (6rig xal ou/X e8Lg oTZLtPaXeLV 66v, &XXa avlaoTcai OLXyo; g E6AQ?vog. elg

. . . read the piece carefullyby (rhetorical)divisions: you may rest assured that the rhythmicalarrangements the ode will escape you, and of you will be unableto guess which is the stropheor which the antistrophe
13G.Nussbaum,in privatecorrespondence, a aptlytermsthe effect of rallentando The in a "trompe-l'oreille." effect of tempoandpitchmodulation indicating sense boundary to the listener is reinforcedby the large numberof connectives in ancient Greek (particles,conjunctions,relatives,etc.), each of whichimmediatelysends a signalto the experiencedlistener that a sense boundaryhas been or is being crossed. 4An informative summaryon the subjectof ancientpunctuation,with additional revised by P. J. Parsons(London 1987)8-10.
references, can be found in E. G. TLrner,Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, 2 ed., 5For the Stoic influence on punctuation, see D. L. Blank (note 3 above).

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G. STEPHEN 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 rhetorical divisions corresponding to grammatical clauses or phrases, presumably 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 divisions. 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 unusual 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 poetic performance, the marks of punctuation, which were originally invented 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 disastrous results noted by Dionysios. Exactly when this development occurred is uncertain, but there is some indication that it may have happened 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 Halikarnassos (fl. 20 B.c.) speaks of the possibility of reading poetry with internal (rhetorical) pause. Quintilian (fl. 75 A.D.), however, clearly recommends 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-

16InDe. Comp. 22, Dionysios had alreadydrawnattentionto the distinctionbeof tween the metricalcolometryof Aristophanes Byzantiumand the syntacticalcolometry of the rhetoricians. 17Cf. Gorgias, Enc. Hel. 9: TTIvJTIOioLV a&joav xai volItO) xai Ovolaco X6yov "I ETxQov. considerand define all poetry as (prose) speech with meter"(trans. EXovTa Daitz).

ON READING HOMER ALOUD: TO PAUSE OR NOT TO PAUSE

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ing of poetry aloud, and is similarto the rhetoricalpunctuation given by Dionysios in the Simonidespoem and by Nicanor for Homer (see note 4). Quintilianhas apparentlyignoredhis own previous statements(see notes 6, 8) that a pause after a short syllable (here the last syllable of litora)lengthensthat syllable. Weare thus presentedwith an anomalous contradictionbetween Quintilian'sprosodic theory and his oral practice. As with Dionysios' remarkson the rhetoricalreadingof Simonides, it is not clear whether Quintilian'srhetoricallypunctuatedrendition of Vergilwas idiosyncraticor was, by his time, a commonpractice, thus representing a radical departurefrom the practice of Cicero's day.8 Whatis clear is that the rhetoricalpunctuationof poetry,originatand ing in HellenisticGreece, then adoptedby the Romangrammarians rhetoricians,was eventually transmittedto our medieval and moder texts. Whatbeganas a scholarlyprocedurefor semanticand grammatical analysiswas imperceptibly unhappilytransformed a perforand into mance practice for Homer and for later classical poetry. And so the diverse elements of the pictureseem to cohere. In the Homeric hexameterwe have a form of poetry in which each verse was originallyfelt to be an integratedunit, centripetalin nature, knit together by the proceduresof elision, correption,consonantalassimilation, and syllabicliaison. This poetry was normallyread withoutpause from the firstto the last syllable, but with a pause after the last syllable of each verse, andwith sufficientflexibilityof tempoandpitchto clearly convey meaningand expression without distortionof the rhythm.The overall aural effect would come closer to the rhythmicregularityand strictnessof music than we are used to hearingin modernrenditionsof poetry. It would therefore be furtherremoved from the rhetoricalcadences of prose which we are accustomed both to hear and to see reflectedin the printedpunctuationof our texts, and which we unconsciously and erroneouslytend to employ in our readingof ancient poetry. 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 Cicero'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 resolutely ignore printed punctuation that distorts the rhythm of the poetry.

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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 .... . eX. &xe. Te. = no pause = relativelyshort pause I = relativelylong pause ,taa nokka' 'Av6gta [o01EVvE, MoViot,,oXv'-roJoO6v 05 EEQjooeTQoioTg lEoQv jTroi,e0Qov Jk&aYX0q.FeTn? 6' l6ev 3tockVDv &v0Q@gcJrv aoTeCaXa vOov yvoW,' 6' 6v Jta0ev a,kyEa xaTCta ToXXa 6 y' Ev t6OVTq) OuO6v,' xal Yv &aQV1[evVOg TEipVXUXv v6ooov E?TiQov.I I a&X' ou6' (g eQaJocazO,FeLRevg e@QTaGoQovSg
Ct1UTOv aTlao0aXiToLV O6ovzo,' oE?TF'QnoLV y&LQ VTtOiOL,OL xaTaXX 3oug 'YeAQiovog

'HeX?ioo'

iaoOi6v- avlaQ 6 TOLOIoV &aeielTO v6oriitov I[taQ. I TCOV X a&160ev y0Ea &,' 0VyatEQALog,,etrit xai, iv.I

10 (Oc tyssey1.1-10)
G. STEPHEN DAITZ

THE CITY COLLEGE AND GRADUATE CENTER CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK