Abstract
If melody is the soul of music, rhythm is its heart. But is rhythm integral to communication or simply an adjunct to it? This article focuses on ancient Greek, a language whose rhythms, from which its numerous and complex regularized metres derived, appear to have been intrinsic to its expression. The earliest Greek written texts, spanning three centuries from 800 BC, were composed almost entirely in different forms of verse. The Greeks were not disposed to accept that the 'music' of their language — its rhythm as well as its melodic contours — could or should be divorced from its expression. Evidence is presented here to show how rhythms and metrical patterns were embedded in the everyday expression of Greek no less than in the more formal patterns of sung music and verse, as well as in the exuberant effusions of later oratorical prose.
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