Note 884 — Chapter VI · METRE AND RHYTHM IN GREEK TRAGEDY

How? By examination of the whole period. If we look at the seventh line of the strophe from Antigone, scanned above, it may seem arbitrary to write

– ˃ | αιναν ‖

rather than

⏗ – | αιν|ανꞈ‖.

But the former method is suggested by the corresponding fourth line, which cannot possibly be scanned otherwise than as above, and which therefore has four feet; hence we scan -αιναν so as to give the seventh line also four, not five, feet altogether.