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Pyrrhic
A pyrrhic (; el, πυρρίχιος ''pyrrichios'', from πυρρίχη ''pyrrichē'') is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. It consists of two unaccented, short syllables. It is also known as a dibrach. Poetic use in English Tennyson used pyrrhics and spondees quite frequently, for example, in '' In Memoriam'': When the blood creeps and the nerves prick. "When the" and "and the" in the second line may be considered as pyrrhics (also analyzable as ionic meter). Pyrrhics alone are not used to construct an entire poem due to the monotonous effect. Edgar Allan Poe observed that many experts rejected it from English metrics and concurred:The pyrrhic is rightfully dismissed. Its existence in either ancient or modern rhythm is purely chimerical, and the insisting on so perplexing a nonentity as a foot of two short syllables, affords, perhaps, the best evidence of the gross irrationality and subservience to authority which characterise our Prosody. War dance By extension, ...
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Pyrrhichios
The Pyrrhichios or Pyrrhike dance ("Pyrrhic dance"; Ancient Greek: πυρρίχιος or πυρρίχη, but often misspelled as πυρρίχειος or πυρήχειος) was the best known war dance of the Greeks. It was probably of Dorian origin and practiced at first solely as a training for war. According to ancient sources, it was a weapon dance. Overview Plato ('' Leges'', 815a) describes it as imitating by quick movements the ways in which blows and darts are to be avoided and also the modes in which an enemy is to be attacked. It was danced to the sound of the aulos; its time was quick and light, as is also shown by the metric foot called pyrrhic.The Cambridge Series for Schools and Training Colleges: Xenophon, ''Anabasis'' VI with vocabulary It was described by Xenophon in his work the '' Anabasis''. In that work he writes that the dance was performed at a festival held in Trapezus to celebrate the arrival of the troops in the city. The following is the part in which ...
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Metrical Foot
The foot is the basic repeating rhythmic unit that forms part of a line of verse in most Indo-European traditions of poetry, including English accentual-syllabic verse and the quantitative meter of classical ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The unit is composed of syllables, and is usually two, three, or four syllables in length. The most common feet in English are the iamb, trochee, dactyl, and anapest. The foot might be compared to a bar, or a beat divided into pulse groups, in musical notation. The English word "foot" is a translation of the Latin term ''pes'', plural ''pedes'', which in turn is a translation of the Ancient Greek ποῦς, pl. πόδες. The Ancient Greek prosodists, who invented this terminology, specified that a foot must have both an arsis and a thesis, that is, a place where the foot was raised ("arsis") and where it was put down ("thesis") in beating time or in marching or dancing. The Greeks recognised three basic types of feet, the iambic (whe ...
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Ionic Meter
The ionic (or Ionic) is a four- syllable metrical unit ''(metron)'' of light-light-heavy-heavy (u u – –) that occurs in ancient Greek and Latin poetry. According to Hephaestion it was known as the ''Ionicos'' because it was used by the Ionians of Asia Minor; and it was also known as the ''Persicos'' and was associated with Persian poetry. Like the choriamb, in Greek quantitative verse the ionic never appears in passages meant to be spoken rather than sung. "Ionics" may refer inclusively to poetry composed of the various metrical units of the same total quantitative length (six morae) that may be used in combination with ionics proper: ionics, choriambs, and anaclasts. Equivalent forms exist in English poetry and in classical Persian poetry. Examples of ionics Pure examples of Ionic metrical structures occur in verse by Alcman (frg. 46 ''PMG'' = 34 D), Sappho (frg. 134-135 LP), Alcaeus (frg. 10B LP), Anacreon, and the Greek dramatists, including the first choral song of ...
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Poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, a prosaic ostensible meaning. A poem is a literary composition, written by a poet, using this principle. Poetry has a long and varied history, evolving differentially across the globe. It dates back at least to prehistoric times with hunting poetry in Africa and to panegyric and elegiac court poetry of the empires of the Nile, Niger, and Volta River valleys. Some of the earliest written poetry in Africa occurs among the Pyramid Texts written during the 25th century BCE. The earliest surviving Western Asian epic poetry, the '' Epic of Gilgamesh'', was written in Sumerian. Early poems in the Eurasian continent evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese ''Shijing'', as well as religious hymns (the S ...
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Laws (dialogue)
The ''Laws'' ( Greek: Νόμοι, ''Nómoi''; Latin: ''De Legibus'') is Plato's last and longest dialogue. The conversation depicted in the work's twelve books begins with the question of who is given the credit for establishing a civilization's laws. Its musings on the ethics of government and law have established it as a classic of political philosophy alongside Plato's more widely read ''Republic''. Scholars generally agree that Plato wrote this dialogue as an older man, having failed in his effort to guide the rule of the tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse, instead having been thrown in prison. These events are alluded to in the '' Seventh Letter''. The text is noteworthy as Plato's only undisputed dialogue not to feature Socrates. Summary Setting Unlike most of Plato's dialogues, Socrates does not appear in the ''Laws'': the dialogue takes place on the island of Crete, and Socrates appears outside of Athens in Plato's writings only twice, in the '' Phaedrus'', where ...
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Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution of higher learning on the European continent. Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato is a central figure in the history of Ancient Greek philosophy and the Western and Middle Eastern philosophies descended from it. He has also shaped religion and spirituality. The so-called neoplatonism of his interpreter Plotinus greatly influenced both Christianity (through Church Fathers such as Augustine) and Islamic philosophy (through e.g. Al-Farabi). In modern times, Friedrich Nietzsche diagnosed Western culture as growing in the shadow of Plato (famously calling Christianity "Platonism for the masses"), while Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradit ...
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Sparta
Sparta ( Doric Greek: Σπάρτα, ''Spártā''; Attic Greek: Σπάρτη, ''Spártē'') was a prominent city-state in Laconia, in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (, ), while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement on the banks of the Eurotas River in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. Around 650 BC, it rose to become the dominant military land-power in ancient Greece. Given its military pre-eminence, Sparta was recognized as the leading force of the unified Greek military during the Greco-Persian Wars, in rivalry with the rising naval power of Athens. Sparta was the principal enemy of Athens during the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), from which it emerged victorious after the Battle of Aegospotami. The decisive Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC ended the Spartan hegemony, although the city-state maintained its political independence until its forced integration into the Achaean League in 192 BC. The city nevertheles ...
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Aristoxenus
Aristoxenus of Tarentum ( el, Ἀριστόξενος ὁ Ταραντῖνος; born 375, fl. 335 BC) was a Greek Peripatetic philosopher, and a pupil of Aristotle. Most of his writings, which dealt with philosophy, ethics and music, have been lost, but one musical treatise, ''Elements of Harmony'' (Greek: Ἁρμονικὰ στοιχεῖα; Latin: '' Elementa harmonica''), survives incomplete, as well as some fragments concerning rhythm and meter. The ''Elements'' is the chief source of our knowledge of ancient Greek music."Aristoxenus of Tarentum" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 1, p. 593. Life Aristoxenus was born at Tarentum, and was the son of a learned musician named Spintharus (otherwise Mnesias). He learned music from his father, and having then been instructed by Lamprus of Erythrae and Xenophilus the Pythagorean, he finally became a pupil of Aristotle, whom he appears to have rivaled in the variety of his studies. According to t ...
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Athenaeus
Athenaeus of Naucratis (; grc, Ἀθήναιος ὁ Nαυκρατίτης or Nαυκράτιος, ''Athēnaios Naukratitēs'' or ''Naukratios''; la, Athenaeus Naucratita) was a Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourishing about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD. The '' Suda'' says only that he lived in the times of Marcus Aurelius, but the contempt with which he speaks of Commodus, who died in 192, shows that he survived that emperor. He was a contemporary of Adrantus. Several of his publications are lost, but the fifteen-volume '' Deipnosophistae'' mostly survives. Publications Athenaeus himself states that he was the author of a treatise on the ''thratta'', a kind of fish mentioned by Archippus and other comic poets, and of a history of the Syrian kings. Both works are lost. The ''Deipnosophistae'' The '' Deipnosophistae'', which means "dinner-table philosophers", survives in fifteen books. The first two books, and parts of the third, eleventh a ...
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Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States, and of American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story, and considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction. Poe is the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career. Poe was born in Boston, the second child of actors David and Elizabeth "Eliza" Poe. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and when his mother died the following year, Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia. They never formally adopted him, but he was with the ...
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Proclus
Proclus Lycius (; 8 February 412 – 17 April 485), called Proclus the Successor ( grc-gre, Πρόκλος ὁ Διάδοχος, ''Próklos ho Diádokhos''), was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major classical philosophers of late antiquity. He set forth one of the most elaborate and fully developed systems of Neoplatonism and, through later interpreters and translators, exerted an influence on Byzantine philosophy, Early Islamic philosophy, and Scholastic philosophy. Biography The primary source for the life of Proclus is the eulogy ''Proclus, or On Happiness'' that was written for him upon his death by his successor, Marinus, Marinus' biography set out to prove that Proclus reached the peak of virtue and attained eudaimonia. There are also a few details about the time in which he lived in the similarly structured ''Life of Isidore'' written by the philosopher Damascius in the following century. According to Marinus, Proclus was born in 412 AD in ...
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In Memoriam A
IN, In or in may refer to: Places * India (country code IN) * Indiana, United States (postal code IN) * Ingolstadt, Germany (license plate code IN) * In, Russia, a town in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast Businesses and organizations * Independent Network, a UK-based political association * Indiana Northeastern Railroad (Association of American Railroads reporting mark) * Indian Navy, a part of the India military * Infantry, the branch of a military force that fights on foot * IN Groupe , the producer of French official documents * MAT Macedonian Airlines (IATA designator IN) * Nam Air (IATA designator IN) Science and technology * .in, the internet top-level domain of India * Inch (in), a unit of length * Indium, symbol In, a chemical element * Intelligent Network, a telecommunication network standard * Intra-nasal ( insufflation), a method of administrating some medications and vaccines * Integrase, a retroviral enzyme Other uses * ''In'' (album), by the Outsiders, 1967 ...
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