AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 25 finding with modern Greek and so-called modern Greek pronunciation. The different parts of Greece are widely scat- tered, being separated by the sea, by highlands, and by other nations intervening. This peculiar- ity of Greeks living secluded from Greeks became more marked politically when the provinces of the Byzantine reign were conquered. This was another reason why a new people's language would not develop and could not spread. A new national language understood by all Greeks did not exist. There were only the many dia- lects of the different provinces, and so we find in regard to the people's contemporaneous lan- guage polyglossy on the one hand and aglossy on the other. The language to which all the Greeks adhered was the virginal, immortal old Greek. It is true that in Cyprus and Crete attempts were made for a while to write contempora- neous language, but these attempts were futile. Writers in the politically and geographically lacerated Greece wrote the idiom of their respec- tive provinces. These dialects were too much intermixed with topical forms and expressions for the majority of the Greeks to understand them, and so none of these writings laid a foun-
