Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/126

114 114 HOMER 1. The first aorist in Greek being a &quot;weak&quot; tense, i.e., formed j by a suffix (-&amp;lt;ro), whereas the second aorist is a &quot;strong&quot; tense, | distinguished by the form of the root-syllable, we expect to iiud a constant tendency to diminish the number of second aorists in use. No new second aorists, we may be sure, were formed any more than new &quot;strong&quot; tenses, such as came or sang, can be formed in English. Now in Homer there are upwards of 80 second aorists (not reckoning aorists of &quot;Verbs in /u.i,&quot; such as etrrTjj, effriv), whereas in all Attic prose not more than 30 are found. In this point therefore the Homeric language is manifestly older. In Attic poets, it is true, the number of such aorists is much larger than in prose. But here again we find that they bear witness to Homer. Of the poetical aorists in Attic the larger part are also Homeric. Others are not really Attic at all, but borrowed from earlier ^Eolic and Doric poetry. It is plain, in short, that the later poetical vocabulary was separated from that of prose mainly by the forms which the influence of Homer had saved from being forgotten. 2. &quot;While the whole class of &quot;strong&quot; aorists diminished, certain smaller groups in the class disappeared altogether. Thus we find in Homer (a. ) The second aorist middle without the thematic &quot; * or o: as I/8A.TJ-TO, icas struck e&amp;lt;/&amp;gt;0t-To, perished ; S.-ro, leaped. (b. ) The aorist formed by reduplication : as Se Saep, taught ; Aea/3e (T0ai, to seize. These constitute a distinct formation, generally with a &quot; causative&quot; meaning ; the solitary Attic specimen is tfyayov. 3. Another &quot; exception,&quot; which is really a survival from a former rule, is seen in the short syllable of the plural of olSa (Jo-yuej/, in Homer 1S-/j.ev, fore, &c.). Other examples occur in Homer, both in the indicative and in the participle, as aprjpias, fern. apapv7a ; so /j.f/j.a.Kv ia, j SuTa, &c. ). But this variation of the stem in different parts of a single tense is exactly one of the complexities from which language is ever striving to free itself ; and accordingly in Attic it has all but disappeared. 4. It had long been known that the subjunctive in Homer often takes a short vowel (e.g., in the plural, -ofj.ev, -ere instead of -co/xej/, -rjT, and in the Mid. -ofuu, &c., instead of -co/icu, &c.). This was generally said to be done by &quot; poetic licence,&quot; or mctri gratia. In fact, however, the Homeric subjunctive is almost quite &quot;regular,&quot; though the rule which it obeys is a different one from the Attic. It may be summed up by saying that the subjunctive takes u or i when the indicative has o or e, and not otherwise. Thus Homer has f-yuec, ice go, 1-o-p.ev, let us go. The later 1-u-fj.ev was at first a solecism, an attempt to conjugate a &quot;verb in /j.t&quot; like the &quot;verbs in a&amp;gt;. &quot; It will be evident that under this rule the perfect and first aorist subjunctive should always take a short vowel ; and this accordingly is the case, with very few exceptions. 5. The article (o, ^, r6) in Homer is chiefly used as an independent pronoun (he, she, it), a use which in Attic appears only in a few com binations (such as 6 /j.fv .... 6 tie, the one .... the other). This differ ence is parallel to the relation between the Latin ille and the article of the Komance languages. 6. The prepositions offer several points of comparison. What the grammarians called &quot;tmesis,&quot; the separation of the preposition from the verb with which it is compounded, is peculiar to Homer. The true account of the matter is that in Homer the place of the preposition is not rigidly fixed, as it was afterwards. Again &quot;with&quot; is in Homer avv (with the dative), in Attic prose juera with the genitive. Here Attic poetry is intermediate ; the use of &amp;lt;ri&amp;gt;v is retained as a piece of poetical tradition. 7. In addition to the particle hv, Homer has another, Ktv, hardly distinguishable in meaning. The Homeric uses of &v and K*V are different in several respects from the Attic, the general result being that the Homeric syntax is more elastic. Thus &v and /cej/are used in Homer with the future, and with the subjunctive in simple sentences (OVK &v rot xpaiVyup, shall not avail thcc). Again in clauses intro duced by the relative, or by ei, if, the subjunctive is found both with and without &v or Ktv ; whereas in Attic (except in a few poetical instances) &v is always found ( 6s &v, sav). And yet the Homeric syntax is perfectly definite and precise. Homer uses no construc tions loosely or without corresponding differences of meaning. His rules are equally strict with those of the later language, but they are not the same rules. And they differ chiefly in this, that the less common combinations of the earlier period were disused altogether in the later. 8. In the vocabulary the most striking difference is that many words appear from the metre to have contained a sound which they afterwards lost, viz., that which is written in some Greek alphabets by the &quot; digainma &quot; f. Thus the words &va, &crrv, fpyov, eiros, and many others must have been written at one time fdva, facm*, f fpyov, /tiros. This letter, however, died out earlier in Ionic than in most dialects, and there is no proof that the Homeric poems were ever written with it. The points that have been mentioned, to which many others might be added, make it clear that the Homeric and Attic dialects are separated by differences which affect the whole structure of the language, and require a considerable time for their development. At the same time there is hardly one of these differences which cannot be accounted for by the natural growth of the language. It has beea thought indeed that the Homeric dialect was a mixed one, containing ./Eolic and even Doric forms, but the proof of this is scanty and doubtful. There are doubtless many Homeric forms which were unknown to the later Ionic and Attic, and which are found in ^Eolic or other dialects. In general, however, these are older forms, which must have existed in Ionic at one time, and may very well have be longed to the Ionic of Homer s time. So too the digamma is called &quot; Jilolic &quot; by grammarians, and is found on ^Kolic and Doric inscriptions. But the letter was one of the original alphabet, and was retained universally as a numeral. It can only have fallen into disuse by degrees, as the sound which it denoted ceased to be pronounced. The fact that there are so many traces of it in Homer is a strong proof of the antiquity of the poems, but no proof of admixture with ^olic. There is one sense, however, in which an admixture of dialects may be recognized. It is clear that the variety of forms in Homer is too great for any actual spoken dialect. To take a single instance : it is impossible that the genitives in -oto and in -ov should both have been in everyday use together. The form in -oto must have been poetical or literary, like our-eth of the third person singular, or like ye for yoii, whoso for whoever, and the like. The origin of such double forms is not far to seek. The effect of dialect on style was always recognized in Greece, and the dialect which had once been adopted by a particular kind of poetry was ever afterwards adhered to. The Epic of Homer was doubtless formed originally from a spoken variety of Ionic, but became literary and conventional with time. It is Homer s own testimony that all the Greeks spoke one language (II. iv. 437), that is to say, that they understood one another, in spite of the inevitable local differences. In these circumstances experience shows that some one dialect gains a literary supremacy to which the whole nation yields. So Tuscan became the type of Italian, and Anglian of English. But as soon as the dialect is adopted, it begins to diverge from the colloquial form. Just as modern poetical Italian uses many older grammatical forms peculiar to itself, so the language of poetry, even in Homeric times, had formed a deposit (so to speak) of archaic grammar. There were doubtless poets before Homer, as well as brave men before Agamemnon ; and indeed the formation of a conventional dialect such as the Homeric must have been the work of several generations. The use of Ionic (instead of ^Eolic) by the Boeotian poet Hesiod, in a kind of poetry which was not of the Homeric type, tends to confirm the conclusion that the literary ascendency of Ionic was anterior to the Iliad and Odyssey. It follows that the choice of Ionic as the language of the Homeric poems is no argument for the Ionian birth of their author (or authors). The argument for the antiquity of Homer founded upon the traces of Homeric influence in later poetry cannot be profitably discussed without going into details which would be out of place here. When a phrase or idea is found in Homer, and again in a later author, we have to inquire whether it may not belong to the common stock from which the poet of the Iliad or Odyssey himself drew, and then whether it proves anything as to the antiquity of the poems in their present form. Hence it is seldom that such considerations yield a satisfactory proof. 1 The case is 1 This is not the place to notice the argument which has been founded upon the differences between Homer and later poets. It may be observed, however, that, while agreement between poets widely separated by time calls for notice and explanation, difference is only what we expect.