Pause and Period In The Lyrics of Greek Tragedy

It has long been accepted as a principle by editors and writers on Greek metre that brevis in longo and hiatus in tragic lyrics often coincide with some kind of sense-pause. The object of this inquiry is (i) to determine the incidence of pause in such places, and show that it is significantly high; (ii) to show that there is a comparable incidence in the corresponding places in strophic systems; (iii) to show that period-ends determined by criteria other than brevis and hiatus are attended by similar conditions. It might seem that if all this were true it would have been recognized long ago, particularly as the connection between sense and metrical structure, and symmetry of sense in strophe and antistrophe, has often been pointed out.