Porson's law

Different formulations of the law

A line of iambic trimeter runs as follows:

In this scheme, there are three anceps elements, marked by the symbol x. These may be long or short.

Porson's law states that, if the third anceps (i.e. the bolded x above) is long and followed by a word break, then it must be a monosyllable.

A simpler summary of the law is provided in W. W. Goodwin's Greek Grammar:

M. L. West states it slightly differently, to take account of a rare situation not accounted for by Porson, where the word-break is followed rather than preceded by a monosyllable (e.g. Euripides, Heraclidae 529):

Normal lines

Some examples of normal tragic trimeters which do not break Porson's law are the following from Sophocles's Oedipus Tyrannus:

|ἦ δοῦλος οὐκ ὠνητός, ἀλλ᾽ οἴκοι τραφείς. | |I was a slave, not bought but reared at home.}}

Here the ninth element is long, but does not end a word.

|τὸν παῖδ᾽ ἔδωκας τῷδ᾽ ὃν οὗτος ἱστορεῖ; | |Did you give this man the boy he is asking about?}}

Here the ninth element ends a word, but is short.

|ἔδωκ᾽: ὀλέσθαι δ᾽ ὤφελον τῇδ᾽ ἡμέρᾳ | |I gave himI wish I had died on that day!}}

Here ninth element ends a word and is long, but is a monosyllable.

Breaches of Porson's law

In tragedy

In tragedy, as West observes, there are very few breaches of Porson's law. When the manuscript tradition, therefore, transmits a line that breaches Porson's law, this is taken as a reason for suspecting that it may be corrupt.

For example, the first line of Euripides's Ion, as transmitted in the mediaeval manuscript Laurentianus 32.2 (known as "L"), the main source for the play, reads:

|Ἄτλας, ὁ χαλκέοισι νώτοις οὐρανὸν | |Atlas, who with his back of bronze [rubs up] against heaven...}}

As Porson observed in his note on line 347 in his first (1797) edition of Euripides's Hecuba, this line is irregular, since -τοις in νώτοις is long, occurs at the third anceps, and is followed by word break. The line therefore breaks the law which Porson later formulated, and it is unlikely that Euripides wrote it as it stands. That the manuscript tradition is incorrect happens to be confirmed by a quotation of this line in a fragmentary papyrus of Philodemus. Philodemus's exact original text is uncertain, but it is reconstructed by Denys Page to read ὁ χαλκέοισιν οὐρανὸν νώτοις Ἄτλας (meaning the same as L's version), which does not break Porson's law, and therefore may be the correct text. Other scholars have suggested other possibilities as to what Euripides may originally have written.

In comedy

In comedy, on the other hand, breaches of Porson's law are very frequent, for example the following from Aristophanes's Clouds:

|ἀπόλοιο δῆτ᾽ ὦ πόλεμε πολλῶν οὕνεκα | |May you die, O war, for many reasons!}}

Here the ninth element is long and ends a word.

|ὀνειροπολεῖ γὰρ καὶ καθεύδων ἱππικήν. | |Even when he's asleep he dreams of horse-riding!}}

Other similar laws

Several other similar laws or tendencies, such as (a) Knox's Iamb Bridge (stating that an iambic word, i.e. a word of shape u –, tends to be avoided in positions 9 and 10 in the iambic trimeter), (b) Wilamowitz's Bridge (stating that a spondaic word, of shape – –, is avoided in the same position), (c) Knox's Trochee Bridge (stating that a trochaic word, of shape – u, tends to be avoided in positions 8 and 9), and (d) the law of tetrasyllables (stating that words of the rhythm – – u x are avoided at the end or beginning of a line), have been discovered since Porson's time. These laws apply to different styles or periods of iambic-trimeter writing (neither of the first two bridges mentioned above apply in tragedy, for example). Details of these and other constraints on the trimeter are given in a 1981 article by A.M. Devine and L.D. Stephens.

Possible explanations

Similar laws which have been discovered in the dactylic hexameter are that if a word ends the fifth or fourth foot it is almost never, or only rarely, a spondee (– –). The philologist W. Sidney Allen suggested an explanation for all these laws in that it is possible that the last long syllable in any Greek word had a slight stress; if so, then to put a stress on the first element of the last iambic metron, or the second element of the 4th or fifth dactylic foot in a hexameter, would create an undesirable conflict of ictus and accent near the end of the line.

An alternative hypothesis, supported by Devine and Stephens in their book The Prosody of Greek Speech, is that in certain contexts some long syllables in Greek had a longer duration than others, and this may have made them unsuitable for the anceps position of the third metron of a trimeter.

Citations

References

1. Porson, R. ''Supplementum ad Praefationem ad Hecubam'', p. XXX
2. Goodwin, W. W. ''Greek Grammar'', Macmillan (1895), p.358 §1660
3. West, M. L. ''Introduction to Greek Metre'': Oxford: Clarendon Press (1987), p.25
4. Clarke, M.L., (1937) ''Richard Porson: A Biographical Essay'', page 70.
5. Lee, K. H. ''Euripides,'' Ion: Aris and Phillips (1997), ''ad loc.''
6. Aristophanes, ''Clouds'' 6.
7. A.M. Devine, Lawrence D. Stephens (1981) [http://grbs.library.duke.edu/article/viewFile/6401/5109 "Bridges in the Iambographers"]. ''Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies'' 22.
8. W. Sidney Allen (1974) ''Vox Graeca'' (2nd edition), pp. 120-123.
9. A.M. Devine, Laurence D. Stephens, (1994) ''The Prosody of Greek Speech'' (Oxford University Press), pp. 119-20.
10. Fortson, B.W. (1995) [http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1995/95.10.09.html "Review of Devine and Stephens (1994)]. ''Bryn Mawr Classical Review''.