Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/83

 PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. 6 1 are an excellent means of showing us how the different written sounds were pronounced in different centuries. The result of the study of the inscriptions has given conclusive evidence that the peculiarity of the pronunciation of the Greek vowels can be traced back as far at least as the fourth century B.C. The accentuation is one of the great beauties of the Greek language, and the rules bearing upon it have been considered as sacred, and have not been changed these two thousand years. Accentuation is first mentioned in Plato's Kratylos (399 B.C.), where he says: " Often we change the accent, and instead of the acute we pronounce the grave." FloXXaxtg ra? o^urrjTa? iisraj^dXAo/jLev, xai dvrt S^eta? ^apelav ^^dey^d/isOa, Demosthenes, in his oration ITspl <TTe<pdvov called ^schines a [Mffdwrov, but had accentuated the word erroneously, namely, fxiffdwrov, whereupon the audience corrected him by crying ixiffdotzov. The people of Athens in those times had a perfect knowledge of correct accentuation, al- though no signs for it were then in use. Every- body knew how his native tongue had to be accentuated. It is generally conceded that Aristophanes, in the second half of the third century B.C., in-