text: PA «5. < MA i«<3 fyxmll Hmvmitg pibai^g BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF iienrg W. Sage 1891 ,A-->g-c£.^.;?:-^ 'f/l/?.:^'.. _ Cornell University Library PA 267.D26 3 1924 021 602 002 The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021602002 THE PRONUNCIATION GREEK ASPIRATES ELIZABETH A. S. DAWES, M.A., D.Lit.(Lond.) LONDON D. NUTT, 270-271 STRAND 1895 <9 THE GREEK ASPIEATES. INTRODUCTION. ERRATA. P. 12 1. 27, omit "and Curtius." P. 53 1. li, for "I" read "a." P. 62 1. 22, /o?' "ff<(> for air" read "ait for o-f." P. 79 1. 25, /OJ- "irup((/)ou = 7rup(x<'"" ''^"'^ " nuppi<|)ou = riuppix'"' " P. 98 1. 19, after "elisions" insert "from various dialects." P. 103 1. 6, for " of the two " read "of either of the two." those who maintain that, whether or not the Greek aspirates were originally genuine aspirates, they had already in the classical period become spirants, or at least affricatives. Amongst these we may reckon Arendt, Brlicke, Ebel, Telfy, Papademetrakopoulos, Raumer, Roscher, and Rumpelt. In this small treatise I purpose to set forth concisely the various arguments of different authorities, and to attempt to estimate from the evidence thus collected the possibility cf drawing conclusions cf a more or less certain nature. B 2 THE GREEK ASPIEATES. INTRODUCTION. In a former treatise on the Pronunciation of Greek I did not consider that of the aspirates; in the following pages I propose to discuss the latter within the bounds of a limited scope. The authorities on the question of the pronunciation of the Greek aspirates may be roughly divided into two classes. First, -vye have those who support the theory that the Greek aspirates were pronounced as the Indian aspirates, that is to say, were genuine aspirates, even in the classical period of the Greek language. To this class belong Brugmann, G. Curtius the great champions of the Erasmian pronunciation, Blass, Meisterhans, G. Meyer, and many others. Secondly, there are those who maintain that, whether or not the Greek aspirates were originally genuine aspirates, they had already in the classical period become spirants, or at least affricatives. Amongst these we may reckon Arendt, Briicke, Ebel, Telfy, Papademetrakopoulos, Raumer, Roscher, and Rumpelt. In this small treatise I purpose to set forth concisely the various arguments of different authorities, and to attempt to estimate from the evidence thus collected the possibility cf drawing conclusions cf a more or less certain nature. B 2 4 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. With this intention I would at the outset disclaim the bias of any foregone conclusion, and maintain that I have en- deavoured to collate evidence with strict impartiality. As regards the estimation of conclusions to be drawn from such evidence, I can only offer my suggestions with the greatest deference to the authority of the many learned scholars who have given their opinion on the subject under discussion. The question of the pronunciation of the Greek aspirates treated fully and in .detail would suffice to fill a volume of some size; here, therefore, I have limited myself to the consideration in detail of a part only of the material at my disposal. In choosing from the latter I have preferred to select for especial investigation the internal evidence sup- plied by Greek, as I consider it is from this source that we can draw the most satisfactory conclusions. The fact alone that, in dealing with internal evidence, we are not so dependent on reasoning from analogy, as we are when treating of the external evidence to be derived from other sources, enables us to base our arguments on more certain ground. The method on which I have proceeded has been to investi- gate what degree of continuity is traceable in the successive periods of the language. I would claim to have especially elaborated that part which bears on the interpretation of the ancient grammarians, as also to have worked out more fully than has been done before the history of the interchange of letters, and the evolution of the phonetic laws, as illustrated by modern Greek. Although the investigation of Greek evidence thus con- stitutes the main substance of this inquiry, I have prefaced this by a short inquiry into the Indo-German sounds which the Greek aspirates are held to represent. Missing Page 6 THE GREEK ASPIEATES. Briicke. — Grundzilge d. Physiologie. 1876. Psichari. — Mim. de la Soc. Zing, de Paris, vi. p. 304. Papademetrakopoulos. — ^dcravo^ tmp -irepl -rrj'; eXkr/p. rrpo- (pofja.'i .... 1889. C. Foy. — Lautsystem d. griech. Vulgarsprache. M. Deffner. — Zakonischs Gram. W. Prellwitz. — Etymol. Worterhuch der griech^. Sprache, 1.BiQ2, and many others. Chap. I. /Nature of the change | Have we a parallel in any other languaffe? ANALYSIS OF CHAPTERS I. AND II, GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. If we suppose an intermediate stage we have a parallel in German. / if the change was effected directly, we know of no parallel in any one language, but can compare the triimsitioii of /Period at which it may /Different /as to its completion /not in lirst centuries a.d. (Curtius, have taken place. opinions !//as to its prelude Blass, &c.' in Classical period (including Homeric) '' (Arendt, Papademotrakopoidos;). /Boeotian 6 and <f> spirants in iifth century B.e. (Ahrena, Meister, Zacher). Laeonian and Cretan 9 also early spirant (Ahrens, Meister, Brugmann). /"perhaps in the ancient dialects (Blass). /Indo-German aspirated tenues into Gorman surd spirants and /'Indo-German aspirated medial into Latin /* and, perhaps,/". Various Land- /niarks. /Sextus Empii'icus, second century a.d., places them with fifji[<^iava may mean that they were already spii'ants in his time. ^.Priscian about 500 a.d. | difficult to distinguish between <^ and f Byz. Schol. of Dion. Thrax between 500 / .and 700 a.d. describes a spirantic pronoun (Blass). Manner in which it may have / been effected .^ Direct transition (Ax-endt). by moans of a Transitional / Stage Ch.ap. II. 4.ffricativo Theory. /Explanation of /according to Raumer and Roscher /according to G. Meyer. Application of -to the Classical Period (Raumer and Roscher). /to no definite period (G. Meyer). /Arguments pro /Such writings as : okxo<;, Sairc^ti). 0, </), X' sometimes count as double / letters in metre. Argviments con. /Such writings as ok\o^, ifcc, possibly due to poetic licence for the sake of the metro. /6, <(), x> generally single letters in metre. ^ the grammarians never call these letters StTrAa. impossible to pronounce (f)9, x^ '^^ / consecutive affricatives. Double homo- geneous /■ Aspirate. /difficult to explain according to aspi- ratic theory. shows last stage in development of / spirant. CHAPTER I. GENERAL CONSIDEEATIONS. According to the generally accepted theory xi'^ were true surd aspirates, i.e. tenues + breathing in the classical period of Greek literature, remained such down to the first centuries of the Christian era, and then gradually became surd spirants, such as we find them in the present language (either by passing through the intermediate step of " affricatae," or without passing through any such transitional stage). Thus a great change must have taken place in the sound of these letters, and it may justly be asked whether a change of such a nature can be paralleled from any other language, as having taken place within somewhat the same compass of time. On investigation, if we suppose an intermediate stage of aifricatae,we find a parallel exists in German in those words where the Modern German spirants and affricatae which were caused by the consonantal change in High-German, have developed out of primitive German tenues, apparently by the following process : tenues : aspirates : affricatae : spirants (ef, Paul, Grundriss d. germ. Fhilog. p. 294) : and the different steps can, in many cases, be illustrated by examples from existent dialects, thus for this change at the beginnifig of words we have : THE GREEK ASPIRATES. Goth, (or N. Franc.) M. Franc. Ordinary' Germ, punt p'unt pfund or fund and Franc. Ord. Germ. kann k'ann Alem. Xann N. Franc. Ord. Germ. toe zu ( = tzu) and in the interior of words : Goth, hilpan O.G. helpfan Mod. Germ, helfen Goth, vitan O.G. wizzan Mod. Germ, wissen Goth, vakan O.G. wahhen Mod. Germ, wachen (where O.G. s is a voiceless spirant and A = p^;). The tenues of (Gothic) primitive Gerntian became aspirated (just as the Germans of to-day aspirate their tenues), and would then be parallel to the Greek y(^, <j), if pronounced originally as aspirates ; the affricative stage of the German words can be com- pared with such writings as oK'^pt;, %aTr<f>a), and finally the Modern German spirants, e.g. helfen, with Modern Greek spirants, eg. ^vcn<i ( = fysis). Perhaps one may go further and say the dialectical ' punt ' and ' kan,' with persistence of original tenuis, may be compared with Modern Asiatic ep/co/iai, a-TOKa^m, which are also taken as instances of the survival of an original tenuis. It may be objected that this is not a complete parallel, because in German this change is by no means fully accomplished as yet, when initial, for in the dental series it has only gone as far as the affricative z, and in the guttural the affricative and spirants are both still wanting in ordinary German, and even in the labial series the pf is not yet universally spoken as simple /. But then German is, as far as our knowledge of it extends, a much younger language than Greek, as the Gothic we know is GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 9 that of the fourth century A.D., so that Greek, of which we kuow a little from the seventh or sixth century B.C., is about ten centuries older, and, as the change of aspirates into spirants had already begun in the Greek dialects before the Christian era, there has been comparatively a far longer space of time for this change to become complete in Greek. Indeed in Modern German we see the change in process and as yet far from complete initially, whereas in Modern Greek not only has the change completely come, but it is in some cases going again — that is, the spirants of the middle ages are already undergoing a species of deterioration, if it may be so termed ; instead of only just becoming firmly fixed they are under certain conditions disappearing again, as if they had existed already many centuries and were now undergoing certain modifications — thus in the case of two consecutive spirants, the second one is now generally changed into a tenuis — e.^r. ^Odvm becomes diTdvm. On the other hand, if we consider with Arendt that the inter- mediate stage of affricatae need not necessarily have existed, but that the aspirated tenues changed directly into spirants (per- haps too without ever having been spoken in Greek for any length of time as aspirated tenues), we cannot compare this change with a similar change in one and the same language, but only with a change like the possibly direct transition of the Indo-German (pure and) aspirated tenues into German surd spirants, e.g. Skt. phena O.G. feim Skt. ^'tn Goth, freis and also that of the Indo-German aspirated mediae into Latin Ji, when initial, and perhaps /, for we are not quite sure whether / was an affricative or spirant. We think, therefore, that the change 10 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. suggested for Greek is paralleled by changes that have and are still taking place in other languages, whether we consider that it was effected directly or by the help of an intermediate stage. With regard to the period by which this change had been completed, opinions also differ widely. Curtius, Blass, Zacher, and Peile think it was not completed by the first centuries A.D. Curtius (ii. p. I7)adds ," that the Laconians seem to have started it," and Blass (p. 108, Eng. ed.) that " this later pro- nunciation will not have arisen all at once, it must have needed time to have made its way from the lower to the upper stratum of the people, and to have become general. But its prelude is perhaps already to be found in the ancient Greek dialects." He further concludes that Laconian of fourth and third centuries B.C. had a partly spirantic 6 — that " in Cretan as we know it from the Gortynian inscription," the dental aspirate had become a spirant, but ^ and ^(^ had not ; and with regard to Boeotian, Lokrian, and Elean he maintains nothing. Zacher (p. 39) says with regard to the date of the change that " there must have been an approximation to the spirantic pro- nunciation at an early period, or special characters would not have been invented to represent the aspirates. 6 must have led the way as the sign @ is found in the oldest alphabets, and also it is never represented by TH." He maintains, however, that the spirantic pronunciation did not become general before the third century A.D., that is to say, in the written language, because in the dialects the change must partly have come about much earlier {e.g. the Spartan 6). Meisterhans {Oram. d. att. Inschr. § 27 ff.) says that the inter- change of tenues with % ^ ^ " excludes the possibility of the latter having been spirants in the classical period." Of ^ he says that GEKEEAL CONSIDERATIONS. 11 "a real assimilation with the spirant / can be shown after 120 A.D.," and of 6 that "the date of its change into a spirant cannot be fixed." Brugmann (Grimdriss, i. pp. 365-6) says that "in most dialects, e.g. in lon.-Att., % <^ ^ probably remained real aspirates down to the historic period. It is impossible definitely to fix the dates of their transition into spirants in dififerent localities, as we have no written evidence of a sufficiently conclusive nature to guide us." He proceeds to show that 6 became a spirant in Cretan, Laconian, Boeotian, Elean and Locrian at an early period, and that in Boeotian ^ also became a spirant very early. G. Meyer {Gk. Gram., pp. 213-214) likewise says that the date of the change cannot be even approximately determined. Meister (i. p. 260) and Ahrens say d and ^ were spirants in the fifth century B.C. inBoeotia, and Meister adds (ii. p. 54) that 6 was a spirant in Crete before the fifth century B.C., and in Elis by the time of the Damokrates bronze, which according to Kirchhofif dates from about 300 B.C. Raumer concludes from Plato, CratyL, p. 427, that <^ pre- ceded X ^'^•i ^ i"^ becoming a spirant, and was already one in Plato's time. Briicke {GrundHi, pp. 127 &c.) maintains that in the combina- tions of aspirates, x^^ must always have been spirants, and probably also in all other cases, or else perhaps " affricatae." " It is doubtful," he says, " whether even in the very earliest ages of Greek speech and writing, the Greek aspirates were ever pronounced as tenues with a breathing appended. The pos- sibility of Greek aspirates having once been tenues -|- h cannot be denied, but inscriptions, change of tenuis into aspirate before the spiritus asper, &c., seem to give no support to this idea." 12 THE GEEEK ASPIRATES. Arendt supposes ')(^0 to have always been spirants in Greek; Psichari (Mem. de la Soc. de Ling., vi. p. 315) considers that X^6 were aspirates in classical times, and as regards the date of their change, he says : " Si Ton parvient a etablir la date du premier [v qui tombe devant x<j)0, on aura la date exacte du passage de I'aspiree k la spirante." Papademetrakopoulos (p. 621) argues that % ^ ^ were already spirants in the classical period, but allows that they may have been aspirates in the earliest stage of the language, that is, in the pre-Homeric times. We have indeed a few landmarks which indicate the time by which % ^ had for certain already become spirants, but they are not many and do not help towards proving when % ^ began to be spirants ; they are as follows : — (1) They were spirants by 700 (?) A.D., as shown by the de- scription of them given by the Scholiast on Dion. Thrax. (2) Priscian, 520 A.D., finds it difficult to distinguish between Latin/ and 0, and describes the latter as a labial spirant. (3) Sextus Empir., second century A.D., places them with rjfil<li(ova, which may mean that they were already spirants in his time. Thus, roughly speaking, ^^^ ^re unanimously considered » to have been spirants from the third . century A.D. onwards, and what remains to be examined is what they were before that time. As to the manner in which the transition from aspirated tenues to spirants was effected, some, like Arendt and Curtius, think that the Skt. sonant aspirates were in Greek immediately changed into surd aspirates, and then there was a direct transi- tion from them to spirants, though they differ as to the time when the second half of this change took place, for Arendt AFFRICATIVE THEORY. 13 thinks that the surd aspirates probably never really obtained in Greek at all, whereas Curtius thinks they were spoken down to the first centuries *..D. Others, like Raumer, Roscher, and G. Meyer, think that in becoming spirants they passed through the transitional stage of " afifricatae," and further, the two former uphold the theory of X<l>0 having been real aflfricatae in the classical period. This theory, which may be called the afifricative, we will now proceed to discuss. CHAPTER II. AFFRICATIVE THEORY. The- manner of the development of spirants from aspirates through the stage of affricatae has been differently conceived by Raumer and G. Meyer. Raumer thinks that, first, the breathing of the aspirate became a spirant homogeneous to the tenuis, i.e. t + h became t + th, and then, secondly, the spirant crowded out the tenuis, i.e. t + th became "th": e.g. o(l>i<i = 0Tr<fii<i = 6<f)i<! (op + his = opfis = ofis). G. Meyer assumes the same first step, but the second one was, he says, that the tenuis became assimilated to the spirant' i.e. t + th became th + th, and then sometimes there was a third step by which the double spirant became single. Ba;)^o? = Ba«j^o? = Baj^j^o? and sometimes Baj^o?. bak + hos = bak + chos = Bachchos or Baclios. 14 THE GEEEK ASPIRATES. G. Meyer does not fix any definite period during which tlie pronunciation of ■x^cfyd as affricatae prevailed, whereas Raumer and Roscher think it was in use during the classical period. Blass thinks that, even if it did exist partially, it was not universal, but yet it will be as well shortly to review the arguments adduced in favour of it and those against it ; the latter being in our opinion quite sufiicient to condemn the theory. The chief arguments for it are the words in which k^, t9, TT^ are evidently written for ■^, 6, cf) ; such are ta/c^j^jew, taA;;\;j; in the tragedians, from \/iaj^, and Ba/c^o? and "\aK'X^o<; ; also OKXO'i and oK'^eco found in the lyric poets. "ZaTrcfxo may perhaps be derived from ao^6<i ; from Vdhe we have correlative forms, such as ndrivr) and titOt), rirOevw, &c. Now these forms with K)(^ for T^ and trcf) for (e.g. crKVTr(f>o^ for a-KV(j>o<!, Hes.) are all poetical, and so written for the sake of the metre ; they are not the forms of ordinary use. It is impossible therefore to say whether these words were ever universally so pronounced or whether this orthography was merely a poetic licence, but most probably it was the latter, as this spelling is confined to a very few words. On an inscription we have the isola,ted foriA dvaTeTOeifiivoi<;, which may be another example in favour of i this theory, or may very likely only be a misspelling. ■ ■ • ■ The second argument is that % ^ ^ sometimes have the force of double letters in metre, and cause the lengthening of the preceding syllable : thus w'e have ^t\oa-o(f)ov in Aristoph. Mel. 571, ^po^ov in Theog., o^t? in Iliad and Hipponax, gene- rally Trl(f>avaKei,v in Homer (both l and I are Indo-Germ;), and KeKpv^aXov in Homer, but KeKpv(f>a\ov in classical Greek. These exceptions, however, are very few and do not occur in the tragedians, and may rightly be regarded as poetic licences, seeing AFFRICATIVE THEORY. 15 that the general rule which holds good for all the poets is that % 0. ^ are treated as single betters. This consideration alone seems sufficient to refute the theory oi x'P^ being afifricatae {v. Blass, p. 103). Similarly it seems unreasonable to suppose that the gram- marians would not have called them SnrXa if ■ they were affricatae ;■ they could not possibly have classed them with the dirXa ypafifiara. This theory does not commend itself in anyway, and it cannot be consistently maintained, for when the combinations of aspi- rates come under consideration, it is found that it would be impossible to pronounce two affricatae consecutively {e.g. in p^^e?), and accordingly in these cases we are to suppose that the sound of the tenues was lost, and the <})9 or '^^0 were pronounced as two simple spirants. Before we pass on, we must look more closely into examples, already referred to, of two homogeneous aspirates being written instead of a tenuis and an aspirate, e.g. 'Bdxxot for BaA;;^o9. G. Meyer considers that writings like Baxxot show complete assimilation of the explosive k to the following x> ^^^ takes them as indicative of the last stage in the development of the Greek aspirates, that is, of their definite conversion into spirants, and that seems the only really plausible manner of explaining them. It might perhaps be argued that in these cases, as in those of the aspiration of a non-homogeneous tenuis to a follow- ing aspirate, the assimilation was merely one " of written letters and not of spoken sounds," but this seems. very improbable, especially as we further have instances of a single x instead of the double ones or tenuis and aspirate. Perhaps it would be as well here to enumerate the examples now extant of this assimilation. 16 THE GREEK ASPIEATES. ;;^;^ for K')(^ we have from — Attica ex XaX;)(;tSo9 of 445 B.C. C.I.A. Slip. 27a 5, 17. 'Idxx'p of third century B.C. (?) G.I.A. ii. 1592. Bdxxio'i G.I.A. ii. 1329. Boeotia Baxx^'>-^^"''i> c- 430 B.C. I.G.A. 157 ii. 14. Corcyra ^axx''^^^ G.I.G. 1850. Tenos Bap^;;;^o?, second century A.D. Ross. Inscr. lined. 104, 3. also seven times Bap^j^^o? in Wescher and Foucart. And for single, x for kx — Ba;jj;i09, Ba;j^£aSa, Ba;!^t?, on a Delph. inscr. (v. Bull. Gorr. hell. v. 429). Of 66 for t6 we have from — Attica Ka.6dave ( = Kar{e)6av€) of fourth century B.C. G.I.A. 2719, 5. Mitylene Kd66eaav. G.I.G. 2169. Methymna KXeo06't? ( = KX6ot0/?). C.J.G^. 22115. Tanagra roe6lBa';. I.G.A. 157. twice on very old Corcyrean inscr. and coin "A.pa66o's, which Strabo vii. 325 and Pliny write "Apardo's. from Crete i66dvri &c., a-vve66a. Of ^0 for 7r<^ we have from — Mitylene on inscr. and coin 'Za<f><pw. G.I.G. 1211. Ithaca td<l>(f>ov, ib. 1927. "A<j)<j>€iv, ib. 3167 (c/. "Attach/, ib. 3278, 1), "Atf.^iov and "Acfxf}!], passim, for 'Att^t]. also single for 7r0 on a vase "Za^w, ib. 7759. As these instances of double and single aspirates are devia- tions from the correct spelling, they must be in all probability phonetic spellings. If this be allowed, it follows either tbat the Greeks sometimes spoke two consecutive homogeneous aspi- Ai^ALYSIS OF CHAPTERS III. AND IV. ETYMOLOGY AND ANALOGY TO SANSKRIT. Chap. III. Indo-Germanic Origin of the Greek Aspirates. /O, 4>, X regularly correspond ^ change from hard into soft to : dh, hh, gh. aspirates. /their pronunciation ^occasionally to : th, /where there is a surd Aspirate in ph, hh both Indie and Greek. .where the Indie has an Aspirate and the Greek a tenuis. possibly in isolated instances to spi- / rants where there are double forms in Greek and it is uncertain / which are the prior according to Curtius illustrates ease of pronunciation. Paul's caution. ^Aspirated tenues (Brugmann, Curtius, &c.). .double change into surd spii'ants effected at once (Arendt). /probably spirants, or uffricatae, from the first (Briicke). close union of the two factors in Greek Aspirates. original Aspirate never, except in Asiatic dialects, superseded by tenuis. Chap. IV. Analogy of the Sanskrit Phonetic Laws. _/two consecutive syllables may not ^reduplication of Perfect in Sanskrit and Greek. begin with an Aspirate /Sanskrit compounds, /exceptions I I/Old Attic words. /a root may not begin and end with an Aspirate in San- skrit the same rule generally observed in Greek. combinations of Aspi- rates unknown in / Sanskrit ypvo Spir, /in Greek we have the groups <^d, x6 and /the Aspirate of a root retained before that of a termination. / proAspir. | the first Aspirate in (j>e, xO, may not have been fully pronounced. AFFEICATIVE THEORY. 17 rates (a combination which most authorities consider very difficult, or even impossible, to pronounce), or the aspirates had already become spirants, and the assimilation of the tenuis to the following spirant was a natural consequence, because it conduced to the ease of pronunciation. If this is the correct explanation, p^ and 6, if not ^, must have become spirants in Attica as well as in various dialects by the fifth century B.C. In the two forms Se8o/e;^0at from Samos {v. Cauer, Syll. 134, 26) and eK^OefiaTu (Bull, de Corr. hell. vi. p. 262) we have a curious grouping of consonants which the supporters of the affrlcative theory take as a confirmation of the same. Others, however, seem with more reason to consider that we have here only cases of confused spelling, such as is also seen in ef?, Hvcr^dvTioi (Blass, p. 117). This latter explanation is probably also the best to apply to the writings /j.errjWaK'^oTe^ Alabanda (Bull, de Corr. hell. x. 302, 1. 39), avvSiaTrf^v\aKj(ev Mylasa (ib. v. 102), elaayeifOK'XpTa thrice (ib. xii. 84 f.) from Stratonikeia, and the converse writing fieTr)Xka^K6To<; from Pergamos (Inschr. v. Pergamos, Berlin, 1890, No. 225, 1. 16) ; or we might attribute them to uncertainty as to the exact form of the perfect termination. CHAPTER III. ETYMOLOGY. We will first review the relation of the Greek aspirates to the Indo-German, and point out briefly the etymological relations between them as demonstrated by Brugmann, G. Curtius, and others. c 18 THE GREEK ASPIEATEa We learn from them that % ^ ^ regularly represent Indo- German gh, hh, dh respectively, and that, originally at any rate, the Greek aspirates probably had the force of h, p, t with an appended breathing. Curtius further proceeds to show {v. ii. p. 17 £f.) that " though at first sight it seems that there has really been in this transition from gh &c. to hh &c. rather a strengthening than a weakening, and that it therefore seems to be an exception to the general tendency of languages " (which is one of the objections Roscher puts forward in his essay), yet that this change from soft into hard aspirates has now been shown to be one " which conduced decidedly to ease " of pronunciation, and does not therefore violate the general law of the development of languages. In confirmation of this he introduces and explains Arendt's theory (that the change con- sisted in a kind of assimilation of the first to the second element), and refers to Briicke and Sievers as having clearly shown that though the soft aspirates, were, and still are, pro- nounced in the Indian languages, yet they are sounds very difiicult to make. He further adduces the parallel to this hardening of the aspirates discovered by Ascoli in the language of the Gipsies. That the hard aspirates are easier to pronounce than the soft, ^ any one can readily test for himself by pronouncing " shep-herd " and " ab-hor " successively and without pausing between the mute and the " h!' It must be noted here that Curtius seems to attribute this change from sonant into surd aspirates primarily to a desire for ease of pronunciation, whereas we must not lose sight of the caution gvien by Paul {Princ. of Hist, of Lang. p. 47) that " the consideration of convenience in each production of sound ETYMOLOGY. 19 affords in every case only a very subordinate and secondary cause." If then % ^ ^ were, at any rate originally, a tenuis with a breathing added, they must have sounded much like the German tenues, only with the A-sound perhaps more dis- tinct; for it is well known that the Germans always aspirate the tenues preceding a vowel and saj', for instance, T-haube, and not Taube. Roscher is of a different opinion, and considers it to be far from probable that the sonant aspirates should in so many words have been changed into surd aspirates, if these latter sounded Hke the Mod. -Germ, tenues. Arendt says, "it is unnecessary to assume that aspirated tenues were really spoken for any length of time by the classic nations," and gives as his belief "that the double phonetic change, which transformed the sonant aspirates into surd spirants took place all at once." Briicke, while admitting the possibility oi y^^d having at one time been surd aspirates in Greek, advocates the proba- bility of their having been spirants, or at least aSricatae, from the very beginning. Brugmann's and Curtius' theory of the pronunciation of the letters is the one most generally received. If we now return to the question as to which Idg. sounds X'l'^ represent, we find they regularly represent the Idg. sonant aspirates gh, hh, and dh respectively. Sometimes, too, they represent an Idg. Jch, ph, and th, or a gh, and this especially in those words where the surd aspirate of the Greek is flanked by one in Indie, as in Koyx^o^ = Ind. 9ankhas (v. Brugm. Grd. i. p. 406 K). In other words where, though Indie has a tenuis aspirate, Greek and other languages have a pure tenuis, it is a point of c 2 20 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. discussion whether the Indie tenuis aspirate is here due to an original Indo-German tenuis aspirate, or whether it has been developed independently from a tenuis after the division of languages. If, according to the former view, all Indie tenues aspirates are to be traced back to Indo-Germ. originals, then we have to suppose that in Greek, as well as in other languages, the aspirate component of the Indo-German sound has often been lost. Again, if Bezzenberger and G. Meyer are correct in main- taining the priority of the aspirate in those Greek words where % and K, ^ arid v, and t appeat interchangeably after cr, then there are more instances than formerly admitted of the corre- spondence of Greek and Indie surd aspirates (v. Bzzb. Btr. vii. 63. ff.). In many cases, too, it is still doubtful whether the aspirate or tenuis is the prior, and also to what Indo-Germ. root they are to be referred. We may here draw attention to the fact that in no case where the form with an aspirate is acknowledged to be the prior, has this aspirate been permanently superseded by the by-form with a tenuis ; the two forms or the different words from the same root but spelt, some with aspirates, some with • tenues, have lived on side by side to this day. Now the fact of an original x <p never becoming a tenuis until quite modern times seems to argue a close union between the two component parts of a Greek aspirate ; they must have been pretty firmly welded into one, for otherwise in spite of the tendency to aspiration, we might expect to find a few words in which the original aspirate had become and Remained a tenuis seeing tliat they were so often interchanged. Even in modern Greek all the ancient aspirates are still intact ; in certain ETYMOLOGY. 21 dialects, e.g. those of parts of Asia Minor, k, tt, t are spoTsen in place oi x^ ^> which seems to be a relic of the ancient Asiatic preference for the tenues, but in Greece proper x^ 6 are still spoken and writteu where the ancient Greek had a % i^ or ^, though in. the really popular language the second aspirate in the groups of two aspirates and also ^ or ;j^; after o- is now pronounced as tenuis. But that this modern tenuis has in these cases not arisen from and survived an original aspirate, while the form with the aspirate died away, is proved by the writings of the middle ages (when % ^ ^ were spirants) in which forms with tenues and spirants occur side by side, — oftener perhaps with the latter — thus ecfiOaae and ecjjTaae, da-Oeva and Spoaia-Tr}, a^VF^ (12 cent.) and o-koXij, idavixdaTrfv and eindcrOriKav, and so on. This sturdy persistence of ;;^ ^ ^ in the ancient, as well as in the modern language, appears to point to a complete amalgama- tion of the two component parts of the Greek aspirate. Curtius explains this by saying that " after the originally soft explosive had become hardened, not without the influence of the breathing, it would have been very surprising to find these hardened consonants again discarding this breathing." This sounds quite right in theory but does not seem to tally with facts as given by inscriptions, which yield us as many examples of tenues written for aspirates as they do of the opposite phenomenon. This causes us to ask, Why if these '' hardened aspirates " could frequently discard their breathing even in Attica (e.g. koXkovv, xirtov, cf. Meisterhans, § 38), without apparently any rhyme or reason for so doing, should it be surprising if in some cases the form with the tenuis had won the day and driven the aspirate entirely from the field ? Before leaving this part of the subject, it will be as well to 22 THE GREEK ASPIEATES. discuss a few isolated words, in which the Greek aspirates irregularly correspond to Sanskrit spirants, and where the colla- teral Latin words have a spirant or breathing, so that, though the pure medial reappears in some of the kindred languages, we find the Greek x^6 flanked on either side by a spirant, and this induces the belief that they also may have been spirants, if only under certain conditions. Taking d first, we have the words x^mv, ydaiJ.aXo'i, with Skt. anm (sic Grassmann, p, 95) or Jcsham (Curt. p. 243), Lat. humi, Zd. zem,-, Slav, and Lith. zem-. Thus for this word we have spirants in all the kindred languages, and the Gk. p^^, Skt. x or ksh, Lat. h, Zd., Slav, and Lith. z all correspond, and are derived one and all from Idg. \/zhsenfb (v. Prellwitz, s.v.) or Idg. tjgzhom- (v. Brugm. Grd. i. p. 409), and either of these roots contains a spirant, so that for these Greek words the spirant is found not only in the sister-languages but also in the mother-language. Grassmann and Curtius explain it thus : the sfghama (from "which '^afiaC) first became " ghjam," and then by dentalism and assimilation " ghdham," and from this come xOov-, %^a/i-, and perhaps also the Sanskrit Jesham. They give the same explanation for %^69, Skt. hjas, Lat. heri, from " ghjes " as primary form : the development of this word Would thus be " ghjes — khjes — khthjes — khthes = ^^e'?. Yet in both these words the Greek d corresponds to an Indo-Germ. spirant, z orj, and in the Skt. and Lat. equivalents we also have spirants / or sh and h respectively, and for vOoiv the same spirant reappears in other languages, which makes it seem probable that, if only in this close connection with x,> & may have been a spirant. Similarly for x,> we often find it cor- responding to Skt. h, and Lat. h, as in %ta)i/, Skt. himam, Lat. hiems, exto, Skt. sahas, Lat. mho. , This Skt. and Lat. h generally THE ANALOGY OP SANSKRIT. 23 represent, it is true, an original " gh," whose " g " reappears in Gothic, &c., thus e-xm is probably from an Idg. \/segho (v. Brugm. Grd. i. 422) — though Prellwitz derives it from tJsezho—\yvit the fact remains that in Skt. we have a guttural spirant A, and in Lat. a spirant or breathing " h," and, as there is some possibility of ■)(^ having been a spirant, these cases make such a supposition probable. In the word ^payf^fiav for Skt. brahma (v. Strabo, xv. 1, 59, Diod. xvii. 102, &c.) the medial ■)(^ represents the Skt. spirant " h," which could perhaps justify the conclusion that by these historians' time, that is, by the end of the pre-Christian era, ■x^ had already become a spirant. For if ■x^ had still been a tenuis- aspirate, Ich, the Skt. spirant " h " would have probably been altogether omitted in the Greek rendering of the word, as ^pafiaP6<; would have sounded more similar to the Sanskrit original than j3pakhfidve^. CHAPTER IV. THE ANALOGY OF SANSKRIT. Amongst several reasons which Curtius instances as apparent proof that % ^ ^ were real aspirates is " the movable nature of the breathing which (a) is easily separated from the explosive element, and leaves the explosive element behind, e.g. 7re(j>vKa for <j}e<j)VKa, but (6) just as easily unites with another explosive, and though its position varies, does not do away with the feel- ing that forms like dpi-ilrco and Tpe<f)(o belong to each other." Of these he proceeds to say : " I doubt whether such pheno- mena occur in any language with recognised spirants, whereas 21 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. the first two " (those we have quoted) " have exact analogies in Sanskrit." We do not think that the analogy in question can be con- sidered at all in the value of proof, but at the same time it seems worth statement and investigation, merely in so far as it is an argument from analogy and one that has been supported by such high authority. With this premiss we will now compare the Sanskrit and Greek phonetic laws. An important phonetic law in Sanskrit is, that two consecutive syllables of a word should not begin with an aspirate, and, to avoid such an occurrence, in the reduplication of verbs for in- stance, the breathing of the first aspirate is dropped and leaves the explosive element behind, e.g. da-dhami from Jdha. This fact, which speaks strongly for the real aspiratic nature of the letters in question, is also generally observed in Greek, as for instance in the reduplication of. verbs, e.g. iretfiiXriKa, not <^e-^i\r]Ka, from (piXeo), and ridrj/ii, from Jde. The same principle of the movable nature of the breathing is evident in the law, known as Grassmann's, which is common to Sanskrit and Greek, though unknown to Indo-German, and which forbids a root to begin and end with an aspirate. Thus Idg.^O/ieudh becomes Skt. ijhudh, Gk. i^irvO ; compare also Skt. dhalc- from « njdagh, Gk. Tpt,')(p'i from Qpi^, erd^rjv from Odinm, &c. This process of dissimilation, which makes one aspirate reappear when the other disappears, does not, as Curtius says, do away with the feeling that forms like dpeyfra and Tpijxo belong to one another, and certainly argues powerfully for the similarity of pronunciation, at least originally, o{ ■^^cjid and the Skt. aspirates. For ii ■^cfid had from the earliest days of the Greek language been real spirants, we might have expected to find in the reduplication of verbs two consecutive spirants, THE ANALOGY OF SANSKRIT. 25 as we do in Latin fefelli from fallo, and Gothic hvai-hvdp from hvdpa. Of course it may be objected that the Greek ideas of euphony and kakophony may have differed widely from those of the Latins and Goths, and that they may have found the sound of two consecutive syllables beginning with spirants very disagree- able, and consequently replaced the first spirant by a tenuis. However this may be, the fact that in two such important points Greek corresponds with the Sanskrit usage, apparently indicates that at some time or other the Greek aspirates were of the same nature as the Indian, but it is not sufficient to prove that they still were so in the classical period of Greek literature, as Curtius says. For supposing that x'^^ were already spirants at that time, even so these forms of verbs, nouns, &c., had long before that time become stereotyped in the language, and would not have been aifected then by any change which was taking place in the pronunciation of single letters, any more than they have been since throughout the many centuries during which X4>0 have been undoubted spirants — Tpe<^<o and dpiyjra) are still said. This rule we have under consideration, namely that aspirates should not stand at the beginning of two consecutive syllables, is not violated in Sanskrit, except in compounds, e.g. abhi-bhutis, ahi-han, and at first sight it appears to be strictly observed in Greek also, but on closer inspection one finds it is by no means inviolably observed. In old Attic, Meisterhans tells us (c/. Gram. d. att. Inschft. § 37) this law " does not seem to have been firmly established," as on inscriptions of the fifth and fourth century B.C. forms are found, such as e^ei (perhaps by analogy with e^co), C.I.A. iv. 373 ; ivOavdol, ib. iv. b. 27, <pap6evo<; and . YoX.%09, ib. iv. b. 373, &c., and sometimes even three consecutive 26 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. syllables commence with an aspirate, e.g. 6v(f)ai6iBr]<;. And apart from errors on inscriptions, we have regular forms as eddcpOriv, Te0d<jidai (by the side of irdi^rjv), i(l>dv6r]v, (/)a^i, and others. These exceptions, which are fairly numerous, seem to indicate that the Greek aspirates were already diverging somewhat from the Indian. Another strict rule in Sanskrit is, that two aspirates should never occur together, but that an aspirate may only stand before a vowel, semivowel, or nasal, and an exception to this rule appears perhaps onjy in the word Vifhthala, which is probably not of Aryan origin. In Greek, on the contrary, this rule is not observed, as there are numerous instances of two aspirates coming together, not only medially, but even initially, e.g. i'^dpo';, ')(6(!t)v, ^Gelpa — such combinations are quite unknown to Sanskrit. The same dislike to the union of two aspirates in Sanskrit is shown by the rule that " when the final sonant aspirate of a root is followed by a t- or th- of an ending, the combination is made sonant, and the aspirate of the final is transferred to the initial of the ending, e.g. tjrundh+thas becomes not rwwdhdhas, but rund.dJa.as" and njladh+ta becomes 6addha {cf. Whitney, /S^if. Gr. p. 50). In Greek we have an exactly opposite phenomenon, which is difficult to explain on the assumption that the Greek aspirates had the same phonetic value as the Sanskrit — for here the rule is, that (1) " when a final surd aspirate of a root is followed by a th of an ending, both the aspirate of the final and that of the initial of the ending are retained," e.^'. <yypa<j) + dr]vai,= ypaipBrjvai ; and (2) that " when a final unaspirated surd of a root is followed by a th of an ending, the unaspirated surd of the final is aspirated, even though it belong to a different class of surds,'' e.g. y/SeK + Ofjvai becomes SexOfjvai, whereas THE ANALOGY OF SANSKRIT. 27 if had the phonetic value of i + h we should have expected heKOffvai to be written. Thus also, contrary again to Sanskrit usage, when a final surd aspirate of a root is followed by an unaspirated surd of an ending, this aspirate of the final is not transferred to the initial of the ending, but is entirely dropped, e.g. ,y/ypa<j) + T09 becomes not 'ypaTr6o<;,hvit 7pa7rTos, whereas in Sanskrit Jbadh + ta becomes baddha, not iatta or badda. This regular aspiration of the explosives before 6 is cer- tainly the point which is most difficult to understand, if we accept the aspiratic theory of x^O. Curtius comes to the con- clusion that " no definite argument is to be drawn from grouped aspirates," and that Von der Miihll's notion that the assimila- tion was in these cases only one of written letters, and not of spoken sounds, is deserving of much consideration. But this grouping of the aspirates is such a distinctive feature in the Greek language, that this summary explanation of it seems hardly conclusive and satisfactory. In dealing with dead languages, writing must, if not wholly, yet largely "be our evidence for the original sound," and the constant, regular recurrence of a peculiar orthography is surely of immense importance in determining the sound of the individual letters. This axiom is one generally accepted, and the arguments for discarding it in this one particular case do not appear weighty enough to justify this being done. From this assimilation of a tenuis to a following aspira,te, which except in four or five instances is uniformly observed, it may be justly inferred, we think, that the tenuis did not retain its original sound in this position, but that some distinctly audible change must have taken place in its pronunciation. For if the ^ or ;\; in i^6, ^S still continued to be spoken as a tenuis, 28 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. or was so slightly aspirated that the aspiration was practically inaudible, how is it that the inscriptions, at least the private ones, do not afford numerous instances of exceptions to this artificial orthography yd, (j>d ? The four or five exceptions, such as airdLTOv, " found on archaic and later monuments," seem hardly worth mentioning, as Blass says (vide p. 103), when com- pared with the countless examples still extant of the omission and misplacing of the spiritus asper, due to its weak sound ; so, too, if (pd, yd were practically pronounced as ivQ, k9, we ought to have, not only half-a-dozen, but many dozen instances of such miswritings. It appears somewhat incredible that every stone- mason should have a sufficiently critical eye to discern that it would look incorrect, or that he should remember his schooling so well as never to forget that it would be inconsistent with the law of assimilation to write a tenuis before an aspirate, and therefore always carefully wrote two aspirates, even though he pronounced the first of the two exactly, or very nearly, as a tenuis. In short, that their spelling should have been so consistently inconsistent with their speech, is hard to believe, and if other evidence tends to prove that % <^ ^ were real aspirates, it seems more logical to decide that in these groupings also two aspirates . were spoken as well as written, even though it may be quite impossible for an Englishman to pronounce fhth or khth. That it is not an impossible combination to some nations we learn from Sievers {Lautphysiologie, p. 96, note), who says that " Die deutschen Mundarten .... die doppelte Aspiration vermeiden. Ich bemerke dass aber anderwarts z. B. im Armenischen, diese Abneigung nicht besteht und man wirklich zwei nicht homorgane Aspiraten neben einander spricht." We have thus no reason for asserting that two consecutive / o S w Q Z; w H Chap. V. Testimony of tho Grammarians, ANALYSIS OF CHAPTERS V, VI., AND VII. INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF GREEK. ^inaccurate /vahie of their evidence Chap. VI. Testimony of Classical Writers. /interpretation I/depends a good deal on its date. /ttc/xui'a and yjfxitfioiva /oi various terms and ■descriptions ^inaccuracy and variety of definitions paralleled by /-that of modern grammarians. /-Aristophanes' I Scythian of definitions of in- ^ dividual letters. /j)TO Aspir. analogy of German and Hungarian yirviv/xa as used by Dion. Halic. and Schol. on D. Thrax different descriptions in- applicable to real / aspirates X®. D. H's. and Schol, 's on D. Thr. defs. can apply to the spii'antic theory /to be rendered "breath" not "breath- ing " = spiritus asper. yrrpotrdi'jKri rov Trj/ci'yuaTos, not to be taken literally. /uecra. cf. Walker and Sweet on Eng. th. ■pro Spir. Spirants of one nation constantly pronounced as homogeneous tenues '' by another. 'Plato's TTvev/jiaTw&rj | not definite enough to allow of any conclusion. , *. D. H's. and Arist. Quint.'s defs. applicable to a bi-labial spirant /X. D. H. and A. Q. vagn Schol. on Dion, Thrax seems most unsatisfactory. Schol. on Dion. Thr.<ix describes a spirantic ^. V Chap. VII. Early Orthography. the writing IIH, KH /why abandoned, if it denoted the phonetic value l/we do not find TH. /the writing ®H /may denote aspiration. I/paralleled by insertion of A after other letters. /pro Aspir. ko", -tto- another substitute. i yX"'' "^o- = ^> V \/pro Spir. /the Naxian hs as substitute for ^o-- 1/some raciis may have heard a softer spirantic element in the first factor cf. German chs. THE GRAMMARIANS. 29 aspirates would have been a combination impossible for the Greeks to pronounce, and the supposition that they did speak two aspirates is more satisfactory than Von der MiihU's suggestion. And yet if they were both pronounced as aspirates, should ■we not have more instances of tenues being miswritten for one or both of them, seeing that the interchange of tenuis and aspirate is so very frequent in the case of ^ngle letters ? CHAPTER V. THE GRAMMARIANS. We now enter upon our especial investigation of the internal evidence of Greek itself, and will begin it by estimating the testimony of the Grammarians as to the nature of x4'^- Unfortunately they are not very accurate in their definitions and descriptions of the different letters; some of their expla- nations can easily be interpreted in different ways to suit different views, and others are obscure and therefore but of little help to us. The only way of getting an insight into their meaning is, we take it, not to quote, or read, a few isolated lines which bear upon the particular letters under discussion, but to read all they say about the letters, which is never very much, and try to catch their spirit and look at the letters from their point of view and not our own. We should further take into account the times in which these different grammarians and other writers who mention the subject lived, as the worth of their evidence for the pronunciation of the classical period 30 THE GREEK ASPIEATES. depends a good deal on this — and it has not heen sufficiently taken into account as yet. So little is known of the lives of the different authorities that their dates can only he very roughly fixed, hut if -we do this, we shall find the following to be their chronological order : — r Dionysius Thrax . . . fl. B.C. 80. \ Dionysius Halic. . . . " B.C. 30. ' Aristides Quintil. . . . " a.d. 100 ? L. and S. " 3rd cent. Blass. Sextus Empiricus . . . " A.D. 220. Diogenes Laertius . . . " A.D. 280 ? Only two therefore lived in the pre-Christian era, and that long after the classical period of Greek literature, whilst the others all wrote at a time when % </> ^ were almost undoubtedly spirants. Blass does not seem to take this fact into con- sideration at all, as he says Aristides Quint, lived in the third century, then quotes his words, and immediately adds " accord- ''■'^9^'!/ X ^ ^ were instantaneous and explosive " ; " accordingly " here meaning " according to Dionys. Hal. and Aristides Quintil.," and yet these two were separated by an interval of at least one- and-a-half centuries, so that their evidence ought not to be » taken as of equal value, and if Aristides Quint, did not live till the third century A.D., % ^ ^ had by his time almost certainly become spirants. The scholiast on Dion. Thrax, whose remarks can profitably be compared with those of Dion. Halic, is of very uncertain date, probably between 500 and 700 A.D. ; at any rate of a time when x4'^ vrere spirants. We will now proceed to sift their evidence and see what we gain from it. THE GRAMMARIANS 31 Dion. Thrax and Dion, Halic. both reckon % ^ ^ among the mutes or a(f>a)va, and the latter defines mutes aright as being those oaa ovre Ta<; reXeta? oiire ra? ^/itreXeia? <f)(ova<; e'^ei Kad' kavrh, fied' erepcov Be i/ctjxoveiTai, and the rjfii^ava are those oaa fjtera /lev rmv ifxovrjivTfov Kpelrrov iK(f)epeTai, Kad' eavTo, Be -^elpov re koI ovk avToreXS)';, and to this class, he says, belong among others X, yit and v. These liquids are so called because in them there is no complete stoppage of the breath, whereas in y(^ ^ 6, if real aspirates, there would be complete stoppage at first. However, that some uncertainty existed as to the class to which % ^ should belong, is shown by the fact that the Stoics (according to Diog. Laert.) did reckon them among the '^fiicjxova. But^ even ii ■^ <f) were spirants, they would very likely from force of habit and accord- ing to some old-established division of the letters, made perhaps when the old writing IIH and KH still existed, have been classed with the mutes. That the term a^wva was certainly used in a very loose manner is shown by the fact that Dion. Thrax, the only other pre-Christian authority, gives a very different definition of the word from that given by Dion. Halic, and one that is practically of no use for phonetics, for he includes all the letters except the seven vowels under the name a-vp,^a>va and then divides these into rip,i<ficova and d<j)<ova according to their being more or less euphonic, thus : a,(f>co va Be Xiyerai OTi fiaXXov T&v aXXcov icrrl KaKoipava, wairep a<f>o)vov Xeyo/iev rpaypBov tov kuko^wvov, and again, '^ p, i (fi to v a Be Xeyerai on trapoa-ov ^ttov twv ^minjevrcov evifxova KadecrrrjKev iv Toi<; p,vyfiol<; Kol cn.yp.ol's, about which the Scholiast very justly remarks : koI evravda a<f)cova Xeyerai w? KaKo^eova, kuI ovk w? reXeo)? (fjeovrj'; ecrreprj/ieva. And this is our oldest authority, who is often adduced as a 32 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. witness for the aspirate pronunciation of ;j^ ^ because he places them amongst the a<f)Q)va or mutes. He certainly reckons them among the dcpwpa, but whether his atjxapa mean what our " mutes " mean, must remain an open question as long as our knowledge of what he meant by a(f>cova is limited to his definition that I have quoted — in other words, as long as we do not know what sounds he would have called ev(j>cova and which KaKOJxova. The evidence of Dion. Thrax is but of very little value to us, therefore, as no argument can be based on premises which are indefinite and not accurately stated. Aristides Quint, does not define d<p(ova at all. Another passage which shows the wide sense allowed to the term d<f>a3va is Plato, Theaet. 203 B, where he says : to a-ty/ia rS)v dtfxovcov earl, i}r6(j)og n<; fiovov. . . . ' that is, he reckons s among the dcfxava and calls it " a mere noise " and goes on to say "h and most other letters are neither vowel-sounds nor noises. . . . The most distinct, which are the' seven-vowels, have a sound only." Brilcke says this proves that Plato understood under dcjieova those letters " in which the sound of the voice was wanting," i.e. our consonants. Further, it must be noted that though here he places cr among the d<p(ova, he evidently ^ knew of the subdivision rj/jLL^cova as we see by referring to Crat. 424 C, where he divides the letters into three classes, (1) (fxovijevTa, (2) a^cova koi dejjdoyya, (3) (fxov^evra fiev ov, oil fievToi, ye. d<^6oyya, 1 ( = ^fii<j)a)va). But really it is perfectly needless to argue on this point, as the science of phonetics had certainly not by the end of the pre-Christian era attained that accuracy which it has now, and subdivisions of letters into sibilants, fricatives, &c., and the distinction between aspirates and spirants had very likely ne.ver THE GRAMMARIANS. 33 been heard, or thought of, and of the five or six Greek writers who mention any classification only the two, Dion. Hal. and Dion. Thrax, can lay any claim to the name " Grammarian " — the others may have known no more of " phonology " than any ordinary well-educated man or woman, — so that, even ii ■)(^^d were spirants in their time and yet they classified them under mutes, it does not appear very astounding. For if a man in 1892 can classify the English spirants /, v, th under mutes although they have alwaj's been spirants, and never aspirates, in his language, then it is quite comprehensible that a man of B.C. 30, who had by no means the same opportunities of learning the correct phonological name to be applied to the individual letters, should also classify under mutes letters which in his own time were spirants, but had in a former period of the language been aspirates. And in order to see that English spirants are still classified by some under mutes, we need only turn to the twenty-fifth edition of Adams' English Language, pp. 59-61, where we shall find that/, V, th are classed with^, h, i under the big heading " Mutes," and are called aspirated mutes or aspirates, and this in a book published in 1892. . The Stoics, however, apparently considered ;)^ ^ ^ to be r)fi,i^(ova (Sext. Emp. is uncertain whether to call thera'ai/xai/a or y/nicjicova), and to show that, even if spirants, they might well have been so called, we can refer to Murray's English Grammar, 1853, where /, V, th are called " semivowels " (vol. i. p. 35). The mistake of calling English th, v, f "mutes" and " aspirates " does not occur in all English grammars of course ; Mason and Morris, for instance, call them " spirants '' and " continuous consonants " respectively — yet the fact that any grammarians should still call them " mutes " and " aspirates " I) 34 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. shows the direful confusion which still exists as to the true use of these terms. Supposing then for the sake of the argument that X'P^ '^^^^ spirants in the time of Dion. Hal. and the Stoics, we have aa exact parallels to their calling them a^wva and ■^fiicjiwva respectively, the case of two English grammarians of this century, who call the English spirants " mutes " and " semivowels " respectively. Of course this evidence by no means proves, or is intended to prove that y(^<j)d in Dion. Hal.'s time were spirants, but it is only adduced to prove that it is utterly futile to try and base any argument as to the specific nature oi ■x^tj) on the fact of their being called by two grammarians a<^aivd and by other writers not grammarians, either d(f>(ova or ■^fio(j>o)va. We see then that if the word " mutes " is still often used in a loose and improper manner, the term d(j>a)va may well have been similarly used in an age when only very rough and large classi- fications of the letters had been made. We will now pass on to the examination of Dion. Halic.'s other remarks, and will first take the passages in which the word TTvevfia occurs, to see what he meant by it. After speaking of the vowels Dion. Halic. says : — (a) p. 75 rovTwv Brj (i.e. of the vowels) <f>eovrjv rjSiarrij/ diroTeXei ra /jLaKpd...0Ti iroXvv ^■^elrai "^ovov «ai tou irvev- fia T o <; ov KaraKOlTTei rbv tovov. (b) then on p. 83, rpia (lev eKcfxavelTai utto twv veiXewv cLKpmv, TO TT (j) 13, orav, tou arofiaTO'i •jne<r6ivT0<!, t o IT p o ^ aXX 6 fi 6 V o V € K Trj <! ap T r) p i a<; ir v ev fia Xvay Tov SecTfiov aiiTov. (c) p. 84 : fiia /x,ev avrr) crv^vyia rpowv jpafifiaTcov a(\>wvav o/ioim <7y(r]/xaTi Xeyofievmv, •yjnXorriTi 8e Kal BacrvTrjTi (tov TTvev/iaTOf) Bia(j)ep6vT03v. THE GRAMMARIANS. 35 {d) ih. Tpla he aXKa Xeyerai, t^? yXaiaarjis dxpo) to3 GTOfJiaTL "TrpotrepeiBofievi^^ Kara tov? ixerewporepov; 6S6vTa<;, kireid' V IT o r o V "Trvevfiaro^ v'iroppa'in^o/j,evri<;, koX ttjv 8ie^f)Bov a V T m irepl tov<; oBovra^ d'7roStSovar]<;, to t koL to 6 KaX TO B (c) ib. Tpia he to. Xotira tcov a^mvcav XeyeTai fj,ev, ttj? yXcoTTTji; avKTTa/jievrj'i kuto. tov ovpavov e'^jv^ Tfj<; ^dpvjyo<i, Kol Tr}<} apT7]pia<; virri'^ovari'; Tm irv ev p,aT i, to k ')( y. ovhevl ravTa hia<j)ipovTa tcS ay^ijfiaTi aXXijXtov, TrXiju oti to /j,h> k ■\}nXa)<; \eyeTat, to he ^ haaeta^, to he y /MeTpieov koI p,eTa^v TOVTCOV. (f) p. 85, he adds : xpanaTa fiev ovv iaTlv oa-a t £ ir v e v- p, a T I TToWoS Xeyerat" hevTepa he, oaa p, e cr m (tt v e v p a t !,)• KUKiQ) he, oa-a i^t\o3 {tt v ev p ut i) TavTa pev yap ttjv eain&v hvvapLLV eyei povrjv Ta he haaea kuI triv tov it v e v p ut o<; •jr p o a 6 rj KT) V, ci)? efyYV? tov TeXeioTUTa elvai. If these passages are read through one after the other with unbiased mind, the best and only really possible translation of TTvevpa will, we think, be admitted to be " breath " or " stream of air," and as, when the whole description of the letters is read connectedly, it is quite clear that the writer uses the word -jrvevpa throughout in one and the same sense, it should also be so trans- lated in every case; In extracts (a), (6), (d) and (e) it is self- evident that it means "breath" or "stream of air," then apply- ing this same translation to extnact (jc) we get that " the first set of three mutes which are pronounced with the same vocal organ, are distiuguished from each other by the weakness or strength of the stream of air [or breath] " used in pronouncing them and NOT that they are distinguished by the weakness or strength of the " breathing," with " breathing " taken to mean the " spiritus lenis " or " fortis" respectively; and siiriilarly extract D 2 36 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. (/) must be translated :—" The strongest are those, which are pronounced with a strong stream of air [or much "breath"], the second, those pronounced with a moderate one and the weakest those pronounced with a scanty amount of Ireath [weak one] ; for these last letters have only their own force, whereas the Sao-ea have the help of the stream of air [or " the addition of the breath "] and thus come near to being the most perfect letters." And when he says they are near being the most perfect letters he is evidently comparing them with the vowels, and the reason he has given for their being such is because " they do not check the current of the breath [or "interrupt the sound of the voice "] or stream of air." Here certainly no one would wish to translate " tov TrvevfiaTc; " as " a breathing i.e. an h," for how could it be said of the long vowels that " they have the pleasantest sound because they do not check, or break off, the sound of the ' A. '" ? Then why in the case of the letters Xi^^, which Dion, is evidently mentally comparing with the vowels and thinking they are very nearly as perfect as the vowels and only a little inferior because they have TrpoadijKrjv TOV TTvev/jLaTOi whereas the vowels are altogether Trvevfia, — why in this obvious comparison should the crucial word on which the whole comparison is based be differently translated in the twq, branches of the comparison ? Why in the second clause should irvevfia mean a " breathing i.e. an h '' when it cannot possibly bear the same meaning in the first clause ? And, as a side- question, which are generally considered to be more similar in nature to vowels, aspirated mutes or spirants ? Evidently spirants, if they " according to the ancient nomenclature ought to be called rjfil^wva" (cf. Blass, p. 100). From this consistent and impartial translation we get a description of the d^cova which, as Blass also finds, certainly THE GRAMMARIANS. 37 suits the modern pronunciation of tt /3 &c., even though it may not prove it, but neither does it prove that % ^ were real aspirates. Dion. Thrax does not himself use the word irvevfjia in his short account of the letters, but his scholiast does and, as he wrote when ,8 and </> were spirants, it will be instructive to compare his use of Trvevfia with that of Dion. Halic. Dion. Halic. Scholiast. KpaTiara. . .ocra too tt v e v- haaea he...ra 7roX\c3 fiaT I TToWaj Xer^eraf ir vev fiar i eK^wvov- Sevrepa Se, baa fie (7 m- fieva- fieaa Se, t^ fi-^ t e KaKico Be ocra ^jr iX £. ir oWa fii] t e oXi y a> (—fiea-a)) yjriXa Si XeyeTai, TO, 6X I y a) TTvevfiart. and again ovSevi T a V T a («%7) /car' oiSev yap hiac^epet to 8 lacj) e po V T a t£ ^XV- "" "^^^ ^> ^' A'V o''"' fie t a fiari aXXrjX(ov,TrXr]v tt oXX o v tt v ev fia t o <; o r I TO K yjriXa)<: Xiy e- eK(j)(oveiTai. T at, T b Be x B aa e (o <s ( = iroXXS TTvevfiari). These descriptions tally in a wonderful degree if we are to believe that one of these writers still pronounced % ^ ^ as aspirates and the other pronounced them as spirants : they seem rather to point to a pronunciation common to both, always supposing that in both cases we translate Trvevfia by " stream of air " or " breath." They both alike lay stress on the fact that the i/rtXa and Baaea only differ from each other in that the latter are pronounced iroXXm irvevfiaTi. Further, here should be noticed, what seems to have been quite left out 38 THE GREEK ASPIEATES. of sight, that these old grammarians counted letters as " in no wise differing " as long as they were pronounced " with the same organ of speech " — eK^wvovfieva Kara tov avrov rpoirov TMv (jxovriTiKaiv opydveov. Thus, because tt was an d^covov and pronounced with the lips, /3 and ^ being also labials would come under the same heading as tt, i.e. under the first set of d^cova, and this regardless of whether they were mutes or semi-vowels (■^fj.i<pQ}va.). Similarly t B 6 and « 7 % being placed in two distinct sets as dtjxova does not show that they were all real mutes, but only that for t S ^ the tongue was in one and the same position, and in a different one for all the three « 7 pj;. That this was so is proved by the fact that even the scholiast of Dion. Thrax says that tt and <f> are only distinguished by the ttoXXw irvevixaTb of the latter, otherwise they are the same, because they are eK<j}ci)vovfj,eva Kara tov avrov rpoirov rcov (pavrjrtK&v opydvav ; he nowhere says that (p was not an d<p(ovov but an rjfii^covov, although it is allowed by all that in his time was certainly a spirant or Tjij,i(j)(ovov. Aristid. Quintil. also begins with the three that Sia r&v y^^eiXewv f]-)(elrai jjlovov, and goes on to the dentals and gutturals. As the grammarians divide these letters into three sets according to the organ with which pronounced and make no further distinction between tt and (p, k aud p^;, r and 6 beyond that of the breath, Blass concludes that % <^ ^ were, like Kirr, ex- plosives because, as he says, "in the modern Greek pronun- ciation no one could ever maintain these letters to be mutes." This appears to be a somewhat too hasty conclusion, for the English /, V, th are quite as genuine spirants as the modern Greek x.4> ^> ^^^ 7®*. ^ we before pointed out, they are in many grammars of the present day classified as mutes and, just THE GRAMMARIANS. 39 as the old Greek grammarians divided their nine mutes into three classes according to the different organ of speech em- ployed, so nowadays we still find grainmarians dividing the nine mutes jp, b, f, and v ; t, d, th ; k, g, Scotch ch ; into three classes " according to the part of the mouth chiefly used in pronouncing them," i.e. into labials, dentals, and gutturals, and no further distinction is drawn between them except by saying that they are " sharp or flat, aspirated or unaspirated." Vide Summary of English Grammar, compiled for Notting Hill High School, third edition, Rivington, 1890, p. 5. Could we have a more exact parallel to the procedure of the Greek grammarians ? Thus the fact of the grammarians including % ^ ^ under the mutes does not exclude the possibility of these letters having already been spirants at that time, or, in other words, no argument can be justly based on their classification of mutes. To go back to the word irvevfia. This, in the last extract from Dion. Halic. where he speaks of rrjv irpoaOiqKrjv tov trvevfiaro<;, ttoXXoG, ixia(p and ■yfriXw Trvev/J-aTi, is often trans- lated by " breathing " in the technical sense, and Trpoad^JKi] is translated " addition " in its baldest sense, and thus TrpoaO'^Kr/ TOV irvevfiaro<i is taken to mean " addition of a breathing, i.e. an h " (cf. Blass, p. 99) ; if this is the correct translation, and the two sounds of the tenuis and spiritus asper were distinctly heard and had not coalesced into one, then it is perhaps strange that not a single writer mentions the fact that they have a double soiind, as Dion. Halic. does oi ^ ^ yjr. He particularly says that these are ypdfifiara SiifKa a fiiKrhv Xafi^dvei tov yp-o^ov, then why does he omit to mention that ■)(^<f>d axe also hmXa ? Then again, if -n-vevfia means ' breathing,' w k t, are pro- nounced with a ■y^iXm nTvevfiaTi = spiritus lenis ; cj) ■^ with TToXXw TTpevfiaTi (or Baa-eat;) = with spiritus asper ; and /S 7 S 40 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. with fieam TTj/eu/iart = with half the spiritus asper, or, ex- pressed differently, — IT = Engl. p. /3 = " b + I h. </) = " p + h. Even though there is a distinct difference in sound between a pure tenuis or media and an aspirated ditto, it is difficult to con- ceive of a half-aspirated letter, and would a nation have been able to go on for centuries pronouncing half-aspirated mediae without converting them into real aspirates or pure mediae ? Even if it did achieve such a miracle, one would imagine that p and p + h would have sounded most alike of the three and that /3 would not have been pushed in between the two in a classification. But, in truth, it does seem as if, in connection with the " mediae " especially, -nvevfiaTi cannot bear the forced meaning of " breathing i.e. an h." If it must bear this meaning, then /8 7 S were " half-aspirated " sounds, that is half-aspirated sonant explosives, and if so, it appears incredible that they should have existed as such any length of time in Greece. For, as we learn from Curtius and others, the Indo-Germ. sonant aspirates were certainly difficult to pronounce, and consequently not preserved in Greek and other languages of the Indo-Germanic stock, but converted into surd aspirates or pure mediae. Now, if this was the fate of the fully-aspirated sonant explosives, is it reasonable to suppose that a language which rejected them should for centuries have retained, if not actually introduced, half-aspirated sonant explosives ? We think not. We cannot consequently reconcile ourselves to the idea that in these extracts •7Tvev/j,a should mean " breathing," Trveufj^ari iroXXm = " the strong breathing," &c. It seems a useless perversion of the meaning of the word, which after all does not give a satis- THE GRAMMARIANS. 41 factory proof of the theory it is required to demonstrate, whereas, if we give it its ordinary and natural meaning, then, though it certainly seems to adapt itself better to the spirantic theory, it still remains vague and indefinite and can be used for either. It is also difficult to understand how Dion. Halic. could speak of the Saaea as being nearest to the most perfect letters, the vowels, if they were pronounced as distinct tenues with a breathing, or as KpaTiara, strongest, if they were a weakened form of the tenues. Aristid. Quiutil. (in whose time it must be remembered % (/> ^ were probably spirants) says : ja 8' evSodev ex (j>dpv'y'yo<; d)v6/j,a(7Tai haaea kclv iari, ~Kiav rpw^ea. Aspirated tenues do not answer to this description either very well, as they cannot be called \iav rpa'^ia, whereas this epithet applies very well to the spirants ; every one will doubtless admit that in a%09, for example, the sound is a much rougher one if it is pronounced " Sichos " with Germ, ch than when pronounced ak-hos ; simi- larly in Adrjvai = Athrjvai. with Engl, th, or = At-h^i^at, the spirantic ^ is a much rougher sound. The breath, too, is not brought energetically from the larynx in pronouncing the aspirated tenues, but simply from the front of the mouth, whereas for the spirants it is most decidedly brought ener- getically from the larynx and the rough sound is produced. As regards the individual letters 6 cf) and ^, it is generally taken that the description of Dion. Halic. proves them to have been aspirates in his time, whereas that of the Scholiast of Dion. Thrax shows that in his time they were spirants. We will take them singly and examine what is said about each. 0. From extract (d) from Dion. Halic. (p. 33) we see that for all three letters alike rSd he says " the tongue is pressed against the upper teeth," whereas the Scholiast says that for 0, t^s 42 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. yKcaa-arj'; air o'^(o pov a rf <; t & v 6 B 6 v r (o v Koi Trape'X^ovarji; e^oBov To3 TToXXeS TrvevfiaTi- — and hence it is argued by Prof. Blass (p. 99) that 6 according to Dion. Halic. is an explosive, not a fricative, " because the tongue is not pressed against the teeth in making the th-sound, but only brought near," just as the Scholiast says that for 6 the tongue is no longer pressed against the teeth as it is for t but comes away from them. (Aristid. Quint, does not mention the position of the tongue in pronouncing 6, and is therefore not referred to on this point.) Now is it a correct statement to assert that in pronouncing the spirant th as in English (and modern Greek) the tongue " is not pressed against the teeth, but only brought near " ? We quote the words of two English writers on the subject, of whom the one has made Phonetics a special study and is generally taken as an authority. T. Walker, Principles of English Pronunciation says : " th in ' think ' and ' that ' are formed by protruding the tongue between the iore-ieeih., pressing it against the tipper teeth and at the same time endeavouring to sound the s or z ; " and Prof. Sweet, Primer of Phonetics, p. 79, says of th in " thin " and " then " : — " Certainly the most distinct form of these consonants is that produced by placing the tip of the tongue firmly en the hack of the upper teeth and forcing the breath partly between the interstices of the teeth, partly between the sides of the tongue-tip and the surface of the teeth ; but they can be — and often are — formed by bringing the tongue against the gums without touching the teeth.'' Thus Walker agrees with Dion. Halic, and Sweet in his description of the "most distinct" pronunciation of th also agrees with Dion. Halic. in every point, whilst the rest of his definition answers to that of the Scholiast. THE GRAMMARIANS. 43 It is then clearly wrong to say that the description of Dion. Halic. could not be applied to d pronounced as a spirant, seeing that it exactly resembles that which Sweet gives for the pro- nunciation of our English t?i, ; for we do not think that the meaning of 'iireira in Dion. Halic. is to be so forced as to imply that the first action, that of closure, must necessarily be at an end before the second begins. Briicke (p. 53) says of the hard English th and Mod. Greek 6 " that it is of no consequence whether the tip of the tongue lies between the teeth, is pressed against the lower teeth, or lies just behind the upper teeth . . ." and then he proceeds in words which might almost be a free modern translation of the second half of Dion. Halic.'s sentence on t Bd: "Das wesentliche fiir diesen Laut ist, da.ss die Zunge mii den oberen Schneide?dhnen, und zwar mit ihnon allein die Enge hildet uiid durch die Enge wird der Luftstrom hervorgetrieben." The description given by Aristides Quint, for t S d is vague and does not mention the position of the tongue, but only that "the teeth must be a little apart and the tongue hurls forth the breath, so to speak, through the opening thus formed." This is not at all exact but in general meaning seems to be identical with Briicke's description. Add to the words of Dion. Halic. the words of Arist. Quint, that for the Saaii, 6, the breath must be brought from the larynx and we obtain a perfect and complete description of our pro- nunciation of spirant th. Thus the argument that 6 pronounced according to Dion. Halic.'s description must certainly be an explosive, not a spirant, entirely falls to the ground — because from it d might be either. We pass on to 0. Here Dion. Halic. and Aristid. Quint, write : Toy a-TOfiaTOi; •jriea&ivTO'; TO-.-irvev/jLa Xvar) top Bea-fiop avTov 44 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. and TO, fiev "jt ^ (j) Sia t&v j^eiKiwv rjj^jUTai, (jlovov tov irvev/MaTOi; TTjv efj.(f>pa^iv avTOiv Kara /lecrov ex^ia^o/iivov, respectively ; whereas the Scholiast on Dion. Thrax says that for <f) dvoiyo- fiivcov Se T&v ')(6ike(ov iravv Kal irveviiaTO'i ttoXXoO i^covra eK^Qyveirai rb (f), — and here the objection urged against a possible spirantic pronunciation of is, that the lips are not closed in producing /. They are, it is true, not closed in producing our dento-labial /, but even the Modern Greek does not correspond exactly to our "/," and in ancient times, if it was a spirant, it was presumably bilabial. The descriptions given by Dion. Hal. and Arist. Quint, of the manner of articulating ^ are certainly in every point correct, if ^ was an aspirate ; at the same time it must be remembered that these definitions may have been inaccurate and may rather denote the general characteristics of each group of three letters than the little differences in the peculiar method of articulating each individual letter. If, on the other hand, ^ was a spirant, not an aspirate, can their definitions be accepted as in any way applicable to a bilabial spirant? Dion. Hal. uses the expression to irvev/jLa... Xvay TOV Secr/Moi' and Arist. speaks of the ef^^pa^tv rSyv ■X^eiXeoiv, both of which indicate closure of the lips. According ^^ to Sweet (p. 30) no spirant is pronounced with closure or e/j,(l>pa^i<;, whereas others {v. Ebel. K.Z. xiii. p. 265) say bilabial spirant (f) is pronounced by keeping the lips closed as for tt and then blowing through them. Some of the Greeks themselves too say that they press the lips quite as closely together in pronouncing (j) as in pro- nouncing TT. The scholiast's description, on the other hand, is most un- satisfactory — the lips are never " wide open " in producing (f>. THE GRAMMARIANS. 45 be it pronounced as aspirate or spirant, unless he means that after the breath has gone forth, the lips are forced open, but then that would apply equally well, or better, to the explosive it. Lastly, we come to ^y. In the pronunciation of this letter "the tongue rises to the palate near the throat," Dionysius Halic. says, as it also does for k and 7 ; he is thus evidently here describing a palatal k 7 and pj;. — Whether aviaTafievri<; 7rpb<;. . .here means " is raised to " in the sense of " being pressed against " is, we venture to think, doubtful — it may do so and thus Blass evidently interprets it, for he argues that from this description complete closure of the vocal passage was required for sounding ^, but this is rather forcing the meaning of avia-Tafj,€vri<; tt/so? which seems to denote simply approximation of the tongue to the palate and to leave indefinite whether partial or complete closure took place. There is not much difference between Dion. Halic.'s definition of the palatal letters and that of Sievers who (p. 53) says : Unter Pa,latalen verstehen wir die durch Articulation des mittleren Zungenriickens gegen den harten Gaumen gebildeten k-ahnlichen Verschlusslaute und die diesen entsprechenden Spiranten e.g. ■x^. Certainly the avia-Ta/xeiir]<; 7r/3o?...of Dionysius Halic. is so vague that, as he gives no further explanation of his meaning, we are left quite in the dark as to whether he really intended to denote complete closure by these words and to include all three letters under explosives, or whether both 7 and x '^^ ^^^7 Y were already spirants — if we had no further explanation of the nature of k and spirant ch from Sievers than the sentence quoted above, and no other grammarians to refer to, it would be difficult to tell wherein as regards the position of the tongue the difference between Germ. Jc and ch lay. 46 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. Aristides Quintilian says of this group : to. Se ^;\;6tTat, rrj<; fiev irapeia<i VTroaaipovar)<;, rov Be irveviiaTO's payoaito^ Kac €i? TrXaro? 7rpo'i6/j,ivov. This description is almost useless as he omits all mention of the tongue, -which is the most important factor in the sounding of these letters, and what he does say is hard to interpret. That the cheeks should "grin a little" recalls the advice of Modern Greeks, who when trying to explain to foreigners how to pronounce their spirant pj; constantly tell them to pull down the corners of the mouth. The Scholiast on Dion. Thrax gives us a more accurate de- scription of the letter ■)(^ than he does of any other, as, after saying that for K the tongue is pressed against the palate, he goes on to say of ■^, Trj<; yXd}TTr]<; firj Trpoa-TriXovfiivr]^ firjB' oXax; avvaiTTOfiivrj^ t«5 ovpaviffKfo, which is of course the correct description of a spirant ■^. We have thus endeavoured to show, firstly, that the remarks of the grammarians must be used with caution, as they are very incomplete and we do not know definitely in what sense they use terms they employ, nor do we know for certain when Aristides Quintilian for instance lived, which is of importance for the value of his evidence ; and, secondly, that if the remarks are carefully examined and weighed, compared with each other » and with the remarks of modern grammarians, and translated in an impartial way and suitably to the context, they are at the best very hazy, indefinite and often incomprehensible. In fact it is useless to try and derive conclusive arguments as to the specific nature of the letters involved from these sparse remarks of the grammarians, whose classifications may have been no less, or even more, faulty than those of some English and German grammarians of the present day. ARISTOPHANES AND PLATO. CHAPTER VI. ARISTOPHANES AND PLATO. Apart from the grammarians we can glean very little from Greek writers to help us in deciding the probable pronunciation of'x^Kpff, but what there is we will now briefly examine : — In Aristoph. Thesm. 1. 1183 S. a Scythian is introduced who pronounces the ■)(^^0 oi the Greek words as ktt t, for instance TvyaTptov for Ovydrpiov, airoTpeKe, iXairpos, Kaplev, KeTraXy^ and so on. From this barbarian's manner of imitating the aspirates Curtius and Peile draw the conclusion that % </> ^ were certainly still real aspirates in Aristophanes' time, but we do not consider this conclusion justifiable. Let us compare the pronunciation of this foreigner of ancient times with that of foreigners of present times and see whither this will lead us. The French pronounce the Modern Greek spirants '^^ and hsk and T, the Germans likewise say t or d for and, what is more remarkable, they nearly all say k for ^^ in spite of their having a spirant 'ch' in their own language, and the English also generally say k for ■x^; the is of course pronounced by all these as f. Similarly French and Germans say t or d for English spirant ' th,' the Russians say t or f for 0, the Arabians of Egypt and Syria pronounce the hard Arabic ' th ' as t, and the Slavs and Lithuanians represent Modern Greek ^ and f by p, and German ch by k (c/, Blass, p. 102). 48 THE GREEK ASPIEATE8. Thus then we see that in very many cases the spirants of a language are pronounced as the homogeneous tenues by people of other nations, and that the present spirantic ;y; 9 ^ are usually pronounced as kttt by those who cannot pronounce them correctly. This being so, is it a just deduction to make that because the Scythian in Aristophanes said tt k t instead of X ^, these latter must have then been true aspirates, when we see that the French, German, and Slavs of to-day say tt /& t instead of spirant ^ x ^ ? It by no means seems reasonable to make such a deduction in the face of the facts we have men- tioned, as it might with equal justice be argued that since spirantic (/> x ^ are often in the present day spoken as tt « t by foreigners, then the Scythian's saying tt /c t for the ancient <^ x ^ must prove they were then what they are now, that is, spirants. However it is unnecessary and impossible to arrive at a definite conclusion as to the value of ancient ^ x ^ from these Scythian mispronunciations — for, if they were true aspirates and he had none in his own language, he would naturally have spoken them as tenues ; or again, if they were spirants and he had none similar to them in his mother-tongue, he would probably have spoken these too as tenues, as is so constantly being done at the present time. And, just as Aristophanes ridiculed the Scythian in his play, so the foreign pronunciation of the Modern Greek spirants is often now introduced on the stage and certainly has a very comic effect. An argument often advanced by the supporters of the spirantic pronunciation of ^ x ^ is> ^"^^^ if these letters had been real aspirates, then the difference in sound between them and the Scythian's pure tenues would not have been noticeable or peculiar enough to have aroused the mirth of a mixed Athenian audience. It does seem doubtful whether it would have been ARISTOPHANES AND PLATO. 49 distinct enough and yet the probability is that it would have been, for we find that the Germans laugh at the Czechs of Bohemia when the latter pronounce pure tenues in German words — and this habit is often made the subject of jokes in comic papers — and vice versa Hungarians laugh at Germans when they aspirate the tenues of Magyar words. Thus this Reuchlinian argument falls to the ground, but so also does that of the Erasmians who judge from the Scythian's mistakes that 4>X^ must have been aspirates, and thus we are reduced to deciding that this passage of Aristophanes is of no assistance to us at all. We must also remember to leave a little margin for exaggerations in the caricatures of a comic poet, and can there- fore not rely sufficiently upon him to assert that all Scythians always said tt for <f) and 'ApTefj,ov^t'a for ' Aprefitcria. The only other passage we need mention is Plato, Cratylus, 427 A. hia Tov <f> Kol Tov yfr Koi tov a- Koi tov ^, on irvevfia- TcoSrj T^ ypafi/iara, iravTa to, Toiavra /Me/JfifirjTat avroi<; ovo/xd^eov, olov to ifrv^pov koi to ^eov /cal to aeieadat, Kal 6 creia-fibi;, Kal OTav ttov to ipvcratSei; fitfifJTai, iravTa'^ov evTuvda o)? to iroXii to, TOiavTa rypd/j,fx,aTa iirKpipeiv <f)aiveTai 6 TO, ovofiaTa Oe/jLevo<;. This Jowett translates as follows : " And there is another class of letters, ^ yjr <r ^, oi which the pronunciation is accompanied by great expenditure of breath ; these are used in the imitation of such notions as '\jrvy(p6p &c., and are always introduced by the giver of names when he wants to imitate what is windy (^uo-wSe?)." This Raumer takes as a positive proof of ^ having in Plato's time been a spirant, whUe Blass thinks it should not be so taken, and seems to find an explanation of the epithet TrvevfiaTwBrj in the fact that " a- has an aspirating power," and translates the sentence " ^ i|r cr f are letters with a strong breathing." E 50 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. There can, however, be no doubt that Plato did not intend to convey any such notion by his word Trvevf^aTtoSr), if the passage is read in connection with the context, and especially with the next sentence, which says "these letters are used to imitate what is ' windy ; ' " hence TrvevfiaTcoSTj must mean, as Jowett says, that they require a great deal of breath. Placed in juxtaposi- tion with simple and compound sibilants as it is here, and then further being designated as one of the letters which is used to imitate what is "windy," certainly seems as if it would answer better to this description if =/than if it were =p +h, and it would also more fitly be ranked with sibilants. Without further evidence to confirm it these few words of Plato's are not sufficient to settle the fact of cj) being a spirant, but such as they are, they certainly seem to indicate that it was such and no longer a real aspirate. CHAPTEK VII. EARLY ORTHOGRAPHY. There are various isolated facts connected with the ancient orthography which are taken as confirmation of the aspiratic ^ pronunciation oi ■^cjid, and amongst them is this one : that "those Greek races which did not possess the non-Phoenician symbols cj) and x, in tliose cases where they were not satisfied with the simple tenues, adopted the writing IIH, KH." Among the races who were content with the simple tenues were the Cretans, who wrote tt and k for and 'x^ — e.g. icpifmra = 'X^prifiaTa. The inhabitants of Thera and Melos, however, wrote IIH, KH for ^ and x '> e.g. eKirhavToi, = eK^avTou, for in the oldest inscriptions from these two islands and which EARLY ORTHOGRAPHY. 51 Kirchhoff attributes to the second half of the seventh century B.C. there are no special signs for ^ i/r </> p^;, and in place of the two latter irh, kK are consistently written, which fact is held to prove that and ;)^ were on these islands at this period pronounced as explosives followed by an " h." It is perhaps, however, unwise to draw this absolute conclusion, for although IIH, KH are written for ;)^, TH is on no inscription written for 0, but always 6 or @H, and these writings for ^ and ;y; may, for all we can tell, be merely a clumsy attempt at representing the spirants for which, owing to the then in- complete state of the Greek alphabet, they had no special signs, whereas the aspirate or spirant 6, for which they had a Phoenician sign, is never resolved into its component parts. These old writings can no more be used as incontrovertible proof of the aspiratic nature of <^ and ;j^ than the English writing " th " and the German " ch " could be used hereafter to prove that these " th " and " ch " were spoken as explosives followed by an " h." But it seems much more strange that, if ^ ;)(; were really spoken as explosives followed by an "h," the Greeks should have felt the need of new signs to express them — if IIH, KH exactly denoted their phonetic value, why was this writing abandoned and another adopted which did not clearly represent their sound ? It seems a needless and rather senseless inno- vation on the assumption that and ;)^ were aspirates; if they were spirants, it is easily comprehensible. Still, even ii ^ 'x^ 6 were real aspirates, the necessity for the introduction of these signs may very well have been that the value of H itself had changed, so that it now denoted rj and consequently HH, KH could no longer be used to denote p + h and k -f- h. E 2 52 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. Again, that 6 was au aspirate, and further that a need was sometimes felt to distinctly express the breathing which followed the tenuis, is said to be shown by the writings 0hapv/jLaKha, dhapvfia^ho^ on the old Thera inscriptions, I.G.A. 444,449. Similar perhaps is ^hpahcrov from Naxos, I.Q.A. 407, if the <J> is correct, but it is doubtful, and even so the h here possibly belongs to the p, not to the ^. We must notice also that it is only twice that the " spiritus asper " is written after Q on the Thera inscriptions, on the others it is plain 6, e.g. OeoOefMo';, ih. 469 ; 'Op6oKKri<;, ib. 451 ; ^eros, ib. 456, &c. This insertion of the " h " after 6 may denote its aspiratic nature, but it may also have no real meaning. The spiritus asper was used somewhat loosely in Greek ; in Old Attic it is sometimes inserted between vowels, it also appears after initial \, p, and p, e.g. Xheaiv, fiheydpei,, its insertion in these places is explained by Blass (p. 88) as due to the fact that \ and p, when initial had their fullest, and not a weak, sound, as /i especially had when medial. This same explanation might stand for the aspiration of initial 0, or otherwise the insertion may in these two cases very likely be an error. Brugmann (GreeJc Grammar ^, p. 65) says that the insertion » of the "spiritus asper" after the liquids showed that they were voiceless in these cases. Another circumstance generally taken to prove that ^ and </> were real aspirates up to the time of Eukleides at any rate, is this : that before the introduction of the symbols f -yjr, the inscriptions from Attica, Styra in Euboea, and Cumae in Italy employed -x^a; ^o- for them, e.g. ehoxosv, ypdcfxTat, C.I.J. 21 ; Cumae K\e<j)a€, I.G.A. 524 ; Styra Mo^o-%9, but also xapoTri ; whilst in Amorgos and Thera they employed «cr, tto-, which EARLY ORTHOGRAPHY. 53 latter is undoubtedly the most correct manner of resolving the sounds ^, 1^, e.g.. Aafiira-ayopeio, Bechtel, Inschr. d. ion. Dial. No. 29, from Amorgos ; 'VeKo-dvwp I.G.A. 451, Ua-riv ib. 461, from Thera. Now what do the writings p(;o-, <^cr mean ? That ^=k + A. + ? and -^=77 + ^+9 or that ^ = cA + 9 and 1^ = / + 9 ? If it means the former the h must certainly in this position have been all but inaudible, and then with the extremely slight difference in sound there can only have been between such a kTi, Trh and pure «, tt it is curious that plain ira-, Ka are never inadvertently written for ^o", ')(<j- in the pre-Eukleidean Attic inscriptions, especially in such a word as e'f , which even stone- masons probably knew was another form of sk and yet we never find 6'«9 but e;j(;9. To say that kJi, •jrh were liable to be heard instead of k, it ^because ^ was a jpdfifia irvevfiaT&Se^ is not sufficient explanation — we have no authority for saying that a lypdjifia irvevfiaTMSef means a " letter which has an h as one of its component parts." Another fact which militates against our rashly assuming that the % ^ in ■x,a; ^o" were aspirated tenues, and not spirants, is that on the archaic inscription of the sixth century B.C. from Naxos {I.G.A. 407) neither ko- nor ;i^o- are employed for ^ but ha- (gS) : thus e\-(To-xp';, 'Na\- clov, ^ypdyaov; while on a later Naxos inscription of the fifth or beginning of the fourth century B.C. {I.G.A. 410) %cr (X^) is used, e.g. ' AXxcTrjvtop, Na;\;o-to9. These two facts when looked at side by side at once suggest, firstly, that the first component in the letter f was a spirant at least to Naxian ears, if ha could be employed for |; and, secondly, that ;)^ must have been a spirant also, if it was after- wards used for h in ')(a- as = f . Unfortunately i/r or a substitute for it does not occur on the ancient Naxian inscription, ■ 54 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. Another ancient inscription of the fifth or fourth century B.C. also found on the island Naxos which has Aa)po(f>ea for AapoOea (the <f> is very distinct), cf. Bull. Oorr. hell. ix. p. 495, makes us think that and must have been spirants in Naxos by the fourth century B.C., and if these two letters were spirants then, that would make it still more probable that x should have been one too. It is quite likely that some races heard a hard explosive as the first component in | and yjr, and others a softer, spirantic element and therefore .represented these compound sounds differently. In any case the name •n-vevfiarmSe'; would apply equally well to ^ and ■s]r ; as Plato includes o- under that class likewise, the mere fact that a was one of the components of ^ and yfr would suffice to explain why he puts these two letters under the same category. With this ancient Greek method of expressing ^ by ^a; where the X i^^y have been a spirant, we can compare the German manner of expressing the £c-sound by chs, where the " ch " is not an aspirate but a spirant : e.g. wachsen = waxen, Fuchs = Fux. In the German ch the explosive is not distinctly heard, it is a bond fide spirant and yet this spirant ch -\- s is consistently written to express the sound x or ^. This parallel removes the difficulty some feel to the possibility of •^ having been a spirant when used with a to express the sound |. Chap. VIII. ANALYSIS OF CHAPTERS VIIL. IX., AND X. INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF GREEK {continued). y Evolution of the Phonetic Laws. /Ancient Greek ttt, kt, <^Q, xO, becomes <^T, ;^T in Modern Greek H 05 El. O M a few instances illustrate the tendency in Ancient Greek /In Modern Greek a surd spirant often /before cr — change general in the becomes tenuis before and after a- vernacular, with few excep- tions in both Ancient and Modem the change in the case of the double tenues predominates. in Ancient Greek find the tendency in Doric forms. after a — double forms in both Ancient and Modern difficult to explain according to the / aspiratic theory. An Modern Greek the nasal before an Aspirate is often omitted Ancient Greek examples of this omission, which is part only of a larger modification both Ancient and Modern omit nasals before tenues, medials, and betw-een vowels. In Modern Greek 6, .<^, y(^, sometimes ^rather the .exception than othei' become tenues after p Chap. IX. The History of Interchange. ^Aspirates with Aspirates y{a) cf, for t), (J) for .^ /(«) X for e, (*) e for X /change of A. into p before <^ disproves existence of any law to this effect. /{a) X for <^, (b) <j> for x /Aspirates with Mediae y(a) S for 6, {b) d for S /(a) fi for 4,, (J) <l> for ^8 /Aspirates with Tenues /Two consecutive Aspii'ates for Tenues /(a) y for x, (b) X for y y{a) T for 6, (b) for t /(a) TT for <j>, (b) (f> for ir /{a) K for X, {f>) X for k X6, i>0 for KT, ITT {a) rare in Ancient (except Aeolic) and Modern ; (6) occasionally in Ancient and Modern, (a) rare in Ancient and Modern ; (&) neither in Ancient nor Modern. (ct) and (6) occasionally in Ancient and Modern. («t) rare in Ancient and Modern; (J) occasionally in Ancient, never in Modern. {a) i^xre in Ancient and Modern ; (i) one instance in both Ancient and Modern. (a) and (6) rare in Ancient and Modern. (a) and (b) frequent in Ancient and Modern. («.) and ('&) rare in Ancient and Modern. («) frequent in Ancient, rare in Modern; (h) frequent in Ancient and Modern, a few cases in both Ancient and Modern. /Aspirates with Sibilants /(a) cr for 6, (b) a-a for 0, (c) for o- o- for X I iiot found in Ancient, frequent in y{a) Ancient Laconian, Modern Laconian. /(6) Ancient Ionian, Modern not found. /{c) Ancient rare, Modern not found. 1/ Modern dialects / Chap. X. Elision and the Spiritus Asper. /In the various dia- /Aspiration yjyro Aspir. regular a.spiration in Attic, etc., proves ; A.spir. =Ton. + Spir. Asp lects ■ • f ■ •'V- /Psilosis /pro S'pir. /no errors, such as ttA written for ^, kc. /preceding tenuis affected in spite of the weakening of the Spir. Asp. /Can aspirates exist in a language when there is no initial h 1 | other languages referred to as examples. PHONETIC LAWS. 55 CHAPTER VIII. PHONETIC LAWS. But perhaps the most satisfactory and conckisive argument as to the nature of the Greek aspirates is based on a thorough investigation of the Greek written language itself. In order to conclude whether any considerable modification in the pronun- ciation of certain consonants has taken place during the progress of a language we must observe, not only to what extent the phonetic laws have been modified, but also what is the nature of such modifications. For certain modifications are natural to the growth of every language. Thus the tendency towards greater ease of pronunciation is natural to every language, and may be said to be, so far as it is possible, a constant factor ; all modifications, therefore, based on the phonetic laws of assimila- tion and adaptation we must expect to find increasing and expanding in the course of the development of a language. So also we must look for the substitution of an easier sound for one more difficult of articulation, and thus it is that we expect the interchange of consonants of the same class, that is of those produced by the same vocal organs, according as greater or less exertion is required in their articulation ; and not only this, but we expect the consonants of one class to be substituted for those of another in the different dialects of the same language, accord- ing as there is a local preference, indicating greater facility, for sounds produced by one set of vocal organs rather than by another. Thus the lonians retained k for tt, e.g. Kolo<i for TTOto?, the Dorians t for a, as tu for av, irkaTiov for -TrXrja-iov. Another modification of sound proceeding from the tendency 56 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. towards ease of articulation is the entire falling away or draf- ting of sounds, thus we have a-<l>aKk(o and /alio, .and vice versd olvo<; and vinum, and for final sounds the omission of m, on early Latin inscriptions, and in the later stages of the language, whilst in contemporary Greek the vulgar pronunciation omits e.g. the v of the ace. sing., saying avOpwiro for avOpairov, also that of the neuter termination, thus to hevhpo. Medial sounds are similarly dropped to avoid difficult combinations of sound, or simply to reduce one in itself not difficult to what requires still less exertion. Given two stages of a language, therefore, separated from each other by a very considerable interval of time, we must not forget to make allowance for the natural expansion of phonetic changes based on the tendency above illustrated, and we must expect proportionate modifications of the original phonetic laws. We must, in other words, be careful not to interpret as a change ■ of phonetic law what is only a modification, or a further applica- tion or extension in a parallel direction, due to the course of natural development. We should also guard against assuming that we can lay down an absolute standard as regards the comparative ease of pro- nunciation of certain sounds or combination of sounds. For one sound may not only in a particular case be relatively easier to pronounce than another, which theoretically analysed requires no greater effort to articulate, but any certain kind or class of sound, which theoretically analysed is ascertained to require less effort for articulation than another, must not consequently be regarded as relatively easier of pronunciation. For, if we conclude in this manner, we are leaving out of sight the con- sideration of physical, and oftentimes theoretically unaccount- able, national and local preferences. PHONETIC LAWS. 57 Thus we are not justified in concluding that because we cannot pronounce such a combination of sounds as " prst " and " krk," therefore a Slav cannot do so, or, to come nearer home, that, because certain combinations of consonants are so difficult for us to pronounce as to be quite impossible, therefore a Welsh- man cannot easily pronounce them. Finally, much precaution is necessary in avoiding an assump- tion that there is anything of the nature of absolute as regards euphony. It is better, indeed, not to argue at all as to what sound may be said to be more euphonious than another, than to risk losing sight of the fact that what may sound euphonious to us, may not sound, or have sounded, so to others ; and vice versd. The caution, however, that is necessary in arguing from a certain standpoint as to ease of pronunciation and euphony does not render these tests altogether inapplicable, in so far as from a careful examination of the phonetic laws of the language under observation we are enabled to gain a more or less accurate idea — this varying with the nature and abundance of material at our disposal — of the relative standard of either as illustrated in that particular language. Bearing these preliminary and necessary observations con- stantly in mind, therefore, we will now proceed to review some salient points in Modern Greek phonetics, and examine these carefully by comparison with the ancient language. If in doing so we think we can show that, apart from what may be considered natural development and extension, the original phonetic laws have been preserved, and the same inter- changes of sound take place now as took place in the earlier stages of the language, we shall conclude also that those sounds to which such phonetic laws and interchanges apply have 58 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. suffered no radical change in the interval, so that their present would, for all practical purposes, represent their ancient pro- nunciation. In the first place, then, one of the most striking features of the modern language is the dislike evinced to the juxtaposition of two surd spirants or two tenues ; and to avoid such a combina- tion in the case of two spirants coming together, the second one, 0, is generally changed to the tenuis ; and in the case of ttt or kt the TT or K is changed to the corresponding spirant ; thus for (fiddvco we have (pTava, for ixOe<;, epjjres, and for KXeTrrri';, /cXicfiTrji;, for vvKra, vv'^ra. This rule is, however, not in- variably observed as ^0 is still frequently heard : avaTrav0rjTe = dvaTra(f>0rJTe, for instance, is never, to our knowledge, pro- nounced avaira^rriTe, nor does it hold good as yet for the combination -kit- which does not generally change, thus eKTropevo/iai, &c., do not become i'^Tropevofx.ai in the ordinary language, though in the dialect of Trebizond we already find instances of this change, thus d'^Travm for eKTrriyaivco, d')(pTapd^a) for eKairapda-ao). We can, however, diregard these few exceptions as they do not invalidate the general rule. The frequency of the forms with <^t, 'xj is adduced as being an example of a new phonetic law, unknown to ancient Greek, and which therefore justifies the conclusion that the sounds % ^ ^ must in the ancient language have been fundamentally different from what they are now. Such forms are frequent it is true, but have we not here an instance of development and extension rather than of radical difference in the phonetic law ? Of development very consider- able indeed, to judge from the few precedents extant in the ancient language, but still of development ; and we must not forget that it is not only from the qwintity of examples that we PHONETIC LAWS. 59 must draw our conclusions, especially when, as is the case in Greek, we are the less justified in so doing because of the small total remnant of the language of the uneducated and of every-day intercourse as compared to that of the educated and literary world. Bearing, then, this caution in mind, we turn to the ancient language to see if we can find anything to justify us in thinking that this modern feature is not a change, but a development of a law already anciently existing. There are apparently no traces of a writing (pr for ^6, or of 0T for TTT, but of X''' fo'^ "'^ there are three, or maybe four, examples extant and perhaps one of y(^T for '^0, and these examples, few as they are, are most valuable as precedents of the modern usage. They are the following : from Attica 'Evray^ro'; = evTaKTo<;, Roscher, Gurt. Shod. i. 2, p. 81. from Chios e'p^; t&v = i/e rmv G.I.G. 2241. from Sagalassos Karej^ravev = KareKTavev ib. 4377, 5. and from Elis eV Ta^rd = iv TaKrrj (?) I.G.A. Add. 113, c. 2. The second and third examples belong to the Roman period, while the last one is probably not much later than 572 B.C. (v. Roberts, Greek Upigraphy, p. 298). Thus we have three definite cases dating from pre-Christian times of j(t being written for kt. The last example, which Bucheler takes as equivalent to eV TaxTrj (cf. Bhein. Mus. xxxvi.) and which would, if his view be correct, make the fourth instance of 'x^t for kt, Comparetti (cf. Journal of Hellenie Studies ii. p. 373) interprets differently, for he takes the original evrdyfrai as standing for ivrdy^Oai, i.e. eVreraj^^at with an omission of the reduplication, and r an error for 6. If this 60 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. be so, this word would be a solitary example from the ancient language of 'yr for ')(jS. Blass corrects it into ev ravrai (v. Roberts, p. 369). Of these instances the contemporary language shows not only development by the frequency of such forms, but extension likewise by the application of the same change to two successive spirants, and also to the group ttt. Thus we have firstly -xj ^^^ ^''' instead of the two aspirates ■)(j9, ^6 in such cases as : i'irKi')(r'r}Ka = iTr\,e')(6r]v, e-^Te'; = ;\;^69, o'XTpo^ = i'^Opo';, (j)Tdvo) = <f)0dvco, (j)rrjv6<; = evdrjvoi, iypd(f)Tr]Ka = eypdcfydrjv, etc. and secondly 'xj, <^t, instead of the two tenues kt, ttt, examples of which abound, such as : dSpd^rt = drpaKToi;, dxriSa = dKTl<i, o^T«, vvyra, crrdxTr), yaXa-yTl^co, /S/ae^^ro?, ai/ojT^ros, ^pd^rf] = tppdKTrji;, <f)ovj(Ta = irvKTi}, airpaxro^, i^ TrjOrji; (Trebizond), (also initial) xjfjfia, ^^rtfo), xjivi = KTel<s, x'^VTrijcre (vernac.) ; and again, (pTvco, <^Taixp<s, <f)Tepva, ^racjo) = TTTaiw, (jiTepo = inepov, <f>Tapvt^o/j,ai = Trrepvi^ofiai, pd<f)Tr)<;, /cXe^Ti??, 6</)Ta, /3a(j)Ti^(o, Tre^Tto, vi(j)Ta), K6<f>Tco, d(npd(^T(o, d(j}TCO, ddacjiTO^, &c., &c. An explanation has been suggested, according to which we have an extension by analogy in the contemporary language of the change of into t after a- already so prevalent in the ancient language. So that would subsequently have been changed into t not only after a-, but after ^ and (f> also, , and then the familiarity of the sounds 0t, y(T would have led to the frequent change also of tt and k into (f> and ^ before t. The objection to this explanation is that it assumes the priority of ^0, '^0 becoming ^t, yj over that of ttt, kt being changed to 0t, yr, and the considerably more numerous instances of the latter change in the contemporary language at least seems to argue against such a priority. The latter change is actually far more common in contemporary Greek. As it happens, three of the four examples surviving from the ancient language are PHONETIC LAWS. 61 instances also of the change of ttt, kt, not of (^6, yd, into 0t, P^t; but this, since it may be merely accidental, cannot be taken as evidence. Considering, however, the difficulty which prevents our accepting without hesitation the explanation adduced, we prefer to consider the present combination of spirant and tenuis a development and extension of what had actually begun in the ancient language, but of which we have very few instances remaining. Again, it is laid down as a distinctive law of Modern Greek that " (J does not admit of a surd spirant either immediately preceding or following it " — here, likewise, we must investigate whether this is quite a new law, unknown to the ancient language, or whether it is not rather the natural development of a tendency, the beginning of which can be seen not only in other ancient dialects, but even in Attic. We will first take the case of a spirant immediately ■preceding <T ; this in the popular language is now generally changed into a tenuis. The most numerous examples of this change are found in the future and aorist endings of verbs in -avos and -evw, which instead of -avaco, -evtrio, &c., are generally spoken as -dyjrm, -iyjra), &c. (-avaeo, -evato being = -d^am, -e<j}(7Co), thus KKavaw becomes Kkd^jrco and i^aaiXevaa, i^aalXeyjra ; further for Kddiae, Karae is frequently heard. On the other hand, a word in constant use is dtjxre, a contraction for d<f)r)a-e or a^crov, and this is never changed into ay^e, although the spirant directly precedes the a. Simi- larly iravata, e-rravaa, &c., are quite as often, if not oftener, spoken as Tra^o-o, eira^a-a, &c., than as Trd^frco, eira^yp'a, &c., and the same can be said of the forms of Trto-reuo). Not only has no definite law been established in Modern Greek by which o- does not admit of a preceding surd spirant. 62 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. but we find the tendency now so fully developed originated in ancient Greek. Thus in Doric we have ■^e (Theocr. iv. 3), and yjriv for o-^e and a^tv respectively, these latter haying by metathesis become 0o-e, (fxrtv, and then yjre, ■\jnv. Further illustration of the fact that this tendency already existed in ancient Greek is afforded by the forms ■y^iat,';, •ylrivofjiai, ■\jri,vdSe^, Siyfrdpa, /j,6po^o<;, e^iarov, and othefs given by Hesychius. These are respectively equal to ^dierif, <pdivofj,ai, &c., and can only be explained from a spirantic pronunciation of (f> and 0, so that to arrive at the forms in question the following successive stages may have been passed through, e.g. <l)diai<; ( = fthisis) = ^a-i(Ti<; = ■y^LuK; ; Meyer {Greek Grammar^, §§ 209 and 250) gives the stages as probably ird — Trth — yfr. We thus have exact counterparts to the modern writing ■yjr for <j)a: We will next consider the dual forms of words written with either aspirate or tenuis after the letter o-. Such forms are numerous, both in Ancient and Modern Greek, e.g. a-y^^eXi'; and a-KeXi<; in Ancient, o-^v/Ji? and <TnTvpl<s in Ancient and Modern, da6evri<i and daTevij'i in Modern. The question for us to consider is whether the almost consistent pronunciation of o-«, a-T for ax, oS (but not a-0 for o-tt) in Modern Greek is indicative of a new phonetic law unknown to classical Greek, or whether it is a continuation and development of a process which had already then begun. Blass (p. 103) lays down as one of the distinctive phonetic laws of Modern Greek that " a does not allow of a surd spirant immediately following it." And Curtius and Roscher teach that of the duplicate forms those written with an aspirate in Ancient Greek are due to the aspirating influence of the preceding o-, and that they are later forms than those written with a tenuis. This theory PHONETIC LAWS. 63 seems to have been generally accepted, and according to it the adoption of ctt, o-k for aff, a-^ in Modern Greek would certainly be a distinct reversal of the ancient law. But are the forms written with tenues older than those with aspirates? And has the aspirating influence of o- been fully established ? Bezzenberger (cf. Bzzb. Beitr. vii. 63 if.) pro- pounds another theory in which he is supported by Gustav Meyer (v. Greek Grammar, 2te Aufl. p. 207) and Grassmann, and that is that the forms with aspirates are the older and then in many cases the aspirate has been changed into a tenuis. The aspirating influence of <r has not, he says, been proved, as in many cases adduced to prove it the derivation of the word adduced is very uncertain, in others the aspirate-form is recognised as quite as old or older than the tenuis-form, and again, aspiration is in many cases produced by analogy, as in Siy(^o/Mat from JSeK ; Tevj(<o from Jtvk. For the majority of these double forms the aspirate is due to an original Indo-German surd aspirate which has been pre- served in Greek, although very often it is represented by a pure tenuis in the kindred languages. Curtius, on the other hand, says that in these cases the surd aspirate of the Indo- German became a tenuis in Greek first and then became an aspirate again owing to the preceding sibilant. But why this step backwards and then another forwards to restore the word to its first state should be necessary, or even probable, it is difficult to understand. It seems much simpler to suppose that the Greek surd aspirate in these cases corresponds to the Sanskrit surd aspirate and was the earlier form of the word, and not only simpler but more in accordance with facts also, as in some words, e.g. \ia-<j>oi and 0-^07709 with by-forms Xt'o-Tro?, a-ir6rfyo<;, the ^ is 64 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. recognised as being prior to, or at least quite as early as, the ir. a^6yyo<; is from stem spheng, whereas airo'yyo'i is a later form, and Xia-(f>o<; appears to be for Xtr-fo? whete perhaps the tj) may be taken as representing the F, and the by-form with tt has not been proved to be earlier. So too of a-K60p6^ and a-xedpoi; (a-)(eBp6<;), cr'xedpoi is un- doubtedly the prior form as its derivation from cr'x^ed-eiu shows (and the k is due to dissimilation). And yet these three words are constantly placed among those in which the aspirate is said to be due to the a. Of other words which were written indifferently with aspirate or tenuis (although generally preferring the aspirate) and in which the aspirate appears to correspond to an Indo-Germ. surd aspirate we may mention : — TT a-a-((j))dpajo<i which with a-cfidpa'YO'; (only found in com- pounds), a-Trapydaj and (j>dpvry^ appears to be connected with Sanskrit sphurg, a<l>vpL<i, a-cftvpd';, a-(j)ovBv\7], cr(j)6vSvXo<; {cf. (nraipco, cnreopm &c.), d-cr<l)6SeXo<; : Sanskrit sphar = whirl. a-'xevSvXT], (T'x^bvBaXfjLO'; or a-KivSakfi6<i, a-'^^d^a (cf. also aKsMv- vvfib &c.) : Sanskrit skhad = split. a-)(eXi<; (cf. crKeXo?) : Sanskrit sJchal. Besides these of Xta^o? and Xio-tto? the tt can "only claim relative priority." So also Boo-^o/ao? and Boairopoi;, probably connected with <f>ep(o. Ato-;y;\a/3tfi3 is found for 'Ao-kXtjitioi! at a very early date (I.G.A. 549), and as the etymology of the word is quite unknown, it is impossible to say whether % or « was the earlier ; so too ' Ka')(\aiTia)v (third century B.C.) new C.I.G. 2716, The probability of this supposition is enhanced by the evidence we have that a de-aspirating tendency after o- was at work very PHONETIC LAWS. 65 early in some dialects and even somewhat affected the Attic dialect ; that the inverse tendency should have existed at the same time in the same dialects is not at all likely. This de-aspiration is most evident in the Elean and Lokrian dialects in which ctt is constantly written for a-6, e.g. Locr. iXea-rai, d(pe<nm c. 431 B.C. I.G.A. 322 ; El. Tifitoa-roav, KeKoi- (TTav, Xva-daTM I.Cr.A. 117, 119, 121. Further Phoc. airoiroKi- Tevaaa-Tai and •Kapw^evkaa-rat, second century B.C. Bull. Corr. hell. V. p. 898 ; and from Elis again irdaKoi = 'jrda-')(ot, I.G.A. 112, of sixth century B.C. from Attica Kadapi^ea-Tio, O.I.A. iii. 743, of second or third century B.C. " ,, 'ETna-rivov, C.I.A. ii. 2683, of second century B.C. " " AaKia-revov, C.I.A. ii. 1499. dcTKaa-Tovi ( = da-y^darov!), G.I.G. 4255, fourth century B.C. " " ' AXKKTTevov, 'A6r)v. v. 417. " Megara Alyoa-revlrai,, Mitth. Arch. Inst. viii. 183. " Messenia dyeia-Ta, Cauer^, 47, 28. " Delphi yivecTTco, dia-rmv, &c. Since therefore we have these proofs that not only was de-aspiration after <r at work more or less in all dialects but also that of the words written with aspirate or tenuis, the forms with aspirate can in some cases undoubtedly claim priority whilst in the others they cannot be proved to be posterior to those with tenues, the rational conclusion appears to be that the forms of words written with aspirate after a are the original and that the de-aspirating influence of the sibilant a produced the forms with tenues. Further, that this law of de-aspiration after (T, which bad commenced in the classical era, especially outside 66 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. Attica, has continued to gain force but is not even yet fully developed, because though it holds good for o-;^;, which is now always pronounced o-«, and mostly for ad also, yet acf) still holds its own and is only in Trebizond pronounced as o-tt, which shows that the change already completed for a^ and ad has also begun for a-^. Contrariwise, if the combination cr^ with ^ = a spirant can be pronounced as we know it still is at this day, a-'x, and a-d with x and = spirants most probably also existed at some time (cr6 = sth has not died out yet entirely) or other in the ordinary language, v. Psichari (Mdm. d. I. Soc. de Zing. vi. 304). When were the % and in a-^, or a-0 pronounced as spirants ? We see that now in 1890 A.D. they are usually pronounced as tenues in these combinations and we have evidence from the inscriptions that by B.C. 400 they had already begun to be so pronounced, so that if at that date ;)^ and d were real aspirates, we are obliged to imagine that from original aspirates they became tenues in a-'x^, a-0 ; from tenues, spirants ; and then from spirants, tenues again. Because if x and were never spirants in the groups a^ and a-0, how can we account for the existence of a spirant ^ in acpl For if the popular ar, ax of Modem Greek in place of a0, a^ is to be regarded as a survival from Ancient Greek when a6, a^ became err, o-« through loss of the breathing, how is it that we have not also a modern air to correspond to the ancient acj) = sp + h? or, in other words, why of the three ancient aspirates has (f> alone become a spirant after a, whereas and x after a are supposed to have lost the breath- ing in very early times and to have remained pure tenues in this combination ever since ? That which has become a definite and fairly universal law in Modern Greek for the pronunciation of x and 6 in ax, o"^, PHONETIC LAWS. 67 and which will in course of time presumably also become so for a-cj), was only in embryo in ancient times and not firmly fixed in the middle ages. In Prodromos err or ctk seems difficult to find, and in the Chansons Populaires (Legrand i.) from the MS. de Vienne of the fifteenth century or earlier we find o-t, <tk or a-O, a-x written indifferently, e.g. aa-deva and SpocrtcrTrj (p. 34), a-Ko\ij, opyia-ry (p. 48), probably i^ovpia-Tm (p. 62) da-diveia (p. 68) from the fifteenth century, ayfuia from the twelfth century (?) ; [and from the beginning of this century c. 1820 a.d., we have eTndcrOrjKav and icarrjpda-dfjva (p. 146), ^tocrOfjTe p. 150], and from Wagner's Medieval Greek Texts prior to 1500 a.d., dtrdeveia passim, <T')(io'Sriv, St^ao-^jjz/, dcrxokriaiv, axpiviv, KaXv^itTTovv, iyekda-drjv. In the tenth century we get the form (7j^ajo^«H' = ets xApiv, and fioaxp^oXave and ^etr^t^ovra? from the seventeenth century, and from Koraes, "Atuktu ii., we get the following words which are anterior to the fifteenth century : a-Ka^m, o-kw, a-Kapi, = 6a-j(,cipiov, a-tcaroyepoi = e(7')(aT6yepo<; and e0avfida-Tr]v. We notice that aK is found more frequently in the middle ages than or and, conformably to this advance on the part of ctk duririg those ages, we find that it is the only group of which can be said nowadays that it is always spoken instead of a-x- The transition of a-0 into err is not yet complete; thus in the beginning of this century we find in Legrand i. i-mda-OrjKav v. Karrjpda-Orjva p. 146 and ^(oaOrjTe p. 150, the word irpoaOev is seldom pronounced •wpocTTev, and in Michalopoulos' 'Kafiara, a collection of modern popular songs, we have ^iXiovfiaaOe, Kot/iacrOe, ^laa-drJTe intermingled with similar forms written with the tenuis after <7, i.e. err. This evolution of tenues out of x'P^ after an im- mediately preceding a has then, as we hope we have not unsuccessfully attempted to show, been in progress ever since F 2 68 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. the fifth or sixth century B.C. ; between that time and the present we cannot lay our finger on any period and say " At this period there is no instance of (tk, <tt, o-tt for o-j^, aO, <r<f>, but X ^ were evidently being spoken and written as spirants in these cases, and it is only from this time onward that the spirants after a gradually changed back into tenues, a transition which has not yet reached completion." No, we certainly cannot do this, and hence we seem obliged to conclude that X<f>& must have been spirants before they ever began to be changed into tenues after o-. Take, for example, the word a-Oevoi — say this in Attica in 400 B.C. was properly pronounced st + henos, in 1890 it is pronounced " stenos " or sometimes " s-th-enos," and soon after 400 B.C. we find it is already some- times pronounced " scenes " there as shown by the wrongly-spelt inscriptions 'AXKia-revov, KaiacrTivov, '^ina-Tevov, yet in the middle ages when 6 was confessedly a spirant we have acrdevd and aaOeveia, (i)^aa6ev&. Now when and how did spirant 6 get in ? Did it already exist before 400 B.C., and was (rBivoi = "s-th-enos" then and not = "st + henos," or were two changes going on simultaneously in the same word ? That is, was o-^^i/o? on the one hand becoming o-rei/os without aspiration, and on the other hand gradually changing its ff from an aspirate into a • spirant, so that by 1200 A.D., let us say, the two forms, a-Tivo<; and a-Oivoi with spirantic 0, existed side by side ? That such contrary tendencies should have been at work at the same time in the same dialect is highly improbable, and therefore if we do not wish to assume that x<f>0 were spirants even in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., the only other explanation of these double forms which have stood side by side from that remote period down to the present day is that of dialectical preferences, in other words, that in some dialects, e.g. the Elean and Jioprian, PHONETIC LAWS. 69 the aspirate after o- was very early replaced by its corresponding tenuis, whereas in others, e.g. in Attic, the aspirate held its own in this position until in the course of ages it here as elsewhere gradually developed into a spirant. Then after Christ when the Koivi) SiaXeKToi}, a mixture of all the dialects without the distinctive features of any one, was the Greek commonly spoken, these dual forms from the various dialects were also gathered in and became common property, and were then used indifferently for some time until, as the modern language shows, the forms in t7T, a-K ousted those in <t9 and crx, while the sturdier a-<f) still remains, though that too will sooner or later share the fate of ad and o-j^. If this second explanation be adopted, then the examples we have from Attica of <tt, otk for ad, a-^ must be regarded as the work of strangers who spelt according to their own dialect. Altogether though, this explanation does not seem satisfactory, for, seeing the many different dialects which give us forms in a-T and o-k, it seems strange that the corresponding ones in ad and ax should have had the force to survive right into the middle ages and even longer, and also that air for a<f) should not be universal in the modern language as aK and ar are. For here we must draw attention to the fact which we only just stated before that acf) is still spoken throughout Greece, as is admitted by Foy and even the great popularist Psichari. It has only in Trebizond become air in some words, and vice versa IT has in a few words been changed into ^ after a, e.g. the Naxians and Gaeopontines say a^vpi(; for ordinary Greek aiTvpi'i (both these forms are old). We also find several varieties, a^ovTvki, airovhvKo'; and &(ji6pSvKo9, and the popular forms 0-^0771' and a(f>oyydpt (answering to the ancient airoyyiov and awoyydpiov) as well as the old form 0-^0770? 70 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. which is known still to exist in the present spoken language. But except in these dual forms, cttt is not spoken for a-<j). Thus this non-existence of o-tt for acf) (except in Trebizond), parallel to the <tt and o-k for ad and ax, militates most strongly against the supposition that in the modern ar and ax we have the survival of the explosive component of the ancient aspirate. All things considered, it seems as if we had in this case a chain of evidence to show that from very early times x'f'^ were spirants, and that a preceding a caused their change into the corresponding tenuis, as it still does ; or even, if this is too rash a deduction, it is at any rate clearly evident that in many cases the % ^ immediately following a was from very early times changed into the tenuis, and that consequently this change which for two of the three sounds regularly takes place in the modern language cannot with any justice be styled "a new departure." Another difference in phonetic law is said to be illustrated by a surd spirant not allowing a preceding nasal, so that in the language as now spoken we get such forms as a60o'; for av6o<;, vvif>7) for vvnjtrj. But if we look a little more closely into this, we shall see that this phenomenon in the contemporary language, far from being a new phonetic law, is likewise but an extension of a modifica- tion that had already attained considerable currency in Ancient Greek, to judge only from such examples as have survived. But there is another reason which argues still more con- clusively against calling this a new phonetic law of the present language, and this is the fact that the modification we are now to consider is only part of a larger one, begun in ancient times and still in force, according to which nasals were omitted, not PHONETIC LAWS. 71 only before aspirates, but also before mediae and tenues, and that from the sixth century B.C. downwards. Blass, in speaking of this omission of the nasal in Ancient Greek, remarks in a footnote (p. 87) that " this rejection of the nasal appears in Modern Greek too, but only before x4'^ owing to a special tendency." We venture to think that this remark would give a wrong impression to any one who did not know Modern Greek ; he would imagine it meant that the nasal only disappeared before %^^, whereas it constantly does so before tenues and medials also, just as it used to do in Ancient Greek. Examples of the omission of the nasal before a tenuis in Ancient Greek are Tviravov, poetical form for rv^iiravov, Eur. H.F. 888 &c., evKa/j.ire'i which is scanned as a dactyl in Anthol. p. 6, 4 ; so also aymKaKr\y,wTa scanned as atrXaKrifiara in Eum. 934, and avaixirkdK'qTo<i which the metre requires to be read as avaTrXa.KrjTO'i in O.T. 472. And from inscriptions 'OXuirto?, 'OXv- 'jri6Scopo<; &c. passim in C.I.G., 'EKe\aBo<i on a vase C.I.G. 8182, and 'ATdXaTTj ib. 8185 on one of sixth or fifth century B.C., TvTcipeoi ib. 8220, Oypr. raXaTtov, arl cf. Coll. i. 60. Corre- sponding to this we find in Modern Greek oTiva = ovTiva, koto^ = Kovrof, Kavco = Kafivca. Psichari is not quite exact in saying " V est rest^ partout oii il ^tait devant une explosive ancienne e.g. irdvTa." Before mediae it is also omitted (or assimilated) in both Ancient and Modern Greek, e.g. ^v^^aXXevdat C.I.A. ii, 52c, Pamph. aSpt, yevoSac, -TreBe (^Trevre) &c. I.C.A. 505, Delph, "A^a/S/So?, Ti/idBpa (=:TifidvBpa) Meisterhans § 31, Ka/3^d(} a var. lect. for ica/i^d^ = Kara^d<i in Find. N. vi. 58, and Kv^^a a by-form of Kvfi^ri. In Modern Greek fidSpa = fidvBpa, Kv^aXa = KV/i^aXa, Lastly, the omission of the nasal, especially v, is very frequent 72 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. before 'x^ij) 6 in the present language, e.g. vv^rj (= vvfi(j)r}), a6o<s (= avOo'i), avvwpSs (= avy^copfo), KoKoKvdi = koKokvvOiov, fj.a6dvca = /Mavddvco and many others. But it is by no means regularly observed in every case and, to speak impartially, one might almost say that the forms without the nasal are not much more frequently heard than those with the nasal, and some words there are in which the nasal is never omitted, such are ^av06<; and its compounds as ^avOovXa. dvOo'i and dv6r) are quite as common as dOOo';, aOdrj, avOl^m more common than dOi^ca, dvdpa-iro^ and dffpawo'; used indifferently, ivdvfiaa-ai rarely, if ever, becomes iOvfida-ai, vutjirj always spoken for vvfi^rj, and so on. In the extant poems of the middle ages there are very few words to be found containing a surd spirant preceded by a nasal, in Legrand vol. i. ■jravddvo) and dOovcn occur in a poem prior to the fifteenth century. This omission of the nasal before % ^ ^ can be paralleled by similar spellings from Ancient Greek which are found in most varied places and times. Like the modern vv^ we find on vases of the sixth and fifth century B.C. d(f)i (— dficjji), vv^r]<; and vv^ai {cf. Meisterhans § 31), and on an archaic inscription from Siphnos vv<f>e(ov I.G.A. 399 ; also Nu^oSw/ao? G.I.G. 3155, 8 and 'A<}iiepeco<} G.I.G. 7710 ; and on the Corinthian clay tablets (Rohl, D.I. 3119f) Afi(j)tTpiTa is twice written with an /m, twice with V, and twice without a nasal, which shows how weak and uncertain the sound of the fi must have been — also 'A^iapffo'i ib. 3140. Like modem av^mpSy we have on an Ionic papyrus of uncer- tain date, probably of the time of the first Punic War (c/. Petrettini, Twp. Greoo-Egizj. 1. 15), Tv^dvoi and TV')(xdvoi for Tvyxdvoi, In Cyprian the nasal is never written before a consonant and PHONETIC LAWS. 73 so this dialect has aOptono^ (= dvdpcoTros:) and Tpe/M6ov<s which probably stands for Tepfj.ivdoO'} ; these can be compared with the modern adpanro<;. Like modern a6o<i, iiaOaivm &c. are Ad-n-vOog from Corinth (Rohl, D.I. 3132), and S/ii'^to? ('ETriyovov) for lifiivdioi; on a Rhodian amphora found in Athens (cf. Dumont, Inscr. dram. p. 92) and again QAkvmv) 'tp>lBLo<i on another Rhodian amphora from Olbia and dating from the third or fourth century B.C. ; also 't/itdcov (= 't/J-ivOcov) on a Melian inscription I.G.A. 413. Further Stephanus Byz. gives us the two forms aiyiOoi; and a'iIyiv6o<; : the former is found in Arist. II.A. ix. 1, and Callim./>. 321, and the latter in Oppian Ixent. i. 10 ; iii. 11 and is suggested as an emendation in Antig. Oaryst. ii. As further examples of the undefined pronunciation of the nasal we may add iS^t^ for %^ly^ G.I.G. 8139, K^oaTavTlvoi G.I.G. 9025 and Kwo-raz'Tto? by the side of the more usual form K.a)va-Tavrlvo<; ; in this last word this omission of v is due to the Latin pronunciation of Costantius, Costantini &c. {v. Seelmann, Aiissprache d. Lat. pp. 283-4). In Modern Greek it is also dropped in some dialects between vowels, as Lokr. 6«eto9 = e/eetvos, Kaevaf = xaviva^ ; at the beginning of words, 'A^la=Nd^o<;, "EiraxTO^ = NauTraxTo? and constantly at the end of words as tt] Kopr} = ttjv Koprjv. It appears then that the nasals still retain the tendency to disappear before a following consonant which they had in the ancient language— it is not clear to us why Blass says their omission before j^ ^ in Modern Greek is due to a special tendency because, as the examples we have collected show, they are omitted before other consonants as well and always have been more or less so from almost the earliest historical times. Hence since the nasal is omitted in Ancient and Modem Greek 74 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. alike before tenues, mediae and % ^ ^, though the examples of its omission in Ancient Greek that we can collect from inscriptions, vases, &c., must necessarily be very few compared with the numbers in Modern Greek to be gathered from the lips of any uneducated living Greek, we hold that its omission before % </> ^ in the popular language of to-day is not a new phonetic departure and cannot therefore be used as evidence of a change having taken place in the pronunciation of ;)^ ^ since the classical period. On the contrary, it seems rather to point to the similarity of the pronunciation of % ^ in classical and modern times. Psichari goes so far as to say that " if the date of the first instance of the omission of v before ')(^<f> or 6 can be ascertained, that will be the date of the transition oi -^^6 from aspirates to spirants," so that according to him the vvcl}r) or d(j)i on Attic vases of sixth or fifth century B.C., the rvy^avot on the papyrus of Artemisium, or the %fji,idio<; on the Khodian vases would conclusively prove that in these dialects at least x4'^ had already become spirants. However, without going so far as that, it may at any rate be justly maintained that, even if on the one hand the omission of the nasal before % ^ ^ which prevails both in Ancient and Modern Greek is of no value to prove the spirantic nature of X(f>d in ancient times, it cannot on the other hand be used to prove the aspiratic nature of these letters for ancient, and their spirantic for modern times. One and the same fact cannot be taken to prove two directly opposite things. Perhaps this fact cannot help us at all, because as the nasal is omitted in Ancient Greek before a pure tenuis, e.g. the /* in rvtravov, it could probably be omitted before % ^ ^ just as easily if they were " tenues + spiritus asper." Lastly, a new phonetic law is said to be responsible for PHONETIC LAWS. 75 tbe fact that a j^, ^ or after p is sometimes changed into a tenuis in the modern language. This change is, however, at present still the exception and by no means the rule, as it is only in very few words and then not in the ordinary Greek that this change ever occurs : Psichari (c/. Mim. d. I. Soc. Zing. Paris, vi. p. 304 ff.) says distinctly that forms like oprcovco and epKOfiai are not common in Greece and not the rule even in Constantinople. Even ^pra and epKOfiat,, which are perhaps the two such forms most frequently heard, are in continental Greece less common than fjpda and epxo/^ai. In fact it would be more correct to speak of this change after p as an exception to the general persistence of p(j>, p^ and p6, for in the majority of words they remain unchanged, e.g. in Kapt^iraa, irapdiva (demotic for irdpdevos;), apdovvia, ap')(iv(o, &c. Further too, the \ before ^Q is in popular Greek generally changed into p, which shows that the combination p^, pd is by no means disliked ; thus aSe\<j)6<; becomes ahep^o'; (never aSe/STro?), Be\(f>iv Sipcftiv, and ^X6a, ek6r]<i &c. become ?ipda, ep6ri<; &c. ; also Kop^o^, which is popular for K6X'n-o<i, and Kopcf)^ contraction of Kopv^rj. The change of \ into p before 6 and ^ had begun in the middle ages, as in the poems before the fifteenth century we find ?ip6a, ep0rj<;, &c., passim. This change, which is so frequent in mediaeval and modern Greek, indeed entirely disproves the existence of a new phonetic law, according to which a spirant after p becomes a tenuis, as it proves that so far from the sounds pcf), pj^, pd being disliked, they are on the contrary rather favourite com- binations. We d& not think, therefore, that any new phonetic laws have come into existence, but that the beginnings of laws 76 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. already visible in the ancient language have been developed so considerably that at first sight they appear to have changed the character of the language. CHAPTER IX. INTERCHANGE. We will now see whether, allowing for natural modifications due to the lapse of centuries, the sanae interchanges of sound still occur as occurred in ancient times. Beginning with the interchange of aspirates with one another, we find {a) a frequent substitution of ^ for 6 in ancient Greek in the Aeolic dialect. Thus we have (f)iX6(f>eipo<; (Inscr. inidit. Ussing No. 25) from Larissa, which, according to Meister, is for ^LXodrjpoi;, while Ussing himself says it is for <f)iXo')(eipo<;. On a Boeotian inscription of the fifth century B.C. we have <E>eTaXos (Meister, Gr. Dial. i. p. 204—211, Tan. 49); also ^er-rako^ {ib. Theh. 28, 8) on one of the fourth century B.C. both for &eTTaX6<; (G.I.G. 2430), while the regular ©erraXov occurs (ih. Thesp. 27, 3). Similarly &€6^ea-To<; and %i6j>ea-T0<s (CJ.G. 3172, A. 42, B. 91) of the third century B.C., which Blass interprets as = @e6dea-To<; (perhaps due to dissimilation). We also have the Boeot. and Epir. (j>ea)v, and ^vov7e<; for 6e5)v, 6vovTe<i (v. Cauer^, pp. 174 — 5) ; and this spirantic sound of in Boeot. 6e6<; Aristophanes {Ach. 905) has indicated by the un-Boeotian writing crto? (c/. Meister i. p. 260). Alcman has the Aeolicisms ^oivai^ ( = 6oLvai<s) fr. 24, B.^ ■n-okv^oivo<; ( = ■KokvOoivo'i) fr. 14 Bergk. INTERCHANGE. 77 Homer, Pindar, Theocritus, Aristophanes, &c., have ^Tuiv for 6\av, also (^Xl^eTai for Bki^eTai Homer and Theocr. xv. 76 ; these forms Curtius regards as ordinary Greek. Meister says that the Homeric and Pindaric ^j;p and <prjplov are not to he identified with drip and 6r)piov, they do not occur on Aeolic in- scriptions. The grammarians reckoned these forms as Aeolic because they considered the old population of Thessaly was Aeolic, £|,nd ^jfjo in Homer is only used as the name of a Thessalian tribe, and in Pindar of the Centaurs. On an old inscription from Naxos, we find Aw/ao^ea for Acopo6ea (I.G.A. 411). In modern Greek the substitution of <f) for is found in a few words when followed by a vowel, X or // (the last in these cases being changed to fi) — thus from Trebizond: ^Xi^epo<; ( = 6XiPepo<i), ^aXafiih ( = 6a\afiiSiov) ; and in the ordipary language api^vrjroi ( = avapiO/irfTOs;), a-Ta^vt] ( = a-rdd/iri), (prjKapi ( = 6r}Kdpt,ov) and @fj^ai is called ^rj^a by the people of that district, (b) There are very few instances in ancient. Greek of the substitution of for ^, and according to Meister no inscriptions give us such a substitution. Hesychius gives iXaffpd (= i\a(f)pa) ; also 60pvv which, he says, the Cretans use as meaning a mountain, and which is probably a dialectical form of the original o'^jou?, and there is the Cretan 0vX\.a, which may be for ^vXKa, though Curtius says it is doubtful, and more doubtful is the identity of the and ^ in Kopv0- and Kopv<^ri respectively. Similarly, in the modern language the substitution of for ^ is seldom found. Thus there is ffXixr], a form for (fyvXiKt], This change is rare, however, except in the Tsakonian dialect, where it is frequent before vowels, p and \ : thus dXoi0^ = aXoKJ}!], vv0r] = vv/i(l>i], evfiopdia = eufiopt^la, and generally in this dialect 0i,, 0v = <jii, (j>v respectively ; thus, 0iXe = ipcXois, dvre = ^vToVy ov0e, = ofi'j. But, as Carl Foy says, no one would here wish 78 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. to recognize an Aeolian survival. Besides this dialect is very peculiar and distinctive from all other present Greek dialects. This interchange of 6 and tj) can only be explained by a spirantic pronunciation of the two letters. Thus Roscher draws our attention to the substitution in England by children of / for th, thus iumi instead of thumh. There is another word, which, if we can consider the forms that occur in dififerent editions authoritative, goes far to prove the spirantic pro- nunciation of and <f). This is the word Fibvi (vid. Hermes xxvii. p. 481) (thus written on an ancient Corinthian vase) which occurs in Aristotle's Naf. Hist. i. 18, p. 617, 1. 9, and is written ^cov^ in some MSS., whilst in others a form dSiv^ is given (yid. Bekker's edition). Thus both 6 and (/> here stand for the original sound f or hav. We see, then, that the interchange of 6 and </> as exemplified in the ancient dialects and the modem language correspond very closely, and we have no reason to think that the cause of such an interchange was not the same in both cases, or, in other words, to suppose that the pronunciation of sounds treated in the same manner at both periods of the language was radically different at the one time from what it is at the other. (a) 6 became ■x^ in ancient Greek in the Doric dialect, thus we have : ef ej^a = e^adev, i^ev'^m = i^iXBco, ixH-ct = Wfia {vid. Hesy- chius). i-^^fiara, idfiara and t^j^i'ta are var. lects. in II. xiii. 71, and opvi'x^o'i &c. for opvido'i &c. in Pindar and Theocr. We have also the Lesbian irX'^'x^co = trXijOco (vid. Cramer, Anecdot. Oxon. i. 149, 6). Corresponding to this we have in the present Cappadociau dialect -^ substituted for d before and between vowels. [It will be seen that several of the above examples were instances of the d between vowels being changed to ^.j Thus, for instance ; INTERCHANGE. 79 ^€0? = 9e6<i, %eXo), ')(aKaaaa = 0iKco, daXacraa, "yavaTrnva = davaroeo, ya^Kco = ^ay8%«i) (vulg.) =s Bdirrm ; and ^d^o(}, crTrj'Xpi = 0d6o^, a-Ti]do<;, ftep^w = neOvm, Kpiyapiv = KXiOdpiv s= KptOi], It is also interesting to notice that in some MSS. of tlie Septuagint dpovov is found for ^povov in Ps. 8, 46 and ^ripav for dripav in Ps. 131, 15. Neither in the ancient nor the modern language do there seem to be any instances of (&) 'x^ being changed into 6. Of (a) (j} being changed into ;i^ we have from the ancient language the word dpxiSav'xya(^opeiaa<i found on some Thessalian inscriptions for dp'^^iBacpvrj^op'^a-a'}, in which Savxva consequently stands for Sd<f>vr] ; of these two forms Curtius opines that Sav'x^va the Aeolic form was probably the earlier. Hesychius gives a form Savx/J>6v (Hipponact. fr. 2) which he says is for Bd<j>pivov ; Meineke here reads iravSav'xycorov and Bergk roiovSe hd<^vr]<s. Alcman also has Bavj(v6cj}opov for Ba(f>vi](fiopov fr. 19, B. In modern Greek we have 'XTivoirmpo for (^dtvoiTtopo, and Lesbian d^avo^Trji} for d^av6<f)Tq<;, which is the same word as the ancient (^avovTrfi which occur in the Scholiast's explanation of Aristoph. Eg^. 997. (6) j^ becomes ^ in ancient Greek in the Lesbian avifyqv =: avxnv, of- Meister i. 120. In Theocr. xxx. 28 {vide Paley's edition) Fritzsche reads afi^rjv, another Aeolic form, which Salmasius restores to av')(riv. We have irvpi^ov = Trvpiy^^ov C.I.A. ii. 2609 in Attic. Hesychius mentions the form <f}Xiap6<i a by-form of ■)(\i,ap6<; in Herod., and this last word gives us a double indication of a spirantic pronunciation, if it can be rightly connected with the form Xiap6<i (vide Liddell and Scott). Prellwitz, however, does not admit this derivation but takes Xta/309 to be derived from a different root, Vslaivo. Hesychius 80 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. also gives Ka<f>d^eiv and ku'x^, Ka>(f>eveiv and «wj^-, in which, according to Curtius, ^ is the earlier. In the contemporary language we find ^ changed to ^ after 7\, thus 'kelya = yXeicfxo ; ^\ri')(mv and r^Xriymv = '^XTj^wvaKi ; whilst in Calabrian ')(t ( = kt) becomes ^t, thus : vv<fiTa, 6<f>Tm, avoi^To for vvyra ( = vvkto) etc. ; and in the same dialect ^z/ = ^v. We see then that the mutual interchange of aspirates is not frequent, either in Ancient or Modern Greek, but, such as it is, the mere fact of its existence in several different dialects (e.g. Aeolic, Doric, Cretan) proves that the aspirates interchanged in the respective dialects had in these a spirantic pronunciation. To pass on to the interchange of Aspirates and Mediae, (a) Beginning with S for 0, we find that in the ancient language the Macedonian hdvov = 6dvaTo<; ; and cfuSaKvoov is for iridaKviov on an Attic inscription of 330 B.C. (G.I.A. ii. 807, b 114, 117). In the modern language this change is comparatively frequent in dialects. Thus we have the Cyprian aSpmiroi; = dvOpeoTro's ; dvaSpfJKa = vdpOrj^ ; the Locrian Aio'^dprji;, At60t\os = 9eo')(dpyi<i and de6^iXo<s, also Bv^arepa, which occurs in other districts as well. On Leukas, Thera, etc., we find the forms MdpSa for MdpOa, A6/JL0KO for &avfj,dKia (a town in Thessaly) and Seid<piov for 0eid<j)iov (Passow, Carmina). (h) We find several instances of 6 for S in ancient Greek. Thus, 6da-o<; = hd(TO'i (Steph. Thes.); in the word @v<})aLOiSri<; (of. Meisterhans § 39) we have an Attic form dating from the sixth century B.C. of T!v^aiSiSr)<;. On another inscription of 373 B.C. ov6' ol = ovh' 01 in Attica (c/. ib.) ; and probably 50' 'Ep/ifji = SB' •Epfiv'! (G.I.G. i. 12), also ov0h = oiBiv ; similarly in New Attic forms we frequently have for B in ov0ei'i, fir/dip, &c., for which the feminine is always ovSefiia, firfBejjbia, never ovTefila, iirjTefjiia, but all these cannot perhaps INTERCHANGE. 81 be taken as true examples of interchange, as the 6 is here due to the folio-wing " spiritus asper," v. Brugmann, Greek Grammar, p. 52. It is worth noticing also that in some MSS. of the New Testament we find i^ovOevSt ( = i^ovBevS)), of. St. Luke xxiii. 11 and Eom. xiv. 10. There do not seem to be any instances of 6 for S in the contemporary language. In the ancient language (a) <j) became /3 in the Macedonian dia- lects, thus we get Bt'XtTj-Tro? ( = Ot'A.tTr'Tro?), cf. Etym. Magn. 179 : ^epevLKf], Bjouyev, Ke^aXr/, d^povTe<; ( = 6^pv<s), l3a\aKp6<; (Diod. Sic. xvii. 55). In the modern language there is dXei^co for dXei<f>(o and the Cyprian /SXd/io? ( = (p^6fji,o<;) and ^puKTrj ( = (^paKTrf). In the ancient language the only instance of (6) ^ becoming <f} appears to be in the word BaXtd? (the name of Achilles' horse in Homer) = " bright," " gleaming,'' of which a by-form ^aXio^, explained by Hesychius as being the same as BaXtd?, is found on ancient vases {e.g. 0. Benndorf, Wien. Vorlege. Matt. 1888, Taf. vi. 3a) and (Gerhard. Etrush. Vasenbild. xii. p. 17), and this form is also found in Callim. /r. 176, compare also Thuc. i. 24, and (f>d\,ap6<; in Theocr. v. 103, viii. 27. Prellwitz does not connect these words. In the modern language the only instance of this interchange seems to be <^Xrj<TKovvi = ^Xri-)(pvvi = ^Xri')(a)v, of which we have the Ionic form yXtjx^^v in Theocr. v. 56. In ancient Greek (a) we have no instances of % becoming 7. In the modern language only sporadically in dialects ■^ becomes 7, thus rypova-6<; = ;\;/3i'o-d?, Cypriot ypova-dcf>iv, yp6vo<i = vpovo^. In Tsakonian this change takes place between vowels, e.g. dveyov = dve')((o. In ancient Greek (b) 7 becomes ;>(;, e.g. in irpfixt^a for irpdyn.a {I.G.A. 3816 17) fifth century B.C. on an inscription Cr(?pi(^l>ios;_ 82 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. also from Attica of first century A.D. (?) •n-p'^xf^aro's {G.I.A. iii. 3822, 4); irapdhefxjJ.a (Ephem. Arch. 1886, p. 166, 1. 251) second century B.C. In the modern language y becomes x only in Cypriot irafx^viSi, and the Locrian Sv^^aripa for Ovyarepa. We see then that there are but few instances of interchange in either the ancient or the modern stage of the language between the aspirates and the mediae. We next come to the interchange between the aspirates and the tenues. (a) For d becoming t in ancient Greek. Hesy chins gives the change before p, thus rpova, for which we have Opova ( = flowers) in II. 22. 441, only given by Hesych., Tpvyovav, = to tap at the door, a var. lect. for Opvyovav Ar. Eccl. 34, and rpiva^, a by-form of dpiva^ which is found in Anth. vi. 104, 6, cf. also Hom. @pi,vaKir) and later TpivuKpia. In Elean we have evravra for ivravOa, whilst the Ionic form is ivdavra. Old and New Ionic give us aSri? and a?j6i^, of which two forms, according to Curtius, the priority cannot be determined. Athenaeus has Hvrvia for Kvdvia. There is besides the regular change of to t after a in Locrian, and sporadically in Boeotian and Phokian, also in Elean, thus : rifj.a)aTa>v (Tl/ji,da-0ci)v), KeXoiarav {-adrfv), XvadcrTO) {-aGw) from Elis [Roehl, I.a.A. 117, 119, 121]: ^meo-TO), eXeo-rat [I.O.A. Oeanthea 822], the Attic Kidapi^eaTco [G.I.A. iii. 74, 3], diroiroKnevaacrrai — irapayeveaaTat Bull, de Gorr. hell. v. p. 398, the Attic forms 'EiiriaTevov and AaKia-revov, and the Aeolic eo-TO<?, fiaa-ro';, klctto^, Klarapo';. From Attic inscriptions we may give as instances of this change evrvfiia G.I.G. 708; on a vase BaruXXo? {ib. 8439) KaTia-TOLo-iv Rang. i. p. 62 and from monuments of other INTERCHANGE. 83 dialects toi/ reov ( = rov deov) G.I.G. 3993 ; evrdhe (ib. 1988c) ; 'Ardfia'} = 'A0dfia<s on a Mysian coiHj and many others. In the modern language we find Xevrepo^ for eXevdepoii in the Peloponnese, reXeo for diXm in Asia Minor. Between vowels, corresponding to the ancient Ionic avTus, we get the form euTw? for evdv';. Again like in ancient Greek, d is changed to T after tr, e.^r. ytito-To?, aiardvofiat,, darev^i. The change is frequent after ^ and pj;, giving the combinations ipr and ;;^;t ; of the latter we have already (p. 57) given one probable instance from ancient Greek ; it is comparatively rare after p, e.g. ?ipTa = ripOa = ■^\0a ; oprmvo} = opOcovco. (&) T becomes in ancient Greek, in Boeotian which has -vdi = -pTt = -cTi for the termination of 3rd pers. plur., thus eycovdi, dirohehoavdi ( = diroSeSdoKaa-i). From Attic vases and inscriptions, Kapidaio<i = Xapnaiof K. V. 51 ; ®v(patSiSri<; = Tv^aiSiSrj'i K. V. 97 of sixth century B.C. ; yiOaiv, rnddav — 'x^itoov of second century B.C. ; Opo^o'; = T/3o</)o? G.I.G. 8139 ; 'ApiaTOKpadei; on a vase {Lpsg. Schrft. viii. p. 747) and 'AvdCKo-xpi {K.V. 51) of sixth or fifth century B.C. ; and others such as old Attic ivOavdol and dveOidri (G.I.A. iv. 6 27), 9efiL<T6oKXri<; {ib. ii. 864) of fourth century B.C. From Cumae we have 9v^X6<s (I.G.A. 624) and i6edr)v {ib. 528) ; from other parts there are several cases of 6 written for T, e.g. 0evSo0o-; = 0evSorov {G.I.G. 8518). Plato {Grai. 406 A) gives the form Ari0a), as one used by ^evoi for Ar/TO). In Ionic we have ^d0paKo<! for ^drpa')(o<;. We may also notice double forms as irXdravoi} and ■7rXd0avo^ ; and the terminations -rpop and -0pov, -rpa and -0pa, -tXo- and -0Xo-, -tXt) and -0Xr], which correspond to similar Idg. ones {v. Brugmann, Gmnd. ii. 115). In the modern language medial r regularly becomes before vowels, e.g. ■)(apdiou ^-. -xapTiov ; a^so, a 2 84 THE GEEBK ASPIRATES. IXiovde = fi^re in the Cretan dialect. In Oinoe £k jeve6r)(} for e'/c yeveTri<; ; and in Tsakonian a-i]da = afjTa. Other instances are : cWi^okij = avTi^oKrj, fjueOavptov, aTpaOicoTr]'; and jtadia, which are sometimes used in the vernacular for the forms with T ; and 6pe<^(o and 6po(^ri are still said, and correspond exactly to the ancient dp6(f>o^ for Tp6(j}0<;. Passing on to the labial we find that (a) becomes v in ancient Greek in several instances apart from the combinations a^, air. Thus afiireaai is Laconian for a/x,(pieaai, ; in Doric Trdrvrj = (^oLTVif], also dfi'TTidovpo^ and dfiTrierTaTrip. The form dfiire'x^ei.v with its derivatives belongs to all dialects where the ir is due to dissimilation. There are also the double forms pdirvt; and pd^vi Curt. p. 502 and Tj-pooifiiov = (fypoifMov, the latter form prevailing since Aeschylus. There are hardly any instances of tt for (j> from inscriptions on vases. In Attic niXnro^, AtTrtXo?, Ni/coTrtXe (G.I.G. 8076) are found on the same vase ; ^virpoavvr} (cf. Rosch.) ; Tiava- Kkeov; Rang. 1823 ; Mo7ro-09 on a vase. Corresponding to the ancient double forms, we have in the modern language pairdvi and peirdvi for pd(f>avo<;. There do not seem to be many other instances of the change of <^ into TT, but we get TrdirXaifia for i(f>d'7T\co/j,a, and dcTTaTrt'Se? for daTa(f>iS6<;. (b) The change of tt into cf> is likewise not at all frequent. In Attic of the 4th and 5th century B.C. ^apdevo<} {G.I.A. iv. h. 373) ; ^epae(j)6vr] and Aio(f>6idrj'; (ib. ii. 835 c.) from an inscrip- tion of 320 B.C. ^iTTaKoi; occurs for IltTTaKo? on a Mitylenian coin (cf. Mionnet, Suppl. vi. 64 no. 82). There is also the Arcadian (cf. Coll. 1181) and Delphic 6e\(l>ov(7io^ (W. and F. Inscr. de Belph. 464, 5) which on coins is OeXTrovano';, INTERCHANGE. 85 In Doric and other dialects e<piopK€Q} occurs for iiriopKeo), in Locrian ^piv = irpip, 7/047709, probably the original form,= 7/34^0? (Curt. p. 354), and the Attic ^tSuKvy = TndaKvr}. Strabo vii. 315 gives lidpo'i as the older form of <I>apo9 ; and the Attic ^ai/o? has also a by-form ■jravo'i, which occurs in Aesch. Agam. 280 &c. and is the older according to Phot. Lex. As before we must here also note the double forms in o-tt and a-<f), the former being more Ionic and the latter predominating in Attic. We find this change in the vernacular of the modern language, in which such forms as (povxra = irvKTrj, ^eXexovSta = TreXeKoiihia, ^Xefip-ovi = TrXevfioviov, K6p(l)0<; = /coX-tto? occur. Also in the double forms similar to the ancient, thus a-(j)ovTv\t, = airovBvXoii, &c. It is very frequent in the combination ^r = TTT, thus ^a(j)To^to, <f)TV(o, (f)Ta)y(^6<; , Xe<^TOKnpvov, &c. There is an Epirotic form d<f>iKpd^ofjiai (it has no corresponding ancient form) = listen, cf. Foy, p. 31 ; and the Tsakonian dcpoKtovpi = dlTOTVpOV. There is more frequen tinterchange in both the ancient and modern stages between the guttural aspirates and tenues than between, the dental and labial. In the ancient Isinguage, (a) y(^ becomes k in the Doric ^pv/cr]dfi6<i (Hesych.) ; in Ktriov cf. Meisterhans § 38 and Kvrpa, probably only a Siceliot solecism, as Epicharmus has %uT/3a (vid. Ahrens ii. p. 82). On Doric inscriptions the form BeKOfiai, which is also Lesbian and Ionic, and is used by Sappho and frequently by Pindar, occurs for the Attic Be-x^ofiao. In Old Attic we have pi'^Kw for the Ionic pef^X"^ (Curt. p. 242) ; kv6o<; for ')(y6o<i. New Attic also sometimes had « for p^, e.g. fiovKop = iJ'V'Xp<; ; Curtius gives apaKo<; a late form for dpa'x,o<s. In New Ionic (e.g. Herodotus) oiiKi = ouj^t, 0dOpaKo<; = ^drpa')^o<; ; Kvdpoi and KVTpo'i for ')(VTp6<i, 86 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. From errors on inscriptions • and vases we get very many instances of k for ^^ from all dialects. A few examples are : from Attic, Ev/tetpo?, Kapi6aio<;, kuXkovv, kiOmv and kitkov (Meisterhans § 38), from Aeolic Kopayiav, v-n-apKoia-ai^ (O.I.G. 3524, 40), NeiKofiaKiSa. On the Gortynian inscription we find, according to G. Meyer, owing to the a.bsence of a special sign for T^, the form Kpifiara = 'y^prifiaTa, e{7nK)opev and avKopev = iinjdcopeiv and ava-ywpelv. This change of ;^ into k occurred frequently after <t, whence we get (TK for o-^, e.g. aKeX,l<; Attic a-'x^eXh, &c., irdaKou for -n-daxoi, (Roehl, LG.A. 112) from Elis. In the modern language this change is also sporadically found in the dialects, thus we find e/co) for exo>, a-roKal^ofiai, both these occurring in Rhodes ; whilst in Cypriot we get oKrpo'i for e^Opo^, epKOfiai for epj(^ofj,ai, &c. The forms BeKo/Mai and KavKoi)/iai occur in the Cretan dialect. Again, as in the ancient language, there are the double forms in a-^ and aK, both in the medieval and modern language, thus cTKcipa = ia-x^dpa, &c. Ptochoprodromos has /xovoKvdpiv for jj-ovoxyrpLv, and also the two forms /3ddpa/co<; (iv. 99) and ^drpaxof (iv. 409), which thus correspond exactly to the ancient Ionic and Attic forms. We find (6) k becomes ^ i^ the ancient language sometimes before t ; and thus we have the forms Taxja ( = raicr^ or Ta-)(Py) Elis, Roehl I.G.A. 113, c. 12, Kariyravev Sagalassus in Pisidia, G.I.a. 4377, 5, evTayTo<i (Roscher 81, 20); e^ t&v Chios, G.I.G. 2241. We have also numerous instances of x written for K in other cases. From Attic, for instance, dvrjxoo'i {G.I.G. 160, 7), XoXt^o? = K6X'x,o'i> ^nd XaxpvXowv = KaxpvXicov on vases of sixth and fifth century B.C. (c/. Meisterhans § 38) ; also ' AiT'xXairlo'; &c. {I.G.A. 549) and forms like •irdvho'xp'i for INTERCHANGE. 87 those with original « as ttwSo/bo?. Athenaeus has XvTvia for Kvdvia. The grammarians give arpexv'; as Doric for aTpeKri<i, Pindar, Callimachus and Theocritus have the tenuis, though one reading for Theocr. ii. 151 is a.Tpexe's and is adopted by Ahrens. In the modern language also k becomes ^ before t, e.g. XTeVt = KTei<;, dSpdy(^rt = drpaKro^, dvof)(T6<; = dvoticTO'! ; e'p^; Tij^i)? in Trebizond. We also get this change before vowels, thus 'X^d<fjTco = Kdirjm, ■yfri'^aXi^ei, x'>X^''°'' > ^^^ before v, e.g. Sel'x^vm = SeiKvvco, Xi.'^vi^Q) = XiKvi^ay. Before tt, e.g. e)(7rdyrjv = eKTrdyqv {e^eird'yiqv), d')(Trdv<o = ^Kirrj'-jalva, d')(Trapdaa'(o = iKaTrapda-crco in Trebizond only. These modern words in which « becomes p(; before v may well be compared with parallel forms in ancient Greek where the aspiration is considered to be due to the influence of a fol lowing liquid or nasal, e.g. Xup^jco? from JXvk. liKo'^fio^ " JifKeK. ^\7]'x^p6<s " f/^Xarc. From the preceding pages we see that aspirates interchange hut seldom with mediae either in the ancient or modern language, y and 'x^ hardly ever in either, (p and /3 do so in one dialect in each, and and B do so in Attic, occasionally in Ancient, and in one or two dialects in Modern Greek — to sum up, the interchange of aspirates and mediae is rare, but the instances we have of this interchange are about equal in number in Ancient and Modern Greek. Then proceeding to the interchange of aspirates and tenues (if we leave out of consideration for the minute the com- binations a-(f), ad and a-^, on which so much stress is laid by those who maintain that % ^ were still real aspirates in classical times), we see that and t interchange as much now as then, 88 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. and mostly in the dialects, whereas -y^ and k did so very frequently both in Attic and in the dialects, and still do so, and <f> and IT very seldom, but equally often in ancient and modern. This interchange is extremely difficult to explain, especially as it still is of constant occurrence in Greece where % ^ are now, and have been for many centuries, distinct spirants. The interchange that is by far the easiest of explanation is that of K and T^ — the Greek spirant p^; is very difficult to pronounce, and as most foreigners, even Germans, find it impossible to manage, and say k instead, it is not hard to imagine that the people of some districts, e.g. Rhodes, find the same difficulty, and therefore regularly say k instead of X' ^^^ ^^^ ^^is peculiarity has in a few instances crept into general use. Similarly in Ancient Greek, whether ■)(^ was an aspirate or a spirant, its frequent interchange with k seems fairly easy to understand. T and 6 interchanged freely in the ancient language, but not more freely than they do in the modern, and the ancient forms with 6 for t can be paralleled by similar modern ones : thus for Attic 6p6(j)o^ we have the common modern forms 6pe<po) and dpo(j>ij and for Attic '^iOcov the modern cficodia for (ptoria and for Ionic aurt? the modern eiirv<; ; and modern ^d6paKo<s like ancient Ionic /3ddpaK0<;. So too for the interchanges of TT and ^ the ancient and modern languages furnish a fairly equal number of examples, e.g. like Attic -n-apdivoi; and (papOevo^ we have modern pd-n-avo'; and pd(j}avo<;, <pov')(Ta and vvktiti and others. If we then collect and weigh this evidence which proves that, though now assuredly spirants, the interchange between X^'^ ^"^^ their corresponding tenues still prevails, is it just to maintain that because these interchanges were so frequent in INTERCHANGE. 89 Ancient Greek, the explosive element in p^; ^ ^ must have still been distinctly audible, when, on the other hand, we find that these interchanges still continue and yet know that the explosive element is not heard in the present spirantic % </> ^ ; and correspond- ing forms with tenuis or spirant, such as ^ipra or ?ip6a (for rikda), are constantly met with and cause not the slightest diflSculty ? The question of course is, whether these forms with a tenuis are a remnant from olden times when % </> ^ were pronounced as true aspirates, or whether this interchange, still existent, could have been possible from the beginning even ii 'x,<f> had always been spirants. Or there is another solution which is held by some, and that is, that two pronunciations oi ■x^^ existed side by side in classical times — namely, that in some dialects they were as now spirants, and in others, in Ionic for example, real aspirates or, if not wholly and in all cases aspirates, yet generally so. In Ionic these aspirates constantly became tenues by the dropping of the aspirate, and in elisions the final tenuis when followed by a i-ough breathing, which in Ionic was hardly used, remained a tenuis. A survival of this aspiratic pronunciation is found in being pronounced as t by the present Asiatic Greeks, e.g. reXw for 0i\o). And we may perhaps go further and admit that in other dialects they were aspirates before or after certain letters, which is shown by their being frequently replaced by the cor- responding tenuis in such cases — in Elean, Boeotian and Lokrian^ may have been = t + h after cr, as in these dialects ar is generally found for a-9 ; so too in Crete the aspiratic pronunciation of 6 was probably retained before p and v, as shown by the writings T/J, TV, though in other cases was in this dialect a spirant already before the fifth century B.C. (v. Meister ii. p. 54). As parallel to such a double co-existent pronunciation, we 90 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. may perhaps adduce the English s, which as a rule is pro- nounced as a hard sibilant but in Somersetshire and Dorsetshire as a soft one, equivalent to z. The interchange of tenuis with % ^ ^ is so frequent in Modern Greek that it seems to entirely weaken the force of the argument urged by Curtiua, Meisterhans, &c., that this inter- change proves aspiratic proniinciation for the classical period. Because if we view this fact as an isolated one (apart from all other considerations which seem to point to 'x^cj) 6 being real aspirates), then " per se " can it be adduced to prove that % ^ ^ were aspirates, seeing that exactly the same interchange is found in the present language where X'f'^ ^^® pure spirants ? Why should, or rather how can, one and the same fact be taken to prove a certain thing in one instance which in another instance it cannot prove ? If the forms in the modern language which have a tenuis in place of aspirate are to be taken as survivals from a period when % ^ were = k + h &c. and hence easily convertible into tenues, we can say the same of similar classical forms, namely that they do not by any taeans prove aspiratic pronunciation oi x'P ^ ^'^^ ^'^^^ period, but are probably survivals of a period from 1000 — 2000 years anterior to the classical. Before we pass on to the interchange of aspirates with sibilants, we must say a few words about the few ancient examples of two consecutive aspirates being written for two consecutive tenues and which Curtius and G. Meyer take with the other interchanges of aspirates and tenues as evidence of the aspiratic nature of % ^. From inscriptions we get "Exffeop ( ="E«T«p) G.I.G. 7673 on a vase, and ej^^d? ( = 6«tos) I.G.A. 322&. 2 from Epidauros, and in Theocritus ii. 62 and vii. 127 the form 67rt0^i5f« occurs for i-jniTTvo}. INTERCHANGE. 91 This last word has an exact parallel in the modern Cretan ^9v(o for iTTvco and the vernacular <f)6epva for inepva, and all three have parallels in words from the poems of the middle ages, such as KparL-xOrjic^v for KparrjKTiKijv from Georgillas Jl. 1490 A.D. and (j)Om^o\oyia (p. 54), ^iijidepoyvpevTdSe^ (p. 113), ■X^pva-o^9epovyo<f)6pe and (f)pa,y(dr) from Wagner's Garmina Medii Aevi. The similarity of formation alone is a strong argument for a similarity of pronunciation of the letters in question, and it is heightened by the extreme unlikelihood of "E/erop being written "K'x^dop if it was to be spoken as "EKr-hop. The double aspirates seem the chief stumbling-block to the aspirate theory of % <^ ^, because it is more than difficult to imagine that if (j)d, yd, 66 were merely written through analogy to 7/3, Kir, "ITT, &c., but pronounced differently with the first aspirate a tenuis, we should not have countless errors on less carefully written inscriptions, such as vases, instead of only two or three e.g. utiOltov and KaTairdiiievrji;, neither of which is Attic by the way. And, as we have noticed in an earlier chapter, this juxta- position of two aspirates is in the most direct variance with the rules for the aspirates of the Indie language, so that the discovery of forms in the ancient language which have their exact counterparts in the language when % ^ ^ had beyond all dispute become spirants, tends strongly to convince us that already in classical times these letters were spirants. It remains therefore to notice the interchange of the aspirates with other letters. We will speak first of the interchanges of 6 and a. (a) 6 becomes <r chiefly in the Laconian dialect, for the stricter Dorians, as Merry and the old grammarians say, pre- served the 6 whilst the Laconians changed it into (t. Opinions differ as to the time when this change began. Ahrens places 92 THE GEEEK ASPIRATES. it as early as Alcman's time, and Blass apparently agrees with him ; G. Meyer thinks this is decidedly too early : he also gives as his opinion that the o- in our copies of the Lysistrata and Thucydides has been interpolated by later copyists ; Merry, on the contrary, takes the words of the Spartan herald as given in the Lysistrata 980 ff. as a specimen of the strict Laconian dialect. In these lines we have : 'Aaavav = 'Adrjvcov, (jLvari^at = /j,vdiaat, ai(o — 6ea>, opera = opdd, a^aeT6<; = dyado':, and others. In Thucyd. v. 77 tw aim tov a-vfji,aTo<; is Laconian for to3 0ew Tov Ovfiaro^, and in Arist. Mh. Nic. vii. 1 ceto? dvrip for ^eto? dvrjp. The old grammarians and Hesychius instance many other Laconian words written with an a for 6, such as icdaaet for Kade'i, irla-op for iriQo'i, &c. In our fragments of Alcman we have craXaa-aofiiSoicrav, a-d}<Xei, ecrrjKe, &c., but we also have 6iaao<i, TrapdevoKuo, dvdo<s, Otolaiv, &c. On Laconian inscriptions o- is only found for 6 on those of late date, the earliest belonging to the second and first centuries B.C. and most of them to the time of the Eoman emperors. Amongst them are Set'ScKra? and SetVo/itTros of Hadrian's time G.I.G. 1241, Bm/xrea dveatjKev Cauer^ 34 of post-Christian time, TOV crlv ( = Qeov) ib. 33, probably of first century B.C. (v. Meyer, Greek Grammar § 211); ««? ar)pdTopiv ( = Kara d-qparopiov) ib. 36, 37 of the time of M. Aurelius. Blass says that the Laconian 6 was " undoubtedly for a time at least the Modern Greek spirant: if it had been a real s, it would have been so written by the Laconians themselves, while it is quite natural that the Athenians should have repre- sented the strange spirant by the allied sound a." This does not sound very convincing, as dialectical peculiarities of speech are never, or rarely, reproduced in the orthography of those INTEECHANGE. 93 born and bred to that dialect, but only by those who, for literary or other purposes, try to reproduce this peculiar pronunciation in writing. The Laconians may have spoken o- for spirant for a very long time before they themselves began to write it as o-, and Athenians of the time of Aristophanes would, if they pro- nounced 6 correctly as a surd spirant (granting for the moment that it was one), naturally in order to render literally the peculiar pronunciation of the Laconians, write an a- wherever the Laconians spoke 6 in that way. The 6 had therefore evidently become a spirant in Laconia at a very early date. If we now turn to other dialects we find that 6 becomes <T before fj. sometimes in Attic, e.g. in ending -a-fio for -d/io {v. Brugmann Crreek Grammar § 70, 1), thus ^a(rfj,6<{ is by Phryn. called the Attic form of the Ionic ^a6fi6<; — this distinction may be incorrect, but anyhow and o- are interchangeable in this word, ^aa-fio^ is found on a Mitylenian and a Lydian inscription (v. C.I.G. 2189 and 3486), dval3a0/jb6<! in Herod, ii. 125, Kara^acr/jiO'; Aesch. Prom. 817. Similarly dvaK\avd/j,6<; and dvaK\avafi6<; Dion. H. vi. 46 ed. Reiske ; pv0/i6<;, Attic, v. Lobeck. ad Phryn. p. 324, and Ionic jouo-yito? Archil, fr. 66 (Bergk p. 701), also in Anac. 78 ; and Call. Ef. 44, 5. IlaXao-tov for trcCKaQuov (Pax 574) and TpiKopvacoi; for -pv6io<; {Lys. 1032) may perhaps be taken as indications of a spirantic pronunciation of 6 in Attic. The Doric and Ionic eVXo? = ea-0\6<s (Find. 01. xii. 17). On an Elean inscription (Coll. 1172, 33) of probably the third century B.C. we have trorjao'crai = 'jroi'qa'aadai. Then again there is (&) the case of er becoming 6. The Rhodians, according to Strabo (xiii. p. 912), said ipvdl^r) for epva-c^rj ; in North looic Bv0fid<; stands for Sva-fMai; in Callim, 94 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. H. ad Ger. 1. 10 ed. Meineke ; and on the Gortynian inscription 66 or 6 is written for ad, e.g. ^prj6dai, airoBodat. All these cases of interchange between 6 and o- point strongly to a spirantic pronunciation of the former. In the modern language there seem to be no cases of (6), that is of (7 becoming 6. Of («), that is, of 6 becoming a, there are many examples to be taken from Locrian and Tsakonian. Thus in Locrian cr\iya) = 6\i^a), and aaXa/Movpa is a corrupt form of 66\o}/jLa. In Tsakonian crept = 6epo<;, a-eplvrov = depi^a, criva = ^t'?, a-aTr] = dvyaTTip, /cpia-d = Kpt6ij, &c ; especially to be remarked are a-ofio, cf. Laconian crepfj,oi, = 6€p/j,oi; Kaarjfiivoi — Ka6r}iievoi, cf. Hesych. Kaacrei, (Lacon.) : thus we have in Tsakonian, which is probably the direct descendant of Laconian, the survival of the ancient Laconian pronunciation of 6 as a-. In the contemporary language we see that p^;, as well as 6, becomes o- occasionally. In Cypriot this change is very general, thus, a-ept = %e/3f, creiXr), a'qpa, eroipo<;, &c., for j^eiXr], XVP^' 'Xplpo'i. A similar pronunciation prevails in Amorgos, Kalymnos and Astypaleia, e.g. ecrei = e'^ei, i^oa-ij = e^o')(rj, &c. Likewise in Samothrace and in the Pontic dialects, e.g. Trebizond, there are the forms craipofj-ai = j^aipofiat, creKihcov = •^eXiBcov, &c. In Calabria creifi&va — ^(eifimp, aelpo = 'xelpov ; in Macedonian aoivUr) == ^oii/tf (also in Pontic we have ■)(^oiviKov and o-oIvikov, and in Tsakonian y^^otviKo). We do not know of any extant instances of this change in the ancient language. ELISIONS AND THE SPIRITUS ASPEE. 95 CHAPTER X. ELISIONS AND THE SPIEITUS ASPER. This subject has such an important bearing on the probable pronunciation o{ '^<p in the various dialects that we must first briefly review the different ways in which it is treated in them (our limited space will not allow of our entering into full details), and then see what conclusions are to be drawn therefrom as to the nature of % ^ ^. In Attic, both old and new, the rule is that the final tenuis of a word is changed into its corresponding aspirate before an initial " spiritus asper," e.g. xad' rifiepav, ixp' ev6<;. And this rule is never (except for a few exceptions on G.I. A. i. 324, which is generally acknowledged to be the work of an Ionian) transgressed on any inscription before the Christian era, in spite of the fluctuating use of the spiritus asper which is often omitted, when initial, on the older inscriptions and has no sign to repre- sent it at all after the formal adoption of the Ionic alphabet. The orthography which corresponds exactly to the pronunciation is that of words like ecfyir/fu and that of those inscriptions where the initial spiritus asper is not written after the aspirate, e.g. Kadd CIA. iv. 61 a. 26. Writings like KaOhdirep on same in- scription, and d^' oii, d(j}' lttttov of the Alexandrian grammarians are incorrect, though the latter may, if had already become a spirant in their time, be explained by their not knowing that after a spirant the rough breathing ought, as after an aspirate, not to be pronounced. In Asiatic Ionian, where the rough breathing was lacking, we have complete psilosis on the inscriptions except for a few 96 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. cases like fiedeXj) B. 174 a, Kadrjfievov ih. 156, KaOohov ih. 238, found on inscriptions of the 4th or 5th century B.C., which are probably old compounds in which the 6 has persisted, and for others like KaOd-Trep B. 147, 151, Kadia-Tafievo^ B. 158 (with dTnjyyjaiv) which are probably due to Hellenistic influence. In Asiatic Aeolian we have no inscription from the time when the sign of the "spiritus asper" was still in use which has instances of elision or crasis, and on all the others there is psilosis, and the same applies to the evidence from MSS. Meister considers that Bergk rightly rejects as incorrect the signs of aspiration in the fragments of the Lesbian poets (Sappho, Alcman) ; of Alcman more hereafter. Exceptions to this rule occur on inscriptions from the time of Alexander onwards, e.g. d(j)iK6fjLevo<s Coll. 281, 15, Kadd ih. 311, 9, i(f)' av, €((>' olcriv ih. 311 must again be 'old compounds' or due to Hellenistic influence. In Boeotian, aspiration of the tenuis is regularly observed, e.g. ■n-oeelXero Coll. 488, 122. In the dialects of N. W. Greece, e.g. Phokian, Aetolian, aspiration of the tenuis is generally observed except in Lohrian where the tenuis is never aspirated in cases of elision and crasis on the older inscriptions, but only on two of later date (Coll. 1502 and 1508). In Mean, psilosis obtains except for a few instances similar to, and probably due to, the same causes as those noticed under Ionian and Aeolian. In Doric, which must be subdivided, we find (a) in Laconian, aspiration of the tenues on inscriptions is the rule, e.g. iroO' dfii Newton ii. 143, Ka0' a O.I.G. 1346; KaT Ihiav and «a^' ihiav represent two different forms of tSto?, Apart from the inscriptions, Apollonius testifies that in Doric poets, among whom Alcman is evidently to be included, the ELISIONS AND THE SPIRITUS ASPER. 97 tenuis in elision and crasis is constantly not altered before the spiritus asper, e.g. kco to^otu^ KoXXoaT viravkev {v. Blass, p. 112), and of the fragments he gives Bergk attributes some to Alcman. As there is great uncertainty not only as to what is Alcman's, but also as to the correct reading in the extant fragments {■)(WTrdpav fr. 76 seems certain), it is difficult to draw any definite inference with regard to the treatment of the tenues in crasis and elision. Blass, in suggesting that the reason of this non-aspiration may be found 'va.-)(^<f>6 being in Laconian spirants already, seems entirely to leave out of account the inscriptions. (6) in Tarentum and Heraldeia, aspiration of the tenues takes place, so also in Messenian and Goriwthian inscriptions. (c) in Bhodes also, aspiration is regularly observed except in the word tepo?, which is in this dialect written tepo?, and in KarvirepOe I.G.A. 482 a. (d) in Crete psilosis prevailed and on the Gortynian inscrip- tions the spiritus asper is never written, and r is never changed into d. To sum up, in Attic, Boeotian, Rhodian, the Doric of Tarentum, Herakleia and perhaps Laconia, aspiration of the tenues in elision and crasis is roughly speaking uniformly observed, whereas it is neglected by the Asiatic Aeolians and lonians, the Eleans and the Cretans. In the latter set of countries the initial spiritus asper had been entirely lost before historic tiimes, and consequently there was nothing to cause aspiration of a final tenuis. The regular aspiration of tenues in Attica, &c., proves accord- ing to some the true aspiratic nature of x4'^- According to Von der Miihll, if there was any reason whatever for the ortho- graphy ■x^cj) in elisions, it can only be found in the supposition that the pronunciation of % ^ was identical with that of the H 98 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. respective tenuis + spiritus asper. For, if this did not represent the pronunciation of %^^, what led to the substitution in question ever being introduced ? On the other hand, if we suppose % ^ ^ always to have been spirants in Greek, we must conceive that in the case of a tenuis followed by an initial spiritus asper the two coalesced into the ne sound of a spirant. It might be argued on the other side that the tenuis + spiritus asper must by the time of the introduction of (j) and y( have already changed more or less from real aspirates, for otherwise how is it possible to explain that never once in Attica before the time of Eukleides whilst H still = h, nor in any other dialect, as for instance in Herculaneum where they had a special sign |- for " h," do we find on an inscription of any kind ttA, kA, or rh written in elisions, erases and compound words for ip, '^ or 6 (excepting of course the cases of Thera and Melos) ? On Attic inscriptions aspirates and tenues are freely inter- changed, the " h " is often left out and sometimes wrongly inserted, we have mistakes in compounds and elisions, e.g. d^earaXKa, irevr opKiav, we even have KaOhdirep near KaOd G.I.A. iv. 61 a 26, but nowhere have we any error such as kut hefiepav, KaThiarTacn or dirheaTaXKa, which, if ^ = tt + A &c., are just the very ones to be expected on the more inaccurate and earlier inscriptions. Similarly on the tables of Herakleia we consistently find tto^oSo?, TTodeXofjievo';, &c., not once ttotI-oSo?, or ■7roT\-eXofjievo<i. Such mistakes as a<f)iaTa\Ka are plainly enough due to the stone- mason's ignorance as to whether earaXKu was aspirated or not, and is like the Mod. jxedavpiov for /Meravptov, e^eros for eTrero?. The writings KaOhd'n-ep, dtfihov &c. are nonsense, if 0, <j) of themselves sounded as r-\-h,Tr+ h; but if they were spirants, the stonemason who knew by ear that KaOdirep not Kard-Trep ELISIONS AND THE SPIRITUS ASPER. 99 was said, and further knew dimly that direp by itself was an aspirated word, thought he had better put in its " h," not under- standing that its aspirate was absorbed by the spirant 0. At all events ii xi'^ were real aspirates, then we ought, if only in elisions, to have some instances of «A, irh, rh being written for them before the abolition of the sign of the spiritus asper, and, this not being the case, it is extremely difficult to believe that X<f>0 were still real aspirates at the time from which even our earliest Attic inscriptions date. It is also maintained by some, e.g. Schiltz, that the " spiritus asper " had disappeared in Attic by the fifth or fourth century B.C., and others admit that, although it was in their opinion still heard down to at least the beginning of the Christian era, it had a very weak sound. If this were so, are we not almost forced to believe that the tenuis and spiritus asper must have coalesced into one sound before the latter became considerably weak- ened, and certainly before it quite disappeared ? Again, although the writing (f> and ;)^ for tenuis and spiritus asper could not possibly have come into use before the introduc- tion of these signs, we are not in a position to state that the language was not ready for them before — the tt + A and K + h may have become affricatives or spirants some time before single signs were introduced to represent them. In post-classical times there are an increasing number of exceptions to this rule of aspiration and these are either to be explained by % </> ^ now more and more approximating to spirants, and their consequently no longer correctly representing a tenuis + "spiritus asper," or by a general ignorance of orthography at a time when the initial " spiritus asper " was probably completely lost to the language, and further by some popular forms in which aspiration existed, though not 100 THE GEEEK ASPIRATES. sanctioned by tradition, having come into general use, e.g. eTot for eVos. As in modern Greek Kadox;, a<^' orov (or vulg. a^ovia), a(f>ir]ij,i, Kadrjfiipav are said, but air' on and a-jr oirov, because the former are stereotyped forms which have come down from antiquity, whereas the latter did not exist in the ancient lanofuaoe but have been formed in latter times when the spiritus asper was no longer spoken, so too in Attica and else- where in post-classical times we find non-aspiration of the tenues in uncommon elisions, whereas it is always retained in old forms and elisions which by their frequency had come to be regarded as almost one word. Now if we turn to the dialects of Asia Minor, Elis, &c., we find psilosis, caused undoubtedly by the spiritus asper having disappeared in these dialects before it and the preceding final tenuis in compounds and elisions had had time to coalesce into one sound, and thus we get air ov (for ^i^' ov) I.G.A. 246, rr/jOiyt (=T^"Hp27) B.211, &c. But even in these dialects we get occasional examples of aspiration such as d<f)iK6fievo<; Coll. 281, 15, KadoerTo-fj-evoi;, Kadwp, /j,e6e\,Tj B. 174 a, KudevSa), which correspond exactly to the tradi- tional forms preserved in Medieval and Modern Greek and, like them, are to be explained as old compounds dating from a time when the spiritus asper still existed in these dialects and had grown so firmly into one sound with the preceding tenuis, that these forms were not affected by the loss of the spiritus asper — or they may be explained by Attic influence. The explanation of analogy does not seem a good one, as the examples occur in different places and times and on different inscriptions. Other exceptions there are too in these dialects, which, according to Meister, are due to Hellenistic influence. ELISIONS AND THE SPIRITUS ASPER. 101 The word KaTvirep6e I.G.A. 482 on the Abu-Simbel inscrip- tion from Nubia, which is probably written by a Ehodian, is noticeable for the non-aspiration of the t, because on the same inscription the " h " is written elsewhere, e.g. ho, but not regularly by any means. It can be explained in two ways ; either, if Q is supposed = t + /i, it was caused by dissimilation of the aspirates, or else 6 was a spirant. The Attic forms ' KtrrfK.imTri'i C.I.G. 518 and KpaTiir-n-ot; Coll. 1307 (c/. 'A(})r]\ia,Tri<; C.I.G. 6180, 6181) cannot be taken as instances of the neglect of aspiration, for it must be remem- bered that no rule can be postulated for the erratic treatment of proper names. As regards KpdTnnro<; we^ find that the word tTTTTo? was regularly in all dialects deprived of its rough breath- ing when it formed the second member of a compound, thus we have Boeot. 'AXKiiriroi;, Delph. TLpdriinro^, &c., which is explained by the aspirate in i'tttto? not being Indo-Germ. ; whilst rjXto? when in composition was sometimes aspirated and sometimes not. To conclude, in those dialects where regular aspiration of a final tenuis before a following " spiritus asper " takes place, it seems only natural to assume that the ^ </> or ^ in these elisions must have been true aspirates, but on deeper investiga- tion we see that one argument against this conclusion is the fact that we have no errors on inscriptions of tenuis + " spiritus asper " being written instead of a 'x^^ ot 6 ; and, secondly, that if the spiritus asper had grown so weak as ,no longer even to require a distinctive sign, it was probably no longer of sufficient force to retain its influence in every case over a preceding tenuis. 102 THE GREEK ASPIRATES. Conclusion. Although in the course of the preceding pages we have from time to time drawn conclusions from the various arguments, it may be useful now to summarize. In the first place it will be as well to say at once that we consider the question one that does not admit of any definite solution, because even the safest, viz. the internal evidence of the language itself, is both of an uncertain and a conflicting nature. This being so, we can, after carefully sifting the same, do nothing beyond forming a more or less certain hypothesis from estimating the value of the arguments on either side and trying to duly appreciate them. From such an estimate we obtain the following results. In support of the aspiratic theory, we have the two analogical phonetic laws in Sanskrit and Greek, by which two consecutive syllables cannot begin with an aspirate, and a root may not begin and end with an aspirate. Add to this the a priori evidence found in the process of elision, and we have the main arguments for the aspiratic theory. On the other hand, in support of the spirantic theory, we have the difference of phonetic law in Sanskrit and Greek, by which in the latter language we find combinations of aspirates. As regards internal evidence, with the exception of that furnished by elision, it would seem to favour this theory. That it does so, we have attempted to show in our investigation of the evolu- tion of the phonetic laws and the history of interchange, which in our opinion seems to point to a continuity of pronunciation. As to the testimony of the grammarians, we think we have CONCLUSION. 103 shown by our exposition that, if considered impartially and in its entirety, it cannot be looked upon as reliable evidence for either theory. These are the broad conclusions at which we arrive, and we do not think they are such as to justify a final decision in favour of the two opposed theories which wo have attempted to elucidate. THE END. BIOHABD OLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BUNGAY. m^ ]jMn 'M-^:i