Abstract
It is said that the trimeter is a very free verse and that it is why it was taken up by tragedians for their dialogues. I believe this interpretation is wrong. It was not until Euripides tried to create new rhythm in his dialogues by frequent use of 'resolution' that it became 'free'. Until then the trimeter was written according to some fixed practices, which fact can clearly be seen if we observe how long ancipitia and short ones are distributed both within a line and in several successive lines. Firstly, in comparison with the Iambographi, tragedians very much preferred long ancipitia, especially for the hemistich before caesura. Then, ancipitia are also used in a way that would remind us of rhyme: the distribution of long ancipitia and short ones to the three feet of each line is very often so arranged as to produce some pattern or other for several lines on end (for example, aaa…, abab…, abba, etc.). Now the late Miss A. M. Dale's argument for the priority of the tetrameter and the subsequent development of the trimeter from it must be accepted (Here again long ancipitia will be found to have contributed to the rejection of monotony of the tetrameter, especially giving more variety to the hemistich before caesura). The trimeter, then had already gone some way towards being a suitable metre for long narratives expressive of man's thoughts and emotions. The lyric trimeters of tragedy have their own traits: in contrast with the dialogue trimeters, their ancipitia are almost uniformly short and they contain a great number of resolved feet. It may sound odd, but we need not be troubled by it, because it will be found quite natural when we examine how the chorus and the dialogue are involved with music respectively. When Euripides created the new style of dialogue, it was once again ancipitia that helped the resolved feet to add the effect. This style of his, without doubt, prepared the way for Aristophanes to produce prose-like verses, on the one hand, and, on the other, it is possibly based on an idea similar to that of T. S. Eliot's in the versification of his drama. Be that as it may, Euripides' new rhythm of dialogue is sufficient for us to expect that his drama is to be essentially different from those of his predecessors; and finally we are advised firmly to bear in mind that these predecessors, Aeschylus and Sophocles, though vastly different otherwise from each other, are nearly the same so far as the rhythm of their dialogues are concerned.
