scansion of iambic trimeter in fragment of Euripides

Question

I am trying to scan a line from a fragment of Euripides Erechtheus (cannot figure out how to write Greek characters here!): - v - -| - - v v v| v- v v os theon bomous patrida te rhuometha

How can the first foot be a trochee? Is the episilon of theon to be scanned as long? Or is theon counted as one long? But is so how does the rest of the line fit?

There is a proposal to create a Greek language stackexchange, and this question would make a good addition there. Go out and support the Greek language stackexchange: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/101509/greek-language — Sir Cornflakes, Nov 09 '16 at 10:07
To mods -- I don't know if this is possible, but rather than closing this question it might be better to migrate it to Latin SE, which has been accepting Greek questions too. — TKR, Nov 09 '16 at 18:19
@TKR I don't think we should encourage that. Better to wait for the proposal to go ahead. — curiousdannii, Nov 10 '16 at 01:24
@curiousdannii, I don't see why not -- this has been discussed on Latin Meta (http://meta.latin.stackexchange.com/questions/218/what-should-we-do-with-greek-questions?cb=1) and members seem to be strongly in favor of accepting Greek questions. — TKR, Nov 10 '16 at 23:14

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 09 '16 at 18:15

The original can be found here. The line is actually

ὡς θεῶν τε βωμοὺς πατρίδα τε ῥυώμεθα

It is an iambic trimeter, with synezesis in θεῶν (i.e. it counts as a single long) and resolution in πατρίδα (i.e. its first two shorts are equivalent to a single long). The τε counts long because of the following initial rho. The foot boundaries look like this:

ὡς θεῶν τε βω|μοὺς πατρίδα τε |ῥυώμεθα

Btw, as Draconis points out, this question might be more appropriate on Latin SE, which has also been accepting Greek questions.

score -1 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 13:01

I'm assuming your line looks like this?

ὁς θεον βωμους πατριδα τε ῥυομεθα

(Accents omitted because I'm not skilled enough to place them correctly.)

If I understood you correctly, the first four syllables are long-short-long-long:

The first syllable is long by position, because the short omicron is followed by two consonants.
The second syllable is short by nature.
The third syllable is long by position, because the short omicron is followed by two consonants.
The fourth syllable is long by nature.

Your transcription doesn't make it clear which "o"s are omicrons and which are omegas. But in this case it doesn't matter, since they're followed by multiple consonants anyway. (And *βομους isn't a word, while βωμους is.)

P.S. You might also find Latin.SE helpful for future classics questions.

scansion of iambic trimeter in fragment of Euripides

2 Answers2