trict, called themselves Ionians; while those, who finally sailed from Argos, and took possession of the southern coast, bore the name of Dorians.

7 The cultivation of lyric poetry by the Eolians of Lesbos, the choral poetry of the Dorians, and the epic poetry of the Ionians, gave an early and definite expression to certain provincial varieties which were called Dialects (diáλEKTOL), and the energetic and intelligent branch of the Ionian race which occupied Attica ('ATTIKń or 'AKTIKÝ, "the Promontory-Land"), subsequently gave such a distinctive character to their own idiom, that the Attic ('AT0is) was considered a fourth Dialect by the side of the Doric ( Awpis), the Æolic (ý Aioλís), and the Ionic (ʼn 'Iás).

8 As every dialect or provincial variety is such with reference to some standard of comparison, and as the Attic in the end became the general language, or "common Dialect" (kový diáλEKTOS) of all the Greeks, Grammarians have always estimated the Eolic, Doric, and Ionic Dialects by their deviations from the Attic standard.

9 Considered, however, in themselves, the four Dialects may be divided into two groups, corresponding to the two main divisions of the Hellenic nation (art. 4). For there is much truth in Strabo's remark (p. 333), that the ancient Attic was identical with the Ionic, and the Eolic with the Doric.

10 The Doric and Æolic Dialects agreed in representing the Pelasgo-Hellenic language in its first rude state of juxta-position. And if, on the one hand, the Hellenic element in these Dialects was more strongly pronounced in its roughness and broadness of utterance, on the other hand, the peculiarities of the Pelasgian, which were lost in the further development of Hellenism, were still preserved in the Æolic, and to a certain extent in the Doric also.

11 Although the Ionians, as such, contained the Pelasgian element in greater proportion than the Eolo-Doric tribes, their language gives less evidence of the lost Pelasgian idiom than those of the more northern Greeks. The reason of this is plain. In their case there was no longer juxta-position, but fusion; and the irreconcileable peculiarities of the Pelasgian and Hellenic idioms had been mutually resigned. The Ionians, whose ear did not repudiate a concurrence of vowels, omitted the harsh consonants of the

Pelasgian idiom, and the Athenians carried this a step farther, by contracting into one the syllables which produced an hiatus.

12 The Attic Greek is the richest and most perfect language in the world. It is the only language which has attained to a clear and copious syntax, without sacrificing its inflexions and power of composition. It is the language of Sophocles, Aristophanes, and Plato. It had become the language of Herodotus; and even Homer's Poems, as they have descended to us, are to a large extent Atticized. It is this language which, following the example of previous grammarians, we propose to teach in the following pages1.

13 Those who learned Attic Greek, as a foreign or obsolete idiom, were said to Atticize (ȧTTıklÇew), and there is a large class of later writers who are called Atticists ('ATTIKIOтai). But those foreigners who spoke Greek from the ear, and without any careful observation of the rules of the Attic idiom, and who consequently mixed up with their Greek many words and dictions which were of foreign origin, were said to Hellenize (Eλλŋvičew), and there is a large class of writers, including the authors of the New Testament, to whom we give the name of Hellenists (EXλnvioтai). It is the object of the Greek scholar's studies to make him not a Hellenist, but an Atticist, in the highest sense of the word.

14 A critical and comprehensive Greek Grammar should contain all the information which is needed by a modern student of the ancient Greek writers, and while it should aim at teaching the art of writing Attic Greek both in verse and prose, it should develop those etymological principles which have been derived from comparative philology, or the philosophical examination of all languages of the same family, and by the aid of which the dialectical and other changes in the language of ancient Greece are easily and safely explicable.

15 Such a Grammar should consist of the following different parts:

i. Orthography and Orthoëpy, which give the rules for the accurate writing, punctuation, accentuation, and pronunciation of ancient Greek.

1 The varieties of the Dialects are noticed in their proper places, namely, under the declensions and conjugations, and the anomalies of nouns and verbs.

ii. Etymology, which explains the analysis of individual words, divides them into different classes according to this analysis, and points out the affections or anomalous structures which result from the contact of consonants or vowels with one another.

iii. Inflexion, which applies the rules of etymology to the motion of nouns through their cases, numbers, and genders, and of verbs through their persons, numbers, tenses, moods, and voices.

iv. Derivation and Composition, which show how one form may be deduced from another, and how two or more forms may be united in the same word.

Syntax or Construction, which examines logically the conjunction of words in a sentence, and the mutual dependence of

sentences.

vi. Metre, which points out the connexion between the quantity of syllables and their rhythmical arrangement in verse composition.

These six parts fall into two main departments—the first four referring to the Word itself, and the last two to the logical and rhythmical arrangement of words in sentences and verses.

PART I.

ORTHOGRAPHY AND ORTHOEPY.

§ I. Alphabet.

16 THE ordinary Greek Alphabet consists of the following twenty-four letters (σTоixeîa):

Besides these twenty-four letters, which are used in this order to designate the books of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Greeks had other characters, which became obsolete at an early period as ordinary letters, but retained their place in the alphabet as numerical signs: these were the spirant F, called Baû or the Digamma, originally the 6th letter of the alphabet and used under the form 5 to denote the number 6; the hard dental sibilant Σáv, which originally occupied the seventh place, that of its Hebrew prototype Zain, but was ousted by Zyra the representative of Tzade, and was represented among the numerical signs only in the arbitrary compound Σaμmî (i.e. Záv and πî, the converse of y), written, to denote the number 900; and the guttural Q, called Kóππα, which originally followed II, and was used to denote the number 90. The latter is still found in inscriptions in such words as φόρινθος, λυρος, &c. (See Böckh, C. I. nn. 29, 37, 166).

§ II. Pronunciation.

17 We have given the usual pronunciation of these letters as they are articulated in England. At the revival of letters there was a considerable controversy on this subject, especially between the followers of Reuchlin, who was guided by the pronunciation of the modern Greeks, and those of Erasmus, whose method rests upon internal evidence, and is also supported by the Latin transcription. The system of Erasmus was called Etacismus, because it gave the value of e to 'Hra, as distinguished from the new Greek Itacismus, which pronounced that letter as i. Few modern scholars will doubt that the theory of Erasmus is the more reasonable. According to this method, B, 7, 8, 0, K, X, μ, V, 0, π, σ, T, X, Y, w, were pronounced as they still are in England, or nearly so; a was the English a in father, or mat, according as it is long or short; e was the short e in met, n the long a in mate, or the long e in there, or the double ee in meer; was the i in machine, or pin, according as it is long or short; and v was pronounced softly, like our u in cube or Cupid.

It will be observed that e and u are called λóv, i.e. "unaspirated." The reason of this is that e was originally an aspirated vowel or the mark of aspiration: and v never occurs at the beginning of a word without a rough breathing. Similarly, p is always hr or rh.