Note 12 — INTRODUCTION

A good illustration of the freedom of order possible (at any rate theoretically) in Greek, even within the limits of verse, is supplied in a letter from Richard Porson to Andrew Dalzel: “There is a passage of Sophocles three times quoted by Plutarch, and always in a different order, but so as in the three variations to remain a senarian. Now the fragment consists of five words, and the sense is this: ‘(The physicians) wash away bitter bile with bitter drugs [πικροῖς πικρὰν κλύζουσι φαρμάκοις χολήν].’ The five words, you know, will admit of one hundred and twenty permutations, and what is extremely odd, these words will admit twenty transpositions [which Porson proceeds to indicate], and still constitute a trimeter iambic.”—Luard’s Correspondence of Richard Porson pp. 91, 92.