430 H. B. Dewing, 
every case coincide with a strong word accent, but a secondary 
accent of a polysyllabic word may occasionally mark the rhythm. 
To quote from Prof. T. D. Goodell: “To produce English verse in 
a desired rhythm, words are so selected and arranged that strongly 
stressed syllables come naturally into enough of the more prominent 
and regularly recurring times of the intended pattern to determine | 
how the other syllables are to make the rest of the pattern.”1 This 
is exactly what Zosimus has done; the arrangement of word accents 
in his clausule makes clear a preference for two definite patterns, 
and the preponderance of these characteristic forms where they are 
clearly marked by written accents raises a strong presumption that 
the rhythm of these patterns must be uniformly present in all his 
clausule. The question thus raised resolves itself into this: what 
was the spoken aécent of the word groups in question as they 
stand in their context? The cursus rhythm was undoubtedly in- 
tended for the ear, and not for the eye. Now though there is 
reason to believe that written accents do not in each case represent 
spoken accents in connected discourse, yet some definite evidence 
is needed to support the evidence of the cursus itself; to prove, 
for example, that the accented forms of the article were not as 
strongly stressed as the accented syllable of a noun or verb. 
Fortunately the evidence desired is at hand in the so-called Po- 
litical Verses. which have an accentual meter instead of a quanti- 
tative basis as in classical Greek poetry.2, We can feel on sure 
ground in dealing with verses of a simple structure; the lines uni- 
formly contain 15 syllables with the movement iambic. Here we 
may expect to find a safe basis for reading the accentual rhythm 
of the cursus. We see, first, that not every word bears a metrical 
accent; monosyllabic words often form the arsis of a foot, even 
though they bear a written accent; for example, the article in all 
its forms, uéy, dé, xai, and the copula yy. The same is true of the 
monosyllabic enclitics and proclitics ze, ye, zz, eis, év, é; all these are 
used in arsi—in other words, have no metrical accent; second, there 
is no consistency in the treatment of the accents of these mono- 
syllables; for example, ué, dé, x«i often do bear an ictus, and even 
enclitics or proclitics may be treated in this way; for example, 
xeavos te zai déov; SO ye is found with an ictus; third, in dissyllabic 

+ Unpublished Lectures; Yale University. 
? Political Verses were examined in the following writers: Michael 
Psellus, Migne 122; John Tzetzes, ed. Kiessling ; Constantinus Manasses, 
Corpus Scr. Hist. Byz. 
