These examples, however, do little towards enabling modern scholars to form a notion of the Greek system of accentuation. In these and similar cases it is the _sentence as a whole_ which is modified by the tonic accent, whereas in Greek it is the individual _word_. It is true that the accent of a word may be affected by its place in the sentence: as is seen in the loss of the accent of oxytone words when not followed by a pause, in the anastrophe of prepositions, and in the treatment of the different classes of enclitics. But in all these instances it is the intonation of the word as such, not of the sentence, which is primarily concerned. What they really prove is that the musical accent is not so invariable as the stress accent in English or German, but may depend upon the collocation of the word, or upon the degree of emphasis which it has in a particular use. [Footnote 1: _Tonempfindungen_, p. 364 (ed. 1863).] (2) The same conclusion may be drawn from the terms in which the ancient writers on music endeavour to distinguish musical and ordinary utterance. Aristoxenus begins his _Harmonics_ by observing that there are two movements of the voice, not properly discriminated by any previous writer; namely, the _continuous_, which is the movement characteristic of speaking, and the _discrete_ or that which proceeds by _intervals_, the movement of singing. In the latter the voice remains for a certain time on one note, and then passes by a definite interval to another. In the former it is continually gliding by imperceptible degrees from higher to lower or the reverse[1]. In this kind of movement the rise and fall of the voice is marked by the _accents_ ([Greek: prosôdiai]), which accordingly form the melody, as it may be called, of spoken utterance[2]. Later writers state the distinction in much the same language. Nicomachus tells us that the two movements were first discriminated by the Pythagoreans. He dwells especially on the ease with which we pass from one to the other. If the notes and intervals of the speaking voice are allowed to be separate and distinct, the form of utterance becomes singing[3]. Similarly Aristoxenus says that we do not rest upon a note, unless we are led to do so by the influence of feeling ([Greek: an mê dia pathos pote eis toiautên kinêsin anankasthômen elthein]). [Footnote 1: Aristox., _Harm._ p. 3 Meib. [Greek: kineitai men gar kai dialegomenôn hêmôn kai melôdountôn tên eirêmenên kinêsin; oxy gar kai bary dêlon hôs en amphoterois toutois enestin.] Also p. 8 [Greek: dyo tines eisin ideai kinêseôs, hê te synechês kai hê diastêmatikê; kata men oun tên synechê topon tina diexienai phainetai hê phônê tê aisthêsei houtôs hôs an mêdamou histamenê, k.t.l.] And p. 9 [Greek: tên oun synechê logikên einai phanen, k.t.l.]]