The Dialects of North Greece.[1]
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
- ↑ Read at the meeting of the American Philological Association held at Ithaca, July, 1886.
