Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/25

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§ 1. General account of the languages of the Indo-Teutonic family.—§ 2. Origin and formation of the Indo-Teutonic languages—multiplicity of their grammatical forms—§ 3. Characteristics of the Greek language, as compared with the other languages of the Indo-Teutonic family.—§ 4. Variety of forms, inflexions, and dialects in the Greek language.—§ 5. The tribes of Greece, and their several dialects—characteristics of each dialect.

§ 1., the earliest product of the human mind, and the origin of all other intellectual energies, is at the same time the clearest evidence of the descent of a nation and of its affinity with other races. Hence the comparison of languages enables us to judge of the history of nations at periods to which no other kind of memorial, no tradition or record, can ascend. In modern times, this subject has been studied with more comprehensive views and more systematic methods than formerly: and from these researches it appears that a large part of the nations of the ancient world formed a family, whose languages (besides a large number of radical words, to which we need not here particularly advert) had on the whole the same grammatical structure and the same forms of derivation and inflexion. The nations between which this affinity subsisted are—the Indians, whose language, in its earliest and purest form, is preserved in the Sanscrit; the Persians, whose primitive language, the Zend, is closely allied with the Sanscrit; the Armenians and Phrygians, kindred races, of whose language the modern Armenian is a very mutilated remnant, though a few ancient features preserved in it still show its original resemblance; the Greek nation, of which the Latin people is a branch; the Sclavonian races, who, notwithstanding their intellectual inferiority, appear from their language to be nearly allied with the Persians and other cognate nations; the Lettic tribes, among which the Lithuanian has preserved the fundamental forms of this class of languages with remarkable fidelity; the Teutonic, and, lastly, the Celtic races, whose language (so far as we can judge from the very degenerate remains of it now extant), though deviating widely in some respects from the general character perceptible in the other languages, yet unquestionably belongs to the same family. It is remarkable that this family of languages, which, possess the highest perfection of grammatical structure, also includes a larger number of nations, and has spread over a wider extent of surface, than any other: the Semitic family (to which the Hebrew, Syrian, Phœnician, Arabian, and other languages belong), though in many respects it can compete with the Indo-Germanic, is inferior to it in the perfection of its structure and its capacity for literary development; in respect of its diffusion likewise it approaches the Indian class of languages, without being equal to it; while, again, the rude and meagre languages of the American aborigines are often confined to a very