Priamel

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A priamel is a literary and rhetorical device found most often in ancient Greek poetry and consisting of a series of listed alternatives that serve as foils to the true subject of the poem, which is revealed in a climax. For example, Fragment Number 16 by the Greek poet Sappho begins with a priamel:

Some say a cavalry corps,

some infantry, some, again,

will maintain that the swift oars

of our fleet are the finest

sight on dark earth; but I say

that whatever one loves, is.

(Mary Barnard, translator)

See W.H. Race, The Classical Priamel from Homer to Boethius (Leiden, 1982).