Page:Herodotus and the Empires of the East.djvu/102

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
96
HERODOTUS.

ly belonged to the Indo-European. Such sounds are represented in these languages simply by a—thus, Indo-European, *é-bhero-nt (Gr., ἔφερον); Sanskrit, ábharan; Old Persian, abara(n). In Avestan this a suffered later euphonic changes.

Herodotus little knew that the Persian language was but a sister tongue of his own. How closely it resembles the Greek, and how far it varies from the mother language, the Indo-European, the following examples of comparative morphology serve to illustrate:

Persian, aspa ("horse"); Indo-European, *éḱwo; Sanskrit, áçva; Greek, ἵππο-ς; Latin, equo-s.

  Persian.   Greek.     Indo-European.
Nom. *aspa   ἵππος     *éḱwos
Acc. *aspam   ἵππον     *éḱwom
Gen. *aspahyā   ἵπποιο (Hom.)   *éḱwosyo
*éḱwesyo
Abl *aspā(d)   *ἵππο(τ)? Cf. Ϝοίκω, Rhein. Mus. LI. p. 303   *éḱwōd
*éḱwēd
Loc. *aspaiy *ἵπποι; cf. οἴκοι *éḱwoi
*ἵππει; cf. οἴκει *éḱwei
Instr. *aspā   *ἵππη; cf. πήποκα. (Att. πώποτε), Cyprian "if" (Att. ἐᾱν for ἠ ἄν)   *éḱwō
*éḱwē

Persian, bar ("bear"); Indo-European, bher; Sanskrit, bhar; Greek, φέρω; Latin, fero.