Note 33 — III

It must be remembered, however, that, if we disregard quantity too much in constructing English hexameters, we also disregard accent too much in reading Greek hexameters. We read every Greek dactyl so as to make a pure dactyl of it; but, to a Greek, the accent must have hindered many dactyls from sounding as pure dactyls. When we read αἰόλος ἵππος, for instance, or αἰγιόχοιο, the dactyl in each of these cases is made by us as pure a dactyl as ‘Tityre’, or ‘dignity’; but to a Greek it was not so. To him αἰόλος must have been nearly as impure a dactyl as ‘death-destined’ is to us; and αἰγιόχ nearly as impure as the ‘dressed his own’ of my text. Nor, I think, does this right mode of pronouncing the two words at all spoil the run of the line as a hexameter. The effect of αἰόλλος ἵππος (or something like that), though not our effect, is not a disagreeable one. On the other hand, κορυθαιόλος as a paroxytonon, although it has the respectable authority of Liddell and Scott’s Lexicon (following Heyne), is certainly wrong; for then the word cannot be pronounced without throwing an accent on the first syllable as well as the third, and μέγας κοῤῥυθαιόλλος Ἕκτωρ would have been to a Greek as intolerable an ending for a hexameter line as ‘accurst orphanhood-destined houses’ would be to us. The best authorities, accordingly, accent κορυθαίολος as a proparoxytonon.