Palmer L.R. The Greek Language
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are two distinct types of tablet. One is an elongated slip of clay (the palm leaf shape) with the text running from
left to right parallel with the long sides. The other is the page type in the form of a rectangle with its height greater
than its width. There is evidence that tablets of the first type were sometimes used for preliminary notes which
were later combined in records of the page type. To the right of the text we find ideograms followed by numerical
indications in a decimal system.
The Linear B tablets were not meant for long keeping. Being merely sun-dried, they would soon have disintegrated
under the action of moisture. Moreover, the only indications of time are month names and expressions such as 'this
year', 'last year', and 'next year'. However, certain texts imply that less ephemeral texts were also kept, but on
material that was more perishable. The archives show that the central administration of Pylos collected and kept an
immense amount of detailed information relating to the population of the dependent territories. In particular,
occasion arose to specify the parentage of groups of adults, such as textile specialists and rowers. Such data
relating to the 'marriages' of the parents and the birth of their children must have been preserved for many years, in
fact until the children had already become trained industrial workers. It would seem to follow that long-term
records were compiled on less bulky and more permanent material than unfired clay tablets. They will have
perished in the flames to which we owe the preservation of the ephemeral tablets. Thus these texts give information
about the last months of the first European high civilization.
The Linear B script (see Fig. 2) is a most inadequate instrument for rendering the phonemic system of Greek. In
essence the script takes account of the vocalic nucleus of the syllable and the immediately preceding consonant if
there is one. In the consonants the vital distinctions of voice and aspiration (e.g.
), are ignored, the system
being skew in that there is a special series only for the voiced dental plosive (da, de, di, do, du). As for the vowels
and diphthongs, the script ignores the distinctions of length and, in the main, the second elements of diphthongs:1
i, l, m, n, and r, the only exception being u. Finally,
1 Particularly at Knossos i-diphthongs are occasionally rendered, e.g. kotoina = ktoina, woikode =
woikonde.
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Fig. 2.
The Linear B Syllabary
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syllabic-final s is ignored1 as are all word-final consonants. These rules reduce Greek to a bewildering mass of
homograms: ako can stand for
, etc., and only the context, if it can be
established, guides our choice. Consonant clusters are treated as in the Cypriot syllabary. Gemination is ignored,
but all members of non-homogeneous clusters receive the immediately following vowel: konoso = Knosos,
tekotone = tektones, atoroqo = anthroqwoi *. While the system thus fails to match the phonemic system of Greek,
it makes distinctions superfluous for Greek: between (a) plain, (b) palatalized, and (c) labialized consonants.
Examples of (b) are: *66 ta2 = tja, *76 ra2 = rja, *68 ro2 = rjo; of (c) *71 dwe, *90 dwo, *48 nwa, *87 twe, *91
two, to which we may add the labio-velars, conventionally transcribed with q, *16 qa, *78 qe, *21 qi, *32 qo. The
phonological oppositions thus reflected in the syllabary are foreign to Greek, and this suggests that the ancestral
form of the script was created for a language of a different type. This impression is reinforced by the failure to
distinguish between r and l and the rendering of the later labyrinthos as dapu2rito, if this identification is correct.
The series conventionally transcribed as za, ze, zo presents a special problem vital for Mycenaean phonology.
Some scholars assume an affricate value [tsa], etc., while others regard them as palatized plosives [kja], etc. The
certainly identified words like topeza = torpeza 'table' <
, mezoe = mezo(h)es 'bigger' < *megjoses, zeukesi =
zeugessi 'for pairs' < *jeuges-si show that IE *dj, *gj and *j- had already converged. On the other hand
identifications like suza standing both for sukiai 'fig trees' and sukia 'figs', kaza = khalkia 'bronze' (adj.), kazoe =
kakjohes 'inferior', a3za = aigia' goat (skin)' show that z also corresponds to later ki and gi. To interpret suza as
[sutsa] is to assume changes unparalleled in later forms of these Greek words. These are 1, synizesis reducing
sukiai and sukia to disyllables and 2, affrication of kj > ts. Moreover, there are numerous examples of spelling
alternations ze/ke (aketirija/azetirija, keijakarana/zei-jakarana, etc.) but none involving ze/se. The orthographic
alternations thus suggest quasi-equivalent values for ze and ke, zo and ko, etc. Ventris originally used the
transcriptions ke2,
1 With the exception of sm (dosomo = dosmos).
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ko2, etc., and there has recently been a shift of opinion back to the view that the z series represents palatalized
plosives.
In arriving at a value for the conventional transcription with z we must make a distinction between' values 'and'
equivalents'. The identified words containing these signs lie between the ancestral Proto-Greek (and the much
earlier IE) and the alphabetic texts. If both these poles present plosives as 'equivalents', then the onus of the proof
is on those who argue an affricate 'value' for the intermediate Linear B. Now, all the alphabetic dialects show -k- in
the word for 'fig' and all its derivatives (
, etc.). The word is presumably of Aegean origin and -k-
also appears in Latin ficus. The same applies to the 'equivalents' of a3za, kaza, and kazoe: both poles show
plosives.
The improbability of [ts] has been increased by new word identifications. It has been shown that aketirija/azetirija
stands for asketriai' (cloth) finishers', from the verb
. A phonetic form [astsetrjai] could hardly be also
written aketirija. The same difficulty attaches in a greater degree to the ox-name transcribed a3zoro. All these
names are ordinary Greek adjectives: a3woro = Aiwolos 'chequered, variegated', kerano = Kelainos 'black', kosouto
= Ksouthos 'golden, yellow', etc. A3zoro has hitherto resisted interpretation, but the name becomes less baffling if
we return to Ventris's original transcriptional conventions and follow the semantic prescription suggested by the
other names: the word is likely to be a Greek adjective appropriate as a name for an ox. Then aiko2ro is easily
recognizable as Aiskhros 'ugly' (this word-family in later Greek names includes Aiskhulos). Evidently this new
identification involves even greater difficulties for giving zo the phonetic value [tso]: a form [aistsros] lacks all
phonetic plausibility.
Thus there are strong grounds for positing the values kja, kje, kjo for the signs conventionally transcribed za, ze, zo.
Since they are used not only for the products of *kj, *khj, and *gj but also for the representatives of *dj and some
instances of *j-, it is evident that these last two sounds must also have evolved to *gj.
There is one peculiarity about the use of the z-series which is of phonemic significance: there are a number of
instances where the k is preceded by s: asketria, aiskhros, and possibly
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zeto = skheto, though gento' he got' is also possible. This suggests that the phoneme /k/ had a palatalized allophone
when it was preceded by s. The exact value of the phoneme represented by z is a matter of guesswork. If we posit a
compromise between dj and gj, this would point to a prepalatal plosive
or its voiceless counterpart [c]. The later
developments in the different Greek dialects will be discussed below (pp. 59 ff.).
The phonetic values of the Linear B syllabary may be conveniently arranged in a table which brings out the
oppositions of plain, palatalized, and labialized consonants.
8a
43 ai (a3) 38 e 28 i 61 o 10 u
3 pa 72 pe 39 pi 11 po 50 pu
56 pa3? 62 pte < *pje? 29 phu
1 da 45 de 7 di 14 do 51 du
71 dwe 90 dwo
59 ta 4 te 37 ti 5 to 69 tu
66 tja 87 twe 91 two
77 ka 44 ke 67 ki 70 ko 81 ku
17 kja 74 kje 20 kjo
16 kwa 78 kwe 21 kwi 32 kwo
80 ma 13 me 73 mi 15 mo 23 mu
6 na 24 ne 30 ni 52 no 55 nu
48 nwa
60 ra 33 rai (ra3) 27 re 53 ri 2 ro 26 ru
76 rja 68 rjo
31 sa 9 se 41 si 12 so 58 su
? sja
57 ja 82 jai (?) 46 je 36 jo 65 ju
54 wa 75 we 40 wi 42 wo
25 ha
There are two signs having a diphthongal value (C)ai: *43 ai (only in initial position) and *33 rai. It is possible
that *82 has the value jai, but this is sub judice. *85 is also anomalous: it has the value au and, like ai, occurs only
initially. The form of the sign transcribed as sja is uncertain. It occurs in a damaged form in the place-name a-?-ta,
the usual orthography of which is asijatia.
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2. Personal Names
Mycenaean grammar must be based primarily on securely established vocabulary words, but most of the words
occurring in the tablets are names of persons and places, not unexpectedly in documents which are largely
concerned with the registering and control of the population. However, the personal names are not only of interest
linguistically, since they often preserve fossilized phenomena, but, as will be shown below, they carry implications
for the history of the Homeric Epic. By way of preliminary some remarks on their morphology must be made.
The abundance of securely-identified personal names in the Linear B tablets shows that Mycenaean had already
evolved the categories familiar in later times. We may first cite an example of the stately combination of full name
and patronymic adjective: Alektruon, Etewoklewehios (spelt arekuturuwo etewokere-weijo 'Alektryon son of
Eteokles'. The father's name is a word with two components, a type familiar also from other IE peoples. Of
particular interest are the names in which one of the components is a verbal stem. Where it is the first component
there are three main types: (a) Ekhe-damos 'holding the people', (b) Orti-nawos 'urging on the ships' and (c) Philo-
wergos1 'loving work'. In (b) the -ti also occurs in the assibilated form -si: manasiweko = Mnasi-wergos 'mindful
of work'.
Such full names may be shortened (e.g. Telemos for Tele-makhos, Ekhelos for Ekhelawos, Patroklos for Patro-kles
(*-klewes), and certain characterizing suffixes may be attached, particularly -eus: e.g. Menestheus for Mene-
sthenes. This is a fact which will be of importance in the analysis of Akhilleus. The same suffix can also be added
to a full name: e.g. tatiqoweu, which is interpreted as Stati-gwoeus * 'he who steads the oxen'.
It was natural that scholars should have looked for the names of the Pylian dynasty, and in particular for Nestor, in
the Linear B tablets recovered by Blegen from Pylos. The search led to results which revealed what may be called
the leitmotiv principle operative in the dynastic names of the Heroic Age. Nestor is an example of a familiar type,
an agent noun in -tor attached to a verbal root, in this case nes- 'bring back safely', 'save'. Others of the same type
are Mentor, Kastor, Hektor, etc.
1 With compositional vowel -o-.
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Now the parallels of Mentor: Menelawos, Hektor: Ekhelawos, Aktor: Agelawos open up the possibility of a name
*Nese-lawos, in which the intervocalic -s- would become -h-: the form Nehelawos in fact accounts for the name
neerawo, which occurs in a list of notables in a Pylian tablet. It also includes akireu (dat. akirewe) = Akhilleus, on
which, see below. The element nes- also occurs in the type -ti-, i.e. with component Nesti- in the name netijano,
dat. netijanore = Nestianor. We may compare Kas-tor: Kasti-aneira. The root kas- 'excel' would also undergo the
aspiration of -s- intervocalically, and this insight suggested an answer to the puzzle presented by the name
Nausikaa, the Phaeacian girl whose brother was called Kluto-neos, a name combining the themes 'renowned' and
'ship'. The girl's name is simply the feminine form of Nausi-kahos 'excelling in ships'.
We may now turn to Nestor's father Neleus, again a longstanding puzzle, not only linguistically but also in Greek
proto-history: why do so many of the earlier generation of heroes have non-Greek and even non-Indo-European
names? One of these was allegedly Peleus, the father of Akhilleus, but here the solution is not far to seek: it is a
shortened form, characterized by the suffix -eus, of a name which has as its first component the adverb qwele- *
'from afar' that is also found in Telemakhos 'fighting from afar', but with the Aeolic treatment of the labio-velar
consonant qwe* > pe* (see p. 60). A later form Teleus, with the Attic-Ionic phonological development, is also
attested. This opens up a similar solution for Neleus: it is explicable as the shortened form of Nehe-lawos 'saving
the folk'. This full form would regularly develop in Attic-Ionic to Neileos, and this is the name given to the son of
Kodros, who in the tradition was the Pylian saviour of Athens from the onslaught of the Dorians.
In Neleus/Nestor, both based on the verbal root nes-, we have an example of the leitmotiv principle: the habit of
giving the son a component of his father's name. This is particularly frequent in Cyprus, an island which preserved
so much of Mycenaean tradition: thus Onasilos (short for Onasi-lawos 'he who helps the people') is the son of
Onasi-kupros. We have a striking example of the same principle in the names of the Atreidai, the descendants of
Atreus. The name of his younger son is transparent: Mene-lawos 'he who makes the folk stand fast', with men- in
the sense 'abide', 'cause to abide'. This occurs more obscurely also
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in the name of his brother Aga-memnon, which has been analysed as Aga-men-mon with a metathesis; but it is also
possible that the characterizing suffix -on has been added to memn-, a reduplicated form of the root men-. With
both analyses the meaning remains the same: 'he who stands fast exceedingly'. The leitmotiv is detectable
semantically in the father's name, but there it is given different linguistic expression. Atreus is clearly a shortened
form of a name whose first element was a-tres- 'not running away', for the root tres- has the meaning of 'panic-
stricken flight'. In Sparta tresas was the term for a deserter.
There is no name in the tablets which bears any resemblance to Odysseus, but morphological analysis opens up a
possible explanation. We may note first that the name of his father Laertas is transparent and is of interest because
it preserves an obsolete verbal root er- 'urge on' which is preserved by Hesychius, the Alexandrian lexicographer of
the fifth century A.D. Law-er-tas means 'he who urges on the folk'. A name made of the same two components
actually occurs in the Pylos tablets, but it is of a different morphological type. The verbal component comes first
and it is of type (b) erti-lawos written etirawo. Another observation is necessary before venturing on a suggestion
for Odysseus. In some of the -eus names the suffix is added directly to a verbal stem: e.g. epekeu, equivalent to
Epeigeus (the name of a Myrmidon in the Iliad), which is made directly from the present stem epeigo, meaning
'drive on', 'press hard in pursuit'. If we set up a morphological schema verbal prefix (epi)+ present stem + -eus,
this will provide the framework for a possible analysis of Odysseus. In the first place there is evidence for a prefix
o- 'on to', 'in to' as in o-truno 'urge on', 'cheer on' (which may occur in the short form Otreus), o-kello 'run a ship
aground'. In view of the predominance of martial themes in the name-giving, natural in a heroic context, we should
seek in this semantic sphere for a present stem which also consorts well with the directional significance of the
prefix o-. The root deuk- 'lead' is an obvious possibility. There is some evidence for an ancient present stem dukj-,
with zero-grade and suffix -j- (see p. 264): *odukjeus would regularly develop to Odysseus, but as has been argued
above, at the time of the tablets the cluster -kj- was still retained and was written with the z-series. If the name
should ever turn
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up in a Linear B tablet, the expected spelling would be oduzeu.
Finally, because of its implications for the Homeric epic, we may turn to the name of its central hero Akhilleus.
First a morphological observation. Neuter s-stems, when used as first components, appear in what is known as the
'Caland-form', with a stem vowel -i: examples are Kallilawos (kallos), Oidipodas (oidos), Kudianeira (kudos),
Thersilokhos (thersos), etc. Such names have short forms, e.g. Penthilos, etc. In such short forms, expressive
doubling of the consonant is often observed, e.g. Kurillos, the components of which are the neuter s-stem kuros
'supreme power', 'authority' and lawos 'the folk'. Finally, the -eus suffix may be attached to such short forms.
Given this morphological schema, the name Akhilleus readily resolves into the component parts akhos 'pain',
'distress' and lawos 'the folk'.
The word lawos must now be given new precision. In the epic it refers to the body of warriors, the army. It might
be objected that no one would think of giving his son a name meaning 'one who causes distress to the army'. There
is, of course, a parallel in the transparent Penthilos with the components penthos 'grief' and lawos, cf. the short
form Pentheus. However, the point has been taken up in a recent study by Gregory Nagy. He writes1 that the
proposed morphological analysis, plausible as it is, 'will not carry conviction unless we can show that the meaning
of
is intrinsic to the function of Achilles in myth and epic.' His study brings out that the central theme
of the Iliad is the pain and distress (algea, pemata, stonakhai, etc.) caused to the lawos by the wrath of Achilles.
The word akhos itself also occurs in a number of passages such as the verse describing the plight of the Achaeans
during the Battle of the Ships:
'for such an has beset the Achaeans' (16. 22).
Thus, from the fact that the central hero of the Iliad is given a name appropriate to his role, we have an easy
counter to the objection that in real life no son would be given so inauspicious a name by his father. Certainly there
is no dynastic leitmotiv principle at work here. As was shown above, his father's name Peleus was no more than a
shortened form of Qwelemakhos *. Akhilleus is thus evidently a 'speaking name' invented for the purpose of the
story and inseparable from it.
1 'The Name of Achilles: Etymology and Epic', in Studies Palmer, 209-37.
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If this conclusion is valid, then the occurrence of the name akireu in the list of Pylian notables referred to above
has an implication of interest to students of the Homeric Iliad. If such a name was already in ordinary use in
aristocratic circles at the end of the thirteenth century B.C., this is because its intrinsically inauspicious meaning
had been masked by its use as an heroic name. The conclusion may seem bold and we give it an interrogative
form: is this an indication that the central theme of the Wrath of Achilles was already current at the time of the
Pylos tablets? The chronological perspective will be given greater depth for those who believe in an early
fourteenth century date for the Knossos Tablets: akireu occurs on a text from the Room of the Chariot Tablets. But
here the archaeological context for a low dating is particularly clear.
3. Mycenaean Grammar
The sketch of Mycenaean Grammar which follows is a distillation from the words securely identified by rigorous
textual philology. Morphology depends also on the establishment of syntactical function. As has been said, most of
the material consists of personal and place-names. The example (p. 32) of a3zoro = Aiskhros illustrates the hazards
and difficulties that the philologist and grammarian faces in extracting 'grammar' from the Linear B tablets. Still
more unreliable than personal names, it need hardly be said, are proposed identifications of place-names. The
place-name matoropuro (once written matopuro) may serve as an illustration, since it figures repeatedly in
arguments bearing on the representation of syllabic *r in Mycenaean. It has been etymologized as matropulos or
matorpulos and given the meaning 'mother city of Pylos'. However, sober textual philology shows that this place is
a sheep station, for which the tablet records one missing sheep. Moreover, the later
is no true parallel:
we should require exemplifications like , 'mother city of Corinth'. In addition, such a designation
could not have been coined until after the founding of the 'daughter city' Pylos. Finally, the proposal would also
carry historical implications. We should have to assume that 'Mother Pylos', having received this honorific title,
subsequently dwindled to an insignificant sheep station, figuring
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