6
While the similarity between Thessalian and Boeotian was rendered more apparent by the dialectological ἑρμαῖον 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 a 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.[1]
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
- ↑ Merzdorf finds four characteristic marks of the Aeolo-Doric period; 1. The treatment of -εω as -μι verbs. 2. ἐν for ἐις. 3 πέρ for περι. 4. Dat. plur. in -εσσι. The incorrectness of all these assumptions will be shown later on, when we come to a discussion of the intermixture of dialects in Central North Greece. Merzdorf assumes that in the Aeolo-Doric period the Dorians, who remained in North Greece, were more closely connected with the Aeolians than the Peloponnesian Dorians, i. e, that the North-Doric dialect is one of the bridges which lead from the Αἰολίς to the Δωρίς.
