Institutio Oratoria
Quintilian
Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.
I am, however, surprised that scholars of the highest learning should have held the view that some feet should be specially selected and others condemned for the purposes of prose, as if there were any foot which must not inevitably be found in prose. Ephorus may express a preference for the paean (which was discovered by Thrasymachus and approved by Aristotle) and for the dactyl also, on the ground that both these feet provide a happy mixture of long and short; and may avoid the spondee and the trochee,
condemning the one as too slow and the other as too rapid; Aristotle [*](Rhet. iii. 8. ) may regard the heroic foot, which is another name for the dactyl, as too dignified and the iambus as too commonplace, and may damn the trochee as too
but for all they say, these feet will force themselves upon them against their will, and it will not always be possible for them to employ the dactyl or their beloved paean, which they select for special praise because it so rarely forms part of a verse rhythm. It is not, however, the words which cause some feet to be of more common occurrence than others; for the words cannot be increased or diminished in bulk, nor yet can they, like the notes in music, be made short or long at will; everything depends on transposition and arrangement.
For a large proportion of feet are formed by the connexion or separation of words, which is the reason why several different verses can be made out of the same words: for example, I remember that a poet of no small distinction writing the following line:
a line which, if the order of the words be reversed, becomes a Sotadean; again, the following Sotadean, if reversed, reads as as an iambic trimeter:
- Astra tenet caelum, mare classes, area messem,
[*](The heaven holds the stars, the sea the fleets, and the threshing-floor the harvest.messem area, classes mare, caelum tenet astra is identical in scansion with the Sotadean which follows, save that it opens with a spondee instead of an anapaest. )
Feet therefore should be mixed,
- caput exeruit mobile pinus repelita.
[*]( The sense is uncertain. It appears to refer to a pine beam or trunk floating half-submerged. The pine-beam caught afresh put forth its nimble head. )
while care must be taken that the majority are of a pleasing character, and that the inferior feet are lost in the surrounding crowd of their superior kindred. The nature of letters and syllables cannot be changed, but their adaptability to each other is a consideration of no small importance. Long syllables, as I have said,