Palmer L.R. The Greek Language

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genre of choral lyric. Simonides (born c. 556 B.C.) and his nephew Bacchylides (flor. 467 B.C.), both Ionians

from Ceos, mark a turning-point. In their choral poetry they are content to make a formal bow to the established

convention that the Doric dialect is proper to the genre. In limiting their Doric in the main to a few standard

features they anticipate the practice of the Attic tragedians in their choral odes. These are the use of

for h, the

genitive of the a-declensions, i.e. singular

and plural , and the accusative of the third personal pronoun .

Apart from these there are isolated Doricisms such as

'to thee', some third plural active endings in ,

infinitives in

and aorists in from dental stems. Of the now familiar Aeolicisms like and

enough will have been said. Doubtless of Lesbian origin is the imperative 'be gracious' < *se-sla-dhi with

Aeolic psilosis,

< sl, and retention of (which here is analogical). Further Aeolicisms are the athematic forms

and . The standard Homerisms make their appearance: genitives in , datives in , aorists in

, omission of the augment, infinitives in / , and the particle . Epic also is the compensatory

lengthening in , and .

The practice of the two Ionian poets marks the establishment of an elaborate and artificial pan-Hellenic literary

Doric, bound up with the genre of choral lyric, devoid of provincialisms, its dialect colouring reduced to a few

salient features, a kind of rough linguistic make-up which suffices to give the general impression of Doric. The

artificiality emerges from a single word in the above passage of Pindar:

has an Epic-Aeolic inflection

added to a Doric stem

. In the same line we have two different datives for the o-stems: ... . Later

the genitive

consorts with .

It is a priori probable that poets were active in all Greek communities and that there was a Mainland stream of

tradition at least partly independent of that which led to the Homeric Epic, so that the poetry of Alcman and his

successors in the genre of choral lyric may well have incorporated 'heirlooms from its own ancestry'.1 Recently

attempts have been made to remove this question from the realm of pure speculation and to discount the

unmistakably Doric components of choral lyric as

1D. L. Page, Alcman, 133.

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later accretions. In his attempt to show that Alcman was heir to a traditional language going back to a North Greek

Mainland source, the Russian scholar N. S. Grinbaum has examined a key feature of all Greek literary language

discussed above, namely the nominal compounds. Pindar is particularly prolific, 300 of the examples occurring

first in his odes, while others are attested only in Homeric proper names. Further, certain verbal stems which occur

as the first element in some Pindaric compounds are not found in Homer but appear in the Linear B texts. The

Mycenaean inscriptions also present compounds which appear for the first time, or uniquely, in Pindar. From his

comparison of the Pindaric material with the Homeric proper names and their Linear B analogues Grinbaum

concludes that, at least in the domain of the nominal compounds, choral lyric preserved, along with the common

tradition, its own peculiar tradition which goes back to the Mycenaean Age and possibly even further.

This is largely an argumentum e silentio. By chosen examples it is possible to link the Homeric Epic language

directly with Linear B. Thus

< *Lawo-er-ta preserves in the second component the verbal root *er- which

is attested only in Hesychius

, etc. This was replaced by the extended forms and . Thus

Laertes means 'he who urges on the folk'. The same combination of elements in a different type of compound

occurs in the Linear B name etirawo = Ertilawos (p. 36). A number of observations may be made. First, proper

names often preserve elements that have passed out of ordinary use: second, the available components may be

combined freely within a few types of nominal composition, so that at any time new compounds may be created by

any poet. Thus Stesichorus coins

(cf. Hom. ) and (cf. Hom. ); third, the

absence of a given element or given combinations from Homer does not mean that they were not used in the

Homeric Epic tradition. It must not be forgotten that these poets could draw on a fund of traditional Epic poetry

besides the Iliad and Odyssey. For instance, Ibycus uses

'deceiving one's host' with reference to Paris.

We now know that this word was used earlier by Alcaeus in a similar connection, but from the Ionic form of the

first component we may be sure that the ultimate source was Epic

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hexameter poetry unknown to us. If we add to these uncertainties the notorious hazards in securely identifying

Linear B proper names, it will be evident that the comparisons adduced are too slight and uncertain to support the

new thesis.

What tells further against it is the progressive creativity evinced in the successive choral lyricists. If they were

drawing on non-Homeric sources of compounds, we might reasonably expect that this Mainland material would be

more prominent in the early poets and would be progressively diluted with the acknowledged growing supremacy

of the Homeric school of Epic, as has just been demonstrated by the gradual reduction of the Doric characteristics.

But precisely the opposite is the case. It is the latest poets who show the largest proportion of non-Homeric

creations in their compounds: with Pindar it is 65 per cent and with Bacchylides 55 per cent. The earlier poets are

content to take the majority of their compounds ready-made from Homer, many of them in the same collocations

as Homer. But even their new compounds are often simply new combinations of familiar elements.

The long-accepted conclusion must stand. Choral lyric resembles Epic and the personal lyrics of the Lesbian poets

in employing a linguistic medium which is not the vernacular of any Greek community but an artificial composite

language with conventions of its own. These languages are varieties of literary formal dress: in Epic the warp was

Ionic, in the Lesbian poets the Aeolic of their island, in choral lyric a neutral pan-Doric, but all three warps were

woven through with other dialect threads.

6. Tragedy

The literary genres considered hitherto originated and flourished on the one hand in the colonial world of Ionia and

Lesbos and on the other in the Dorian Peloponnese and its colonies to the west. With tragedy we turn to a genre

which reached its fullest flowering in Athens. Yet its composite origin is linguistically evident at first glance.

There is a clear distinction between the Attic of the spoken parts, in iambic trimeters, and the Doric colouring of

the choruses. The origin of tragedy, perhaps the greatest and most enduring creation of Greek literary genius, is

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a disputed question, but there seems no really cogent reason for not accepting, at least in outline, Aristotle's

account.

The chorus was originally the heart of the matter. Tragedy originated in cult songs sung by performers playing the

part of satyrs 'and dressed as goats (hence

'goat song' < 'he-goat'). Such songs, of an orgiastic

character, were sung in honour of the god Dionysus and were known as 'dithyrambs'. The Greek word

resembles , which was also a song sung in honour of Dionysus, and . All three words, which have a

similar morphology, are technical words from the semantic sphere of song and dance. They are in all probability

foreign loan-words in Greek, and the first two were conceivably introduced along with the worship of Dionysus

which (according to W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greeks and their Gods, 31) 'descended upon Greece from Thrace in

post-Homeric times as a foreign intrusion'.1

According to Herodotus (I. 23) the development of the dithyramb to a distinct literary genre was the work of the

poet Arion, who was active at the court of Periander of Corinth (c. 628-625 B.C.) though he came from Lesbos. It

is to be noted that the Corinthian choirs whom he trained to perform his compositions were dressed up as satyrs.

The dithyramb was later introduced to Athens and became a subject for competition at the festivals of Dionysus.

According to Aristotle, the germ of the non-choral element of tragedy is to be sought in the

, those who

'gave the lead' to the choir in the performance of the dithyramb. The word occurs along with the earliest

example of the word

: Archilochus (fr. 77 Diehl) boasts that in his cups he has the gift of starting up

the lovely song of Dionysus. It is conceivable that this 'leader' explained the subjects of the successive

songs for the benefit of the audience. It was the Athenian Thespis who was given the credit for inventing the

prologue and spoken parts

, which were all the more necessary when complex stories from myth and saga

provided the theme of dithyrambs.

The next stage, we may surmise, was the introduction of dialogue between this speaker and the chorus leader. It

was Thespis who is recorded as being the first to present a tragedy at

1 This was written before the decipherment of Linear B, but the occurrence of diwonuso(jo) on fragmentary

Pylian tablets is difficult to evaluate.

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the Great Dionysia in Athens in the 61st Olympiad (536/35-533/32 B.C.). Aeschylus introduced a second actor,

and he also curtailed the choral odes, giving predominance to the spoken parts. Sophocles increased the actors to

three. As for the plots, according to Aristotle they were originally short and the language facetious, but they

achieved dignity at a later stage, once tragedy had grown out of its 'Satyr' origins. It was at this stage that iambics

were substituted for trochaic tetrameters, the latter being a metre appropriate to the 'satyric' and to dancing. It was

nature herself who hit upon the appropriate metre once dialogue had developed. For the iambic measure is the one

most appropriate to speaking, as can be seen from the fact that in ordinary conversation we (i.e. Greeks of

Aristotle's time) fall into iambics more frequently than we do into hexameters.

Given such a complex origin, we should expect the dialogue parts of tragedy to be couched in Attic and the choral

lyrics in Doric. At first glance this seems to be the case. In fact (the point must be made at once) Attic tragedy is

through and through Attic in dialect, both in the iambics and the choral parts, with only a slight admixture of

Doric, Epic and Aeolic elements, mostly belonging to the general poetic language. As Gudmund Björck (Das

Alpha Impurum, 181) has written, 'On the orchestra speech had to be Attic, in metrical form of course, and

stylistically ennobled and enriched.'

We may emphasize that in the choruses, where the genre demanded Doric colouring, the Doric elements are even

more restricted than in Simonides and Bacchylides (see above). The main stylistic colour is the use of

, but even

this appears only in a small basic stock of fixed Doric elements, such as

, and .

Alternation between lyrics and dialogue is regular where the word in question formed part of the Attic

vocabulary. Curiously,

is shunned in compounds and derivatives (e.g. and ), and this is true

of other non-Attic elements (e.g. is admitted but not * ). But Atticisms like and

occur in choral parts in all three of the major tragedians. We even find hybrids like and , and

these highlight the essentially conventional and decorative nature of the literary Doricisms: the

persists

mainly at the end of the word. On the other hand it is curious to find certain per-

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sistent Doricisms. Thus

is solely Doric (Homer has ), yet it occurs no fewer than forty-one times in

dialogue in all three tragedians. Apart from

the more noticeable Doric features are the genitive singulars in and

plurals in

, the pronoun and the occasional aorist of verbs, and even these might be Homerisms. A

single line

(Aesch. Ag. 44) shows how conventional and artificial such touches of

Doric were. The Aeolic features are few in number and are not direct borrowings from Lesbian personal lyrics but

confined to elements which had become part of the general poetic language: e.g. the preposition

in ,

and the characteristic phonology in words like .

Epic elements, occurring mostly in choral odes and in anapaests, are 1, absence of contraction as in ,

, and also in material adjectives in , the declension of s-stems, etc.; 2, compensatory lengthening in

, etc. (see further below for differences in the usage of the three tragedians); 3, metrical lengthening in

, etc.; 4, the case-endings ; 5, personal pronouns , etc.; 6, in the verb the inflexions

-n (for

, see below for Euripides), and first plural ; 7, the infinitive ; 8, aorists like

, etc.; 9, omission of the augment; 10, optatives in ; 11, comparatives

, .

A peculiarity common to all the great tragedians is that Homerisms are particularly frequent in messenger speeches,

which is not surprising, seeing that these are in effect spoken arias in the genre of Epic narrative. But Homer is also

drawn on with telling effect when other dramatic occasions call for elevated diction. A wonderful example is

Clytaemnestra's reply (Aesch. Ag. 1551-9) when asked by the chorus who will deliver the funeral laudation over

the husband she has just murdered. She retorts 'Iphigeneia the daughter he sacrificed'.

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'It is no concern of yours to take thought for this duty. At our hands he fell, he died, and we shall bury him, not

with lamentations of the household, but Iphigenia, his daughter, 'as is right, with fond welcome meeting her father

at the swift ferry of woe, putting her arms about him, will kiss him.'

Aeschylus is the only tragedian to use the Homeric

'care for'; and are both Homeric verbs

with apocope of the preposition;

'wailing' is an epic word and an Homeric adverb, both

occurring in tragedy only in this passage. Finally is an hexameter ending and clearly a

reminiscence of l 211, where Odysseus vainly attempts to embrace his mother's shade.

So far we have been mainly concerned with grammatical features (phonology and morphology) as dialect pointers,

and it is evident that Greek writers consciously applied them as touches of colour appropriate to the different

genres. But, as Antoine Meillet stressed (Aperçu, 130), the creation of a literary language means almost

everywhere the creation of a vocabulary. Aristotle has some sapient and pertinent observations on the practice of

Greek poets in their choice of words which amounts to a concise theory of poetic diction. A fundamental

distinction is drawn between colloquial and prose speech on the one hand and poetry on the other. Poetic diction is

remote from, and raised above, the language of everyday life. What is dignified, elevated and 'remote' is

Dionysus in The Frogs of Aristophanes (1604) addresses Aeschylus as 'the first who towered up lofty words'

. Aristotle, in prescribing the means of achieving such dignity, in fact applies

Tacitus's dictum omne ignotum pro magnifico. Men feel about words as they do about their fellow men: strangers

are more admired than their fellow citizens. So to give dignity to literary diction we must alter the vocabulary of

ordinary speech. This will be achieved (while preserving the necessary clarity) by lengthening and shortening and

otherwise altering the form of words. Important, too, is the use of

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'foreign words' drawn from non-Attic dialects. This he demonstrates by substituting the ordinary words

and for 'small', 'worthless', 'feeble' and 'unseemly' in the Homeric line

(i 515)

. The technical term for such a 'foreign' word is , the

everyday term being

, and its technical definition is that it is a word used in other regions. Thus was

to the Cypriots but a to the Athenians. Everything that is 'alien' and out of the ordinary

contributes to the dignity and elevation

of style. Aristotle, as a good scientist, doubtless based his

generalizations on a study of the practice of the tragedians. In the following list of equivalents the first words of the

pairs come from normal prose:

/ 'husband', / 'wife', / 'son', / 'brother',

/ 'body', / 'house', / 'walk', / 'see', / 'hear', /

'extremely', / 'breast'. For the non-present forms of the verb 'to go' tragedy uses a verb which has

dropped out of Attic (except in a transferred sense

'I am going to...'): .

Aristotle chose a Cypriot word to exemplify his definition of a , but the main source of poetical expressions

was of course the Homeric Epic. But what appear to be dialect words may have been borrowed by the poets from

Epic sources unknown to us. This point has already been made with reference to the supposed Arcado-Cypriot

elements in Homer. Eduard Fraenkel underlines this apropos of the word

'man destroyer' (Aesch. Ag.

1456): 'The word shows that the vocabulary of Aeschylus in its bolder coinages is sometimes indebted to the

language of post-Homeric Epic, a fact for which there is every now and then direct evidence [

occurs

in an Epic fragment, applied to the Amazon Melanippe], though far more often we have to infer it from what we

find in later poets.' Again, the verb

, which occurs only in Aeschylus and Euripides, has the Ionic form

in Aesch. Sept. 28, and this fact 'would suggest that Aeschylus took over the word from the language of

(post-Homeric) Epic, to which he seems to be indebted to a large extent.' It may be added at this point that the

greater part of the Ionicisms in the language of tragedy is in all probability to be credited to such Epic sources. It

was

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doubtless to the Homeric model that Greek high poetical language owes its most pronounced feature: the

abundance of compound words. Aristotle remarks (1459a) that 'double'

words are most suited to the

dithyramb. If this is so, then tragedy is true to its supposed dithyrambic origins, for it abounds in compound words.

In his effective coinages Aeschylus is supreme. Typical is Ag. 146-55:

'I call upon Apollo the Healer

that she [Artemis] shall not contrive for the Greeks

counterblowing, delaying, ship-detaining non-sailings,

bent on another sacrifice, lawless with no feasting,

not husband-fearing; for there

abides a terrible, ever-arising, cunning

housekeeper, an unforgetting child-avenging Wrath.'

Besides 'foreign' elements and compounds there are other pervasive features of tragic diction, the study of which

has revealed interesting differences in the practice of the three main tragedians. As an example we may take the

word

'ferry' in the passage quoted above (p. 134) from the Agamemnon of Aeschylus. This word occurs

only here and evidently obeys Aristotle's injunction for alteration of the everyday word, which is

. This

device of substituting an abstract in

(for the formation see p. 252) for the familiar word is widely used in

tragedy. What is notable is that though this type of formation was evidently abundantly used in Old Attic, it is

rather rare in Thucydides, while later Attic prose, particularly oratory, uses such forms even less. On the other hand

it is extremely frequent in Ionic prose of a technical character. A possible explanation of this peculiar Attic

development is that tragedy at an early stage drew on these Old Attic neologisms as

. As a con-

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sequence they became in Athens invested with the aura of high poetry and so unsuitable to sober prose.

In this usage of the

nouns Aeschylus and Euripides are opposed to Sophocles. Their new coinages greatly

outnumber those of Sophocles (134, 134, 48). Further, while Aeschylus and Euripides often use a

formation as

an alternative to the more common word, Sophocles prefers to employ them in peri-phrastic phrases, e.g.

'guard objects of herdsmen' = 'herds'. This is a favourite device of his elevated poetic style: it

occurs in lyric and also gives colour to ornate spoken passages, such as the messenger speeches. In general

Sophocles' language abounds in abstract nouns. A counterfoil to

formations (which in the main express the

result of an action) are those in

which are action nouns. These developed in the Ionian writers of the late sixth

and early fifth century B.C. But there is little evidence of this in Attic even as late as the middle of the fifth

century, and these new technical words are rare in Aeschylus. Sophocles, however, was much involved in the

intellectual development of his time. A symptom of this is the fact that the

nouns are more frequent in his latest

plays: all but three of the fourteen

nouns peculiar to Sophocles occur in the Philoctetes and the Oedipus

Coloneus. He also leans towards the new

adjectives, which were a development of philosophical and

technical literature. There is in fact a clear stylistic distinction in Sophocles between the

and the nouns: the

former are rare in lyric, are not used with compound adjectives or in elevated contexts and the periphrases have a

prosaic character. With

it is precisely the opposite. But it should not be thought that the nouns have a

'prosaic' character in Sophocles. On the contrary, his practice conforms to the Aristotelian injunction that common

words should be altered. Consequently he draws on Ionian prose for forms such as give variety and distinction to

his language: e.g.

, , etc. An illuminating example is in Philoctetes 792 with

reference to the hero's suppurating foot. The only other instance of the word reveals its high tragic tone: it is used

by Aristophanes in a parody of the poet Agathon. In much the same way

formations are used by Sophocles to

give dignity to everyday things. A good illustration is the string of

nouns in the list of the household effects (in

the cave!) of

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