Notes · Classical GreekUK · A-Levels

Unseen verse translation and scansion

Section B of Component 01 carries exactly as many marks as Section A: fifty for the translation of an unseen passage of Greek verse, with the scansion of two lines sitting inside that total. The specification names both the author and the metre for a fixed window — for examination from 2027 to 2032 the passage will be taken from Euripides, in iambic trimeter — and that single sentence settles what has to be trained. It is the metre of tragic dialogue, twelve positions long, with its own anceps, its own resolutions and its own bridge; it is not the dactylic hexameter, which in this qualification is a set-text metre and never an unseen one. These notes cover the whole of it: what a passage of Euripidean dialogue looks like on the page, the poetic vocabulary and morphology that never appear in prose, the rules of syllable quantity, the trimeter position by position with its permitted substitutions and its caesurae, how verse word order carries sense, and exactly what to write on the paper for the translation and for the two scanned lines.

6 sections~54 min reading time4 competenciesLevel Standard 4 · Advanced 2

T·0444 / 10

Exam profile

AO1 · Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the language: translate an unseen passage of Classical Greek verse into EnglishAO1 · Demonstrate a detailed understanding of the linguistic structures of verse written by ancient authors, and scan two lines of iambic trimeterAO2 · Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of literature: recognise the conventions of tragic dialogue, including metre, poetic diction and verse word orderAO3 · Critically analyse and evaluate: judge how metrical shape and word order contribute to the sense of a line

Operators:translatescanmark the quantitiesdivide the metraidentify the caesuradeduceexplain

basic level

At AS Level the verse passage is chosen for accessibility and keeps within the Defined Vocabulary List published for H044, and the lines set for scansion tend to be regular ones. An AS candidate needs secure quantity rules, a reliable twelve-position template and the habit of finding the main verb before doing anything else with a line.

higher level

The A-Level passage is unadapted Euripides. Expect resolution, elision, crasis and synizesis; poetic vocabulary outside any published list; the longer dative plurals in -οισι and -αισι; νιν and σφε doing the work of αὐτόν and αὐτούς; the article dropped where prose would keep it; sentences that run past the end of the line; and stichomythia in which the whole force of an exchange is carried by particles. Expect also that the two lines set for scansion will have something in them — a resolution, an elision, a doubtful vowel — rather than being the two most regular lines on the page.

Depth

Text

Contents · 6 sections

Unseen verse translation and scansion

Section B: Euripides, fifty marks and two lines to scan#

StandardOCR H444 Component 01 Section B — translation into English of an unseen passage of Classical Greek verse, and the scansion of two lines (50 marks)OCR H444 Component 01 — for examination from 2027 to 2032 the unseen verse passage will be taken from Euripides, in iambic trimeterOCR H444 Component 01 — 1 hour 45 minutes, 100 marks, 33% of the A-Level, testing AO1 alone

Start with the arithmetic, because it decides how the year is spent. Component 01 is one hour forty-five minutes for one hundred marks, and it divides exactly in half: fifty marks for the unseen prose in Section A and fifty for the unseen verse in Section B, with the scansion of two lines sitting inside the second fifty. Both sections are answered; there is no choice. Equal marks means equal time, so the working plan is roughly fifty minutes on each section with a few minutes at either end for reading and checking. The commonest way to lose marks in this paper is not ignorance of Greek but a mismanaged split: verse feels harder, so it is rushed, or prose feels safer, so it is polished, and one half of the largest paper in the qualification ends up written in twenty minutes.

The specification names both the author and the metre, and it names them for a fixed window: for examination from 2027 to 2032 the unseen verse passage will be taken from Euripides, in iambic trimeter. That is a large piece of luck and it should be used. It means the register to train on is tragic dialogue rather than epic narrative, and the metre to master is one metre and not several. It also means that a candidate who prepares the dactylic hexameter because Homer is famous has prepared the wrong thing: in this qualification Homer appears only as a Group 3 or Group 4 set text on Component 04, never as the unseen. Confirm the prescription for your own series before you plan the year, because the window is stated with years attached and windows expire.

Euripides was an Athenian tragedian of the fifth century BC, born about 480 and dying in 406; nineteen plays survive under his name, more than for Aeschylus and Sophocles together, which is why his dialogue is the natural quarry for an unseen. The passage you meet will be spoken dialogue — a speech, a messenger narrative, or an exchange between two characters — and not lyric. That distinction is worth holding on to. Tragic lyric is sung by the chorus, is coloured with Doric long alpha, and moves through a whole family of complex metres. Tragic dialogue is Attic Greek with a poetic overlay, and it moves in one metre, the iambic trimeter, from the first line to the last.

Three things make verse harder than prose, and it helps to name them rather than to feel them. The vocabulary is a partly different lexicon: δόμοι rather than οἰκία, μολεῖν rather than ἐλθεῖν, χθών rather than γῆ. The morphology keeps older and longer forms that prose had dropped, because a poet needs a choice of shapes: δόμοισι beside δόμοις, ἐς beside εἰς, ξύν beside σύν. And the word order is far freer, so an adjective may be separated from its noun by half a line, and a sentence may run past the line end into the next. One thing, though, makes verse easier than prose, and it is the reason the scansion question exists at all: the metre is a check on your reading. A line has to scan, so a reading that produces a syllable of the wrong quantity is a reading that is wrong.

The scansion itself is a technique rather than a talent, and it is learned in the way techniques are learned. Read verse aloud every week from the beginning of the course, whether or not you understand every word, and scan two lines of it each time. After a term you will have a hundred scanned lines and you will have stopped counting syllables and started hearing the rhythm, which is the point at which two lines of scansion in an examination become quick marks rather than a four-minute problem. The specification does not publish a split of the fifty marks between the translation and the scansion, so treat the translation as the bulk of the section and check the mark allocation printed beside the scansion instruction on your own paper before you decide how long to spend on it.

Worked example

Two openings of Euripides, translated clause by clause

Both lines below are quoted exactly and are the first lines of their plays. Translate each, working from the main verb outwards, and name the construction that carries the sense. (a) Euripides, Medea 1: Εἴθ' ὤφελ' Ἀργοῦς μὴ διαπτάσθαι σκάφος. (b) Euripides, Bacchae 1: Ἥκω Διὸς παῖς τήνδε Θηβαίων χθόνα.

(a) find the verb and recognise the construction
The finite verb is ὤφελ', that is ὤφελε, third person singular of the second aorist ὤφελον, from ὀφείλω. On its own that verb means he owed or he ought; followed by an infinitive and introduced by εἴθε it is the standard way Greek expresses a wish about the past that cannot now be fulfilled. Note the negative: wishes take μή, not οὐ, so μὴ διαπτάσθαι is part of the wish and not a separate denial. The whole frame is therefore would that X had not done Y, and the elided εἴθ' at the head of the line is the signal that this is a wish rather than a statement about obligation.
(a) find the subject and the infinitive
διαπτάσθαι is the aorist infinitive of διαπέτομαι, to fly across or through. Its subject is σκάφος, a neuter noun in the nominative, standing at the very end of the line: hull, and so by extension ship. Ἀργοῦς is the genitive singular of Ἀργώ, the ship Argo, and depends on σκάφος. The word order is entirely poetic — the subject last, its genitive first, the negative and the infinitive between them — and no prose writer would arrange it so, but every relationship is marked on the words themselves, so nothing is lost.
(a) render it
Would that the hull of the Argo had not winged its way across. English needs a past perfect after would that; Greek marks the same thing by the aorist ὤφελε with an aorist infinitive. Do not translate ὤφελε as ought — that produces the nonsense the Argo's hull ought not to fly. The whole idiom has to be recognised as an idiom, which is exactly the sort of thing an unseen sets in its opening line.
(b) the verb first, and what tense it really is
Ἥκω is the first word and the main verb: first person singular present of ἥκω. Its meaning is the trap. The form is present but the sense is perfect: I have come, and so I am here. Translating I come loses the arrival that the whole prologue depends on. Διὸς παῖς stands in apposition to the unexpressed subject of ἥκω, the son of Zeus, with Διός the genitive of Ζεύς.
(b) an accusative with no preposition
τήνδε ... χθόνα is a feminine accusative singular with the deictic demonstrative ὅδε, this land here, and Θηβαίων is a genitive plural, of the Thebans. There is no preposition. In prose you would expect εἰς τήνδε τὴν χθόνα; verse regularly drops the preposition and lets a bare accusative express the goal of motion. Notice also that the article is missing before χθόνα, where prose would print τήνδε τὴν χθόνα. Both features are ordinary in tragedy and both must be supplied silently by the reader.
What this tells you about reading a verse line
In both lines the finite verb is early and everything else is arranged around it; in both, a word that closes the line belongs grammatically with a word that opened it. The reading order is therefore not left to right but verb, then subject, then the phrases that attach to them. Get into the habit of ringing the finite verb before you translate a single word, exactly as you would in a long prose period.

Result: (a) Would that the hull of the Argo had not winged its way across. The construction is εἴθε with ὤφελε and an aorist infinitive, negatived by μή: an unfulfillable wish about the past. (b) I have come, the son of Zeus, to this land of the Thebans. ἥκω is present in form and perfect in sense, and τήνδε χθόνα is a bare accusative of goal with the article omitted, both of them verse conventions rather than irregularities.

Typical mistakes

Treating verse as the optional half of Component 01 and giving fifty marks twenty minutes.
Preparing dactylic hexameter on the assumption that Greek verse means Homer, when the named unseen author is Euripides and the named metre is the trimeter.
Leaving the scansion until the paper is nearly over, when it is the one task in the section that can be finished in three minutes if it has been drilled.

Active revision

Every week, take twenty lines of Euripidean dialogue in any edition, read them aloud without stopping to translate, and then scan the first two. Time yourself on the scansion. Keep every scanned line in one notebook with the date. Separately, once a week, translate ten lines cold under the clock at the rate the examination needs, which is roughly one line a minute including checking, and mark yourself only on whether every word has been rendered.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR A Level in Classical Greek (H444) specification (Cambridge OCR) · OCR A Level Classical Greek — specification at a glance (Cambridge OCR)

The language of tragic dialogue: poetic diction, older forms and the missing article#

StandardOCR H444 Component 01 Section B — the unseen verse passage is unadapted Greek verse; there is no Defined Vocabulary List at A-LevelOCR H444 Appendix 5d — accidence and syntax required for Components 01 and 02, applied here to verse forms

Verse forms and their Attic prose equivalents

Fig. 1Everything in this table is a difference of register or spelling, not of grammar: the syntax of tragic dialogue is the syntax of Appendix 5d. The emphasised cell is the one that most often stops a reader outright — νιν is an object pronoun standing for αὐτόν, αὐτήν or αὐτό, and a line containing it looks, to a reader who has not met it, like a transitive verb with nothing to govern.

Tragic dialogue is Attic Greek, but it is Attic Greek written by a poet with an inherited poetic vocabulary at his elbow, and the difference is concentrated in a few hundred very common words. A house is not οἰκία but δόμοι, δώματα, μέλαθρα or στέγαι, usually plural for a single building. The earth is χθών, γαῖα or πέδον rather than γῆ. To come is μολεῖν, the second aorist infinitive of βλώσκω, a verb that in the present tense you will almost never meet. To kill is κτανεῖν as often as ἀποκτεῖναι, to see is λεύσσω or δέρκομαι as often as ὁρῶ, a husband is πόσις and a wife δάμαρ, and a king is ἄναξ or τύραννος. None of this is difficult, but none of it can be worked out under examination pressure from first principles. It is learned as a list, from reading.

The morphology keeps alternatives that Attic prose had given up, and it keeps them because a poet needs a choice of syllable shapes. The dative plural appears both as δόμοις and as the longer δόμοισι or δόμοισιν, and the first declension both as ψυχαῖς and as ψυχαῖσι; the poet takes whichever fits the line. The preposition εἰς appears as ἐς and σύν as ξύν, in the simple word and in compounds alike. Prose forms in -ττ- appear in verse with -σσ-: θάλασσα for θάλαττα, πράσσω for πράττω, τάσσω for τάττω. Contraction is often left undone, so φάος stands where prose has φῶς. Every one of these is a spelling choice inside one and the same word, and none of them changes the meaning or the grammar. Recognise them and move on.

Two enclitic pronouns belong to verse alone and must be learned, because they are frequent and they look like nothing else. νιν is a third-person object pronoun standing for αὐτόν, αὐτήν or αὐτό, and occasionally for the plural; it never changes its shape for gender or number. σφε does the same work, more often for a plural, and the dative σφιν or σφι appears beside it. Euripides in particular uses νιν constantly. A candidate who does not know it stares at a line with an apparently transitive verb and no object; a candidate who does know it supplies him, her or it and reads on. Alongside them, the personal pronouns themselves appear in older shapes, and ἐγώ can be reinforced as ἔγωγε in exactly the way prose reinforces it.

The most consequential difference is not a word at all: verse drops the definite article far more freely than prose. Where Xenophon writes ὁ στρατηγὸς ἦλθεν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, Euripides may write στρατηγὸς ἦλθεν ἐς πόλιν and mean exactly the same thing. The consequence for translation is that you must not infer indefiniteness from the missing article. If the sense requires the general, then the general is what the line means, article or no article. This costs marks quietly and constantly, because the error produces English that is grammatical and merely slightly wrong, which is the hardest kind of error to catch when you check.

Finally, verse compresses. Prepositions are omitted with an accusative of goal, as in Bacchae 1 above; a genitive alone will do the work of a prepositional phrase; a bare dative will express means, place or manner without ἐν or σύν. Whole clauses hang on a participle where prose would supply a conjunction. The remedy is not to guess but to identify the case and ask what that case is capable of doing, then choose the possibility the context supports. Case usage is the same as in prose — the accusative of goal, the genitive of separation, the dative of respect are all in Appendix 5d — but verse asks you to recognise them without the prepositional signposts prose provides.

Worked example

Six phrases in a poetic register, turned back into prose and then into English

Constructed teaching Greek in a poetic register, printed as phrases and not as verse. For each, write the Attic prose equivalent and then the English. (a) ἐς δόμους μολεῖν. (b) ξὺν τοῖσδε τέκνοις. (c) κτανεῖν νιν ἤθελον. (d) ὦ φάος, λεῦσσε τήνδε χθόνα. (e) πόσις δάμαρτι ταῦτ' ἔλεξεν. (f) θάλασσαν πράσσειν οὐκ ἔξεστιν.

(a) two poetic words in three
ἐς is the verse spelling of εἰς and takes the accusative; δόμους is the poetic plural of δόμος, house, and denotes one house; μολεῖν is the aorist infinitive of βλώσκω, to come or go. The prose version is εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν ἐλθεῖν, restoring the article that verse drops. English: to come into the house. The plural δόμους must not become houses.
(b) the preposition and the demonstrative
ξύν is σύν and takes the dative. τοῖσδε τέκνοις is a dative plural with the deictic demonstrative ὅδε, these children here, the -δε suffix pointing at what is present on stage. Prose: σὺν τούτοις τοῖς τέκνοις or, more idiomatically for accompaniment, μετὰ τούτων τῶν τέκνων. English: with these children.
(c) the pronoun that is easy to miss
κτανεῖν is the second aorist infinitive of κτείνω. νιν is the object, standing for αὐτόν, αὐτήν or αὐτό — the gender is settled by the context, not by the form. ἤθελον is imperfect and, without a stated subject, can be either first person singular or third plural; a reader decides from what precedes. Prose: αὐτὸν ἀποκτεῖναι ἐβούλοντο, or ἤθελον, which is equally good Attic. English: they wanted to kill him. Without νιν in your vocabulary, this phrase reads as a bare infinitive with no object at all.
(d) apostrophe, and a bare accusative
ὦ φάος is the uncontracted φῶς in the vocative, an address to the daylight of the kind that opens many tragic speeches. λεῦσσε is the present imperative of λεύσσω, look upon. τήνδε χθόνα is accusative, this land here, with no article. Prose: ὦ φῶς, βλέπε ταύτην τὴν γῆν. English: O light, look upon this land.
(e) the domestic vocabulary
πόσις is the nominative subject, husband; δάμαρτι is the dative singular of δάμαρ, wife, and is the indirect object; ταῦτ' is ταῦτα elided before the vowel of ἔλεξεν, the accusative object; ἔλεξεν is the aorist of λέγω. Prose: ὁ ἀνὴρ τῇ γυναικὶ ταῦτα ἔλεξεν, with both articles restored. English: the husband said this to his wife. Note again that the missing articles do not make the husband and the wife indefinite.
(f) the spelling difference that looks like a new word
θάλασσαν is the accusative of θάλασσα, which prose spells θάλαττα, and πράσσειν is the infinitive of πράσσω, which prose spells πράττω. οὐκ ἔξεστιν is the impersonal it is not possible, taking the infinitive. Prose: τὴν θάλατταν πράττειν οὐκ ἔξεστιν. English: it is not possible to deal with the sea. Two supposedly unknown words in a six-word phrase turn out to be two words you have known since GCSE, differently spelled.

Result: (a) εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν ἐλθεῖν — to come into the house. (b) σὺν τούτοις τοῖς τέκνοις — with these children. (c) αὐτὸν ἀποκτεῖναι ἤθελον — they wanted to kill him. (d) ὦ φῶς, βλέπε ταύτην τὴν γῆν — O light, look upon this land. (e) ὁ ἀνὴρ τῇ γυναικὶ ταῦτα ἔλεξεν — the husband said this to his wife. (f) τὴν θάλατταν πράττειν οὐκ ἔξεστιν — it is not possible to deal with the sea. In every case the grammar was ordinary Attic; only the diction, the spelling and the missing articles were poetic.

Typical mistakes

Translating δόμοι, δώματα or μέλαθρα as a plural, when the poetic plural regularly denotes one house.
Reading a noun without the article as indefinite and producing a general where the context demands the general.
Failing to recognise -σσ- for -ττ- and treating θάλασσα or πράσσω as unfamiliar words.

Active revision

Take any twenty lines of Euripidean dialogue and rewrite them as Attic prose: restore every article the poet dropped, replace every poetic word with its prose equivalent, put ξύν back to σύν and ἐς back to εἰς, expand νιν and σφε into the appropriate part of αὐτός, and supply the prepositions that the cases are doing without. Then translate your prose version. Doing this twice a week for a term is the fastest way there is to make verse feel like Greek rather than like a code.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR A Level in Classical Greek (H444) specification, Appendix 5d (Cambridge OCR) · GCE AS and A level subject content for ancient languages (Department for Education)

Quantity: how a Greek syllable becomes heavy or light#

StandardOCR H444 Component 01 Section B — the scansion of two lines of the verse passageOCR H444 Appendix 5d — knowledge of Greek orthography, including that lunate sigma and iota adscript are not used

How a Greek syllable becomes heavy or light

Fig. 2Read this table in the order the rows are printed, because that is the order in which a line should be scanned: the vowels that announce themselves, then the diphthongs, then position, and only at the end the three doubtful vowels. The emphasised cell is the single most common source of error, because a candidate who has learned accentuation properly has learned that final -αι and -οι are short, and that rule does not cross over into metre.

Every metrical question in Greek reduces to one prior question: is this syllable heavy or light? The vocabulary is worth fixing at the start. A vowel is long or short — that is a property of the vowel. A syllable is heavy or light — that is a property of the syllable, and it depends both on the vowel and on what follows it. Almost every mistake in beginners' scansion comes from confusing the two, because a short vowel can perfectly well sit in a heavy syllable. Greek is kinder here than Latin in one respect: two of its vowels announce their quantity in the alphabet. Ε is always short and Η always long; Ο is always short and Ω always long. That single fact settles a large share of any line before you have thought about anything else.

The three doubtful vowels are α, ι and υ, which can each be long or short by nature and are written the same either way. There is no macron on an examination paper, so the quantity has to come from knowledge rather than from the page. Three sources supply it. The paradigm: the first declension nominative singular in -η and the genitive in -ης are long, the neuter plural in -α is short, the accusative plural in -ᾱς is long. The word itself: μῦθος has a long υ, τιμή a long ι, πατήρ a short α. And, most usefully of all, position, which needs no knowledge of the word at all. Learn the endings first, since endings recur; learn stems as you meet them.

Diphthongs are always heavy: αι, ει, οι, υι, αυ, ευ, ου and ηυ each count as one long syllable. There is one refinement that catches candidates who have learned their accent rules well. Word-final -αι and -οι count as SHORT for the purposes of accentuation, which is why ἄνθρωποι keeps its acute on the antepenultimate; but for the purposes of METRE they are long, like any other diphthong. The two systems are independent, and the accent rule is the exception, not the metrical one. A syllable containing a vowel with iota subscript — ᾳ, ῃ, ῳ — is likewise heavy, since the subscript records a long diphthong.

Position is where most of a line is decided. A syllable whose vowel is followed by two or more consonants is heavy, however short the vowel is by nature, and the two consonants may be split across a word division: in ἐν δόμοις the syllable ἐν is heavy because ν and δ meet. The double letters ζ, ξ and ψ each stand for two consonants — roughly σδ, κσ and πσ — so a short vowel before any one of them is in a heavy syllable on its own. Initial ρ is written ῥ and counts as a doubled consonant, so a short final vowel before it is also heavy. Elision removes the question entirely: an elided vowel is simply gone, and δ', ἀλλ' and ὤφελ' contribute nothing where the vowel used to be.

Two refinements complete the system. The first is Attic correption: a short vowel followed, within the same word, by a stop plus λ or ρ is usually left LIGHT in tragic dialogue, so the first syllable of πατρός or of ὅπλα is normally short. A stop plus μ or ν does not enjoy that licence and normally does make position, so τέκνον and ἀριθμός have heavy first syllables, and the licence does not operate across a word boundary either. The second is brevis in longo: the final syllable of the line counts as heavy whatever its natural quantity, because the pause at the line end fills it out. Both rules matter in practice: the first explains lines that otherwise refuse to scan, and the second means you should never waste time on the last syllable of a line.

Worked example

Marking the quantities of a line before scanning it

Quoted exactly: Euripides, Bacchae 1, Ἥκω Διὸς παῖς τήνδε Θηβαίων χθόνα. Divide the line into syllables and give the quantity of each, with the reason. Do not divide it into metra yet.

Divide into syllables
Ἥ-κω Δι-ὸς παῖς τήν-δε Θη-βαί-ων χθό-να. Twelve syllables. Count them before anything else: an unresolved iambic trimeter has exactly twelve, so a count of twelve tells you at once that this line contains no resolution, and a count of thirteen or fourteen would tell you to look for one.
The syllables settled by the vowel alone
Ἥ is heavy: η is long by nature. κω is heavy: ω is long by nature. παῖς is heavy: αι is a diphthong. τήν is heavy: η again. Θη is heavy: η again. βαί is heavy: the diphthong αι, here inside the word. ων is heavy: ω. That is seven of the twelve settled without looking at a single consonant.
The syllables settled by position
ὸς is heavy by position: its vowel is short ο, but the ς at its end and the π that begins παῖς make two consonants, so the syllable closes heavy. This is the rule that most often surprises a reader, because ὸς looks light and the two consonants sit either side of a word division.
The light syllables
Δι is light: ι is short here and is followed by the single vowel ο with no consonant cluster. δε is light: ε is always short, and the θ that follows it is a single consonant. χθό is light: ο is always short, and the ν that follows is single. Three light syllables.
The last syllable
να has a short α by nature and nothing follows it, so it would be light anywhere else in the line. At the line end it counts heavy, by brevis in longo. Do not spend time on the final syllable of a line: it is always marked heavy.
Assemble and check
Reading left to right: Ἥ heavy, κω heavy, Δι light, ὸς heavy, παῖς heavy, τήν heavy, δε light, Θη heavy, βαί heavy, ων heavy, χθό light, να heavy. That is - - u - - - u - - - u -. Three light syllables, at positions three, seven and eleven, which is exactly where an iambic trimeter puts them. The quantities are now fixed and the line is ready to be divided into metra.

Result: Ἥ-κω Δι-ὸς παῖς τήν-δε Θη-βαί-ων χθό-να scans - - u - - - u - - - u -. Seven syllables were settled by η, ω or a diphthong, one by position across a word division, three were light by having ε or ο or a short ι with no cluster, and the last counts heavy by brevis in longo.

Typical mistakes

Confusing a short vowel with a light syllable, and refusing to make a syllable heavy because its vowel is obviously short.
Carrying the accentuation rule about final -αι and -οι into the scansion and marking them short.
Forgetting that ζ, ξ and ψ are double consonants, so that a line comes out one heavy syllable short of scanning.
Applying Attic correption across a word boundary, or to a stop plus μ or ν, where it does not operate.

Active revision

Take ten lines of Euripidean dialogue and, without attempting to scan them, mark every syllable you can call heavy from position alone: two consonants, a double letter, an initial rho. Then mark every syllable settled by η, ω or a diphthong. Count how much of each line you have already fixed — it will usually be more than three quarters — and only then look up the doubtful vowels that remain. This is the order in which a scansion should always be done, and it is the order in which it is fastest.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR A Level in Classical Greek (H444) specification (Cambridge OCR)

The iambic trimeter: twelve positions, resolution, caesura and Porson's bridge#

AdvancedOCR H444 Component 01 Section B — the scansion of two lines of the verse passageOCR H444 Component 01 — the unseen verse passage will be taken from Euripides, in iambic trimeter, for examination from 2027 to 2032OCR H444 Component 04 — detailed knowledge and understanding of the verse set texts must include metre

The twelve positions of the iambic trimeter

Fig. 3The whole metre is in this table, and the shape it describes is x - u - repeated three times. The emphasised cell is the ninth position, the anceps of the third metron: it may be heavy or light like the other two ancipitia, but if it is heavy no word may end there, which is Porson's Law. Reading down the fourth column gives you the template to write out from memory at the start of a scansion answer.

The iambic trimeter is built from three metra, not six feet, and the metron is the unit that matters. One metron is x - u -, that is an anceps which may be either heavy or light, then a heavy, then a light, then a heavy. Three of those give the twelve positions of the line: x - u - | x - u - | x - u -. The anceps positions are the first, the fifth and the ninth; the light positions are the third, the seventh and the eleventh; everything else is heavy. Learn the template as a shape and write it out from memory before you scan anything, because scansion is not the discovery of a pattern but the fitting of a line to a pattern you already know.

The older way of describing the same line counts six iambic feet, and it is worth being able to translate between the two, because both appear in books and in classrooms. On the six-foot analysis the odd feet — first, third and fifth — may be an iambus u - or a spondee - -, since their first position is the anceps, while the even feet — second, fourth and sixth — must be an iambus. That is exactly the same statement as the metron template, differently packaged. The metron analysis is preferable because it makes the three ancipitia visible, and the ancipitia are where the freedom of the line lives.

The one substitution that changes the syllable count is resolution: a heavy position may be replaced by two light syllables, so that a line of twelve positions is realised in thirteen or occasionally fourteen syllables. The two shorts of a resolution normally belong to the same word. Resolution is found most freely in the first metron and becomes rarer towards the end of the line; the twelfth position is never resolved, and the light positions cannot be resolved because they are already short. Euripides admits resolution far more readily than Aeschylus or Sophocles, and the increasing frequency of resolution across his career is the standard basis on which his undated plays are ordered chronologically. In practice, this is why counting the syllables of a line is the first thing to do: twelve means no resolution, thirteen means one, and you then know what you are looking for.

The trimeter has a caesura, a word division inside the line that keeps it from falling into two mechanical halves. It falls in one of two places. The penthemimeral caesura comes after the fifth position, that is after the anceps of the second metron; the hepthemimeral comes after the seventh, that is after the light syllable of the second metron. One or the other is present in the overwhelming majority of lines, and a word break that falls only after the sixth position, cutting the line exactly in half, is avoided. When you are asked to name the caesura, count the positions and say penthemimeral or hepthemimeral: those are the two answers.

The one prohibition that has a name is Porson's Law, also called Porson's bridge, and it governs the ninth position — the anceps of the third metron. If that position is filled by a heavy syllable, a word may not end there. The practical consequence is that a trimeter does not end with a word of the shape - u -, a cretic, preceded by a word break and a heavy ninth position: if the last word is a cretic, the anceps before it must be light. The standard exceptions concern monosyllables and elision, where the word division is not felt as a break. Porson's Law is useful in two directions. It is a check on your own scansion, because a scansion that breaks it is almost certainly a scansion that has gone wrong; and it is exactly the sort of named rule an examiner can ask you to state.

Worked example

Two trimeters scanned position by position

Scan each line: count the syllables, mark the quantities, divide the metra, name the caesura and check Porson's Law. (a) Quoted exactly: Euripides, Medea 1, Εἴθ' ὤφελ' Ἀργοῦς μὴ διαπτάσθαι σκάφος. (b) Constructed teaching Greek, scanned below before being printed: τί ταῦτα λέγετε, παῖδες, ἐν δόμοις ἐμοῖς;

(a) count the syllables
Two vowels have already been elided away and are marked as such on the page: Εἴθ' is εἴθε and ὤφελ' is ὤφελε, each losing its final short vowel before the vowel that follows. What is left divides as Εἴθ' | ὤ-φελ' | Ἀρ-γοῦς | μὴ | δι-α-πτάσ-θαι | σκά-φος. Twelve syllables, so there is no resolution and the twelve syllables map one to one onto the twelve positions.
(a) mark the quantities, positions 1 to 4
Position 1, Εἴθ': the diphthong ει, heavy. Position 2, ὤ: ω, heavy. Position 3, φελ': short ε followed by λ and then the vowel of Ἀργοῦς, so one consonant only, light. Position 4, Ἀρ: short α followed by ρ and γ, two consonants, heavy by position. First metron therefore - - u -, an anceps realised heavy and then the regular - u -.
(a) positions 5 to 8
Position 5, γοῦς: the diphthong ου, heavy — an anceps realised heavy. Position 6, μὴ: η, heavy. Position 7, δι: short ι followed immediately by the vowel α, light. Position 8, α: short α followed by π and τ, two consonants, heavy by position. Second metron - - u -.
(a) positions 9 to 12
Position 9, πτάσ: the α is short by nature but is followed by σ and θ, so the syllable is heavy by position — the third anceps realised heavy. Position 10, θαι: word-final -αι, long for the metre, heavy. Position 11, σκά: short α followed by the single consonant φ, light. Position 12, φος: short ο, but the last syllable of the line counts heavy. Third metron - - u -.
(a) caesura and Porson
The full scansion is - - u - | - - u - | - - u -, with all three ancipitia heavy. Word ends fall after positions 1, 3, 5, 6 and 10. The break after position 5, at the end of Ἀργοῦς, is the penthemimeral caesura, and it is the one to name; the break after position 6 is only μή, which leans forward onto the infinitive it negatives and is not felt as a division. Now Porson: position 9 is heavy, so no word may end there — and none does, because διαπτάσθαι runs on through position 10. The bridge holds. Had Euripides written a three-syllable word of the shape - u - to close the line after a word break, he would have needed a light ninth position to do it.
(b) count the syllables
τί | ταῦ-τα | λέ-γε-τε | παῖ-δες | ἐν | δό-μοις | ἐ-μοῖς. Thirteen syllables. Thirteen against a template of twelve means exactly one resolution, and the job is now to find which heavy position has been replaced by two lights.
(b) mark the quantities
τί: short ι before the single consonant τ, light — position 1, an anceps realised light. ταῦ: diphthong αυ, heavy — position 2. τα: short α before the single λ, light — position 3. λε: short ε before the single γ, light. γε: short ε before the single τ, light. Those two lights together fill position 4, which is the resolution. τε: short ε before the single π, light — position 5, an anceps realised light. παῖ: diphthong, heavy — position 6. δες: short ε, and the ς is followed by the vowel of ἐν, so a single consonant only, light — position 7. ἐν: short ε followed by ν and δ, two consonants across the word division, heavy by position — position 8. δό: short ο before the single μ, light — position 9, the third anceps realised light. μοις: diphthong οι, heavy — position 10. ἐ: short ε before the single μ, light — position 11. μοῖς: diphthong, heavy — position 12.
(b) assemble, divide and check
u - u uu | u - u - | u - u -. All three ancipitia are light, which makes this the purely iambic form of the line, and position 4 is resolved into the two light syllables λε-γε, both of them inside the same word, as a resolution should be. Word ends fall after positions 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10 and 12; the break after position 5, at the end of λέγετε, is the penthemimeral caesura. Porson's Law is not engaged, because position 9 is light. The line means: why are you saying these things, children, in my house?
How to lay the answer out on the paper
Write the quantities above the Greek, one mark over each syllable, and put a vertical stroke at the end of each metron and a double stroke at the caesura. Then, if the question asks for it, name the caesura in words. Do not write an essay: the answer is the marked line and, at most, one clause naming the caesura and any resolution.

Result: (a) Medea 1 scans - - u - | - - u - | - - u -, twelve syllables, no resolution, all three ancipitia heavy, a penthemimeral caesura after Ἀργοῦς, and Porson's bridge intact because the heavy ninth position lies inside διαπτάσθαι. (b) The constructed line scans u - u uu | u - u - | u - u -, thirteen syllables, with position 4 resolved into λε-γε, all three ancipitia light, and a penthemimeral caesura after λέγετε.

Typical mistakes

Trying to discover the pattern from the line instead of fitting the line to a template written out in advance.
Forgetting that the first, fifth and ninth positions are anceps and marking them heavy or light as though the metre required it.
Meeting a thirteen-syllable line, deciding it does not scan, and abandoning it, when it simply contains a resolution.
Naming a caesura at the sixth position, which is precisely the division the trimeter avoids.

Active revision

Write out the twelve-position template from memory, then take two lines of Euripidean dialogue and scan them under a three-minute clock: count the syllables, mark the quantities, divide the metra with vertical strokes, mark the caesura, and check the ninth position against Porson's Law. Do two lines every day for a fortnight. The whole task should come down to well under two minutes, at which point it is worth more marks per minute than anything else in Component 01.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR A Level in Classical Greek (H444) specification (Cambridge OCR) · OCR A Level Classical Greek — specification at a glance (Cambridge OCR)

Reading verse for sense: word order, the line end, particles and stichomythia#

AdvancedOCR H444 Component 01 Section B — translation into English of an unseen passage of Classical Greek verseOCR H444 Appendix 5d — uses of the participle, subordinate clauses, and standard patterns of case usage, applied to verse

The grammar of tragic dialogue is the grammar of Appendix 5d and nothing else: the same participles, the same conditions, the same indirect statement, the same uses of ἄν. What changes is the arrangement. A poet writing to a metre places words where their shapes fit, so an adjective may stand several words away from its noun, a genitive may precede the noun it depends on by half a line, and the verb may be anywhere. This is not disorder, because Greek marks agreement and case on the words themselves; it does mean that the sequence of words is not the sequence of thought. Reading a verse line from left to right in the hope that a sentence will assemble itself is even less effective than it is in prose. Find the finite verb, find its subject, then attach everything else by its endings.

The line end is not a full stop. A tragic sentence frequently runs on into the following line, sometimes finishing after a word or two, and the practice has a name, enjambment. Two habits follow. First, never translate a line as a unit: read to the punctuation, not to the line end. Second, when a line ends with a word that could complete the sentence but need not, hold the possibility open and read on. Euripides uses the technique deliberately, and a word held back to the beginning of the next line is nearly always a word he wants weight on, which is a point you can make in Component 04 as well as a reading habit you need in Component 01.

Particles carry more of the meaning of a verse exchange than any other class of word, and they are the easiest thing to skip. μέν and δέ set two things against each other and often need no more than a comma and a but in English. γάρ explains what has just been said and is frequently the whole reason a line exists. οὖν draws a consequence, δή marks emphasis or impatience, τοι appeals to the hearer, καὶ μήν announces something new or someone entering, ἀλλά changes direction. In stichomythia a speaker's whole attitude may be carried by γε or by δῆτα. Translating them all mechanically produces stilted English; ignoring them produces English that is fluent and has lost the argument. The discipline is to identify each one, decide what it is doing, and then render it as naturally as English allows, sometimes by word order or punctuation rather than by a word.

Stichomythia, the exchange of single lines between two characters, is a set piece of tragedy and a favourite source of unseen passages, because it is dense, dramatic and self-contained. Its conventions are worth knowing before you meet one. Each speaker takes exactly one line; a question in one line is answered in the next; a speaker often picks up a word from the previous line and turns it back; the pace of the exchange is itself the drama. Practically, this means the speaker changes at every line break, so pronouns and verb persons flip constantly, and a first-person verb in one line and a second-person verb in the next refer to different people. Mark the speaker changes on the paper before you translate.

Two smaller conventions round the picture out. The vocative and the apostrophe are far commoner than in prose: characters address the gods, the light, the earth, their own hearts, the house. Recognise the vocative for what it is and do not press it into the syntax of the sentence. And tragic Greek uses interjections and cries — οἴμοι, φεῦ, αἰαῖ, ὦ τάλας — which have no exact English equivalent and are best rendered by a natural English exclamation rather than by a dictionary gloss. Neither of these is difficult, but both look strange in the middle of a line if you have not seen them before, and both cost time that the translation cannot spare.

Worked example

Reading an exchange: word order, particles and who is speaking

Constructed teaching Greek in a poetic register, printed as an exchange and not as scanned verse. Translate it, and at each step say what settled your reading. — A: τί δῆτα σιγᾷς; οὐ γὰρ οἶδα σὴν φρένα. B: σιγῶ, γέρον, τὰ δεινὰ γὰρ λέγειν φοβοῦμαι. A: λέγοις ἄν, εἴπερ ταῦτα σοὶ δοκεῖ καλῶς. B: οὐκ οἶδα· τὸν γὰρ παῖδα δεσπότης καλεῖ.

Speaker A, line 1: the particles do the work
τί is the interrogative why or what, and δῆτα intensifies it: the pair together is impatient, so then, why on earth. σιγᾷς is second person singular present of σιγάω, contracted, you are silent. The second clause is explanatory: the postpositive γάρ in οὐ γὰρ οἶδα σὴν φρένα marks the clause as the reason for the question just asked. σήν is the possessive adjective agreeing with φρένα, the accusative of φρήν, mind or heart. Translate: why, then, are you silent? For I do not know your mind. The γάρ is not decorative — it is the whole logical link between the two clauses.
Speaker B, line 2: the vocative and the object of fear
The speaker has changed. σιγῶ answers σιγᾷς directly, in the first person: I am silent. γέρον is a vocative, old man, and must be lifted out of the syntax rather than construed with anything. Then τὰ δεινά, a neuter plural accusative used as a noun, the terrible things, is the object of λέγειν, and λέγειν is the complement of φοβοῦμαι, I am afraid. Notice the order: the object stands before its own infinitive and the whole phrase before the verb that governs it, which is ordinary in verse and impossible in English. Translate: I am silent, old man, for I am afraid to speak of terrible things.
Speaker A, line 3: a potential optative and a conditional
λέγοις ἄν is present optative with ἄν, the potential optative, which in dialogue is a courteous imperative rather than a statement of possibility: you might speak, that is, do speak. εἴπερ is εἰ strengthened, if indeed. δοκεῖ is impersonal, it seems good, with σοί as the dative of the person to whom it seems and ταῦτα as its subject. καλῶς is the adverb. Translate: do speak, if indeed this seems right to you. The uses of ἄν are in Appendix 5d, and this is the commonest of them in dialogue.
Speaker B, line 4: the raised dot and a delayed subject
οὐκ οἶδα is I do not know, closed by the raised dot, the ano teleia, which does the work of an English colon or semicolon and is not a full stop. Then γάρ again introduces the reason, and note where it stands: γάρ is postpositive and can never begin its clause, so the clause actually begins with τὸν παῖδα. The subject δεσπότης is held back to the end, after its own object. Translate: I do not know; for the master is calling the boy. If you attach τὸν παῖδα to καλεῖ as its object and take δεσπότης as the subject, the line is easy; if you read left to right and make τὸν παῖδα the subject, it is impossible, because it is accusative.
What the exchange shows
Four lines, four changes of person, three particles carrying the argument, one potential optative, one vocative to be lifted out, one postpositive marking a clause boundary and one subject held to the end. Every difficulty is a difficulty of arrangement rather than of grammar; the grammar itself is on the Appendix 5d list. That is a fair description of a Euripidean unseen.

Result: A: Why, then, are you silent? For I do not know your mind. B: I am silent, old man, for I am afraid to speak of terrible things. A: Do speak, if indeed this seems right to you. B: I do not know; for the master is calling the boy. The readings were settled by δῆτα and γάρ marking the logic, the vocative γέρον standing outside the syntax, the potential optative λέγοις ἄν, the postpositive γάρ marking where the clause really begins, and the accusative τὸν παῖδα forbidding it to be the subject.

Typical mistakes

Treating each verse line as a sentence and producing a translation of disconnected fragments.
Joining an adjective to the nearest noun rather than to the noun it agrees with, when verse routinely separates them.
Rendering every μέν as on the one hand and every δέ as on the other hand, until the English collapses under the weight of the machinery.
Losing track of who is speaking in a stichomythia and attributing a first-person verb to the wrong character.

Active revision

Take a stichomythia of twenty lines. Before translating, do three passes with a pencil: first mark every speaker change, then ring every finite verb and join each to its subject, then underline every particle and write one English word above it saying what it does. Only then translate. Compare the time this takes with the time a straight left-to-right attempt takes, and the accuracy of each.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR A Level in Classical Greek (H444) specification, Appendix 5d (Cambridge OCR)

Exam technique: the verse translation and the two scanned lines#

StandardOCR H444 Component 01 — 1 hour 45 minutes, 100 marks, Section A 50 marks and Section B 50 marks, both answeredOCR H444 Component 01 Section B — translation of an unseen verse passage and scansion of two linesOCR H444 — Component 01 assesses AO1 alone

Decide the clock before you enter the room. One hundred and five minutes, one hundred marks, split fifty and fifty. A defensible plan is five minutes to read both passages, forty-five minutes on the prose, forty-five on the verse including the scansion, and ten minutes at the end to check both. Write the two changeover times on the question paper in the first minute. The single most valuable habit in this paper is leaving Section A when the clock says so, even mid-sentence, because the marks left unwritten in Section B are worth exactly as much as the marks you were polishing in Section A. Check the mark allocation printed beside the scansion instruction on your own paper, since the specification does not publish how the fifty marks divide.

Work in this order on the verse. Read the whole passage once without writing, using the English introduction, which is there to give you the situation and the names. Mark the sentence ends, not the line ends, and mark every change of speaker if the passage is dialogue. Ring every finite verb. Then translate sentence by sentence, and write continuous English on the answer paper as you go rather than a rough version to be tidied later. There is no time for two drafts. If a word defeats you, write the most probable English for it and move on; a blank scores nothing, whereas an intelligent guess in a sentence that otherwise makes sense frequently costs less than it looks as if it should.

Translation marks in this component are earned by completeness and accuracy of sense, so the first rule is that every Greek word must be represented. Do not leave out a particle you cannot place, an adverb you find awkward or a participle you have not fully understood — render it, and render it in the right grammatical relation. Tenses, moods and voices must show in the English: an aorist participle is when he had done, not doing; a middle is different from a passive; a potential optative with ἄν is not a plain indicative. Names and places should be transliterated in their normal English form. English that reads naturally is worth having, but never at the cost of a word or a relationship: a slightly wooden clause that contains everything scores better than an elegant clause that has quietly dropped a genitive.

The scansion is the most predictable task in the whole qualification, and it should be rehearsed until it is mechanical. Write the twelve-position template above the first line, from memory. Count the syllables of the line: twelve means no resolution, thirteen means one. Mark the quantities syllable by syllable, doing the certainties first — η, ω, diphthongs, position — and leaving the doubtful vowels until the shape of the line has told you what they must be. Divide the metra with vertical strokes. Mark the caesura with a double stroke and, if asked, name it: penthemimeral after the fifth position, hepthemimeral after the seventh. Finally check the ninth position against Porson's Law as a proof that the scansion is right.

Two things to write and two things not to write. Do write the quantity marks directly above the Greek, one mark per syllable, clearly enough to be read; and do write, in one clause, anything the question asks you to name — the caesura, a resolution, an elision. Do not write a paragraph explaining your reasoning, because the marks are for the marked line and not for the commentary; and do not leave the scansion until the end of the paper, because it is the one task in Section B that is finished in under three minutes when it has been drilled and impossible in ten when it has not. If time runs out with lines untranslated, scan first: it is the highest-yield minute in the section.

Worked example

Forty-five minutes, minute by minute, and what the paper looks like at the end

You have forty-five minutes for Section B: an unseen passage of Euripidean dialogue of roughly twenty-five to thirty lines, plus two lines to be scanned. Plan and execute the section.

Minutes 0 to 3 — read and mark
Read the English introduction first and take the names and the situation from it; this is free information and it prevents the commonest kind of catastrophic misreading. Read the Greek through once without writing. Then mark the paper: a stroke at every sentence end, a bracket at every change of speaker, a ring round every finite verb. You are not translating yet, and you should not have written an English word.
Minutes 3 to 6 — scan the two lines
Do this now, while you are fresh and while the clock is not yet a threat. Write the template x - u - | x - u - | x - u - above the first of the two lines. Count the syllables. Mark the quantities, certainties first. Divide the metra. Mark and name the caesura. Check the ninth position. Repeat for the second line. Three minutes is enough if it has been drilled, and the marks are now banked whatever happens to the rest of the section.
Minutes 6 to 38 — translate, in fair copy
Roughly one line a minute. Take one sentence at a time: finite verb, subject, then the phrases attached by their endings, then write the English straight onto the answer paper as continuous prose. Do not write a draft. When a word defeats you, put the likeliest English in and mark the margin with a small cross so you can come back to it; do not stop, and do not leave a gap. Keep the line numbers visible in your answer if the paper provides them, so the examiner can follow you.
Minutes 38 to 43 — the completeness check
Go back through the Greek word by word with a finger and ask of each word: is it in my English? This is the single most productive check in the paper, because omission is the commonest cause of lost marks and it is invisible when you read your own English, which makes perfect sense without the missing participle. Then do a second, faster pass for tense, mood and voice: every aorist participle rendered as a past, every middle distinguished from a passive, every optative with ἄν given its potential force.
Minutes 43 to 45 — the crosses and the handwriting
Return to the words you marked with a cross and give each a better guess if one has occurred to you, but do not spend more than thirty seconds on any one of them. Check that the two scanned lines are legible and that the quantity marks sit clearly above the right syllables — a scansion the examiner cannot read scores nothing. Make sure nothing is crossed out so heavily that the replacement is ambiguous.
What the finished section looks like
On the question paper: sentence ends marked, speaker changes bracketed, verbs ringed, two lines carrying quantity marks, metron strokes and a named caesura. On the answer paper: one continuous English translation with no gaps and no rough version, plus the two scanned lines if the rubric asks for them to be copied out. Nothing else — no notes on grammar, no alternative renderings offered in brackets, no apologies.

Result: The section divides three minutes to read and mark, three to scan, thirty-two to translate at about a line a minute, five to check for omissions and for tense, mood and voice, and two to tidy. The scansion is done early, not late, because it is the one task whose marks can be secured in three minutes; the completeness check is done at all, because omission, not error, is what most often costs a candidate this section.

Typical mistakes

Overrunning on Section A and leaving Section B, worth the same fifty marks, half written.
Writing a rough translation first, intending to tidy it, and running out of time before the fair copy.
Leaving out particles and small adverbs on the grounds that they do not translate neatly.
Writing an explanation of the scansion instead of the marks themselves, or leaving the scansion to the last two minutes.

Active revision

Sit the section under full conditions once a fortnight: forty-five minutes for a passage of Euripidean dialogue of about the length OCR sets, including the two scanned lines, writing continuous English straight onto the paper with no rough copy. Then mark yourself twice — once for words omitted, which is the fastest diagnostic there is, and once for tenses, moods and voices misrepresented. Record both numbers each time and watch them fall.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR A Level in Classical Greek (H444) specification (Cambridge OCR) · OCR A Level Classical Greek — specification at a glance (Cambridge OCR)

References & sources

Sources

Cambridge OCR

Department for Education

GCE AS and A level subject content for ancient languages

Unseen verse translation and scansion

6 sections~54 min reading time4 competenciesLevel Standard 4 · Advanced 2

Section B: Euripides, fifty marks and two lines to scan#

Standard

OCR H444 Component 01 Section B — translation into English of an unseen passage of Classical Greek verse, and the scansion of two lines (50 marks)

OCR H444 Component 01 — for examination from 2027 to 2032 the unseen verse passage will be taken from Euripides, in iambic trimeter

OCR H444 Component 01 — 1 hour 45 minutes, 100 marks, 33% of the A-Level, testing AO1 alone

The iambic trimeter: twelve positions, resolution, caesura and Porson's bridge#

Advanced

OCR H444 Component 01 Section B — the scansion of two lines of the verse passage

OCR H444 Component 01 — the unseen verse passage will be taken from Euripides, in iambic trimeter, for examination from 2027 to 2032

OCR H444 Component 04 — detailed knowledge and understanding of the verse set texts must include metre

Unseen verse translation and scansion

Key points

Two openings of Euripides, translated clause by clause

Key points

Six phrases in a poetic register, turned back into prose and then into English

Key points

Marking the quantities of a line before scanning it

Key points

Two trimeters scanned position by position

Key points

Reading an exchange: word order, particles and who is speaking

Key points

Forty-five minutes, minute by minute, and what the paper looks like at the end

Sources

Unseen verse translation and scansion

Key points

Two openings of Euripides, translated clause by clause

Key points

Six phrases in a poetic register, turned back into prose and then into English

Key points

Marking the quantities of a line before scanning it

Key points

Two trimeters scanned position by position

Key points

Reading an exchange: word order, particles and who is speaking

Key points

Forty-five minutes, minute by minute, and what the paper looks like at the end

Sources