Page:EB1911 - Volume 12.djvu/522

 northerly Ionic island on the Asiatic coast, seems to have been originally Aeolic, and its Ionic retained some Aeolic characteristics. The most southerly of the mainland towns which were originally Aeolic was Smyrna, but this at an early date became Ionic (Hdt. i. 149). The last important Ionic town to the south was Miletus, but at an early period Ionic widened its area towards the south also and took in Halicarnassus from the Dorians. According to Herodotus, there were four kinds of Ionic (, i. 142). Herodotus tells us the areas in which these dialects were spoken, but nothing of the differences between them. They were (1) Samos, (2) Chios and Erythrae, (3) the towns in Lydia, (4) the towns in Caria. The language of the inscriptions unfortunately is a , a conventional literary language which reveals no differences of importance. Only recently has the characteristic so well known in Herodotus of appearing in certain words where other dialects have ( for ,  for  , &c.) been found in any inscription. It is, however, clear that this was a popular characteristic not considered to be sufficiently dignified for official documents. We may conjecture that the native languages spoken on the Lydian and Carian coasts had affected the character of the language spoken by the Greek immigrants, more especially as the settlers from Athens married Carian women, while the settlers in the other towns were a mixture of Greek tribes, many of them not Ionic at all (Hdt. i. 146).

The more southerly islands of the Aegean and the most southerly peninsula of Asia Minor were Doric. In the Homeric age Dorians were only one of many peoples in Crete, but in historical times, though the dialects of the eastern and the western ends of the island differ from one another and from the middle whence our most valuable documents come, all are Doric. By Melos and Thera Dorians carried their language to Cos, Calymnus, Cnidus and Rhodes.

These settlements, Aeolic, Ionic and Doric, grew and prospered, and like flourishing hives themselves sent out fresh swarms to other lands. Most prosperous and energetic of all was Miletus, which established its trading posts in the Black Sea to the north and in the delta of the Nile (Naucratis) to the south. The islands also sent off their colonies, carrying their dialects with them, Paros to Thasos, Euboea to the peninsulas of Chalcidice; the Dorians of Megara guarded the entrance to the Black Sea at Chalcedon and Byzantium. While Achaean influence spread out to the more southerly Ionian islands, Corinth carried her dialect with her colonies to the coast of Acarnania, Leucas and Corcyra. But the greatest of all Corinthian colonies was much farther to the west—at Syracuse in Sicily. Unfortunately the continuous occupation of the same or adjacent sites has led to the loss of almost all that is early from Corinth and from Syracuse. Corcyra has bequeathed to us some interesting grave inscriptions from the 6th century Southern Italy and Sicily were early colonized by Greeks. According to tradition Cumae was founded not long after the Trojan War; even if we bring the date nearer the founding of Syracuse in 735, we have apparently no record earlier than the first half of the 5th century , though it is still the earliest of Chalcidian inscriptions. Tarentum was a Laconian foundation, but the longest and most important document from a Laconian colony in Italy comes from Heraclea about the end of the 4th century —the report of a commission upon and the lease of temple lands with description and conditions almost of modern precision. To Achaea belonged the south Italian towns of Croton, Metapontum and Sybaris. The ancestry of the Greek towns of Sicily has been explained by Thucydides (vi. 2-5). Selinus, a colony of Megara, betrays its origin in its dialect. Gela and Agrigentum no less clearly show their descent from Rhodes. According to tradition the great city of Cyrene in Africa was founded from Thera, itself an offshoot from Sparta.

1. Arcadian and Cyprian.—As Cyprian was written in a syllabary which could not represent a consonant by itself, did not distinguish between voiced, unvoiced and aspirated consonants, did not represent at all a nasal before another consonant, and did not distinguish between long and short vowels, the interpretation of the symbols is of the nature of a conundrum and the answer is not always certain. Thus the same combination of two symbols would have to stand for . No inscription of more than a few words in length is found in either dialect earlier than the 5th century In both dialects the number of important inscriptions is steadily increasing. Both dialects change final to , passing into. Arcadian changes the verb ending - into - . Arcadian uses  or  for an original gw-sound, which appears in Attic Greek as : , Attic  , “throw.” In inflexion both agree in changing - of masculine - stems into  (Arcadian carries this form also into the feminine - stems), and in using locatives in -  and -  for the dative, such locatives being governed by the prepositions and  (before a consonant  in Arcadian). Verbs in -, - and - are declined not as -, but as - verbs. The final of the ending of the 3rd plural present changes the preceding to :, cp. Laconian (Doric), Attic  , Lesbian . Instead of the Attic, the interrogative pronoun appears as, the initial  in Arcadian being written with a special symbol &#991;. The pronunciation is not certain. The original sound was qw, as in Latin quis, whence Attic and Thessalian. In Arcadian the Aeolic particle and the Ionic  seem to be combined.

2. Aeolic.—Though Boeotian is overlaid with a Doric element, it nevertheless agrees with Thessalian and Lesbian in some characteristics. Unlike Greek generally, they represent the original qw of the word for four by before, where Attic and other dialects have : , Attic. The corresponding voiced and aspirated sounds are similarly treated: the adjective in Thessalian to , and  for . They all tend to change to : , “name”; for in Thessalian: , “Apollo”; and  in Boeotian for  : , “house.” They also make the dative plural of the third declension in -, and the perfect participle active is declined like a present participle in -. Instead of the Athenian method of giving the father’s name in the genitive when a citizen is described, these dialects (especially Thessalian) tend to make an adjective: thus instead of the Attic <span title="Dêmosthenês Dêmosthenous">, Aeolic would rather have <span title="D. Dêmostheneios">. Thessalian stands midway between Lesbian and Boeotian, agreeing with Lesbian in the use of double consonants, where Attic has a single consonant, with or without lengthening of the previous syllable:, Attic  for an original *esmi;  , Attic <span title="stêlê"> ;  for an earlier  , Attic , Ionic, Doric <span title="xênos">. Where Attic has - from an earlier - or - , Lesbian has -  :  accusative in Lesbian for older. Lesbian has no oxyton words according to the grammarians, the accent being carried back to the penult or ante-penultimate syllable. It has also no “rough breathing,” but this characteristic it shared with the Ionic of Asia Minor, and in the course of time with other dialects. The characteristic particle of the dialects is, which is used like the Doric  , the Arcadian  , and the Attic and Ionic. Thessalian and Lesbian agree in making their long vowels close, belonging  (a close ē, not a diphthong),  , “father.” The sound did not become ü as in Attic and Ionic, and hence when the Ionic alphabet was introduced it was spelt , or when in contact with dentals, as in  =  , “name,” = <span title="tychê">, “chance”; the pronunciation, therefore, must have been like the English sound in news, tune. Boeotian developed earlier than other dialects the changes in the vowels which characterize modern Greek: became ē,  passing into <span title="kê"> : compare and above:  became  in , “has.” Thessalian shows some examples of the Homeric genitive in - : , &c.; its ordinary genitive of - stems is in -.

There are some points of connexion between this group and Arcadian-Cyprian: in both Thessalian and Cyprian the characteristic (Attic, &c., ) and  - for <span title="daphnê"> are found, and both groups form the “contracting verbs” not in - but in -. In the second group as in the first there is little that precedes the 5th century Future additions to our materials may be expected to lessen the gap between the two groups and Homer.

3. Ionic-Attic.—One of the earliest of Greek inscriptions—of the 7th century, at least—is the Attic inscription written in two lines from right to left upon a wine goblet (<span title="oinochoê"> ) given as a prize: <span title="hos nun orcheston panton | atalotata paizei toto dekan min">. The last words are uncertain. Till lately early inscriptions in Ionic were few, but recently an early inscription has been found at Ephesus and a later copy of a long early inscription at Miletus.

The most noticeable characteristic of Attic and Ionic is the change of into  which is universal in Ionic but does not appear in Attic after another vowel or. Thus both dialects used <span title="mêtêr">, <span title="timê"> from an earlier <span title="matêr">, , but Attic had  ,  and <span title="chôra"> , not <span title="sophiê">, <span title="prêgma"> and <span title="chôrê"> as in Ionic. The apparent exception <span title="korê"> is explained by the fact that in this word a digamma ϝ has been lost after, in Doric. That the change took place after the Ionians came into Asia is shown by the word <span title="Mêdoi">, which in Cyprian is ; the Medes were certainly not known to the Greeks till long after the conquest of Ionia. While Aeolic and the greater part of Doric kept ϝ, this symbol and the sound w represented by it had disappeared from both Ionic and Attic before existing records begin—in other words, were certainly not in use after 800 The symbol was known and occurs in a few isolated instances. Both dialects agreed in changing u into ü, so that a u sound has to be represented by. The short o tended towards u, so that the contraction of + gave. In the same way short e tended towards i, so that the contraction of +  gave , which was not a diphthong but a close ē-sound. In Attic Greek these contractions were represented by O and E respectively till the official adoption of the Ionic alphabet at Athens in 403 So also were the lengthened syllables which represent in their length the loss of an earlier consonant, as and , Aeolic  ,  , which stand for a prehistoric &#8202;* and * , containing the -- of the first aorist, and ,,  representing an earlier  ,  , (3 pl. present) or * (dative pl. of present participle). Both dialects also agreed in changing before  into  (like Aeolic), as in  above, and in the 3rd person singular of -  verbs, <span title="tithêsi"> , <span title="didôsi">, &c., and in noun stems, as in for an earlier *. Neither dialect used the particle or , but both have  instead. One of the effects of the change of ᾱ into was that the combination changed in both dialects to <span title="êo">, which in all Attic records and in the later Ionic has become <span title="eô"> by a metathesis in the quantity of the vowels:, earlier  , “temple,” is in Homeric Greek <span title="nêos"> , in later Ionic and Attic <span title="neôs">. In the dative (locative) plural of the -ᾱ stems, Ionic has generally -<span title="êisi"> on the analogy of the singular; Attic had first the old locative form in -<span title="êsi">, - , which survived