But some will say, Did the ancients invent nothing
themselves? Yes, say I, they did invent, but their inventions were grave and decent. For they who have written the history of music attribute to Terpander the addition
of the Dorian nete, which before was not in use. Even
the whole Mixolydian mood is a new invention. Such were
also the Orthian manner of melody with Orthian rhythms,
and also the Trochaeus Semantus.1 And if we believe
Pindar, Terpander was the inventor of the Scolion (or
roundelay). Archilochus also invented the rhythmic composition of the iambic trimeter, the change to rhythms of
different character, the melo-dramatic delivery,2 and the
[p. 123]
accompaniment proper to each of these. He is also presumed to be the author of epodes, tetrameters, the Cretic
and the prosodiac rhythms, and the augmentation of the
heroic verse. Some make him author also of the elegiac
measure, as likewise of the extending the iambic to the
paeon epibatus, the prolonged and heroic to the prosodiac
and Cretic. And Archilochus is first said to have taught
how iambics could be partly recited to the stroke of the
lyre and partly sung; from him the tragedians learned it,
and from them Crexus took it, and made use of it in
dithyrambics. It is thought that he invented also playing
on the lyre at intervals in the song, whereas the ancients
played only during the singing.
1 See Rossbach, Griechische Rhythmik, p. 96, § 23. (G.)
2 So Rossbach and Westphal interpret παρακαταλογή. Metrik, III. pp. 184, 554. (G.)
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