The sotadean metre (pronounced: /soʊtəˈdiən/)[1][2] was a rhythmic pattern used by and named after the 3rd-century BC Greek poet Sotades.
It had a reputation for being vulgar and indecent; but it was also sometimes used for more serious purposes, for example, didactic poems such as Lucius Accius's now lost history of Greek and Latin poetry, or Terentianus Maurus's grammatical treatise on the letters of the alphabet.
The lost treatise Thalia by the heretical Christian theologian Arius is also sometimes said to have been written in sotadean metre, but it has been shown to be in a slightly different type, longer by one syllable.
Sometimes the trochaic rhythm (– u – u) is used in the first or second metron as well as the third (rarely in all three): Resolution (the substitution of two short syllables for a long one) is common, so that lines such as the following may be found: Sometimes the line starts with two anapaests, or an ionicus a minore and anapaest, such as the following: There is also sometimes contraction of two short syllables into one long one, for example: In all these variations, whatever the shape of the metron, in most writers it remains equal to six morae or time units.
In some writers, however, such as in the lines quoted by Stobaeus, or in the Latin sotadeans of Plautus, Accius and Varro, occasionally a metron of 7 time-units is allowed, such as | – u – – | or | – – – u |.
[8] Pliny the Younger in one of his letters feels it necessary to make excuses for his sometimes reading comedies, mimes, lyric poems, and sotadeans, which some people thought undignified for a gentleman.
[9] In one of his hendecasyllabic poems Martial writes dismissively of the galliambic and the sotadean metres and gives his reasons for refusing to write in them: In the word supīnō Martial alludes to the fact that galliambic verses (the metre of songs sung by the galli or eunuch devotees of the goddess Cybele) were regularly described as anaclomenon "leaning backwards" by Greek and Roman metricians.
In the second line he calls Sotades a cinaedus ("passive homosexual"), and refers to the fact that in some cases a dactylic hexameter, if read with the words in the reverse order, becomes a sotadean.
[11] He says that these metres are appropriate for the likes of Palaemon, a grammarian and minor poet of the age of Nero, notorious for his dissolute life, homosexuality, and loose morals.
[15] In the 4th century AD, Athanasius of Alexandria repeatedly castigates Arius for imitating the metre of Sotades in his theological treatise Thalia.
He calls the metre effeminate and undignified, and criticises Arius for "imitating Salome's dance and playing" instead of using a more solemn style.
"[16] D. S. Raven points out that another metre very similar to the sotadean is the anacreontic, made popular by the 6th-century BC singer Anacreon.
The resultant line resembles a sotadean, except that it has an extra two short syllables at the beginning; and also the caesura is placed later:[17] Another related metre of the Ionic type is the galliambic, used by Catullus in his poem 63.
The 3rd-century poet Sotades of Alexandria has been described as a "sort of court jester travelling from one kingdom to another and making a living from poking fun at Hellenistic rulers".
Another line is the following, which Athenaeus and Plutarch inform us was written in criticism of the incestuous marriage between King Ptolemy II Philadelphus and his full-sister Arsinoe II, which took place about 273 BC: But as well as satiric poems such as the above, Sotades is also said to have rewritten the story of Homer's Iliad in sotadean metre.
The following extract is in a more serious style: Some lines attributed to Sotades were included in an anthology collected by Stobaeus (5th century AD).
413 has part of a play, known as the "Charition Mime", mostly in prose, in which an intoxicated Indian king bursts into sotadean verse, addressing the moon goddess Selene.
Also from Egypt, from Xois in the Delta, is the pillar or stele set up by a certain Moschion to the god Osiris for curing his foot (2nd century AD).
It begins: There is a second sotadean poem on the pillar, of nine lines, of which the initial letters form the acrostic ΜΟΣΧΙΩΝΟΣ "of Moschion".
The satirist Lucian (2nd century AD), among other works, wrote a short mock-tragic drama of 334 lines about Gout, called Podagra.
The speeches of various characters (a gouty man, the goddess Podagra, a messenger, and two hapless doctors) in iambic trimeters are interspersed with choral songs in various metres.
The heretical theologian Arius wrote a theological work called Thalia (Θαλεία, "Bountiful", the name of one of the Muses) about 320 AD.
[33] Athanasius characterises the work as effeminate and lax, and criticises it for imitating the ethos and song of the Egyptian Sotades.
The practice of placing an accent on the penultimate syllable of a line became common in various types of Greek poetry from the 2nd century AD onwards.
According to Tom Sapsford, in the use of the metre there may be an implication that among the work Sosia was expected to do at night was servicing his master in the bedroom.
[44] Another early Latin poet who wrote sotadean verses, a few years after Plautus, was Lucius Accius, but on a more serious subject.
Another example from the same work, quoted by Nonius for its rare word redhostio "I pay back, recompense", is the following: Another extract from Accius's work on poetic history, quoted by Aulus Gellius, discusses which plays of Plautus are authentic: In these verses Accius favours a caesura at the end of the second metron, and sometimes also at the end of the first.
The first consists of the following four lines, spoken at a night-time orgy by a cinaedus (camp homosexual) prior to his attempting to make a sexual assault on the narrator Encolpius: In another poem later in the novel, the narrator, Encolpius, who has been rendered impotent, tries but fails to emasculate himself: The metre is much more regular than in Accius and Varro, and apart from the occasional resolution, every line is the same with anaclasis only in the 3rd metron.
[52][53] Of uncertain date is a line quoted by Festus, supposedly said by a retiarius, a kind of gladiator armed with a net and trident, who was set to fight a Gallus (Gaul) or murmillo, a kind of gladiator armed like a Gaul with sword and shield, who had an image of a fish on his helmet.
[55] Both lines have the same rhythm: Although Martial generally refused to write in the sotadean metre, here he uses it speaking on Zoilus's behalf.