The Dialects of North Greece

The statement of Strabo (VII 1, 2, p. 333) πάντες οἱ γὰρ ἐκτὸς Ἰσθμοῦ πλὴν Ἀθηναίων καὶ Μεγαρέων καὶ τῶν περὶ τὸν Παρνασσὸν Δωριέων καὶ νῦν ἔτι Αἰολεῖς καλοὺνται is a statement which epigraphic testimony proves to contain an illegitimate use of Αἰολεῖς, but which is doubtless to be explained by reference to that plastic use of tribal names the most patent case of which is the extension of the term Ἕλληνες. By the Greeks before Aristotle Thessaly was regarded as the cradle of the Greek race, and bore origmally, i. e. before the incursion of the Thesprotians under Thessalus, the name Αἰολίς. This incursion gave the impetus to a series of revolutions in tribal relations which it is impossible for the historian to control with certainty. The Αἰολιδέων πόλις in Phocis on the way from Daulis to Delphi (Hdt. VIII 35), and the territory of Pleuron and Calydon, called Αἰολίς, in Southern Aetolia, received in all probability their names from exiled Aeolians, In the case of Pleuron (Πλευρωνία) such a conjecture has at least the testimony of antiquity in its favor (Strabo X 3, 6, p. 465), and, as Meister remarks, the statement of a historian in Steph. Byz., ἐν μέν τοι Δωριεῦσιν Αἰτωλοί, can readily be brought into agreement with the assertions of Thuc. III 102, and the scholion on Theocr. I 56 (Αἰολὶς γὰρ ἡ Αἰτωλίς), by regarding the Doric Aetolians as the inhabitants of the ἀρχαία Αἰτωλία. The passage from Strabo quoted above is the only authority which affixes to the inhabitants of northwestern and north-central Greece the name Aeolic. On the other hand, the consentient testimony of the ancients regarded Thessaly and Boeotia alone as Aeolic, and the grammarians restrict the use of ​the term “Aecolic dialect” to the idiom of Lesbian poetry, very infrequently characterizing as Aeolic a form which is Boeotian or Thessalian.

Giese (Der aeolische Dialekt, p. 131) has well remarked, in discussing the difficulties presented by the utterances of the Greeks in reference to their tribal and dialectological relations: “Nicht in den Meinungen der Alten liegen die wahrhaft historischen Zeugnisse, sondern in ihrer Sprache selbst.” If we supplement this statement by another, which in reality is not excluded by the first: “Ohne Rücksicht auf das Leben des Volks ist die Sprachwissenschaft todt und werthlos” (Fick, Ilias, p. 564), we open up the two avenues by which the science of Greek dialectology is to be approached. It will, therefore, in the first instance be necessary to pass in review the various phenomena which constitute each of the cantonal idioms of that wide territory reaching from the Aegean Sea to the western part of Epirus, and from Olympus to the southernmost parallel of those states washed by the Corinthian Gulf Upon this scientific basis alone can we hope to attain results, the value of which will doubtless be enhanced by the fact that so comprehensive an investigation has as yet net been attempted in Germany.

To establish the position of the dialects of Thessaly and Boeotia as dialects of North Greece, in their connection with Asiatic-Aeolic and in their relation to one another, I present the following table of their chief distinctive morphological features.

From this summary it is clear that the dialect of Boeotia occupies an intermediate position between that of Thessaly and that of Lesbos, is nearer akin to that of Thessaly, and that the dialect of ​Thessaly has a distinctively Aeolic coloring.^[4] Aside from those special evolutions in vocalization to which the Boeotian dialect first gave graphical expression, and the Aeolisms af Boeotian speech, there is a remainder of Dorisms the explanation of which has offered no inconsiderable difficulty to the dialectologist.^[5]

That the inhabitants of Boeotia and Thessaly were of the Aeolic race is proved by the close similarity of their dialects, and by the indisputable belief of the ancients that the Boeotians were of kindred race with the Aeolians. Boeotians joined the κτίσαντες Αἰολεῖς expelled by the Dorians, in the emigration to Aeolis, Lesbos and Tenedos, a union of émigrés scarcely possible had there existed no ties of consanguinity between them.

Two great tribes occupied Greece north of the Corinthian Gulf—the Aeolic in the east, the Doric chiefly in the west and centre,^[6] the Dores themselves being referred to North Thessaly. From that western element came the Pelopennesian Doric as an offshoot,^[7] now expelling the idiom of the original settlers, now absorbing its forms, which stand out as isolated landmarks of a bygone age (e. g. Ποοἵδαια in Sparta, the only example of the οι ablaut in this name). Though the Locrian dialect offers certain peculiarities, reappearing in Elean, it can nevertheless be adjudged to be a descendant of North-Doric speech.

Whether a dialectical separation between Peloponnesian and North-Greek Dorians took place at the time of the return of the Heraclidae, or whether they continued to use one and the same speech, is a question admitting merely a tentative solution, though the latter seems the more probable assumption, since there exist in North Doric a few remnants which are parallel to Peloponnesian Doric (gen. in -ω and -ως).

​While the similarity between Thessalian and Boeotian was rendered more apparent by the dialectological ¨ερμαῖον of the inscription from Larissa, their points af difference still await a final explanation. Upon the solution of the problem whether the original inhabitants of Boeotia were of Aeolic or of Doric blood depends the exact position of its dialect in its relation not only to that of Thessaly, but also to that of Western and Central Greece, We enter here upon a tortuous path, which is illuminated solely by the occasional rays of light cast by ancient literature.

It has been asserted by many, and, for example, by Merzdorf, that there existed an Aeolo-Doric period. This favorite assumption rests upon a probability that is purely specious, and has flourished upon the sterile soil of reverence for Strabo from the time of Salmasius to the present day. Its correctness has never been demonstrated by a detailed investigation, nor is it easily supportable by any more cogent argument than that in ᾱ both Aeolic and Doric have preserved a common inheritance, and that they retained ϝ with greater tenacity than the Ionians. But these considerations, together with some other minor points of agreement, by no means prove the existence of an Aeolo-Doric unity in any determinable prehistoric period, much less elevate such a unity to that degree of certainty sufficient to serve as a basis for exact dialectological investigation. Though Merzdorf accepts this unity as an incontrovertible fact, he fails to show that the Boeotian dialect, with its mixture of Aeolic and Doric forms, stands in direct succession to this primitive Aeolo-Doric period.^[8]

If, then, this contingent of Aeolic and Doric forms cannot be demonstrated to be an heirloom of an Aeolo-Doric period. it is necessary to take refuge in the theory of dialect intermixture through the agency of the influence of one race upon another.

The opinion has prevailed in many quarters that the inhabitants of Boeotia were originally Doric, and that they were Aeolized at the time of the irruption of the “Boeotians” from Arne in Thessaly, whence they were driven by the Thesprotians under ​Thessalus. Thucydides (I 12) says that, sixty years after the fall of Troy, the Boeotians, having been expelled by the Thessalians, took possession of the land, which was now called Boeotia, but which before had been called Cadmeïs, wherein there had previously dwelt a section of their race, which had contributed their contingent to the Trojan war. The latter statement is evidently a makeshift to bring his account into harmony with Homer, who recognizes the Boeotians as inhabitants of Boeotia. The account of Pausanias varies from that of Thucydides in that he relegates the immigration of the Boeotians to a period anterior to the Trojan war, and Ephorus states that the invading force was composed of the Boeotians from Arne, and af Cadmeans who had been expelled from Boeotia by the Thracians and Pelasgians. The theory of Thucydides that the Boeotians in their ingression from Thessaly into Boeotia were returning to their ancestral dwelling-place is evidently an invention, coined in the workshop of fiction, and failing to show that the Boeotians were of Aeolic stock. A similar inversion of historical fact is seen in the legend that the Aetolians “returned” to Elis at the time of the retarn of the Heraclidae. The atmosphere which Greek historians breathed was surcharged with “returns” of expatriated tribes.

Though tradition is adduced pointing to an invading force of Aeolic blood, and though it has been assumed that this force was successful in subduing a Doric race in Boeotia, traces of whose language worked their way into the speech of the conquerors, it cannot be said that these suppositions have either been made convincing or even possible. According to Brand, the latest writer on the subject, all those Dorisms which appear in the Boeotian dialect are either survivals of the Doric speech of the conquered inhabitants, or are importations from the neighboring communities to the west. Whatever may be said of the plausibility of the latter assertion, which will not be overlooked later on, the grotesque ingenuousness of his argument that, because in all the cantons of Northern Greece, except that of Thessaly, at the time of Alexander the Great, there obtained a dialect which presents the same general Doric characteristics, therefore such must have been the case in prehistoric times, needs no refutation.^[9] Inasmuch as all previous ​treatises on the dialect of Boeotia have failed to investigate the source of its dialect-mixture, an examination of this problem may not be without value.

Upon the arrival of the expatriated Arneans in Boeotia, they found there a imxed population, of which the Cadmeans and the Minyae certainly formed a portion. (The Thebans are said to have taken possession of their land—συμμίκτους ἀνθρώπους ἐξελάσαντες.) Busolt denies that the Cadmeans were of Phoenician origin, though it is impossible to tell with any certainty to what race they belonged. It is, however, probable that upon their expulsion they settled in Claros, Laconia, in Melos and in Thera. Tradition informs us that Erchomenos, the city of the Minyae, of which Athamas, the son of Aeolos, was king, was connected with Iolcos^[10] in Thessaly, an Aeolic city, called an ἀποικία of the Minyae. if we remember that the seats of the Minyae were originally on the Pagasaean Gulf, and that they emigrated thence to the Copaïc valley, we cannot fail to see that Boeotia and Thessaly were originally united into one territorial district.^[11]

Athamas was worshipped as a hero at Alos in Achaea Phthiotis, having a chapel connected with the temple of Zeus Laphystios.^[12] Here human sacrifice had been permitted—an importation from Boeotia, where it had been introduced by Phoenicians. In Boeotia and in Phthiotis was an Ἀθαμάντιον πεδίον. Near the Boeotian Coroneia was a temple dedicated to the Itonian Athena; a similar temple near a town called Itonus existed in Thessaly; cf Grote, Chap. XVIII. The architectural remains of the Minyae at Erchomenos are testimonials of Aeolic genius contemporaneous with those at Mycenae. The Achaeans were an Αἰολικὸν ἔθνος; and the Dorians did not develop at this remote period any architectonic greatness.

When the new-comers from Thessaly took possession of Boeotia, the Minyae fled to Lemnos, Phocaea and Teos, and thence to Triphylia in Elis.^[13] Pelias of Iolcos, and Neleus of Pylos, which was identified with the Triphylian Pylos, were brothers (λ 254). Busolt (Griech. Geschichte, I 95) finds it difficult to explain the origin of the settlement of the Minyae in Triphylia, and characterizes the Elean dialect as “related to the Arcadian.” The Arcadians, ​it is true, are said by Strabo to have been the earliest inhabitants of Triphylia. But, if the Minyae were of Aeolic stock,^[14] as is supposed by Fick (Ilias, p. 568), their settlement in Elis would explain that mixture of Aeolic and North Doric which is one of the chief peculiarities of the Elean patois.

Aetolians settled in Elis, under the leadership of Oxylus, at the time of the return of the Heraclidae. If these Aetolians brought with them a dialect not dissimilar to that of Locris, we understand why the Eleans displayed such a fondness for ᾰ before ρ, as in ϝάργον, πάρ; for ᾱ as in ϝράτρα and πατάρ, phonetic aberrations found chiefly in Locris as regards ᾱ, and in Locris alone as regards the ᾰ. Furthermore, we then comprehend such unmistakable traces of North-Doric influence as the dative-locative in -οι in the ο decl., -οις dat. pl. cons. decl., στ for σθ, and perhaps -ες accus. pl. (Delphic and Achaean). The Dorisms which are the common property of all Doric dialects, and which recur in this dialect, may be ascribed to the same source, e. g. τ for σ, ω by comp. length, ποτί, τόκα, πεντεκάτιοι, infin. in -μεν, though the possibility of the influence of Peloponnesian Doric is not thereby excluded. Strabo testifies to the admission of Doric elements into the Elean dialect, saying ὅσοι μὲν οὖν ἧσσον τοῖς Δωριεῦσιν ἐπεπλέκοντο καθάπερ συνέβη τοῖς τε Ἀκράσι καὶ τοῖς Ἠλείοις, οὗτοι Αἰολιστὶ διελέχθησαν. If the Minyae who settled in Triphylia (Hdt. IV 148) were Aeolic originally (and we need not assume that they had been Aeolized at Lemnos), their phonetic contingent was Aeolic, and we perceive whence came the Aeolic stratum in that remarkable combination of dialectical phenomena known as the Elean dialect. I refer to the ψίλωσις (ἐπίαρον), to the accus. pl. of the ᾶ and ο decl, in -αις and -οις (e. g. ταῖρ, τοῖρ, rhotacism being a later development), to the treatment of -εω verbs as -μι verbs in καδαλήμενος, though it must be conceded that this too is a peculiarity of the Locrian dialect. This theory of the origin of the intermixture of dialects in Elis (first suggested by Fick), though new, and perhaps destined to excite the hostility of surprise, cannot be dismissed without an examination of all the arguments that make for this conclusion.^[15]

​This digression was necessitated by my desire to develop and confirm the supposition that, of the original inhabitants of Boeotia, the Minyae at least were of Aeolic stock.^[16] The name of the inhabitants of the land drained by the Cephissus was in historical times inter alia Αἰολεῖς Βοιωτοί. Now, the peculiarity of this denomination of a people which formed later on a federal unity, leads to the not unplausible supposition that herein we have a designation of two tribal entities—the Aeolians and the Boeotians; otherwise, it would be difficult to explain a compound name of this character not easily paralleled in the domain of Greek ethnography or elsewhere in Greek, but occurring in at least one cognate language. If in reality the tribe called Βοιωτοί was a part of that body of Dorian Greeks who, as pioneers of a Dorian civilization, left their western home to seek a new habitation in the east, the possibility of a solution of the problem of dialect-mixture in Boeotia becomes at once apparent. The Boeotians left Arne in Thessaly either before or after the Trojan war—our authorities varying between the one date and the other—but that they were necessarily Aeolians is far from being proved by the sporadic testimony of tradition. Pausanias, X 8, 4, couches his opinion in positive language: Θεσσαλίαν γὰρ καὶ οὗτοι (οἱ Βοιωτοί) τὰ ἀρχαιότερα ᾤκησαν καὶ Αἰολεῖς τηνικαῦτα ἐκαλοῦτο, but we have no warrant for the credibility of his source of information. Thucydides doubtless believed them to be Aeolians, since they were “returning” to Boeotia, which was an Aeolic country in his opinion. A dispossessed Aeolic people would naturally take refuge with a kindred race, but their arrival is signalized not by a fraternal welcome, but by the expulsion of the Minyae, once the most powerful tribe of North Greece. If it be granted that the Arneans were Aeolians—and we must confess that the balance of probability according to tradition inclines to this view—we are driven to the conclusion that at this turbulent period, when the Dores themselves were compelled to vacate their settlements, a body of Dorians must have forced their way across the confines of Boeotia and become amalgamated with the remnant of ​the original Aeolic population. Whence these Dorians came we know not, if they be not in reality the Arneans.^[17] Doubtless they were Dorians who had crossed the Pindus—such ultramontane Doric tribes are not without parallel—and, forced by the later incursions of the Thesprotians under Thessalus, pressed southward to seek a new abode in Boeotia.^[18] Or, perhaps, from the Dores who, on their expulsion from Thessaly, settled in Doris, may have come an offshoot, which forced its way into Boeotia. We must be content with a non liquet in the investigation of such an elusive problem, and rest satisfied with the results attained—that Boeotia was originally an Aeolic land, and that it was partially Dorized at an early period of its history. The possibility of Doric accretions from the west at a later period is not thereby excluded, though an examination of the dialect of the neighboring cantons justifies the conclusion that the Boeotians were more liberal in infusing peculiarities of their idiom into adjacent regions than ready to receive foreign loan-forms.

In Thessaly, as frequently where alien races come into contact, the speech of the conquerors yielded to that of the conquered. That the invaders were Dorians is clear from many considerations, one of which has heretofore been overlooked. The leader of the Thesprotians was Thessalus, grandson of Hercules; the leaders of the Dorians who overran the Achaean Sparta were the sons of Aristodemus, grandson of the same hero. In both Thessaly and Sparta the subdued inhabitants occupied a similar position,^[19] the Achaeans and Magnetes in the north being reduced to a condition parallel to that of the περίοικοι, while the πενέσται were subjected to the fate of the Helots. Thessaly was divided into four, Laconia into six divisions. It need not excite our surprise that the tenacity of the Aeolic of the overpowered Thessalians was so vigorous as ​to supplant the dialect of the conquerors. The western Greeks, though of genuine Hellenic stock, were an uncultivated people, the Aeolians of Thessaly a people destined, together with the Achaeans, to be the nurse of the noblest development of Hellenic poetry. Hence the fact that we find so few Dorisms in Thessaly; e. g. ποτί, κράτος (Lesbian κρέτος), ψαφιξαμένας, etc.,^[20] whereas in the land of the crassi Boeoti, a people enkindled by no great love of the humaner arts—for Pindar was really extra flammantia moenia mundi—less resistance was offered to the speech of the invading Dorians. Thus we find such surviving Aeolisms^[21] as inf. in -μεν, patronymics in -ιος, dat. in -εσσι mixed with Dorisms; e. g. α for ε in ἱαρός (Thess. ἱερός, Lesbic ἶρος); the accus. pl. in ως, ει < η, by comp. length; ἀπό for ἀπύ, εἶμεν for ἔμμεν, ἄν for ὄν Thess., Lesb.; κά, the change of εο to ιο (?), inflection of θέμις θέμιτι), τοί, ταί, absence of assimilation, reflexive αὐτὸς, αὐτῶν, ἀσαυτῦ, fut. in -ξω, aorist in -ξα from -ζω verbs, Other non-Doric peculiarities of Boeotian speech which find no parallel either in Thessaly or in Lesbos are either individual developments of the dialect or importations from elsewhere; e. g. ττ from Attica or Euboea, as we may assume that the σσ on the most ancient Boeotian inscriptions (Κυπαρίσσι Λιβύσσαι) is antecedent to the ττ of the later monuments.

Turning from the eastern to the western portion of North Hellas, we enter upon a field that has heretofore not been systematically explored by the dialectologist. The present investigation of the vowel and consonantal systems of the dialect of Epirus, Acarnania, Aetolia, Phthiotis, and of the dialect of the Aenianes, is the first that attempts to bring together all the phenomena illustrative of the dialect of this extensive region. Before proceeding to a summary of the chief features of this patois, it may be instructive to pass in review some matters of ethnographic and historical importance that will cast light upon this obscure corner of Greek dialectology.

Epirus. The Greeks held that Hellas proper ended at Ambracia, and that therefore the Epirotic tribes were non-Hellenic. Though Thuc. (II 81) expressly states that the Chaones were ​barbarians, modern investigation has determined that of the northern tribes some were wholly barbarous, while the southern tribes at least were Hellenized. If, however, the Thesprotians under Thessalus, presumably in the eleventh century, were the source of the admixture of Doric elements in the Aeolic of Thessaly, and perhaps of Boeotia, we cannot doubt but that the Epirotes were on a footing of ethnic equality with the other Hellenes, nor refuse to allot them a place among the sections of that Doric race which afterwards was split into a northern and a southern division. In history the Epirotes play no part till the rise of the Molossi under Pyrrhus; and in 168 B. C. they were subdued by the Romans.

Acarnania. The earliest inhabitants were Leleges and Curetes, the former of whom had originally their habitations in Caria. Tradition points to early settlements under Cypselus from Corinth, and Blass has declared that the Acarnanian dialect is nothing more than an imported Corinthian, a declaration which he has unfortunately not yet proved. The Acarnanians were at all times the bitter opponents of the Aetolians, serving as auxiliaries under Philip of Macedon after 220, to which fact they owed their fall in 197.

Aetotia. Curetes, Leleges and Hyantes are stated to have been the original settlers of Aetolia. At the period of the tribal revolutions Aeolians from Thessaly forced their way in to settle near Pleuron and Calydon, and Epirotes came from the northwest to augment the number of immigrants. The Aetolians were the early settlers of Elis under Oxylus, though tradition fixed the original seat of the Aetolians in Elis (Ἡλείαν προγονικήν). Thucydides, III 94, makes the uncanny statement in reference to the Aetolians, ἀγνώστατοι δὲ γλῶσσάν εἰσι καὶ ὡμοφάγοι, ὡς λέγονται. If this assertion be true, which is doubtful on account of the qualification, it ean readily be referred to the inhabitants of Aetolia ἐπίκτητος. The eastern Greeks evidently had a fragmentary knowledge of their western brethren, whom they characterized as semi-barbarians because they failed to keep pace with themselves in the race for intellectual development. If we may trust the evidence of the inscriptions (cf. especially Coll. 1413), which flatly contradicts the self-asserting superiority of other more favored tribes, there did not fail to exist, even in this western canton, some love of sculpture and of poetry. The Aetolian league disseminated for almost a century its Kanzleistyl over a large part of Greece and the Archi​pelago (Ceos, Teos). In Laconia (Cauer² 30, 32) we find traces of Aetolian forms in inscriptions otherwise composed in pure Laconian. In Phocis (Delphi was subject to the Aetolians from 290 to 191), Locris, South Thessaly, are inscriptions varying in no important particular from those discovered in Aetolia itself. One possibility must, however, not be suppressed—the dialect presented in the inscriptions may not be the native dialect of the inhabitants. As the Macedonian official language is separated by a chasm from the speech of the people, which suffered one of the earliest recorded Lautverschiebungen on European soil, so the judicial language of the Aetolian league may fail to present to us those delicate nuances of vowel and consonantal coloring which are the bone and sinew of a genuine “dialect.”

The ever-increasing sway which this Aetolian state-speech exercised throughout Hellas was a potent factor in the dissolution of the ancient cantonal idioms. So complete, indeed, appeared the authority of this dialect at the time of Ahrens, that he was misled into the assertion that North Doric was merely an extension of Aetolian Doric, an assertion proved to be false by the Locrian tables, and by the Delphic decrees of manumission.^[22]

The Aenianes were genuine Hellenes and closely related to the Myrmidons and Phthiote Achaeans. Their original habitation is supposed to have been Thessaly, though in historical times they occupied the valley of the Spercheios, covering in part the territory embraced by the ancient Phthia. From 279 to 195 they were members of the Aetolian league.

The inscriptions from the southernmost Thessalian quarter, Phthiotis, bear such unmistakable traces of North-Doric influence that the opinion of Fick, who has collected and commented upon them in Coll. II. 1439–1473, cannot be upheld, though supported by the authority of Kirchhoff (Alphabet³ 138), and Meister (Dialecte, I 289). These scholars all hold that the inscriptions afford a true picture of the Phthiote dialect. The inconsistency of Fick’s opinion is manifest when we remember that he assumed the Doric dialect of the invaders from Epirus to have succumbed to that of the subjected Aeolians in North Thessaly. Here, however, in Phthiotis, where the pulse of Aeolic life must have beaten with the greatest vigor, where dwelt the Phthiote Achaeans, close to Phthia, the home of the Myrmidons and of Achilles, who was undoubt​edly an Aeolian of the Aeolians—here we are asked to accept a complete submerging of the Aeolic dialect and its replacement by a foreign speech. On the contrary, I hold that we have to maintain that the linguistic peculiarities presented by the inscriptions are the record of the political domination of the Aetolians. Despite the complete ascendency of the official language of the Aetolians, traces of the original native speech may have forced their way through, since the patronymic formations in -ιος—the surest criterion of the Aeolic dialect—in Nos. 1453, 1460, 1473 need not be explained as importations from any one of the three northern provinces of the τετραρχία. Whatever may have been the original form of the dialect of Phthiotis, so far as our epigraphical testimony allows us to judge, its present status is completely North Doric. Thus, for example, we find Θεσσαλῶν No. 1444 (183 B. C.), and Κάμων No. 1459 (160 B. C.), the North-Thessalian forms being Πετθαλοῦν and Κάμουν.

The following table presents the chief characteristics of the dialects of Epirus, Acarnania, Aetolia, of the Aenianes and of Phthiotis:^[23]

In turning from the rich bloom of the generous dialect-life in the Aeolic cantons of the east to the monotonous sterility of the North Doric of the west, we enter upon a period of the development of Hellenic morphology in which the life-blood of the cantonal speech has been drained dry, in which the epichoristic idiom has suffered a disintegration which is equivalent to absorption into the lingua franca of Dorism. None of the western cantons resisted the encroachment of the κοινή, as long as did those of Central Greece, or equalled the tenacity with which the Laconian and Messenian dialects maintained their cantonal individuality.

Of greater vitality, and therefore of greater moment to the dialectologist, are those phenomena of speech contained in the interlying dialects of Locris and Phocis (especially Delphi), dialects which occupy no unimportant place in an investigation of the problem of Greek dialect-mixture. These dialects in their oldest stage possess almost as strong a local coloring as the patois of Boeotia. The Delphic διάλεκτος, while not so strongly marked in its earliest epigraphical monuments as that of Locris, preserves a good part of its individuality till the birth of Christ; but the Locrian patois was soon merged into that North Dorie which is spread throughout all the regions of the west.

The Locrian dialect is represented by two strata of phenomena: (1) An older stratum found in the inscription relating to the settlement of the Opuntians at Naupactus among the Ozolian Lacrians ​(Coll. 1478), dating from the first half of the fifth century, and in the inscription containing a fragment of the treaty between Chaleion and Oeanthea, placed by Kirchhoff at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war; (2) All the later inscriptions, The two documents of the first class, together with the βουστροφηδόν inscription discovered at Crissa (Cauer² 202), and dating at least from the fifth century, are (aside from the great Larissaean inscription) the most important epigraphical monuments of Northern Greece, and of incalculable value to the dialectologist, inasmuch as they contain traces of the oldest phase of Northern Dorie found nowhere else. The chief features of the older strata of forms are as follows:

The later stratum of forms presents the general Doric character of the western group, all the remarkable peculiarities of the older stratum having disappeared.^[26] Contraction of vowels is more frequent, ϝ ceases to appear, there is no α for ε before ρ. In this later development of the dialect there is one essential difference between the dialect of Opuntian and that of Ozolian Locris: the former alone has -εσσι in the dative plural of consonantal stems (χρημάτεσσι, about 200 B. C.). This characteristic mark of the Aeolic dialect is found from Mount Olympus throughout Boeotia, Opuntian Locris and Delphi, but is unable to force its way across the boundary into the territory of Ozolian Locris.

A survey of the dialect of Phocis, including that of Delphi, which contains some few peculiarities of its own, will complete our review of the speech of Northern Hellas. he oldest monuments of the Phocian dialect are inscription No. 1537 (Crissa), which Kirchhoff assigns to the sixth century as the earliest possible date, ​and No. 1531 (Elatea), which must be of considerable antiquity, as it has the labial spirant in ϝανακείωι. Of the Delphic dialect the oldest monuments are Cauer² 203, which contains the form ϝέξ, and No, 204, 380 B.C. As the manumission decrees of Delphi present more peculiarities than the inscriptions of the rest of Phocis, I give here a summary of the dialect of the former, noticing when the Phocian monuments register actual differences:

This presentation of the phenomena of North-Greek speech, which affords a complete summary of the prominent features of each dialect, has new placed us in a position to gain a wider horizon in our estimate of the interrelation of the various dialects of this extensive territory. The entire region north of the Peloponnesus, with the exception of Attica and Megara, was the seat of two great dialects: (1) the Aeolic in the east, found originally in Thessaly and in Boeotia, where, through tribal revolutions and later dialect mixture, it has become strongly interfused with Dorisms, and (2) the North Doric, found in comparative purity, if we consider the paucity and late date of the inscriptions, in Western Greece, i. e. from the eastern confines of Aetolia to the west and northwest. This dialect contains no Aeolisms what​ever. Between the two—the Aeolic of the cast and the North Doric of the west—lies the Doric of the centre, a Doric essentially of the same character as that of the west, though from its greater antiquity presenting peculiarities not found elsewhere. The Doric of the west and the Doric of the centre of North Greece presents so many characteristic features which are identical, that it can hardly be deemed an assertion devoid of improbability if we maintain that no small portion of the Doric peculiarities of the Locrian idiom must have been a common heritage of the Dorians who remained in North Greece, and that, if we possessed epigraphic testimony from Aetolia or Epirus of the sixth or fifth centuries, or even such of a later date but of an unofficial type, we should discover many of those phenomena which are now held to be the distinctive property of Locris or Phocis; e. g. the Locrian genitives in -ω.

The peculiar nature of the North Dorisms, mixed with Aeolisms, in the Elean dialect substantiates the above hypothesis; for, had the Aetolians, at the time of their emigration to Elis, used as a vehicle of expression no other form of the dialect than that found in the inscriptions of their canton, those distinctive North-Greek features of Elean could never have been introduced by their agency. We may, indeed, conjecture that the official language of the inscriptions—a language reduced to the dead level of a monotonous Dorism—does not represent the language of the people, but such a conjecture does not militate against the probability of the assumption that originally there was but one North Doric, varied no doubt here and there by cantonal preferences, but spoken by Locrians and Aetolians alike. By this assumption alone can the Doric ingredient in the mixture of dialects in Elis be explained.

There now remains but one problem for our consideration—the interrelation of the North-Doric and Aeolic elements in the speech of Locris and Phocis. There are three possible solutions to this difficult question: (1) The Aeolisms embedded in the Doric of Phocis and Locris are loan-formations from the Aeolic of the east or northeast, or (2) they are the result of independent generation, or (3) they are relies of an Aeolo-Doric period. To the impossibility of demonstrating the existence of such a period, and of the inadvisability of attributing to it, if demonstrated, any potency in the settlement of mooted questions, reference has already been made. If, at the time of Homer, or of the return of the Heraclidae, Aeolic and Doric were cleft asunder, to what re​moter period shall we then penetrate to discover a unity which shall throw a flood of light upon the existence of sporadic phenomena at variance with the genius of the dialect in which they appear—phenomena that belong to a period at least a thousand years after this supposed Aeolo-Deric unity? Perhaps no argument could be better adapted to strengthen Schmidt’s “wave-theory” than the indefensibility of such assumptions as those of Merzdort and others.^[27] Shall the dialectologist, supported solely by the elusive testimony at his command, arrogate to himself the right to establish periods in the prehistoric life of Hellas, from which even the historian or ethnographer recoils? If I read aright the march of Greek dialectological investigation, one tendency at least is apparent: the assumption of an original unity of tribes, that later on enjoyed a separate existence, is only then available as a sure basis for further speculation when such a unity is elevated beyond the possibility of a doubt.

When a causa efficiens for dialect mixture^[28] can be found in tribal migrations attested by the evidence of antiquity, such evidence cannot be neglected. But the assumption of dialect mixture, even when we can show no historical testimony to the special influence of one tribe upon another, or the assumption of independent generation, is invariably preferable to any theory of great tribal unities designed to solve all difficulties as a deus ex machina. By the “independent generation” of a form in a Greek dialect, I understand the genesis of a form which is alien to the genius of the dialect in which it appears, and which is controlled in the last instance by the forces of analogy. As language constantly renews her processes, it is possible that the same tendency to create a given form may arise independently in different localities which stand in no interrelation. Such an analogical formation may have arisen, for example, in the dialect of Locris many years after a similar formation was called into existence in the dialect of Lesbos, and at a time when the forces that caused the Lesbian formation had become impotent in Lesbos.

I assert, then, in opposition to each and every scholar who is of the opinion that the Aeolisms of Locris and Phocis are survivals of an Aeolo-Doric unity, that neither is the testimony of antiquity^[29] nor ​is the evidence of Greek dialectology able to establish as valid any such unity; on the contrary, I maintain that all these Aeolisms are either loan-formations or are the result of independent generation, The delimitation of the extent of dialect mixture is as difficult as the delimitation of that of independent generation; and that it is often difficult to determine whether we shall assign a given form to one or to the other of these causes, cannot be held to militate against the validity of my position.

Connection between Boeotia and Phocis or Loeris is eo ipso probable, and is attested in many ways;^[30] Ἐρχομενός in a Delphic inscription preserves the epichoristic spelling of the later Ὀρχομενός. Hartmann attributes to the Boeotian dialect a vigorous influence in coloring the Doric of the west, but as he fails to support his assertions by any arguments that savor of cogency, we are not loath to characterize as incredible his statement that the datives in -οι in Delphic are a loan-formation, since there are about 30 instances of -οι, over 1000 in -ωι. It has been assumed that the -οι’s represent an orthographical error, an assertion as far from the truth as that they are Boeotisms. Traces of Boeotian influence have been seen in Δρυμιεύς and in ἔνδυς, for Δρομιεύς (cf. Δρομεύς, Δρόμιος) and ἔνδος, which is ascribed to the Dorians, Anecd. Ox. II 162, 10. But, though the darkening of ο to υ is found in Boeotian (Διουσκουρίδαο, Θιουτίμυ and in Διυδότω Νιυμείνιος), this phenomenon is not exclusively Boeotian, as it is not even chiefly Aeolic. As ἔνδος occurs In Delphic, the υ of ἔνδυς may have been generated on Delphian soil; and Δρυμαία, Δρυμία, Δρυμός are different names of a city of Phocis. Δρυμιεύς need, therefore, not contain the base δρομ. Πηλεκλέα, W. F. 54, 2, is perhaps a Boeotism for Τηλεκλέα; cf. Boeot. Πειλεστροτίδας (but also Τειλεφάνειος) and Lesbic πήλυι = τηλόσε.

Locrian ἐνκαλεἰμενος, Delphic ποιείμενος, ἀφαιρείμενος are instances of the -μι inflection of -εω verbs that constantly recurs in the dialects of Aeolic coloring.^[31] It is improbable that ἐνκαλείμενος should, through Boeotian influence, have forced its way into the dialect of the Ozolian from that of the Opuntian Locrians, who were settlers in Naupactus. The -μι form is to be ascribed either to the influence of Aeolic settlers (cf. Terpander and the Lesbic citharoedi, ​Ahrens, Gött. Phil. Versamml., 1852, p. 77), or, better, to a development of the Doric of these cantons parallel to that of the Aeolic dialect. As these forms are undoubtedly of later origin, they offer no proof of an Aeolo-Deoric period.

ἐν cum accusativo occurs throughout the entire extent of Northern Hellas (εἰς occurs in all the Delphic inscriptions but three times), and in Arcado-Cyprian. It does not occur, however, in the κατ’ ἐξοχήν Aeolic dialect, the Lesbian. As this construction is a relic of the period when Greeks and Latins^[32] possessed but one preposition to express “motion to” and “rest in,” it cannot be regarded as a characteristic of an Aeolo-Doric age. The Ionians have supplanted it entirely by the use of ἐς, εἰς, and the Aeolians too, perhaps under the influence of their Ionic neighbors, relinquished their ancient inheritance. That ἐς cum genetivo in Aeolic was driven out by ἐκ, ἐξ of the Ionians is not improbable, as both Thessalian and Boeotian stand here on a plane. The occurrence of ἐν in ἐλ Λακεδαίμονα (C.² 26, 8, about 316 B. C.), the single example in Laconian insciptions, is, if correct, a trace of Elean influence, rather than a survival of the original construction.

The elision of περί is not Aeolo-Doric, but Hellenic, though of sporadic occurrence. For Attic the forms περεβάλαντο, Agam. 1147; περεσκήνωσεν, Eum. 634; περιών, in a fragment of a comic poet, are well attested. The elision of this preposition, claimed as a characteristic of the Locrian idiom, is done away with by the correct reading, Περκοθαριᾶν, Coll. 1478. πέροδος, the single occurrence on Delphian territory.^[33] περιδαῖος, περάπτων, περ’ αὐτᾶς, περ’ ἀτλάτου πάθας in Pindar, περοίχεται, περίαχε in Hesiod, poets, who have incorrectly been supposed to have preserved herein traces of their close relationship to the Pythian oracle at Delphi, περομνύναι, περόσχια, περώσιον in Hesychius, the Elean πάρ, which may be due to North-Doric or to Aeolic influence (cf. Alcaeus 36, περθέτω; and in two conjectures of Bergk περ’), περ’ ἐμεῖο Megara CIG I, 1064—all these forms make clear the folly of attaching to a single dialect an occurrence of such general character.^[34]

The dative pl. in -οις in the cons. decl. is found in Aetolian, Locrian and Delphic, and also in Boeotian (ἤγυς), the isolated ​position of which leads us to regard it as an importation from the west, though the possibility of its being a native growth should not be suppressed. This analogical formation, like that of -σαν in the imperfect, testifies merely to the loosening of the old rigidity of inflection, and is not the exclusive property of any dialect, since it appears in Messenian, late Laconian, Sicilian, Arcadian, Cretan, and perhaps in Lesbian.

That -εσσι is not Aeolo-Doric is clear from the fact that, apart from the Homeric and Lesbian formations, it ecenrs only in Boeotian and in Thessalian. There is no trace whatsoever of -εσσι in any inscription of Peloponnesian Doric, and in North Greece it comes to light only as far west as the western boundary of Phocis. If this form were Aeolo-Doric, its appearance beyond this boundary and elsewhere would have followed as a consequence. The Delphic forms are not necessarily loan-formations, as they may be representatives of the forces of analogy inherent in each separate dialect. -εσσι occurs in inscriptions of Corcyra, Megara, in Theocritus and in Archimedes.

The result of this investigation may now be briefly stated:

1. The eastern part of North Greece was originally the abode of an Aeolic race whose dialect survived in Thessaly till the latest times. In Boeotia the incursion of a foreign Doric element was not so successfully resisted as in the case of Thessaly, and it is to the influence of this foreign element that we owe, both in Thessaly and Boeotia, the existence of Doric forms, though thereby the possibility of later accessions is not denied.
2. The dialect of the extreme western part of North Greece is pure North Doric, and absolutely free from the contamination of Aeolisms.
3. The dialects of Central North Greece are substantially North Doric in character; the Aeolisms which they contain are not survivals of an Aeolo-Doric period, but are purely adventitious, and their appearance is traceable up to certain definite limits.
4. Conformity to general usage, and not an accurate terminology, dictates my expression “dialect of Epirus,” etc., though care must be taken to assert that, in the five cantons, Epirus, Acarnania, Aetolia, the canton of the Aenianes and Phthiotis, there obtained at the period subject to our control but one “dialect,” distinguished here and there by minute local landmarks. I see herein a proof of the correctness of the theory of Joh. Schmidt (or of Paul Meyer, if he has the prior claim of being its originator), in so far ​as it maintains that the term “dialect” refuses to be restricted to any limited centre of speech. In any theory of dialects which are ever subject to a Heraclitean flux, especially if not subjected to the restraining hand of a written literature, chronological considerations are of an importance that cannot be underestimated. Therefore, while for a later period of the dialect-life of Hellas the expression “dialect” is one of peculiar relativeness, it is a justifable term for certain aggregations of morphological and syntactical phenomena in the earlier periods of language, when dialect-relations were more sharply defined. Schmidt’s theory is undoubtedly popular, though it has suffered trenchant criticism, notably at the hands of Fick, but I doubt whether it can ultimately hold ground. If it were rigorously enforced, it might deprive of all individual existence so strongly colored an idiom as that of Boeotia or Thessaly, Locris or Delphi. The restriction of the term “dialect” to narrow geographical limits may convey, and has conveyed, erroneous conceptions concerning the nature of a dialect, but the boundaries which enclose a dialect in the true sense of the word are not necessarily coextensive with those dictated by geographical configuration or by the exigencies of state policy.

This investigation, then, is not without its significance, inasmuch as it casts a light—dimmed, it is true, by the poverty of material at our command—upon the contention between two theories of the interpretation of dialectical phenomena. It shows us that we cannot cast aside the Stammbaumstheorie engrafted upon Greek by the Darwinism of Schleicher, and still defended by Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorf, even though the practical difficulties in the way of its absolute adoption seem well-nigh insurmountable. If, too timid, we struggle to avoid being dashed against the Scylla of Schleicherism, we may be drawn into the Charybdean waves of Schmidt’s Wellentheorie. The cardinal feature of this consists, according to one of its most keen-sighted adherents,^[35] in its assuumption: “Dass sie (Schmidt’s Theorie) eine allmähliche Differenzierung des ursprünglich in continuierlicher Reihe verlaufenden Sprachgebietes annimmt, und zwar eine Differenzierung durch dialektische Neuerungen, die an verschiedenen Stellen des ursprünglichen Gebietes aufkommen und von dem Punkte ihrer Entstehung aus auf das benachbarte Gebiet sich verbreiten.” The adoption of such an explanation not only of the I.-E. languages, but also of the Greek dialects, may lead us to see the cause whereby sub-dialect ​may lead to sub-dialect, and how each dialect may thus be bound together with the life of another by a “continuous series of minute variations.” But we are confronted in the science of Greek dialectology with phenomena dating from historical periods; for these phenomena we must seek a historical explanation as far as is permitted by the dim light of history. The wave-theory regards as merely interesting confirmations of its suppositions those causes of differentiation of a linguistic territory which to its opponents are the very sinew of the genealogical theory. It may well be questioned whether Schmnidt’s theory does not confuse these processes which caused dialects originally to come into existence, and those processes which give birth to phenomena that have become in historical times the property of two adjacent dialects which have flourished for a long period of time. Peculiarities which link together two dialects may be ascribed to the influence of one upon the other; but in periods antedating all historical ken the influence of a neighboring speech-territory need not necessarily have been the cause of dialectic peculiarities.

If linguistic phenomena alone be taken as the point of departure, we must confess that we thereby seek a refuge in a sauve qui peut, and renounce that ideal whose every patient endeavor aims at discovering in the disiecta membra of dialect-speech a clue that will reinforce those utterances of antiquity which make for the intimate connection between parent-stock and the offspring which, in periods subject to conjecture alone, left an ancestral home. This ideal in dialectology is as important a guiding motive as the ideal of the freedom from exception to phonetic law is in the science of comparative philology. We have, then, at least no mean purpose, if we search for the golden thread that shall lead us to an explanation of the genealogy of each separate form. With this ideal in view we may perhaps discover that, when the forms of adventitious growth have been separated from those which are indigenous, it is not impossible to construct genealogical trees for the Greek dialects, which will stand in harmonious interdependence. If we endeavor to sift the material which a kind chance has preserved to us, and believe that terra mater noua miracula suis ex uisceribus numquam emittere cessabit, we may trust that a solution may not be far off for many problems which the vigorous dialect-life of Hellas presents.