PREFACE. FOR Some long time past it has been widely felt that a reduction in the cost of Classical Works used in schools generally, and more especially in those intended for boys of the middle classes, is at once desirable and not difficult of accomplishment. For the most part only portions of authors are read in the earlier stages of education, and a pupil is taken from one work to another in each successive half-year or term; so that a book needlessly large and proportionably expensive is laid aside after a short and but partial use. In order, therefore, to meet what is certainly a want, Portions of the Classical Writers usually read in Schools are now being issued under the title of GRAMMAR SCHOOL. TEXTS; while, at the request of various Masters, it has been determined to add to the series some of the Gospels in Greek. Each TEXT is provided with a VOCABULARY of the words occurring in it. In every case the origin of a word, when known, is stated at the commencement of the article treating of it, if connected with another Latin, or Greek, word; at the end of it, if derived from any other source. Further still, the primary or etymological meaning is always given, within inverted commas, in Roman type, and so much also of each word's history as is needful to bring down its chain of meanings to the especial force, or forces, attaching to it in the particular "Text." Moreover, as an acquaintance with the principles of GRAMMAR, as well as with ETYMOLOGY, is necessary to the understanding of a language, such points of construction as seem to require elucidation are concisely explained under the proper articles, or a reference is simply made to that rule in the Public Schools Latin Primer, or in Parry's Elementary Greek Grammar, which meets the particular difficulty. It occasionally happens, however, that more information is needed than can be gathered from the above-named works. When such is the case, whatever is requisite is supplied, in substance, from Jelf's Greek Grammar, Winer's Grammar of New Testament Greek, or the Latin Grammars of Zumpt and Madvig. LONDON: January, 1875. SOME ACCOUNT OF THE METRES AND VERSES OCCURRING IN THE THIRD BOOK OF THE ODES OF HORACE. METRE (μέτρον, "6 'measure") denotes sometimes a definite order of verses; sometimes a combination of two feet (diodía), as in the case of the iambus, trochee (and anapæst); and sometimes a single foot, as in the case of the dactyl and also of all feet having four syllables. The term "Metre," as such, is here used in the first of the foregoing meanings. The other two meanings, however, attach to the following terms derived in part from the Greek word μéтpov; viz. monometer, dimĕter, triměter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, i. e. "of one metre, of two metres," etc. Metres consisting of two or more kinds of verse in a recurring order are called Strophic (σTрopikós, "pertaining to a σrpoon, or the turning" of the Chorus on the stage, and hence, "the strain sung during such turning). When two verses alternate, the metre is called Distichon (diorixov, "of two rows or verses "); when four, Tetrastichon (TETpáσTIXOV, "of four rows or verses"). |