[4]
Of the different rhythms the heroic is
dignified, but lacking the harmony of ordinary conversation; the iambic is the
language of the many, wherefore of all meters it is most used in common speech;
but speech should be dignified and calculated to rouse the hearer. The trochaic
is too much like the cordax; this is clear from the tetrameters,
which form a tripping rhythm. There
remains the paean, used by rhetoricians from the time of Thrasymachus, although
they could not define it.
The paean is a third kind of rhythm closely related to those already mentioned;
for its proportion is 3 to 2, that of the others 1 to 1 and 2 to 1, with both of
which the paean, whose proportion is 1 1/2 to 1, is connected.1
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1 The heroic rhythm （dactyls, spondees, and anapests） is as 1 to 1, two short syllables being equal to one long; trochaic and iambic 2 to 1 on the same principle; paean, 3 to 2 （three shorts and one long）, being the mean between the other two.
Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 22, translated by J. H. Freese. Aristotle. Cambridge and London. Harvard University Press; William Heinemann Ltd. 1926.
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