For upon harmonies would follow the consideration of rhythms: we must not pursue complexity nor great variety in the basic movements, Footnote 1Practically the feet. but must observe what are the rhythms of a life that is orderly and brave, and after observing them
require the foot and the air to conform to that kind of man’s speech and not the speech to the foot and the tune. What those rhythms would be, it is for you to tell us as you did the musical modes.
Nay, in faith,
he said, I cannot tell. For that there are some three forms Footnote 2According to the ancient musicians these are the equal as e.g. in dactyls (–⏑⏑), spondees (––) and anapests (⏑⏑–), where the foot divides into two equal quantities; the 3/2 ratio, as in the so-called cretic (⏑–⏑); the 2/1 as in the iamb (⏑–) and trochee (–⏑). Cf. Aristid. Quint. i. pp. 34-35. from which the feet are combined, just as there are four Footnote 3Possibly the four notes of the tetrachord, but there is no agreement among experts. Cf. Monro, Modes of Ancient Greek Music. in the notes of the voice whence come all harmonies, is a thing that I have observed and could tell. But which are imitations of which sort of life, I am unable to say. Footnote 4Modern psychologists are still debating the question.
Well,
said I, on this point we will take counsel with Damon, Footnote 5The Platonic Socrates frequently refers to Damon as his musical expert. Cf. Laches 200 B, 424 C, Alc. I. 118 C. too, as to which are the feet appropriate to illiberality, and insolence or madness or other evils, and what rhythms we must leave for their opposites; and I believe I have heard him obscurely speaking Footnote 6There is a hint of satire in this disclaimer of expert knowledge. Cf. 399 A. There is no agreement among modern experts with regard to the precise form of the so-called enoplios. Cf. my review of Herkenrath’s
Der Enoplios,
Class. Phil . vol. iii. p. 360, Goodell, Chapters on Greek Metric, pp. 185 and 189, Blaydes on Aristophanes Nubes 651. of a foot that he called the enoplios, a composite foot, and a dactyl and an heroic Footnote 7Possibly foot, possibly rhythm. δάκτυλον seems to mean the foot, while ἡρῷος is the measure based on dactyls but admitting spondees. foot, which he arranged, I know not how, to be equal up and down Footnote 8ἄνω καὶ κάτω is an untranslatable gibe meaning literally and technically the upper and lower half of the foot, the arsis and thesis, but idiomatically meaning topsy-turvy. There is a similar play on the idiom in Philebus 43 A and 43 B. in the interchange of long and short, Footnote 9Literally becoming or issuing in long and short, long, that is, when a spondee is used, short when a dactyl. and unless I am mistaken he used the term iambic, and there was another foot that he called the trochaic, and he added the quantities long and short. And in some of these, I believe, he censured and commended the tempo of the foot no less than the rhythm itself, or else some combination of the two; I can’t say. But, as I said, let this matter be postponed for Damon’s consideration. For to determine the truth of these would require no little discourse. Do you think otherwise?No, by heaven, I do not.
But this you are able to determine—that seemliness and unseemliness are attendant upon the good rhythm and the bad.
Of course.
And, further, Footnote 10Plato, as often, employs the forms of an argument proceeding by minute links to accumulate synonyms in illustration of a moral or aesthetic analogy. He is working up to the Wordsworthian thought that order, harmony, and beauty in nature and art are akin to these qualities in the soul. that good rhythm and bad rhythm accompany, the one fair diction, assimilating itself thereto, and the other the opposite, and so of the apt and the unapt, if, as we were just now saying, the rhythm and harmony follow the words and not the words these.
They certainly must follow the speech,
he said. And what of the manner of the diction, and the speech?
said I. Do they not follow and conform to the disposition of the soul?
Of course.
And all the rest to the diction?
Yes.
Good speech, then, good accord, and good grace, and good rhythm wait upon good disposition, not that weakness of head which we euphemistically style goodness of heart, but the truly good and fair disposition of the character and the mind. Footnote 11Plato recurs to the etymological meaning of εὐήθεια. Cf. on 343 C.
By all means,
he said. And must not our youth pursue these everywhere Footnote 12The Ruskinian and Wordsworthian generalization is extended from music to all the fine arts, including, by the way, architecture (οἰκοδομία), which Butcher (Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry, p. 138) says is ignored by Plato and Aristotle. if they are to do what it is truly theirs to do Footnote 13Their special task is to cultivate true εὐήθεια in their souls. For τὸ αὑτῶν πράττειν here Cf. 443 C-D. ?
They must indeed.
Book 3