I have some unacademized opinions, yes. I don't think that Dionysius of Halicarnassus left out any lines to make us squint, and I don't think strophic structure (in the usual sense of repeated rhythmic templates) that Dionysius was writing about actually existed, that is, outside of possible papyrus breaks. (Simonides was, I think, probably one of the first early poets to write and revise.) Dionyius was a man of his age, an age that expected a certain kind of writing: metrics, strophes, all that really good stuff. To say out loud that it wasn't there wouldn't do. So Dionysius fudged.
Simonides was an unusually astute man: he invented a number of letters for the Greek alphabet, he wanted to be be actually paid for his work, and what remains of his work sometimes demonstrates extraordinary punch (ex: "Go tell the Spartans..."). He seems to have been widely informed on a lot of things, and might even have known of the "non-metrical" psalmaic poetry current among the Jews, and possibly of some of the motifs associated with that. In any case, this fragment is almost unique in its amorphous quality apart from some sections of tragic dramatic writing, and it demonstrates (for me) two things.
One is that a powerful and moving representation of deeply felt emotion (Danae's feelings as she and her semi-divine son drift in their sealed casket abandoned by her father in the storm at sea) can generate a poetry that can transcend metrics, at least occasionally and perhaps briefly. This has real pathos.
By its failing to be widely imitated, it also demonstrates that for the ancients how hard it was (is?) to find sufficiently convincing moments and how difficult to put them into words.
A third thing I feel isn't related to the fragment at all. That is that how little of modern "free verse" has the punch of this fragment.
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