[400b]
“Well,” said I, “on this
point we will take counsel with Damon,1 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 speaking2 of a foot that he called the
enoplios, a composite foot, and a dactyl and an heroic3 foot, which he arranged, I know not how, to
be equal up and down4 in the interchange of long and short,5 and unless I am mistaken he
used the term iambic, and there was another foot that he called the
trochaic,
1 The Platonic Socrates frequently refers to Damon as his musical expert. Cf. Laches 200 B, 424 C, Alc. I. 118 C.
2 There 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.
3 Possibly foot, possibly rhythm.δάκτυλον seems to mean the foot, while ἡρῷος is the measure based on dactyls but admitting spondees.
4 ἄνω 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.
5 Literally “becoming” or “issuing in long and short,” long, that is, when a spondee is used, short when a dactyl.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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