Note 57 — Book III
Reading edition
λεκτικῆς ἁρμονίας. Cope and Welldon translate “conversational harmony.” The literal sense of the phrase is “speech harmony,” “harmony of diction, or of style”; but since Aristotle can hardly mean to say that the heroic measure lacks harmony of diction in verse, and since he is talking of prose, I translate “prose harmony.” Ἁρμονία may be taken either in the general or in the particular (musical) sense of harmony; but in the latter sense its application is restricted to melody.