in forms which became adverbs like Ἀθήνησι and θύρᾱσι; but
after 420 B.C. these were replaced by -αις, θύραις, &c. The Ionic
of Asia Minor showed many changes earlier than that of the Cyclades
and Euboea. It lost the aspirate very early: hence in the Ionic
alphabet H is ē, not h; it changed αυ and ευ into αο and εο, and
very early replaced to a large extent the -μι by the -ω verbs. This
confusion can be seen in progress in the Attic literature of the 5th
and 4th centuries B.C., δείκνυμι gradually giving way to δεικνύω,
while the literature generally uses forms like ἐφίει for ἐφίη (impft.).
In Attica also the aspiration which survived in the Ionic of Euboea
and the Cyclades ceased by the end of the 5th century. The Ionic
of Asia Minor has -ιος as the genitive of ι-stems; the other forms of
Ionic have -ιδος.
4. Doric.—As already mentioned, the dialects of the North-West differ in several respects from Doric elsewhere. As general characteristics of Doric may be noted the contractions of α + ε into η, and of α + ο or ω into ᾱ, while the results in Attic and Ionic of these contractions are ᾱ and ω respectively: ἐνίκη from νικάω, Attic ἐνίκα; τιμᾶμες 1 pl. pres. from τιμάω, Attic τιμῶμεν; τιμᾶν gen. pl. of τιμᾱ “honour,” Attic τιμῶν. In inflection the most noticeable points are the pronominal adverbs in locative form: τουτεῖ, τηνεῖ (this from a stem limited to a few Doric dialects and the Bucolic Poets), τεῖδε, ὅπει, &c.; the nom. pl. of the article τοί, ταί, not οἱ, αἱ and so τοῦτοι in Selinus and Rhodes; the 1st pl. of the verb in -μες, not in -μεν, cp. the Latin -mus; the aorist and future in -ξ-, where other dialects have -σ-, or contraction from presents in-ζω; δικάζω, δικάσω, Doric δικάξω, &c.; the future passive with active endings, ἐπιμεληθησεῦντι (Rhodes), found as yet only in the Doric islands and in the Doric prose of Archimedes; the particles αἱ “if” and κα with a similar value to the Aeolic κε and the Attic-Ionic ἄν. Doric had an accentuation system different both from Aeolic and from Ionic-Attic, but the details of the system are very imperfectly known.
In older works Doric is often divided into a dialectus severior and a dialectus mitis. But the difference is one of time rather than of place, the peculiarities of Doric being gradually softened down till it was ultimately merged in the lingua franca, the κοινή, which in time engulfed all the local dialects except the descendant of Spartan, Tzakonian. Here it is possible to mention its varieties only in the briefest form. (a) The southern dialects are well illustrated in the inscriptions of Laconia recently much increased in number by the excavations of the British School at Athens. Apart from some brief dedications, the earliest inscription of importance is the list of names placed on a bronze column soon after 479 B.C. to commemorate the tribes which had repulsed the Persians. The column, originally at Delphi, is now at Constantinople. The most striking features of the dialect are the retention of ϝ at the beginning of words, as in the dedication from the 6th century ϝαναξίβιος (Annual of British School, xiv. 144). The dialect changed -σ- between vowels into -h-, μῶhα for μῶσα “muse.” Later it changed θ into a sound like the English th, which was represented by σ. Before o-sounds ε here and in some other Doric dialects changed to ι: θιός, σιός for θεός “god.” The result of contraction and “compensatory lengthening” was not ει and ου as in Attic and Ionic, but η and ω: ἦμεν infinitive = εἶναι from *esmen; gen. sing. of o-stems in ω: θεῶ, acc. pl. in -ως: θεώς; dy was represented by δδ, not ζ, as in Attic-Ionic; μύσιδδε = μύθιζε. The dialect has many strange words, especially in connexion with the state education and organization of the boys and young men. The Heraclean tables from a Laconian colony in S. Italy have curious forms in -ασσι for the dat. pl. of the participle πρασσόντασσι = Attic πράττουσι. Of the dialect of Messenia we know little, the long inscription about mysteries from Andania being only about 100 B.C. From Argolis there are a considerable number of early inscriptions, and in a later form of the dialect the cures recorded at the temple of Asklepios at Epidaurus present many points of interest. There is also an inscription of the 6th century B.C. from the temple of Aphaia in Aegina. ϝ survives in the old inscriptions: ϝεϝρεμένα (= εἰρημένα); νς, whether original or arising by sound change from -nty, persists till the 2nd century B.C.: hαντιτυχόνσα = ἡ ἀντιτυχοῦσα, τὸνς υἱόνς = τοὺς υἱούς. The dialect of the Inachus valley seems to resemble Laconian more closely than does that of the rest of the Argolic area. Corinth and her colonies in the earliest inscriptions preserve ϝ and ϙ (= Latin Q) before ο and υ sounds, and write ξ and ψ by χσ and φσ, the symbols which are used also for this purpose in old Attic. In the Corcyrean and Sicilian forms of the dialect, λ before a dental appears as ν: Φιντίας = Φιλτίας; and in Sicilian the perfect-active was treated as a present: δεδοίκω for δέδοικα, &c. From Megara has come lately an obscure inscription from the beginning of the 5th century; its colony Selinus has inscriptions from the middle of the same century; the inscriptions from Byzantium and its other Pontic colonies date only from Hellenistic times. In Crete, which shows a considerable variety of subdialects, the most important document is the great inscription from Gortyn containing twelve tables of family law, which was discovered in 1884. The local alphabet has no separate symbols for χ and φ, and these sounds are therefore written with κ and π. As in Argive the combination -νς was kept both medially and finally except before words beginning with a consonant; -ty- was represented by ζ, later by -ττ-, as in Thessalian and Boeotian: ὁπόττοι, Attic ὁπόσοι; and finally by -θθ-; λ combined with a preceding vowel into an au-diphthong: αὐκά, Attic ἀλκή, cp. the English pronunciation of talk, &c. In Gortyn and some other towns -σθ—was assimilated to—θθ, where θ must have been a spirant like the English th in thin; ζ of Attic Greek is represented initially by δ, medially by δδ, but in some towns by τ and ττ: δοός (= ζωός), δικάδδεν (= δικάζειν). Final consonants are generally assimilated to the beginning of the next word. In inflection there are many local peculiarities. In Melos and Thera some very old inscriptions have been found written in an alphabet without symbols for φ, χ, φ, ξ, which are therefore written as πh, κh or ϙh, πσ, κσ. The contractions of ε + ε and of ο + ο are represented by E and O respectively. The old rock inscriptions of Thera are among the most archaic yet discovered. The most characteristic feature of Rhodian Doric is the infinitive in -μειν: δοῦναι, &c. (= Attic δοῦναι), which passed also to Gela and Agrigentum. The inscriptions from Cos are numerous, but too late to represent the earliest form of the dialect.
(b) The dialects of N.W. Doric, Locrian, Phocian, Aetolian, with which go Elean and Achaean, present a more uncouth appearance than the other Doric dialects except perhaps Cretan. Only from Locris and Phocis come fairly old inscriptions; later a κοινή was developed, in which the documents of the Aetolian league are written, and of which the most distinctive mark is the dative plural of consonant stems in -οις: ἀρχόντοις (= Attic ἄρχουσι), ἀγώνοις (= Attic ἀγῶσι), &c. Phocian and the Locrian of Opus have also forms like Aeolic in -εσσι. In place of the dative in -ῳ, locatives in -οι are used in Locrian and Phocian. Generally north of the Corinthian gulf the middle present participle from -εω-verbs ends in-ειμενος; similar forms are found also in Elean. Locrian changed ε before ρ into α: πατάρα for πατέρα; cf. English Kerr and Carr, sergeant and Sargeaunt. στ appears for σθ, and ϙ and ϝ are still much in use in the 5th century B.C. Many thousands of inscriptions were found in the French excavations at Delphi, but nothing earlier than the 5th century B.C. In the older inscriptions the Aeolic influence—datives in -εσσι, ὄνυμα for ὄνομα—is better marked than later. In the Laws of the Labyad phratry (about 400 B.C.) the genitive is in ου, but a form in -ω is also found, ϝοίκω, which seems to be an old ablative fossilized as an adverb. The nom. pl. δεκατέτορες is used for the acc.; similar forms are found in Elean and Achaean.
The more important of the older materials for Achaean come from the Achaean colonies of S. Italy, and being scanty give us only an imperfect view of the dialect, but it is clearly in its main features Doric. Much more remarkable is the Elean dialect known chiefly from inscriptions found at Olympia, some of which are as early as the beginning of the 6th century. The native dialect was replaced first by a Doric and then by the Attic κοινή, but under the Caesars the archaic dialect was restored. Many of its characteristics it shares with the dialects north of the Corinthian gulf, but it changes original ē to α: μά = μη, &c.; δ was apparently a spirant, as in modern Greek (= th in English the, thine), and is represented by ζ in some of the earliest inscriptions. Final -σ became -ρ; this is found also in Laconian; -ty- became -σσ-, but was not simplified as in Attic to -σ-: ὄσσα = Attic ὄσα.
As we have seen, Ionians, Aetolians and Dorians tended to level local peculiarities and make a generally intelligible dialect in which treaties and other important records were framed. The language of literature is always of necessity to some extent a κοινή: with some Greek writers the use of a κοινή was especially necessary. The local dialect of Boeotia was not easily intelligible in other districts, and a writer like Pindar, whose patrons were mostly not Boeotians, had perforce to write in a dialect that they could understand. Hence he writes in a conventional Doric with Aeolic elements, which forms a strong contrast to that of Corinna, who kept more or less closely to the Boeotian dialect. For different literary purposes Greek had different κοιναί. A poet who would write an epic must adopt a form of language modelled on that of Homer and Hesiod; Alcaeus and Sappho were the models for the love lyric, which was therefore Aeolic; Stesichorus was the founder of the triumphal ode, which, as he was a Dorian of Sicily, must henceforth be in Doric, though Pindar was an Aeolian, and its other chief representatives, Simonides and Bacchylides, were Ionians from Ceos. The choral ode of tragedy was always conventional Doric, and in the iambics also are Doric words like δράω, λάω, &c. Elegy and epigram were founded on epic; the satirical iambics of Hipponax and his late disciple Herondas are Ionic. The first Greek prose was developed in Ionia, of which an excellent example has been preserved to us in Herodotus. Thucydides was not an Ionian, but he could not shake himself free of the tradition: he therefore writes πράσσω, τάσσω, &c., with -σσ-, which was Ionic, but is never found in Attic inscriptions nor in the writers who imitate the language of common life—Aristophanes (when not parodying tragedy, or other forms of literature or dialect), Plato and the Orators (with the partial exception of Antiphon, who ordinarily has -σσ-, but in the one speech actually intended for the law-courts -ττ-). Similarly Hippocrates and his medical school in Cos wrote in Ionic, not, however, in the Ionic of Herodotus, but in a language more akin to the Ionic κοινή of the inscriptions; and this dialect continued to be used in medicine later, much as doctors now use Latin for their prescriptions. The first literary document written in Attic prose is the treatise on the Constitution of Athens, which is generally printed amongst the minor works of Xenophon, but really belongs to about 425 B.C. From the fragment of Aristophanes’
