Abstract

The first part of this survey analyzes theories: the ancient doctrine and modern interpretations about dochmiac; the evidence on poems in responsion, the treatment by scholars, from 19th century on, of free responsions and other recent interpretations of this apparent licence; the problem of hiatus and brevis longo in dochmiacs. In the second part I analyzed strophic dochmiacs in the Persians, the Seven against Thebes, the Supplicants, Agamemnon, Coephores, Eumenides, Prometheus and the astrophic dochmiac of Pr. 425 ff. and Cho. 961-964. Finally I made up two Appendixes (index of responsions and index of the keywords). As far as colometry is concerned, I checked on microfilms or by means of digitally photographic reproductions the main manuscripts of the Oresteia: the Mediceus, the so-called prototriclinians and Demetrius Triclinius’s autograph (T), which is the ultimate achievement of the recensio made by this scholar on the text of Aeschylus. The Suppliants and the Coephores are trasmitted by a codex unicus. The Byzantine triad is handed down by more than one hundred of manuscripts: I saw the most important (MTGFVIRaQLK) for the Seven; I checked the Persians on MTGF, whereas for Prometheus I controlled the colometry of the Mediceus, but I extended my collation as to include other manuscripts in some cases, since dochmiacs are generally organized in compact structures (‘systems’), so that we can quite confidently rely on vulgate colometry, which often goes back to G. Hermann.