Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/254

 238 HISTORY OF GREECE. nized as the god watching over and enforcing the fraternity thue constituted. 1 Hekataeus, Herodotus, and Thucydides, 2 all believed that there had been an ante-Hellenic period, when different languages, mutually unintelligible, were spoken between Mount Olympus and Cape Malea. However this may be, during the historical times the Greek language was universal throughout these limits, branching out, however, into a great variety of dialects, which were roughly classified by later literary 'men into Ionic, Doric. jEolic, and Attic. But the classification presents a semblance of regularity, which in point of fact does not seem to have been realized; each town, each smaller subdivision of the Hellenic name, having peculiarities of dialect belonging to itself. Now the lettered men who framed the quadruple division took notice chiefly, if not exclusively, of the written dialects, those which had been ennobled by poets or other authors ; the mere spoken idioms were for the most part neglected. 3 That there was no such thing as one Ionic dialect in the speech of the people called Ionic Greek, we know from the indisputable testimony of Herodo- tus, 4 who tells us that there were four capital varieties of speech among the twelve Asiatic towns especially known as Ionic. Ot 1 Herod, viii. 144 ..... rb 'EhfyviKov ibv bfiaifiov TS Kal dfibyhuaacv, na) deuv ldpv/j.aTu TE KOIVU. Kal -dvaiai, jjdea. re opoTpOTra TUV irpodoraf yevec- Sai 'Atiqvaiovs ova av EV EXOI. (V- x. 7.) TtyeZf 6e, Az TE 'E?.^vtov aic!e rf, Kal TIJV "EAAaJa SEIVOV rcoiEVftevoi irpodovvai, etc. Compare Dikaearch. Fragm. p. 147, ed. Fuhr; and Thucyd. iii. 59, rtJ Koiva TUV 'QTMjvuv voftifta ...... t?eot)f roi)f 6/nopuuiov; Kal x.oivoi)<; TUV 'E/Ur/vu* also, the provision about the KOIV& /epti in the treaty between Sparta and Athens (Thuc. v. 18 : Strabo, ix. p. 419). It was a part of the proclamation solemnly made by the Eumolpidae, prior to the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, " All non-Hellcns to keep away," dpyeadat, TUV iepuv (Isocrates, Orat. iv. Panegyr. p. 74). 8 Hekatae. Fragm. 356, ed. Klausen : compare Strabo, vii. p. 321 ; Herod. i. 57 ; Thucyd. i. 3, Karti Tro/leic T, &aoi u'k'kTj'kav ovvieaav, etc. 3 " Antiqui grammati ji eas tantum dialectog spectabant, quibus scriptorea nsi essent : ceteras, quaj non vigebant nisi in ore populi, non notabant.'' (Ahrcns, De Dialecto ^olica, p. 2.) The same has been the case, to a great degree, even in the linguistic researches of modern times, though printing now affords such increased facility for the registration of populai dialects. 4 Herod, i. 142.