[1] "Political" verse or metre is the name given to a kind of verse
found as early as the 6th century in proverbs, and characteristic of
Byzantine and modern Greek poetry. It takes no account of the
quantity of syllables; the scansion depends on accent, and there is
always an accent on the last syllable but one. It is specially used
of an iambic verse with fifteen syllables, i.e. seven feet and an
unaccented syllable over. Byron compares "A captain bold of Halifax
who lived in country quarters." Such facile metres are called
"political," in the sense of "commonplace," "of the city." Cf.
Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_ (ed. Bury, 1898), vi. 108; Du Cange,
_Gloss. med. et infin. lat._ (vi. 395), who has an interesting
quotation from Leo Allatius. Leo explains "political" as implying
that the verses are "scorta et meretrices, quod omnibus sunt
obsequiosae et peculiares, et servitutem publicam serviunt."
MANASSES, PRAYER OF, an apocryphal book of the Old Testament. This
writing, which since the Council of Trent has been relegated by the
Church of Rome to the position of an appendix to the Vulgate, was placed
by Luther and the translators of the English Bible among the apocryphal
books. In some MSS. of the Septuagint it is the eighth among the
canticles appended to the Psalter, though in many Greek psalters, which
include the canticles, it is not found at all. In Swete's Old Testament
in Greek, iii. 802 sqq., A is printed with the variants of T
(_Psalterium turicense_).[1] From the statements in 2 Chron. xxxiii. 12,
13, 18, 19, it follows that the Old Testament chronicler found a prayer
attributed to Manasseh in his Hebrew sources, _The History of the Kings
of Israel_ and _The History of the Seers_. Naturally the question arose,
had the existing Prayer of Manasses any direct connexion with the prayer
referred to by the chronicler? Ewald was of opinion that the Greek was
an actual translation of the lost Hebrew; but Ball more wisely takes it
as a free rendering of a lost Haggadic narrative founded on the older
document from which the chronicler drew his information. This view he
supports by showing that there was once a considerable literature in
circulation regarding Manasseh's later history. On the other hand most
scholars take the Prayer to have been written in Greek, e.g. Fritzsche,
Schürer and Ryssel (Kautzsch, _Apok. u. Pseud._ i. 165-168).
This fine penitential prayer seems to have been modelled after the
penitential psalms. It exhibits considerable unity of thought, and the
style is, in the main, dignified and simple.
As regards the date, Fritzsche, Ball and Ryssel agree in assigning this
psalm to the Maccabean period. Its eschatology and doctrine of "divine
forgiveness" may point to an earlier date.
The best short account of the book is given by Ball (_Speaker's
Apocrypha_, ii. 361-371); see also Porter in Hastings's _Dict. Bible_,
iii. 232-233. (R. H. C.)