Accentual Cursus tn Byzantine Greek Prose. 423 
writer. What we have is merely an artistic device, a rhetorical 
trick which was used or disregarded at will. 
A later publication which makes use of the law is by Paul Maas, 
Rhythmisches zu der Kunstprosa des Konstantinos Manasses (By- 
zantinische Zeitschrift 11, 1902, p. 305). The law is stated by Maas 
with a very significant modification of the form in which it was 
previously stated by Meyer and received by Litzica: between the 
last two accents only an even number of syllables may stand. This 
leaves the type with 3 and 5 syllables in arsi among the irregular 
clausule. The importance of this will appear presently. Maas re- 
marks on the difficulty of punctuating in accordance with the 
cursus; the ordinary placing of commas in Greek texts seems in 
general correct, but there seems reason to doubt whether a comma 
should be permitted before a relative sentence, since a regular 
clausula is often not to be found in that position.! 
Parr I1.—Tuse Law ItTsewr. 
When Meyer formulated the cursus law, he wrote with his at- 
tention fixed on the rhythmical prose itself; he neglected to justify 
his statement of the law by a careful and detailed comparison 
with prose in which such a rhythm does not exist. The general 
characteristics of the accentual cursus struck him so forcibly that 
he failed to see more than two fundamental facts: the preponde- 
rance of a form having two syllables in arsi, and the constant 
avoidance of forms having no syllables or one syllable in arsi. 
Hence his statement of the law that two or more syllables must 
stand in arsi. The law thus stated includes too much, since forms 
which do not in any sense characterize the cursus are massed 
together with the really characteristic forms. Obviously the only 
satisfying method of finding out exactly what is characteristic of 
the accentual prose rhythm is a comparison by individual forms of 
clausulaee between writers who show a cursus and writers who do 
not. Meyer readily saw that the form having three syllables in 

1 The accentual cursus law is incidentally noted in Norden, Kunst- 
prosa; Krumbacher, Geschichte der Byzantinischen Litteratur; Havet, 
Cours élémentaire de métrique grecque et latin. Important works on 
the Latin accentual cursus which treat incidentally of the law in Greek 
are: Havet, La prose métrique de Symmache, 1892; W. Meyer, Die 
rhythmische lateinische Prosa (Gétt. gelehrte Anzeigen 1893), reprinted 
in Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur mittellateinischen Rhythmik 1905, 
vol. II. 
