Review

Author(s): M. L. West
Review by: M. L. West
Source: Gnomon, 48. Bd., H. 1 (Feb., 1976), pp. 1-8
Published by: Verlag C.H.Beck
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27686376
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W. Sidney Allen: Accent and Rhythm. Prosodie Features of Latin and Greek. A
Study in Theory and Reconstruction. Cambridge 1973. XIV, 394 S. (Cambridge Stu
dies in Linguistics. 12.) 7,90 ?.

This book is a systematic discussion of the phonetic foundations and

implications of Greek and Latin metre. It is divided into three parts.
The first part, cThe General and Theoretical Background*, is a thorough
investigation of such matters as the nature of the syllable, vowel length
and syllabic quantity, the significance of stress and pitch, the concept of
rhythm. Various modern theories are described and criticized in detail.
The second part, cThe Prosodies of Latin*, and the third, cThe Prosodies
-
of Greek*, examine the scansion and structure of classical verse
parti
-
cularly hexameters, elegiacs, and the metres of dramatic with
dialogue
special reference to syllabification, the alternation in certain circumstances
of? and ^^, and the effect of stress (which A. believes to exist in Greek
as well as in is frequent
Latin). There comparison of phenomena in other
languages, for example there is an excursus on 'iambic and
shortening*
'staccato stress* in and many other matters also find mention.
English;
An appendix is devoted to the Latin hexameter: the extent to which it
seeks or avoids coincidence of stress and arsis; the different approaches
taken in antiquity, in the Middle Ages and since the Renaissance to the
question of how to read it; and the interplay of stress and quantity in
imitations of the metre in English, German, and other languages.
On the jacket the claim is made that 'this is a book of permanent
for students of classical and literatures, and also
importance languages
for metricians, and For and
phoneticians, general linguists*. phoneticians
general linguists I cannot speak. For metricians the claim is certainly
justified: having lived hitherto, most of them, in a state of innocence in
regard to phonetics, they will accept the instruction provided by this book
with the utmost gratitude, and acknowledge that it has clarified their
understanding of the problems they deal with. Classicists without a spe
cialist interest in metrics or phonetics, however, are likely to find it daun
tingly technical; and the parts most likely to interest them, where A.
draws inferences from Greek and Latin versification about stress in the
two are the which are
languages, precisely parts unconvincing.
Crucial to Greek and Latin verse is the syllable. Every line must have
the right number of them and the right sort. We all think we know what
they are. But when it comes to defining what a syllable is and where it
begins and ends, it is not so simple. A. records and criticizes a number
of physiological and other, approaches to the question, finally adopting
with minor qualifications the 'motor* theory of Stetson.1 According to
this, a syllable to a unitary, indivisible of the inter
corresponds pulse
1
R. H. Stetson, Motor Phonetics, Amsterdam 1951.
1 Gnomon 1976

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 2 M. L. West: Allen, Accent and Rhythm

costal muscles of the chest. Speech consists essentially of a succession of

expirations accompanied by vibration of the vocal chords, each expira
tion being modified by a rapid sequence of chest pulses and adjustments
of the mouth. The syllabic pulse is initiated by a muscular contraction;
it may be arrested either 'thoracically*, that is, by contraction of an op
set of chest muscles, or a constriction of the oral
posing orally, by appa
or it may a arrest. arrest
ratus, lapse without positive Thoracic gives what
is as a vowel, oral arrest a consonantal close. Either kind
perceived long
of arrest makes the syllable long (as classicists are accustomed to call it)
or heavy (as A. prefers to say, following the Indian This
grammarians).
is why the weight of a syllable for metrical purposes depends not on the
sum of the durations of individual phonemes but on their arrangement :
the first syllable of aTpocpo? is lighter than that of octtsov, in spite of con
more consonants any because are associated with
taining (on count), they
the release of the chest pulse and not its arrest. The prosody of a word
like 7tixpo? depends on whether the x is given a releasing or an arresting
- a question
function presumably of the timing of the oral constriction in
relation the to
chest
pulses.
On this
account, since the pulse either is or is not arrested, there are only two proso
die possibilities for the syllable, heavy or light; durational differences between different
heavy or light syllables are admitted to exist, but denied prosodie But in
significance.
Greek verse, at least, there is evidence that they are significant. For instance, a word
such as a?poTdeTOO (scanned like ?voa?ou) is generally avoided in a resolved foot even by
poets who are willing to scan the first syllable of a?poc light in other circumstances.
This can only be explained by saying that a(?po), though is not as light as ?(vo).2
light,
This is not to say that the motor theory is faulty. It is very plausible. But pulse arrest
in itself is not the only factor relevant to quantity: subtle differences of time-value
(relative, not absolute) are also significant.
A particular concerns the quantity of the final syllable of words like xaxo?
problem
or manet when occur before a pause. to motor (and other
they According theory
modern phonetic theories) they should be heavy; but this conflicts with the normal
practice of Greek and Latin poets, and explicit statements by Quintilian (9, 4, 107)
and Hephaestion (Ench. 4, 5). A. explains the poets' unscientific habits by reference
to the tendency (apparently inherited from IE. times) to treat the verse-line in certain
respects like a grammatical colon, pausing at the end but internally continuous.3 So
much is allowable; but it really will not do to plead (131) that Quintilian, refined con
noisseur of rhythmic effects in oratory, contrasts the short final syllable of (pre-pausal)
diceret with the long one of diceres only because he is misled by traditional doctrine'.
Clearly {dice)ret is lighter than {dice)res; equally clearly it is heavier than {dice)re,
and the fact that elegiac poets prefer ^VC to ^V at the end of the couplet (130, cf
205 f) does not mean that^VC is as heavy as ~VC. Here again the refusal to recog
nize more than two degrees of heaviness has paradoxical consequences.

Among the problems of Latin versification perhaps the most interesting

questions concern the nature of elision and the effect of the accent. The
treatment of the former is somewhat fuller than in the author's Vox

2
See further Glotta 48, 1970, 185ff.
3 at the
Cf. Kurylowicz in: Indo-European and Indo-Europeans (Papers presented
Third Indo-European Conference at the University of Pennsylvania) 42iff; Allen

113??. Hence also correption at sense-pause, and elision, even with change of speaker.

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 M. L. West: Allen, Accent and Rhythm 3

Latina.4 Much the same balanced conclusions are reached, that

except
final vowel + my instead of being regarded as simply a type of long
vowel, is now found to call for separate classification, and indeed from
one point of view to ?occupy an intermediate position between short and
long? (147). Short vowels behave in elision as if cut right off. They never
combine with a light initial syllable in such a way as to make it heavy.
Long vowels seem not to be lost completely, since there is reluctance to
elide them before light syllables (leaving a light syllable). The assumption
of some kind of contraction with the initial vowel, resulting in a heavy
syllable, explains this inhibition. In certain cases consonantalization of -t
and -m may be to take e. odi et amo =
supposed place, g. phonetic [ood
jetamoo].
On the quantity of final -em, -urn, etc., it would be relevant to observe that they
occur in hypermetric elision in Virgil (G. 1, 295. A. 7, 160): long vowels do not. A.
regards them5 as vowels that are nasalized and The
simultaneously lengthened.
grammarians, however, imply that what was heard was a short vowel followed by
difficult to describe,6 and this is also presupposed
something by French rien from
rem. The nasalization, then, came after the release of the vowel. Between vowels it
seems sometimes to have fondness for eliding -Mm might then
disappeared.7 Virgil's
be interpreted as an antipathy towards the sound that Velius calls a fere
- peregrina
litter a. The contraction theory of long-vowel elision, as put by A., fails to explain
why a long vowel never makes a into a heavy one. We find
following light syllable
Antandro~et Phrygiae, but not Ant andr o~ et Idae. Where such a juncture occurs, the
result is always a light it is rarely allowed to occur. Should we not
syllable; though
infer that it made something of intermediate which the poets felt was short
quantity,
rather than long but on the whole was better avoided?

On the accent A. is admirably and workmanlike.

thorough Starting
from the arguments for its dynamic nature and its tendency in early Latin
to coincide with the he considers evidence from
verse-ictus, grammarians
and from versification for irregular effects enclitics like
involving -que,
and for certain other anomalous accentuations. For the normal rule he de
vises a new formulation based on the -
accentual of and \?>^j.
equivalence
He argues that the accent is a kind of a reinforce
dynamic perispomenon,
ment of the syllabic chest pulse followed by an arrest, this sequence re
a Matrix* of the ? or ww.
quiring length Its position is then given by
the rule ?the accent occupies the last matrix in the word, exclusive of the
final syllable in words of more than matrix
length? (177Q. Only for iambic
words this would be problematic, because the final syllable is excluded
and the first is too short to be a matrix. A. suggests that the phenomena
of iambic shortening (ego, bene, etc.) and cbrevis brevians' now find their
: for a certain and in certain strata of
explanation period society, speakers
tended to weaken the second syllable of iambic words so as to them
adapt
4
Cambridge 1965, ch. 4. He could not at that time take account of J. Soubiran,
L'Elision dans la po?sie latine (Paris 1966).
5 At
any rate in Vox Latina 30 f. 74.
6
Quintilian 9, 4, 40; Priscian II, 23. 29 Keil.
7
Velius Longus VII, 54 Keil. Verrius Flaccus ap. eund. 80; but not as
always,
Quintilian shows.

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 4 M. L. West: Allen, Accent and Rhythm

to the normal matrix vZa_a a stress

pattern By assuming secondary pre

ceding the main one in long words, the explanation can be extended to
cover scansions like ?m?c?tiam, c?lef?cio.
There is much
plausibility in this. But it fails to explain how the second syllable of
words like
iuuentute, gubernabunt, can be treated as light in verse; A. admits that
there can be no reduction of the consonant sequences nt or rn (183 f). It seems that
for this we must resort to a durational explanation, and say that under these accentual
conditions the pronunciation of such syllables was simply accelerated; the effect is
-
easy to simulate. More eccentric, and unintegrated with the rest of his system, is
A.'s idea that iambic words followed by a pause may have been accented on the final

syllable (186-8). His main argument is that the elegists increasingly favour iambic
words (which include, by A.'s criteria, words like er?t) at the end of the couplet: their
motive must have been to secure agreement between ictus and accent. But why? The
more fastidious Greek elegists by this time were going out of their way to avoid

accenting the last syllable of the pentameter.8 This has rightly been seen as a sign of
the development of the Greek accent into a dynamic accent; and in the later Greek
trimeter it is precisely the pattern v^x that is sought at close, as also at the caesura
the
of the hexameter. As for the stylistic device of ending halves
the of the pentameter
with a rhyming epithet and noun, as inflammaque in arguto saepe reperta foro, this
has nothing to do with stress. It is done equally with non-rhyming epithet and noun;
and it is a pattern established by the Greeks, occurring for example in five of the first
six couplets of Callimachus' fifth Hymn.
That the Latin accent was dynamic is certain, but may it not have been melodic
at the same time? This is certainly what Varro and other grammarians indicate,
and I see no reason to reject whatthey say about acute and circumflex tones {arma:
Musa, h?mis: h?mus) just because it agrees with the Greek system (151). Greek
doctrine led them to attend to the melodic rather than the dynamic aspect, but they
must have been able to hear it.9
The accent
of thein classical Latin is explained by A., following others,
position
in terms of an as a secondary accent following the more ancient initial accent.
origin
?For example, one might have had prehistoric accentual patterns of the types det?rios,
relatos, dedic?tio, regiones, with initial main stress, and secondary stress in the posi
tion of the historical accent? (189). But it is characteristic of a secondary accent that
its place is determined from the main accent, normally on a principle
mechanically
of alternate accented and unaccented positions (90), since the essence of accent is
contrast. So why not *d?ter?'os, ^relatos} It seems to me that we are dealing with an

accent, fixed from the main accent of the following word

anticipatory secondary
to the same rules that determine the incidence of a secondary accent in
according
in the (190). There have
long words historical period, misericordia, ind?lig?ntia may
been a transitional period in which the more emphatic words in a sentence main
tained their primary, initial accent, while the secondary accents thrown back by them
achieved dominance over the weakened stresses of the less words. In cases
emphatic
like ad-t?nsor{em) ire (Plaut. As. 394), ad-scribend{um) ddpulit (Ter. And. 1), the
accent on the elided words is still determined by the actual distance from the follow
not the distance from the end of the word considered as a lexical unit
ing accent, by
in isolation.

Coming to 'the prosodies of Greek*, A. deals methodically and effi

ciently with syllabic structure and the questions raised by mute + liquid
or nasal, initial etc., and with the various results of final
rho, digamma,
initial vowel clash (hiatus, correption, contraction, elision). A longer
8
Wackernagel, Kl. Sehr. 1189 f.
9 are more as stress
Mus?que, limin?que suspect, incredible accents, though per
not as pitch accents separate from the primary stress accent.
haps impossible

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 M. L. West: Allen, Accent and Rhythm 5

chapter is devoted to the accent: its nature and placing, the significance
of the final grave in the Byzantine system, evidence hinting at a sentence
accent of the word-accent. A. thinks in terms of a Contona
independent
tion5 consisting of high pitch + fall, se. O or XX, and states the law of
limitation thus : ?Not more than one mora may follow the contonation?

(237). Oxytone words, however, end with the high pitch, which means
an contonation. A. takes this to be the reason their acute
incomplete why
becomes a grave before another word : the contonation could not be car

ried over the word-break in Greek (as it could in Vedic), so the pitch was
- or
lowered to the level of the following initial syllable below it if it was
an accented so that the new contonation could stand out as
syllable,
such. But before a pause there is still a high pitch without following fall.
A. finds this easier to accept on the assumption that a final high pitch
was a feature of sentence intonation, wherever it was with the
compatible
?
word accent. In an excursus to the he discusses the
appended chapter,
origin of the substitution of ? for ww in hexameters. Following a sug
gestion of G. Nagy, he takes vowel contraction to be the most likely
source for the alternation. I find this persuasive.
The validity of the contonation concept is not self-evident. A high pitch clearly
can occur without a following fall, as before a pause, or in a phrase such as t? Xsysi?;
It is still perceived as high, by contrast with other in the neighbourhood.
syllables
And in classical Greek, indeed down to the beginning of our era, the evidence indi
cates thatoxytone words retained their accent within the sentence as well as at the
end of it.10 By the time of Apollonius lost the high
Dyscolus they have pitch, but by
now the accent has a dynamic which survived in all positions.11 The
component, argu
ment for a sentence intonation with final high is insubstantial. A. is right to consider
the invariable acute of interrogative tl? as a feature of sentence but his
intonation;
attempt to link this with the supposed is extraordinarily
pre-pausal pattern (252f)
artificial.

More than half of the discussion of Greek is taken up by the chapter

on Stress. that the pitch accent was associated with
Rejecting suggestions
an element of stress before the Roman A. nevertheless
period, maintains,
here as in that the classical had a
previous publications, language per
ceptible and discoverable stress accent. The evidence adduced is exclusi

vely metrical. From the fact that words of a given prosodie shape have,
in such metres as the hexameter and the certain loca
trimeter, preferred
tions among those theoretically possible, he infers that some other factor
besides quantity is involved, and he conjectures that this is a stress which
was contrived to coincide as far as possible with the arsis. He to
proceeds
devise a rather set of rules for stress (summarized on 333
complex f).
Their application would in general give results in accord with the hypo
thesis of a correlation with the metrical arsis: not surprisingly, because
they are designed solely with this end in view. Here is one example of
the method. After an argument to the effect that heavy final syllables are
10
Plato Crat. 399ab; Demetrius Byz. ap. Philod. de poem. 17,
(JbPhil Suppl. 1889,
247 fr. 18); Dion. Hal. comp. 63; and the musical
11 inscriptions.
Wackernagel, Kl. Sehr. 1073-6.

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 6 M. L. West: Allen, Accent and Rhythm

stressed, the next step is: ?Word-endings S S and SES regularly show

the metrical placement patterns S S and S S S (as they must if they are
to be admitted to the hexameter line at all) ; and if we accept that this
reflects their normal we may state a more rule that the
stressing, general
last heavy syllable in the word was stressed? (292 f). Or again in the tri
meter ?words of the more extended form S S S S S are similarly located
as S S/S S/S, supporting a predicted stress pattern [S S S S S]? (321).
How else could they be located? The whole operation is a petitio principii,
and no means an one.
by elegant
The system is primarily
based on word-shapes. But we are to believe (297 ff) that
a pause - not a
when a word stands before syntactic pause, if it is verse, but a me
-
trical pause this principle is abandoned, and its stress is determined by that of the
preceding word. There is no linguistic plausibility in this; but once A. has decided
that heavy final syllables are stressed, he needs this bizarre escape-clause in order
that the assumption of regular stress-placing shall not founder on the quantitative
indifference of the last syllable of the verse. Another odd doctrine (295 f) is that the
same word may be differently stressed according to whether the next word begins
with a vowel or a consonant; thus av&pc?Tzo?, or (in epic) xoupoi, would be stressed
on the penultimate before a vowel but on the last before a consonant. This is danger
- a word
ously near to saying cthe stress shifts to suit the metre'. Presumably like
on the on the veo when
?cpociveo is stressed <pai when uncontracted but contracted;
but it is paradoxical that a reduction of quantity should attract stress.
The assumption that serious poets12 would seek agreement between stress and arsis
is dubious from the start, for this is not what happens in Byzantine verse in classical
metres, or in non-dramatic Latin poetry. If one tried to deduce the rules for the Latin
accent from Virgil, one would surely be misled by the constant occurrence of spondaic
words in just those positions of the hexameter from which A. infers them to be end
stressed in Greek. One may ask why, if there was a metre/stress pattern in Greek
hexameters, the Romans failed to copy it.
There is much
special pleading to circumvent awkward facts. For example, spon
daic words occur at the beginning
often of the hexameter, with the heavy final syllable
in thesis, but ?at the beginnings of lines ... we should not in any case look for very

regular coincidence between speech and metrical patterns? (292: yet the common ini
tial location of molossic words is accepted as part of the evidence for their stress).
Trimeter-endings such as 7](x?v aO x^PLV> cr/jpiaiv' elV ?yei, vo^v ?u$' ?va> call forth
about stressed as a single unit (310?:).13 In Eur.
improbable hypotheses word-groups
IT 1284 ?S vococpuXocxe? ?a)[i.ioi t' ?maTQLTOii it is proposed to stress v?ocp?Xocxec in spite
of its heavy final syllable, ?perhaps by the indifference principle? (322), meaning that
before caesura, as at line-end, the stress is not affected by the quantity of the last

(313). But this was to be because the pre-pausal stress rule operates;
syllable supposed
and that, if it is possible to apply it in the present case, would not give the required
- we are a horribly in a line
effect. After all the ingenuity left with heterodyne rhythm
ending like xaXxo/iTocivcov, where A.'s stress would fall on ?>v . . xo/i . . vcov.
'A^atcov

Thatancient Greek had some system of mild stress-variation is likely

But if the say nothing about it, if it has no dis
enough. grammarians
coverable phonological effect, and if versification suggests no simple and
coherent principles, there is little hope of finding out how it operated.
12 But
not the comedians in many more faithful
(31 if), despite their being respects
to spoken Attic than the tragedians.
13 In view of the sense of the words vo?v ouS' one must the if any,
Iva, expect stress,
to fall anywhere but on the ouS'.

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 M. L. West: Allen, Accent and Rhythm 7

Some of the details of verse technique to which A. refers do need explai

ning, and his explanation was worth trying, but it is open to too many
objections to be acceptable.
The fact that molossic words are usually placed in Homer with the first and third
in arsis (285) may be connected with the secondary status of ? in the thesis
syllables
as a substitute for ww. This of the molossus only involves one such substitu
placing
tion instead of two. Hence also the common placing of words scanning
-
at line-end. The strong tendency in trimeters and tetrameters for resolved positions
to be occupied by the first two syllables of a polysyllabic word (31 off) does not point
to any particular stress pattern A. is unable
(and to explain the preference for ini
- on resolved are con
tiality), but rather since other
prosodie restrictions positions
as short as possible - to a to pronounce
cerned with keeping the syllables tendency
the first syllables of a long word more rapidly than the last ones. It is in accord with
this interpretation that when the two syllables do stand at the end of a word, the
vowels are normally separated only by p or not at all (323f. 327, cf. 331 n. 5), so that
their succession is as rapid as possible short of contraction.14
Here are some further marginalia on various parts of the book. 119 The main
caesura of the hexameter ?seems already to have been observed by Varro?: and
earlier by Aristotle, Metaph. 1093a 30. 177 n. 1 ?Note that the Contraction* of two
vowels . . . never results in more than a 2-mora vowel?: but may not Homer's ?p?ocv
and the like be considered as such? (Glotta 48, 1970, 193?). 180 The occurrence of
(elision and) iambic across a change of speaker in Roman drama is
shortening
regarded as linguistically unjustified because ?it would that the stress
imply pulse
initiated by one speaker was arrested by the other?. But the text was not composed
by two speakers, it was composed by a single poet saying it all to himself. i88f The
accentuations f?cilius, adsimiliter may have been influenced by facile, adstmile.
216 n. 3 implies that the pronunciation of ? as [z] is post-Theocritean, but it seems
to occur already in Timotheus 791, 190. 225 The statement that Herodotus does
not use paragogic n is highly dubious; see Rosen, Laut- u. Formenlehre d. herod.
Sprachform 5if. 232 ?A syllable which would bear the acute accent is generally
marked in the musical inscriptions to be sung on a higher note than any other syllable
in the word. ? It would be more correct to say that it is generally at least as high as
any other syllable in the word, and, if initial, at least as high as the final syllable of
the preceding word. 238 The recession of the Aeolic (Lesbian) accent is not quite
invariable: Glotta 48, 1970, 195. 241 Polyphemus' companions are said to overlook
the accent of his Oim?. But we do not know that the poets pronounced the name so.
243 ?Consonants such as 9 or a are incapable of carrying melodic variation. ? It is
attested for a, however, in the Sicilus inscription (sgti [KIK]) and in Limenius 20
(svoixoo? tt?Xel). 252 Is not the recessive accent of vocatives like ?SsXcpe, 7r?vY)pe to do
with the vocative's ancient enclitic character? 253 Arist. Soph. El. i66b 6 should not
still be cited as evidence for oxytone ou. This error was of eighty years
disposed
ago.15 268 The statement that Nonnus avoids oxytone endings is only true where
the final syllable is short. 299 The first line of Callimachus' Iambi is cited (after
Diehl) as if it were 30of The to find accent-based differences
Hipponax. attempt
between Greek and Latin choliambics is unconvincing. Only 22 lines in Catullus out
of 126 end with a short vowel; this is not much above the frequency in Herondas
(72 out of 598). The spondaic fifth foot, avoided by Latin poets after Varro, is rare in
Alexandrian and later choliambics. 302 A. misrepresents the explanation of brevis
in longo from the presence of a pause. It is not that the short syllable is itself length
ened by the pause, but that the addition of the pause to the syllable fills the long
metrical position. 319 n. 2 The law supposedly observed by the iambographers

14
A quasi-diphthongal character for ^/VpV'^' and ^VXV^ is suggested by the
accentuations euxspco?, (piXoyeXcoc, Suaspco?.
15
Wackernagel, Kl. Sehr. 1077-81.

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8 I. Opelt: Lilja, The Treatment of Odours in the Poetry of Antiquity

?w ? ?
that a trimeter does not end with the caesuras X | (Knox)
| is in fact
or by anyone ? w ?
not observed by them else; and the against law |X | (Wilamo
witz, Knox) is strictly observed only by Archilochus. 347 The statement that Greek
hexameter inscriptions ?show no evidence of ignorance of metrical patterns? will
- name
surprise epigraphists. The Reinach is mis-spelled throughout.
If there is much to dissent from in this book, there is also much to
admire : the and of the the com
professionalism thoroughness approach,
prehensive knowledge of relevant modern literature, the ability to draw
pertinent comparisons from English or T?batulabal, the seldom-failing
clarity and precision of the writing; above all, the raising of questions
that are avoided, and the effort to answer them.
commonly painstaking
It will stand as a substantial work of scholarship that one will turn to
again and again.
Bedford College, London M. L. West

Saara Lilja: The Treatment of Odours in the Poetry of Antiquity. Hel

sinki: Soc. scient. Fennica 1972. 275 S. (Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum.
49.) 28 fM.

Jeden Leser des meisterhaften Romans von Marcel Proust CA la recher

che du temps perdu* schl?gt die Wei?dornszene in ihren Bann: aus dem
Duft der Hecke steigen gleichsam die Jugenderinnerungen auf; ?hnlich
ist auch das Aroma des Kr?utertranks, der ctisane*, das aus
beruhigenden
l?sende Moment, das die Vergangenheit in die Gegenwart zur?ckholt.
Proust hat damit eine neue poetische Dimension gewonnen; die k?nst
lerische Verwendung der ?sthetisch negativen Geruchseindr?cke blieb
dem Realismus vorbehalten.
Der Titel der hier anzuzeigenden Monographie, die die Behandlung
der Ger?che in der gesamten griechisch-lateinischen Dichtung bis Juvenal
(S. 8) und einschlie?lich der Anthologia Palatina zum Gegenstand hat, er
weckt die Hoffnung, hier sei die k?nstlerische Funktion eines Bereichs
der sinnlichen erfa?t, deren Wortwerden noch schwie
Wahrnehmungen
riger ist als das der visuellen, der auditiven, der taktilen. Mit anderen
Worten: man hofft auf eine Erg?nzung der feinsinnigen (von Lilja in der
Bibliographie S. 233-237 jedoch nicht herangezogenen) Untersuchungen
Snells, Die Entdeckung des Geistes, und M. Treus, Von Homer zur Lyrik.
Nur diese Ausrichtung auf die k?nstlerische Funktion w?rde das Aus
klammern der Prosa rechtfertigen.
Statt dessen sieht man sich vor einer im wahrsten Sinn des Wortes alt
modischen Quellensammlung mit kulturgeschichtlicher Zielsetzung im
Stile des 19. Jahrhunderts. L. sch?pft gewissenhaft ihre Texte aus und
subsumiert die Aussagen unter 12 Kategorien, stets jedoch in der Art, wie
man fr?her cRealien* zu behandeln pflegte. Ihre Textfunde bleiben dem
Rahmen des Wortgef?ges verhaftet : der Blick bleibt stumpf f?r duftende

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