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 κ
appearing in certain words where other dialects have π (ὅκως for
ὅπως, κοῦ for ποῦ, &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 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, δοθῆ, τόνδε, τῶδε, τὸ, δή. No inscription of more than a few words in length is found in either dialect earlier than the 5th century B.C. In both dialects the number of important inscriptions is steadily increasing. Both dialects change final ο to υ, ἀπό passing into ἀπύ. Arcadian changes the verb ending -αι into -οι. Arcadian uses δ or ζ for an original gw-sound, which appears in Attic Greek as β: ζέλλω, Attic βάλλω, “throw.” In inflexion both agree in changing -ᾶο of masculine -α stems into αυ (Arcadian carries this form also into the feminine -α stems), and in using locatives in -αι and -οι for the dative, such locatives being governed by the prepositions ἀπύ and ἐξ (before a consonant ἐς in Arcadian). Verbs in -αω, -εω and -οω are declined not as -ω, but as -μι verbs. The final ι of the ending of the 3rd plural present changes the preceding τ to σ: φέρονσι, cp. Laconian (Doric) φέροντι, Attic φέρουσι, Lesbian φέροισι. Instead of the Attic τίς, the interrogative pronoun appears as σίς, the initial σ in Arcadian being written with a special symbol ϟ. The pronunciation is not certain. The original sound was qw, as in Latin quis, whence Attic τίς and Thessalian κίς. In Arcadian καν the Aeolic particle κε and the Ionic αν 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 π before ε, where Attic and other dialects have τ: πέτταρες, Attic τέτταρες. The corresponding voiced and aspirated sounds are similarly treated: Βέλφαιος the adjective in Thessalian to Δελφοί, and φήρ for θήρ. They all tend to change ο to υ: ὄνυμα, “name”; ου for ω in Thessalian: Ἄπλουν, “Apollo”; and υ in Boeotian for οι: ϝυκία (οἰκία), “house.” They also make the dative plural of the third declension in -εσσι, and the perfect participle active is declined like a present participle in -ων. 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 Δημοσθένης Δημοσθένους, Aeolic would rather have Δ. Δημοσθένειος. 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: ἐμμί, Attic εἰμί for an original *esmi; στάλλα, Attic στήλη; ξέννος for an earlier ξένϝος, Attic ξένος, Ionic ξεῖνος, Doric ξῆνος. Where Attic has -ᾶς from an earlier -ανς or -αντς, Lesbian has -αις: ταὶς ἄρχαις accusative in Lesbian for older τὰνς ἄρχανς. 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 κε, which is used like the Doric κα, the Arcadian καν, and the Attic and Ionic ἄν. Thessalian and Lesbian agree in making their long vowels close, η belonging ει (a close ē, not a diphthong), πατείρ, “father.” The υ sound did not become ü as in Attic and Ionic, and hence when the Ionic alphabet was introduced it was spelt ου, or when in contact with dentals ιου, as in ὀνίουμα = ὄνυμα, “name,” τιούχα = τύχη, “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: αι became ē, καὶ passing into κή: compare πατείρ and ϝυκία above: ει became ι in ἔχι, “has.” Thessalian shows some examples of the Homeric genitive in -οιο: πολέμοιο, &c.; its ordinary genitive of ο- stems is in -οι.
There are some points of connexion between this group and Arcadian-Cyprian: in both Thessalian and Cyprian the characteristic πτόλις (Attic, &c., πόλις) and δαυχνα- for δάφνη are found, and both groups form the “contracting verbs” not in -ω but in -μι. In the second group as in the first there is little that precedes the 5th century B.C. 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 (οἰνοχόη) given as a prize: hός νῦν ὀρχεστον πάντον | ἀταλότατα παίζει τοτο δεκᾶν μιν. 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 α into η which is universal in Ionic but does not appear in Attic after another vowel or ρ. Thus both dialects used μήτηρ, τιμή from an earlier μᾱτηρ, τιμα, but Attic had σοφία, πρᾶγμα and χώρα, not σοφίη, πρῆγμα and χώρη as in Ionic. The apparent exception κόρη is explained by the fact that in this word a digamma ϝ has been lost after ρ, in Doric κόρϝα. That the change took place after the Ionians came into Asia is shown by the word Μῆδοι, which in Cyprian is Μᾶδοι; 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 B.C. 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 ου. The short o tended towards u, so that the contraction of ο + ο gave ου. In the same way short e tended towards i, so that the contraction of ε + ε gave ει, 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 B.C. So also were the lengthened syllables which represent in their length the loss of an earlier consonant, as ἔμεινα and ἔνειμα, Aeolic ἔμεννα, ἔνεμμα, which stand for a prehistoric *ἔμενσα and *ἔνεμσα, containing the -σ- of the first aorist, and τοὺς, οἴκους, ἔχουσι representing an earlier τόνς, οἴκονς, ἔχοντι (3 pl. present) or *ἔχοντσι (dative pl. of present participle). Both dialects also agreed in changing τ before ι into σ (like Aeolic), as in ἔχουσι above, and in the 3rd person singular of -μι verbs, τίθησι, δίδωσι, &c., and in noun stems, as in δόσις for an earlier *δότις. Neither dialect used the particle κε or κα, but both have ἄν instead. One of the effects of the change of ᾱ into η was that the combination ᾱο changed in both dialects to ηο, which in all Attic records and in the later Ionic has become εω by a metathesis in the quantity of the vowels: νᾱός, earlier νᾱϝός, “temple,” is in Homeric Greek νηός, in later Ionic and Attic νεώς. In the dative (locative) plural of the -ᾱ stems, Ionic has generally -ηισι on the analogy of the singular; Attic had first the old locative form in -ησι, -ᾱσι, which survived
