Abstract
The possibility of creating accentual (and no metric) clausulae appeared with the phonetic evolution of the Greek language which, towards the end of the Hellenistic period, replaced the quantitative rhythm, based on the opposition of length of syllables, by an accentual rhythm, based on the equality of distances between the accented syllables of the stressed words. This innovation, which goes back at least to Parthenios of Nicaea, is used by Xenophon of Ephesos in some passages of his novel in order to give them a rhythm at the end of every period∞∞ ; the recurrence of several clausulae can even define several levels of the rhetoric organisation of the passage. In other excerpts, the density of these accentual clausulae is such – they appear at the end of each colon – that their use is no more rhetoric but poetic (similar to that of the rhymes in French poetry).
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