Palmer L.R. The Greek Language

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the hero (35-7)'

. The last word is similarly used by Euripides in a passage with

accumulation of

nouns: 'herds' 'lamb', 'cheeses', (El. 494-7).

Study of the use of abstract nouns thus leads to a paradoxical conclusion. Scholars have observed that in his latest

plays Sophocles approximates more and more to the style that 'seems spontaneous and natural' (A. A. Long, 1968).

Such new words as he coins are generally simpler and there is less recourse to metaphor and simile. But such

simplicity does not mean closeness to everyday speech. The increased use of abstracts is one of the means whereby

the everyday expression is kept at a distance and elevation of style

is achieved. If we must turn to

Thucydides and the technical writers to find a comparable liking for

nouns, this is not because Sophocles was

aiming at an effect of intellectual modernity. The clue is given by the language of Aristophanes: only a few such

stock words had been admitted to everyday speech. For Sophocles (and his audience) these formations, precisely

because of their rarity in the colloquial language and Attic prose of his day, could function as

and so

contribute to the elevation and distinction of style which Sophocles consistently cultivates. Yet the ease and grace,

clarity and smooth elegance of his style are given force and piquancy by discreet rhetoric. An example is offered

by the exchange between Neoptolemus and Philoctetes, culminating in a sustained condemnation of evil,

hammered home by repetition of the word

(Philoctetes, 1360-1, 1367-72).

'Those whose mind becomes the mother of wicked things bring up children who are in all things wicked.... Then

will you ally

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yourself with these [who robbed you of your father's accoutrements] and compel me to do these things? Do not do

this, child, but as you promised, send me to my home. And you yourself staying in Scyrus, leave wicked men to

perish miserably. And in this way you will earn double thanks from me and double from your father. And you will

not by helping the wicked seem to have yourself a nature like the wicked.'

Above we drew attention to a feature which unites Aeschylus and Euripides in opposition to Sophocles. To this we

may add the use of the Ionicisms

, and . These are avoided in dialogue by Aeschylus and

Euripides whereas Sophocles admits them as convenient alternative forms. It is also curious that Aeschylus and

Euripides use the Homeric form

as a simple noun and in compounds. The sole form which occurs in

the text of Sophocles is the compound (Ant. 970), and there it is only a variant for , which is

rightly preferred by some editors.

It hardly need be said that despite their common use of certain linguistic features the styles of Aeschylus and

Euripides are poles apart. This is particularly so in dialogue. Aristotle (Rhet. II 42, 1404) comments that one of the

ways of concealing art is to draw on the vocabulary of everyday life, and he adds that in this Euripides was the first

of the dramatists to show the way. A similar point was made by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (de imitatione, p. 206

Usener-Radermacher): Euripides took delight in truth and closeness to contemporary life. In his style he chose the

middle of the road: it was neither elevated nor plain. But even in the dialogue parts Euripides uses what is clearly

an artificial literary language: there are merely touches and splashes of modernity. Only in this sense is it true to

say that he approximated to the language of everyday life. In his morphology, too, there are modern features. Thus

he uses

and , whereas the two older dramatists have and . Similar are the

imperatives

, , whereas Aeschylus and Sophocles use the forms in . On the other hand, the

dative plural of the a-stems presents a puzzle:

is normal in all three tragedians despite the fact that, with few

exceptions,

/ appears in the inscriptions until c. 420 B.C., after which predominates both

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inscriptionally and in prose. This touch of modernity is avoided by Euripides.

In the lyrics, where the genre demanded an elaborate and highly coloured language, Euripides avoids the heavy

accumulation of epithets which he ridicules in his description of Aeschylus (Ar. Frogs, 837-9) as

'a man,

creator of savages, stubborn-mouthed, having a mouth unbridled, intemperate and ungated...empty-bundle-worded'.

Precisely in their employment of the ubiquitous compound adjectives there is a pronounced difference between

Aeschylus and Euripides. In the latter we miss the bold, the obscurely allusive, but dramatically pregnant, creations

of his predecessor. His own new coinages, abundant though they are, lack originality in that they are mostly new

combinations of a comparatively small stock of old elements. Yet precisely this transparency contributes to the

ease and comprehensibility of ordinary language. How successful Euripides was in his coinages can be gauged

from the fact that over 55 per cent of them were used by his successors. Among those who borrowed from his

lyrics are not only poets like Aristophanes or the Orphic poets, Lycophron, Apollonius Rhodius, the poets of the

Anthology and Nonnus, but also prose writers like Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Lucian and Plutarch.

The approximation to ordinary language even in his lyrics is revealed by statistical analysis. Whereas Aeschylus

(and Pindar) use a vocabulary which is almost wholly

, consisting of purely poetical words, it has been

calculated that the lyrics of Euripides contain over forty per cent of words shared with ordinary Greek prose. Of

the poetical words Epic supplies the largest share, and this might well be increased if we knew more of the lost

Epic sources. It has been conjectured that Euripides' Homerisms are in the main those which had passed into the

general poetic language and had lost their full Epic flavour. In all this we sense deliberate artistic purpose. Public

taste had outgrown what had come to be felt as the archaic dithyrambic bombast of his great predecessor, and

Euripides strove to replace it by a more natural and less obscure mode of lyrical expression. In this way he

progressed towards what was a necessity for a

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tragic poet in the late fifth century B.C.: a clear and moderate style which, while respecting the rules of the genre,

made it easy for the audience to follow what was being said and done on the stage.

Even so, the arias and monodies which he composed for performance by the actors, thereby reducing the part

allotted to the chorus, have a strongly emotional character, with the result that the gap between the spoken and the

sung constituents of his plays is greater than in all the other tragedians. What is particularly characteristic of his

style is the unrelenting use of rhetorical devices: in this respect he was the product of the Sophistic school (see

below). This, more than anything else, separates Euripides' style from the dignity and nobility of Sophocles. How

Aristophanes assessed their merit emerges clearly from the Frogs: in Pluto's world Aeschylus yielded to Sophocles

a place on his bardic throne.

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The Literary Languages: Prose

1. Herodotus and Early Ionic Prose

It is a curious fact of Greek literary history that although a number of highly elaborate poetical languages were

evolved at an early date, there is no example of artistic prose before the second half of the fifth century and, in the

case of Attica, none until towards its end. That prose was used for practical purposes even in the Mycenaean Age

has been revealed by the Linear B inscriptions (see Chapter II); but here, too, it is significant that in all likelihood,

as we have argued, this language was of a formal and stereotyped character which had to be learned by the Palace

scribes as part of their administrative training. But all this was lost with the destruction of the palaces and long

centuries of illiteracy ensued. Even after the introduction of the alphabet in the eighth century B.C. (pp. 201 ff.) it

seems likely that for long the Greek states relied not on written records but on specially gifted and trained

'remembrancers' for recording matters and events of public importance, both sacred and secular, for that is the

meaning of the word for such recorders

This feature of Greek civilization is in striking contrast to the habits of its neighbours in Egypt and the Orient. As

far as we know there was in Mycenaean times no counterpart to the boastful public records of the exploits of the

Egyptian Pharaohs. Even in the alphabetic period 'No early chronicles of events, even in the briefest form, have yet

been found in any Greek state.'1 The Epic language, largely the creation of Ionia, remained firmly established as

the natural medium of formal expression even for such pedestrian themes as astronomy, navigation and agriculture.

Yet it was again to the Ionians that the Greeks were indebted for another major literary breakthroughthe creation of

the first fully-developed prose style. The gift was two-fold: 1, a mature instrument of scientific

1 L. H. Jeffery, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece, 21.

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analysis and exposition and 2, a rich and sensitive artistic prose such as we find in Herodotus. The Ionians, in close

symbiosis with the ancient civilizations of the Orient, learned their empirical sciences such as astronomy and

geometry, but gave them that abstract and conceptual form which is the hallmark of the Greek mind. These new

sciences found the traditional language of poetry inadequate for their needs. The Muse was forced to descend from

her carriage and learn pedestrian ways. The speed of advance must have been remarkable: whereas no epigraphic

evidence exists even for the inscribing of name-lists earlier than the sixth century B.C., by the middle of the fifth

century a technical prose had been hammered out, adequate for the expression of the precise observations and the

abstract theorizing of the scientific treatise (the hypomnema).

This we find fully developed, and in great variety and abundance, in the writings preserved under the name of

Hippocrates of Cos, the Father of Medicine (469-399 B.C.). The Corpus Hippocraticum, a collection of medical

writings which may go back to the library of a school of medicine, spans a full century (c. 440-340 B.C.). The

very sparseness and sobriety of the language conceal the long effort required to devise a scientific terminology and

style which met the needs of anatomy, surgery, diseases and their treatment, climatology and much else. The works

subserve a variety of purposes ranging from technical jottings to lectures for lay audiences. The former have no

stylistic pretensions, as can be seen from the specimen taken from Epidemics (I, 13-14).

'In Thasos, shortly before and during Arcturus, many violent rain-storms with northerly winds. About the equinox

and until the (setting of) the Pleiades light southerly rains. Winter northerly, droughts, frosts, strong winds, falls of

snow. About the equinox violent storms.... In this climate ('constitution')

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during winter one-sided paralyses began and many were affected and some quickly died. In fact, in general the

disease was epidemic. But in other respects they continued free from sickness.'

Of greater literary interest are two works assignable to the second half of the fifth century. One deals with the

'environments' (On Winds, Waters and Places) and discusses their effects on healthy and sick persons.

XXIV, 41-52

'But where the country is bare and waterless and rough and suffers from the winter cold and is burnt by the

(summer) sun, there you will see hard, lean, well-knit, taut and hairy men. In such natures you will find energy and

vigilance, men stubborn and independent in character and temper, with a greater part of wildness than tameness,

sharper and cleverer in practical crafts and better in war. And whatever grows in the earth likewise conforms to the

earth. Such is the case with the most sharply opposed natures and kinds. On the evidence of these things draw your

conclusions as regards the rest, and you will not go astray.'

Noteworthy in the passage are the abstract expressions formed by prefixing the definite article to the neuter of an

adjective (e.g.

'energy'). This was one of the essential mechanisms of the intellectual revolution.

Nominalizations are the tools of abstract thought: the intellectual is a nominalizer. Attention may also be drawn to

a non-linguistic point which will recur later in discussing the Sophists: this is the scientific method of inferring

from evidence (

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'evidence'). The Ionic dialect was also used by the historiographers who, in the new spirit of empirical

enquiry tried to assemble basic historical and geographical facts. Hecataeus of Miletus, who as an elderly

man was active in the Ionian Revolt (500-494 B.C.), wrote Genealogiai, a rationalistic account, the first of its kind,

of the pedigrees of old families including his own. He was also a pioneer in the Periegesis 'a tour of the world',

which is mentioned by Herodotus (IV, 36) as

. In this work he seems to have created a scheme of

remarkable tenacity which still persists in certain passages of Thucydides. Little survives of the work of Hecataeus

and the few connected passages present a bare and unadorned style.

'Orestheus, son of Deucalion, came to Aetolia in search of a kingdom, and his bitch bave birth to a log. And he

ordered it to be buried and from it grew a vine with many bunches. Hence he called his son Phytius. Of him

Oineus was begotten called after the vines (for the ancient Hellenes...called vines oinai).'

This specimen supports the judgment of the ancient critics who spoke of his style as being pure, precise, clear and

lacking in ornament and less poetical than Herodotus. Our text has evidently been Atticized (

for

for , for and for ). Hecataeus is also stated to have written an 'unmixed'

type of Ionic as contrasted with the variegated dialect of Herodotus.

Herodotus was born just before Xerxes' invasion of Greece (480 B.C.) and he lived till after the outbreak of the

Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.). His family had Carian affinities (his father Lyxes and his uncle Panyassis both

bore Carian names), but his birthplace was Halicarnassus which had been a Dorian colony and had passed into the

possession of the Ionians. After a period of exile as a young man in Samos, extensive travels took

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him to Egypt and thence via Phoenicia down the Euphrates to Babylon. On other occasions he visited the North

Aegean and Scythia. These travels of 'sightseeing'

provided him with the geographical and ethnological

material which he incorporated in his great 'History', the central theme of which was the age-old struggle between

Europe and Asia that culminated in the Persian Wars. His boundless curiosity and cosmopolitan outlook are

reflected in the foreign words which he picked up in the course of his travels: Egyptian (

'gentleman', a kind of bread, a garment), Persian ( posting system,

'benefactors of the King', a short sword), Medic ( 'dog'), Scythian ( , a kind of fruit juice),

Libyan (

corresponding in meaning to Greek 'a hill', but applied to a species of mouse) and Phrygian

(

'bread'). He also shows knowledge of technical terms from the Greek dialects. Thus he quotes as the

Syracusan word for wealthy landholders,

as the wealthy class of Chalcis, and he knows that in Achaea

Phthiotis the council-chamber or town hall was called

(Attic ).

More important are the Atticisms, for they reflect a lengthy stay in Athens which was decisive in his development.

There he enjoyed the friendship of Sophocles and entered into the stimulating intellectual and artistic life of the

Periclean Age. He participated in the settlement of the Panhellenic colony Thurii, organized by the Athenian

statesman, and it is not without significance that one of his fellow-colonists was the Sophist Pythagoras, who was

commissioned by Pericles to draw up a code of laws. It is in the later historical part of his work where Athens

appears as the hero of the resistance to the Persian aggression that a distinct difference of vocabulary has been

detected. Attic vernacular source is claimed for such words as

'wait expectantly', 'take a

bribe', and '(catch) red-handed'. The influence of tragedy is noticeable in such words as

'frighten' and 'running', 'course'. An Attic technical expression of law is 'speak in defence',

and of seamanship 'put into land', with compounds and (Homer uses and

For the description of the lands and peoples encountered by

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the Persians in their imperialist expansion Herodotus uses the plain unadorned style of his predecessors in the genre

of the periegesis. But for the variety of human themes which his greater subject encompassed he evolved a

linguistic instrument of great range and sensitivity. What gives his work its particular charm is its rich store of

folk-tales told in an artless style in which participial phrases cluster round the simple syntactical structure of the

central theme of the sentence. A good example is the story of an ugly duckling of a girl who is miraculously

transformed into the most beautiful woman in Sparta.

VI. 61. 2-5.

'This man happened to have as wife by far the most beautiful of the women of Spartastrange to say having become

the most beautiful from being the ugliest. Her nurse, seeing that the child was not much to look at, in view of the

fact that the ill-favoured child was the daughter of well-to-do parents who thought her looks were a disaster,

realizing all this, she hit on the following idea. She carried the child every day into the shrine of Helen. And

whenever the nurse so carried her, she would set her in front of the statue and would beseech the goddess to take

away

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