1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Greek Language
GREEK LANGUAGE. Greek is one of the eight main
branches into which the Indo-European languages (q.v.) are
divided. The area in which it is spoken has been curiously
constant throughout its recorded history. These limits are,
roughly speaking, the shores of the Aegean, on both the
European and the Asiatic side, and the intermediate islands
(one of the most archaic of Greek dialects being found on the
eastern side in the island of Cyprus), and the Greek peninsula
generally from its southern promontories as far as the
mountains which shut in Thessaly on the north. Beyond
Mt. Olympus and the Cambunian mountains lay Macedonia,
in which a closely kindred dialect was spoken, so closely
related, indeed, that O. Hoffmann has argued (Die Makedonen,
Göttingen, 1906) that Macedonian is not only Greek, but
a part of the great Aeolic dialect which included Thessalian
to the south and Lesbian to the east. In the north-west,
Greek included many rude dialects little known even to the
ancient Greeks themselves, and it extended northwards beyond
Aetolia and Ambracia to southern Epirus and Thesprotia.
In the Homeric age the great shrine of Pelasgian Zeus was at
Dodona, but, by the time of Thucydides, Aetolia and all north
of it had come to be looked upon as the most backward of Greek
lands, where men lived a savage life, speaking an almost unintelligible
language, and eating raw flesh (ἀγνωστότατοι
The most remarkable characteristic of Greek is one conditioned by the geographical aspect of the land. Few countries are so broken up with mountains as Greece. Not only do mountain ranges as elsewhere on the European continent run east and west, but other ranges cross them from north to south, thus dividing the portions of Greece at some distance from the sea into hollows without outlet, every valley being separated for a considerable part of the year from contact with every other, and inter-communication at all seasons being rendered difficult. Thus till external coercion from Macedon came into play it was never possible to establish a great central government controlling the Greek mainland. The geographical situation of the islands in the Aegean equally led to the isolation of one little territory from another. To these geographical considerations may be added the inveterate desire of the Greeks to make the πόλις, the city state, everywhere and at all times an independent unit, a desire which, originating in the geographical conditions, even accentuated the isolating effect of the natural features of the country. Thus at one time in the little island of Amorgos there were no less than three separate and independent political units. The inevitable result of geographical and political division was the maintenance of a great number of local characteristics in language, differentiating in this respect also each political community from its nearest neighbours. It was only natural that the inhabitants of a country so little adapted to maintain a numerous population should have early sent off swarms to other lands. The earliest stage of colonization lies in the borderland between myth and history. The Greeks themselves knew that a population had preceded them in the islands of the Cyclades which they identified with the Carians of Asia Minor (Herodotus i. 171; Thucydides i. 4. 8). The same population indeed appears to have preceded them on the mainland of Greece, for there are similar place-names in Caria and in Greece which have no etymology in Greek. Thus the endings of words like Parnassus and Halicarnassus seem identical, and the common ending of place-names in -ινθος, Κόρινθος, Προβάλινθος, &c., seems to be the same in origin with the common ending of Asiatic names in -nda, Alinda, Karyanda, &c. Probably the earliest portion of Asia Minor to be colonized by the Greeks was the north-west, to which came settlers from Thessaly, when the early inhabitants were driven out by the Thesprotians, who later controlled Thessaly. The name Aeolis, which after times gave to the N.W. of Asia Minor, was the old name for Thessaly (Hdt. vii. 176). These Thesprotians were of the same stock as the Dorians, to whose invasion of the Peloponnese the later migration, which carried the Ionians to Asia and the Cypriot Greeks to Cyprus, in all probability was due. From the north Aegean probably the Dorians reached Crete, where alone their existence is recorded by Homer (Odyssey, xix. 175 ff.; Diodorus Siculus v. 80. 2); cp. Fick, Vorgriechische Ortsnamen (1906).
Among the Greeks of the pre-Dorian period Herodotus distinguishes various stocks. Though the name is not Homeric, both Herodotus and Thucydides recognize an Aeolian stock which must have spread over Thessaly and far to the west till it was suppressed and absorbed by the Dorian stock which came in from the north-west. The name of Aeolis still attached in Thucydides’ time to the western area of Calydon between the mountains and the N. side of the entrance to the Corinthian gulf (iii. 102). In Boeotia the same stock survived (Thuc. vii. 57. 5), overlaid by an influx of Dorians, and it came down to the isthmus; for the Corinthians, though speaking in historical times a Doric dialect, were originally Aeolians (Thuc. iv. 42). In the Peloponnese Herodotus recognizes (viii. 73) three original stocks, the Arcadians, the Ionians of Cynuria, and the Achaeans. In Arcadia there is little doubt that the pre-Dorian population maintained itself and its language, just as in the mountains of Wales, the Scottish Highlands and Connemara the Celtic language has maintained itself against the Saxon invaders. By Herodotus’ time the Cynurians had been doricized, while the Ionians, along the south side of the Corinthian gulf, were expelled by the Achaeans (vii. 94, viii. 73), apparently themselves driven from their own homes by the Dorian invasion (Strabo viii. p. 333 fin.). However this may be, the Achaeans of historical times spoke a dialect akin to that of northern Elis and of the Greeks on the north side of the Corinthian gulf. How close the relation may have been between the language of the Achaeans of the Peloponnese in the Homeric age and their contemporaries in Thessaly we have no means of ascertaining definitely, the documentary evidence for the history of the dialects being all very much later than Homeric times. Even in the Homeric catalogue Agamemnon has to lend the Arcadians ships to take them to Troy (Iliad, ii. 612). But a population speaking the same or a very similar dialect was probably seated on the eastern coast, and migrated at the beginning of the Doric invasion to Cyprus. As this population wrote not in the Greek alphabet but in a peculiar syllabary and held little communication with the rest of the Greek world, it succeeded in preserving in Cyprus a very archaic dialect very closely akin to that of Arcadia, and also containing a considerable number of words found in the Homeric vocabulary but lost or modified in later Greek elsewhere.
On this historical foundation alone is it possible to understand
clearly the relation of the dialects in historical times. The prehistoric
movements of the Greek tribes can to some extent be realized in
their dialects, as recorded in their inscriptions, though all existing
inscriptions belong to a much later period. Thus from the ancient
Aeolis of northern Greece sprang the historical dialects of Thessaly
and Lesbos with the neighbouring coast of Asia Minor. At an early
period the Dorians had invaded and to some extent affected the
character of the southern Thessalian and to a much greater extent
that of the Boeotian dialect. The dialects of Locris, Phocis and
Aetolia were a somewhat uncouth and unliterary form of Doric.
According to accepted tradition, Elis had been colonized by Oxylus
the Aetolian, and the dialect of the more northerly part of Elis, as
already pointed out, is, along with the Achaean of the south side of
the Corinthian gulf, closely akin to those dialects north of the
Isthmus. The most southerly part of Elis—Triphylia—has a dialect
akin to Arcadian. Apart from Arcadian the other dialects of the
Peloponnese in historical times are all Doric, though in small details
they differ among themselves. Though we are unable to check the
statements of the historians as to the area occupied by Ionic in
prehistoric times, it is clear from the legends of the close connexion
between Athens and Troezen that the same dialect, had been spoken
on both sides of the Saronic gulf, and may well have extended, as
Herodotus says, along the eastern coast of the Peloponnese and the
south side of the Corinthian gulf. According to legend, the Ionians
expelled from the Peloponnese collected at Athens before they
started on their migrations to the coast of Asia Minor. Be that as
it may, legend and language alike connected the Athenians with the
Ionians, though by the 5th century B.C. the Athenians no longer
cared to be known by the name (Hdt. i. 143). Lemnos, Imbros and
Scyros, which had long belonged to Athens, were Athenian also in
language. The great island of Euboea and all the islands of the
central Aegean between Greece and Asia were Ionic. Chios, the most 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 (χαρακτῆρες γλώσσης τέσσερες, 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 κοινή, a conventional
literary language which reveals no differences of importance.
Only recently has the characteristic so well known in Herodotus of
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 B.C. 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 B.C., we have apparently no record earlier than the first half of the 5th century B.C., 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 B.C.—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.
Chief Characteristics of the Greek Dialects
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 τότε, τόδε, δότε,
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
There are some points of connexion between this group and
Arcadian-Cyprian: in both Thessalian and Cyprian the characteristic
πτόλις (Attic, &c., πόλις) and
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 (
The most noticeable characteristic of Attic and Ionic is the change
of
4. Doric.—As already mentioned, the dialects of the North-West
differ in several respects from Doric elsewhere. As general characteristics
of Doric may be noted the contractions of
In older works Doric is often divided into a dialectus severior and a
dialectus mitis. But the difference is one of time rather than of
place, the peculiarities of Doric being gradually softened down till
it was ultimately merged in the lingua franca, the κοινή, which in
time engulfed all the local dialects except the descendant of Spartan,
Tzakonian. Here it is possible to mention its varieties only in the
briefest form. (a) The southern dialects are well illustrated in the
inscriptions of Laconia recently much increased in number by the
excavations of the British School at Athens. Apart from some brief
dedications, the earliest inscription of importance is the list of names
placed on a bronze column soon after 479 B.C. to commemorate the
tribes which had repulsed the Persians. The column, originally at
Delphi, is now at Constantinople. The most striking features of the
dialect are the retention of ϝ at the beginning of words, as in the
dedication from the 6th century ϝαναξίβιος (Annual of British
School, xiv. 144). The dialect changed -
(b) The dialects of N.W. Doric, Locrian, Phocian, Aetolian, with
which go Elean and Achaean, present a more uncouth appearance
than the other Doric dialects except perhaps Cretan. Only from
Locris and Phocis come fairly old inscriptions; later a κοινή was
developed, in which the documents of the Aetolian league are
written, and of which the most distinctive mark is the dative plural
of consonant stems in -οις: ἀρχόντοις (= Attic ἄρχουσι), ἀγώνοις
(= Attic ἀ
The more important of the older materials for Achaean come from
the Achaean colonies of S. Italy, and being scanty give us only an
imperfect view of the dialect, but it is clearly in its main features
Doric. Much more remarkable is the Elean dialect known chiefly
from inscriptions found at Olympia, some of which are as early as the
beginning of the 6th century. The native dialect was replaced first
by a Doric and then by the Attic κοινή, but under the Caesars the
archaic dialect was restored. Many of its characteristics it shares
with the dialects north of the Corinthian gulf, but it changes original
ē to
As we have seen, Ionians, Aetolians and Dorians tended to level
local peculiarities and make a generally intelligible dialect in which
treaties and other important records were framed. The language of
literature is always of necessity to some extent a κοινή: with some
Greek writers the use of a κοινή was especially necessary. The
local dialect of Boeotia was not easily intelligible in other districts,
and a writer like Pindar, whose patrons were mostly not Boeotians,
had perforce to write in a dialect that they could understand. Hence
he writes in a conventional Doric with Aeolic elements, which forms
a strong contrast to that of Corinna, who kept more or less closely
to the Boeotian dialect. For different literary purposes Greek had
different κοιναί. A poet who would write an epic must adopt a
form of language modelled on that of Homer and Hesiod; Alcaeus
and Sappho were the models for the love lyric, which was therefore
Aeolic; Stesichorus was the founder of the triumphal ode, which, as
he was a Dorian of Sicily, must henceforth be in Doric, though Pindar
was an Aeolian, and its other chief representatives, Simonides and
Bacchylides, were Ionians from Ceos. The choral ode of tragedy
was always conventional Doric, and in the iambics also are Doric
words like δράω, λάω, &c. Elegy and epigram were founded on epic;
the satirical iambics of Hipponax and his late disciple Herondas are
Ionic. The first Greek prose was developed in Ionia, of which an
excellent example has been preserved to us in Herodotus. Thucydides
was not an Ionian, but he could not shake himself free of the
tradition: he therefore writes πράσσω, τάσσω, &c., with -
Of Dorian literature we know little. The works of Archimedes written in the Syracusan dialect were much altered in language by the late copyists. The most striking development of the late classical age in Doric lands is that of pastoral poetry, which, like Spenser, is “writ in no language,” but, on a basis of Syracusan and possibly Coan Doric, has in its structure many elements borrowed from the Aeolic love lyric and from epic.
From the latter part of the 5th century B.C. Athens became ever
more important as a literary centre, and Attic prose became the
model for the later κοινή, which grew up as a consequence of the
decay of the local dialects. For this decay there were several
reasons. If the Athenian empire had survived the Peloponnesian
War, Attic influence would no doubt soon have permeated the whole
of that empire. This consummation was postponed. Attic became
the court language of Macedon, and, when Alexander’s conquests
led to the foundation of great new towns, like Alexandria, filled with
inhabitants from all parts of the Greek world, this dialect furnished
a basis for common intercourse. Naturally the resultant dialect
was not pure Attic. There were in it considerable traces of Ionic.
In Attica itself the dialect was less uniform than elsewhere even in
the 5th century B.C., because Athens was a centre of empire, literature
and commerce. Like every other language which is not under
the dominion of the schoolmaster, it borrowed the names of foreign
objects which it imported from foreign lands, not only from those of
Greek-speaking peoples, but also from Egypt, Persia, Lydia, Phoenicia,
Thrace and elsewhere. The Ionians were great seafarers, and
from them Athens borrowed words for seacraft and even for the tides:
ἄμτωτις “ebb,” ῥαχία “high tide,” an Ionic word ῥηχίη spelt in
Attic fashion. From the Dorians it borrowed words connected with
war and sport: λοχαγός, κυναγός, &c. A soldier of fortune like
Xenophon, who spent most of his life away from Athens, introduced
not only strange words but strange grammatical constructions also
into his literary compositions. With Aristotle, not a born Athenian
but long resident in Athens, the κοινή may be said to have begun.
Some characteristics of Attic foreigners found it hard to acquire—its
subtle use of particles and its accent. Hence in Hellenistic Greek
particles are comparatively rare. According to Cicero, Theophrastus,
who came from as near Attica as Eretria in Euboea, was easily
detected by a market-woman as no Athenian after he had lived
thirty years in Athens. Thoucritus, an Athenian, who was taken
prisoner in the Peloponnesian War and lived for many years in
Epirus as a slave, was unable to recover the Athenian accent on his
return, and his family lay under the suspicion that they were an
alien’s children, as his son tells us in Demosthenes’ speech “Against
Eubulides.” In the κοινή there were several divisions, though the
line between them is faint and irregular. There was a κοινή of
literary men like Polybius and of carefully prepared state documents,
as at Magnesia or Pergamum; and a different κοινή of the vulgar
which is represented to us in its Egyptian form in the Pentateuch,
in a later and at least partially Palestinian form in the Gospels.
Still more corrupt is the language which we find in the ill-written
and ill-spelt private letters found amongst the Egyptian papyri.
Not out of the old dialects but out of this κοινή arose modern Greek,
with a variety of dialects no less bewildering than that of ancient
Greek. In one place more rapidly, in another more slowly, the
characteristics of modern Greek begin to appear. As we have seen,
in Boeotia the vowels and diphthongs began to pass into the characteristic
sounds of modern Greek four centuries before Christ.
Dorian dialects illustrate early the passing of the old aspirate
The Chief Characteristics of Greek.
As is obvious from the foregoing account of the Greek dialects, it is not possible to speak of the early history of Greek as handed down to us as that of a single uniform tongue. From the earliest times it shows much variety of dialect accentuated by the geographical characteristics of the country, but arising, at least in part, from the fact that the Greeks came into the country in separate waves divided from one another by centuries. For the history of the language it is necessary to take as a beginning the form of the Indo-European language from which Greek descended, so far as it can be reconstructed from a comparison of the individual I.E. languages (see Indo-European Languages). The sounds of this language, so far as at present ascertained, were the following:—
(a) 11 vowels: a, ā, e, ē, i, ī, o, ō, u, ū, ǝ (a short indistinct vowel).
(b) 14 diphthongs: ai, au, ei, eu, oi, ou, āi, āu, ēi, ēu, ōi, ōu, ǝi, ǝu.
(c) 20 stop consonants.
Labials: p, b, ph, bh (ph and bh being p and b followed by an audible breath, not f and v).
Dentals: t, d, th, dh (th and dh not spirants like the two English sounds in thin and then, but aspirated t and d).
Palatals: ǩ, ǧ, ǩh, ǧh (kh and gh aspirates as explained above).
Velars: q, g, qh, gh (velars differ from palatals by being produced against the soft palate instead of the roof of the mouth).
Labio-velars: qṷ, qṷ, qṷh, gṷh (these differ from the velars by being combined with a slight labial w-sound).
(d) Spirants—
Labial: w.
Dental: s, z, post-dental ṣ, ẓ, interdental possibly þ, ð.
Palatal:
Velar: x (a deeply guttural
Closely akin to w and y and often confused with them were the semi-vowels ṷ and ḭ.
(e) Liquids: l, r.
(f) Nasals: m (labial), n (dental), ñ (palatal), ɲ (velar), the last three in combination with similar consonants.
(a) As far as the vowels are concerned, Greek retains the original
state of things more accurately than any other language. The sounds
of short e and short o in Attic and Ionic were close, so that e + e
contracted to a long close e represented by
(b) The short diphthongs as a whole remained unchanged before a
following consonant. Before a following vowel the diphthong was
divided between the two syllables, the
(c) The consonants suffered more extensive change. The voiced
aspirates became unvoiced, so that bh, dh, ḡh, gh, gṷh are confused
with original ph, th, ǩh, qh, qṷh: I.E. *bherō (Skt. bharāmi) is Gr.
φέρω; I.E. *dhūmos (Skt. dhūmas), Gr.
A great variety of changes in the stopped consonants arose in
combination with other sounds, espey ḭ (a semivowel of the nature
of English y), ṷ (w) and s; -
(d) The sound ṷ was represented in the Greek alphabet by ϝ, the
“digamma,” but in Attic and Ionic the sound was lost very early.
In Aeolic, particularly Boeotian and Lesbian, it was persistent, and
so also in many Doric dialects, especially at the beginning of words.
When the Ionic alphabet was adopted by districts which had retained
ϝ, it was represented by
But the most effective of all elements in changing the appearance
of Greek words was the sound s. Before vowels at the beginning,
or between vowels in the middle of words, it passed into an h sound,
the “rough breathing.” Thus ἑπτά is the same word as the Latin
septem, English seven; ἅ
After nasals s is assimilated except finally; when assimilated, in all
dialects except Aeolic the previous syllable is lengthened if not
already long: Attic ἔνειμα, ἔμεινα for the first aorist *enemsa,
*emensa; but τόνς, τάνς, &c., of the accusative pl. either remained
or became in Aeolic τοίς, ταίς, in Ionic and Attic τούς, τάς, in Doric
τώς, τάς; cp. τιθείς for *τιθέντς, βάς for *βάντς, είς “one” for
*sem-s, then by analogy of the neuter *sens. Assimilation of
(e) The most remarkable feature in the treatment of the nasals is
that when n or m forms a syllable by itself its consonant character
disappears altogether and it is represented by the vowel
The ends of words were modified in appearance by the loss of all stop-consonants and the change of final m to n, ἔδειξε, Latin dixit; ζυγόν, Latin iugum.
Accent.—The vowel system of Greek has been so well preserved because it shows till late times very little in the way of stress accent. As in early Sanskrit the accent was predominantly a pitch accent (see Accent).
Noun System.—The I.E. noun had three numbers, but the dual
was limited to pairs, the two hands, the two horses in the chariot,
and was so little in use that the original form of the oblique cases
cannot be restored with certainty. Ionic has no dual. The I.E.
noun had the following cases: Nominative, Accusative, Genitive,
Ablative, Instrumental, Locative and Dative. The vocative was
not properly a case, because it usually stands outside the syntactical
construction of the sentence; when a distinctive form appears, it is
the bare stem, and there is no form (separate from the nominative)
for the plural. Greek has confused genitive and ablative (the distinction
between them seems to have been derived from the pronouns),
except for the solitary ϝοίκω =
The Verb System.—The verb system of Greek is more complete
than that of any of the other I.E. languages. Its only rival, the early
Vedic verb system, is already in decay when history begins, and
when the classical period of Sanskrit arrives the moods have broken
down, and the aorist, perfect, and imperfect tenses are syntactically
confused. Throughout the Greek classical period the moods are
maintained, but in the period of the κοινή the optative occurs less
and less and finally disappears. The original I.E. had two voices,
an active and a middle, and to these Greek has added a third, the
passive, distinguished from the middle in many verbs by separate
forms for the future and aorist, made with a syllable -
The syntax of the verb is founded on the original I.E. distinction of the verb forms, not by time (tense), but by forms of action, progressive action (present and imperfect), consummated action (aorist), state arising from action, emphatic or repeated action (perfect). For the details of this see Indo-European Languages.
Bibliography.—(i.) A grammar of Greek, which will deal fully with the whole material of the language, is at present a desideratum, and is hardly possible so long as new dialect material is being constantly added and while comparatively so little has been done on the syntax of the dialects. The greatest collection of material is to be found in the new edition of Kühner’s Griechische Grammatik, Laut- und Formenlehre, by Blass (2 vols., 1890–1892); Syntax, by Gerth (2 vols., 1896, 1900). Blass’s part is useful only for material, the explanations being entirely antiquated. The only full historical account of the language (sounds, forms and syntax) at present in existence is K. Brugmann’s Griechische Grammatik (3rd ed., 1900). Gustav Meyer’s Griechische Grammatik (nothing on accent or syntax), which did excellent pioneer work when it first appeared in 1880, was hardly brought up to date in its 3rd edition (1896), but is still useful for the dialect and bibliographical material collected. See also H. Hirt, Handbuch der griech. Laut- und Formenlehre (1902). Of smaller grammars in English perhaps the most complete is that of J. Thompson (London, 1902). The grammar of Homer was handled by D. B. Monro (2nd ed., Oxford, 1891). The syntax has been treated in many special works, amongst which may be mentioned W. W. Goodwin, Syntax of the Greek Moods and Tenses (new ed., 1889); B. L. Gildersleeve and C. W. E. Miller, Syntax of Classical Greek from Homer to Demosthenes, pt. i. (New York, 1901—and following); J. M. Stahl, Kritisch-historische Syntax des griechischen Verbums (1907); F. E. Thompson, Attic Greek Syntax (1907). (ii.) The relations between Greek and the other I.E. languages are very well brought out in P. Kretschmer’s Einleitung in die Geschichte der griechischen Sprache (Göttingen, 1896). For comparative grammar see K. Brugmann and B. Delbrück, Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen (the 2nd ed., begun 1897, is still incomplete) and Brugmann’s Kurze vergleichende Grammatik (1902–1903); A. Meillet, Introduction à l’étude comparative des langues indo-européennes (2nd ed., 1908). Greek compared with Latin and English: P. Giles, A Short Manual of Comparative Philology for Classical Students (2nd ed., 1901, with an appendix containing a brief account and specimens of the dialects); Riemann and Goelzer, Grammaire comparative du Grec et du Latin (1901), a parallel grammar in 2 vols., specially valuable for syntax. (iii.) For the dialects two works have recently appeared, both covering in brief space the whole field: A. Thumb, Handbuch der griechischen Dialekte (with bibliographies for each dialect, 1909); C. D. Buck, Introduction to the Study of the Greek Dialects, Grammar, Selected Inscriptions, Glossary (Boston, 1910). Works on a larger scale have been undertaken by R. Meister, by O. Hoffmann and by H. W. Smyth. For the κοινή may be specially mentioned A. Thumb, Die griech. Sprache in Zeitalter des Hellenismus (1901); E. Mayser, Grammatik der griechischen Papyri aus der Ptolemäerzeit: Laut- und Wortlehre (1906); H. St J. Thackeray, A Grammar of the Old Testament in Greek, vol. i. (1909); Blass, Grammar of New Testament Greek, trans. by Thackeray (1898); J. H. Moulton, A Grammar of New Testament Greek. I. Prolegomena (3rd ed., 1906). (iv.) For the development from the κοινή to modern Greek: A. N. Jannaris, An Historical Greek Grammar, chiefly of the Attic Dialect, as written and spoken from Classical Antiquity down to the Present Time (1901); G. N. Hatzidakis, Einleitung in die neugriechische Grammatik (1892); A. Thumb, Handbuch der neugriechischen Volkssprache (2nd ed. 1910). (v.) The inscriptions are collected in Inscriptiones Graecae in the course of publication by the Berlin Academy, those important for dialect in the Sammlung der griech. Dialektinschriften, edited by Collitz and Bechtel. The earlier parts of this collection are to some extent superseded by later volumes of the Inscr. Graecae, containing better readings and new inscriptions. A good selection (too brief) is Solmsen’s Inscriptiones Graecae ad inlustrandas dialectos selectae (3rd ed., 1910). A serviceable lexicon for dialect words is van Herwerden’s Lexicon Graecum suppletorium et dialecticum (2nd ed., much enlarged, 2 vols. 1910). (vi.) The historical basis for the distribution of the Greek dialects is discussed at length in the histories of E. Meyer (Geschichte des Altertums, ii.) and G. Busolt (Griechische Geschichte, i.); by Professor Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece, i. (1901), and P. Kretschmer in Glotta, i. 9 ff. See also A. Fick, Die vorgriechischen Ortsnamen (1905). (vii.) Bibliographies containing the new publications on Greek, with some account of their contents, appear from time to time in Indogermanische Forschungen: Anzeiger (Strassburg, Trübner), annually in Glotta (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht), and The Year’s Work in Classical Studies (London, Murray). (P. Gi.)