Penthemimeral elision in tragic trimeters

This paper provides a statistical survey of the incidence of elision at the penthemimeral caesura in the iambic trimeters of Greek tragedy. It updates and builds on the work of Descroix (1931) by considering the rates of elision of different types of words: lexicals, nonlexical polysyllables, and nonlexical monosyllables. While all tragedians elide less at the caesura than throughout the line, in Aeschylus the rate of this reduction is far greater for lexicals and polysyllabic nonlexicals than it is for monosyllabic nonlexicals. On this evidence, and the evidence of interlinear elision, it is tentatively suggested that lexicals and nonlexical polysyllables should together be considered as the more constrained elisions. When the rates of constrained elision are examined, the difference between Aeschylus and later Euripides is revealed to be twice that obtained when bulk figures are used. This difference is attributed to a combination of Euripides’ adoption of more fluent phrasing towards the end of his career and the tragedians’ different approaches to compositional constraints.