Correption

Abstract: It is a familiar fact that in Greek hexameter poetry diphthongs and long vowels at the end of a word, followed in the same verse by a word beginning with a vowel, are usually treated as short (vocalis ante vocalem corripitutr). But the explanation of this correption is uncertain, its relation to the tolerance of hiatus is obscure, and even the elementary facts concerning the extent and proportions of the usage itself, the vowels and diphthongs in which it appears most frequently, and the difference in practice among the different poets, are loosely stated in the most recent handbooks. It has therefore seemed worth while to make a new and somewhat extended examination of this feature of dactylic verse, covering a considerable number of poets from the earliest to the latest times. Such an examination may furnish us at least with a clear general view of the extent of the practice and the circumstances under which it occurs, and at the same time may shed some light on the difficult problem of its origin and explanation. The poets whose usage has been noted are twenty-six in number, and the list includes the chief representatives of the epic, classical, Alexandrian, Roman, and Byzantine periods. Certain poets of great intrinsic importance are passed over because we possess too little of their work to afford a sufficient basis for observation. The parts of Homer examined were chosen from among the earliest, as well as the latest, portions of the poems, in the hope of finding such a difference of usage as should be significant. But no such marked difference was found to exist. Homeric correption is fairly constant from A to co, and the slight differences have no apparent significance for our inquiry. In most cases at least 1,000 consecutive verses of each poet were examined,' or the