The Value of
Byzantine and Modern Greek
in Hellenic Studies
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE
DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1908
BY
SIMOS MENARDOS, D.Ph., LL.D
UNIVERSITY LECTURER
Price One Shilling net
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1909
The Value of
Byzantine and Modern Greek
in Hellenic Studies
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE
DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1908
BY
SIMOS MENARDOS, D.Ph., LL.D.
UNIVERSITY LECTURER
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1909
HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK
TORONTO AND MELBOURNE
THE VALUE OF BYZANTINE
AND MODERN GREEK IN
HELLENIC STUDIES
GENTLEMEN,
In starting to-day a course of lectures on Byzan-
tine and modern Greek language and literature, I feel
I must offer an apology both for myself and for my
subject.
To begin with, I must justify myself for venturing to
undertake in this illustrious University the task of teach-
ing in a scientific field, cultivated now in all Europe by
so many specialists and extending over a period of two
thousand years. But the consciousness that by speak-
ing on these subjects I shall deal with familiar things,
that by occupying myself in these studies I shall be
transferred mentally to my fatherland, encourages me
to believe that my teaching, whatever else it may lack,
is at least based on a cordial interest.
I also fear that my subject itself requires a justifica-
tion, especially before the classically educated. The
very name Byzantine has given rise to many prejudices,
and the modern Greek language, owing to the smallness
of the kingdom, has not a wide attractiveness.
Fortunately, the apology has become much easier in
recent years. The mediaeval Greek empire is no more
regarded as the degenerated heir of the Roman empire,
; AND MODERN GREEK
as Voltaire could think ; on the contrary, Schlumberger
inscribes his valuable works ' L'popee Byzantine ', and
Prof. Bury's notes to Gibbon's immortal History prove
that Gibbon himself would nowadays have to revise
many of his opinions.
But to-day we shall not deal with political, but with
literary history. And the following question arises first
of all ; did Hellenism exercise any influence whatever
on the intellectual progress of mankind from the fatal
day upon which Mummius made Greece a province?
I will reply, gentlemen, only with some hints.
I shall pass over the well-known story of the submis-
sion of Italy to Graecia capta, and shall mention only the
part which Greeks played in the spread of Christianity.
As a fact, those intellectual struggles which were re-
quired to impose the new religion on the political
authorities and to overcome the various heresies, were
internal between Greeks. Of the 318 bishops of the
first Oecumenical Synod ten only came from Latin-
speaking places. There is no doubt that there were also
others. But no other race had then an equal authority.
With Christianity the simple-minded Greeks of Asia
Minor overcame the infidel sophists of Greece proper,
and that victory was so complete, that the name Hellene
itself, which according to Isocrates was equivalent to
civilized, was banished. This significant result must have
been due to many reasons, some of which were, as we
shall see, simply literary. But I fear that much more
often the rhetorical phrase is repeated that Plato's style
is that of Jupiter, than the fact is comprehended that the
holy idiom of Christianity, and perhaps of Jesus Him-
self, is nothing else but late Greek.
But the religious action of Hellenes though they were
no longer called Hellenes is not confined only to the
IN HELLENIC STUDIES 5
sphere of doctrine. They established churches of a
quite new description, and the temple of Saint Sophia,
that is to say the Divine wisdom, is according to an
English critic the best Christian Church. They adorned
them with incomparable mosaics ; they invented a new
style of painting the precursor of Italian art a new
music, and above all a new poetry. Romanes, one of
our lyric poets, has been called the greatest of all
religious poets.
Hence the religious influence of the Greeks after the
foundation of Constantinople was immense, as it has
been said, ' from the mountains of Abyssinia to the
mountains of Caucasus/ The dependence of the Latin
liturgy on the Greek one is obvious. But Constan-
tinople for all the peoples of the East and the West, was,
according to Diehl's expression, la reine des elegances.
The Armenian nation, already civilized, was taught by
the Byzantines the whole liturgy, the historiography
and the arts ; their royal palaces at Ani, still existing,
were made by Greek masons. Afterwards, the Syrians,
especially the clergy, translated and imitated, not only
ecclesiastical books, but also the chroniclers and some of
the ancient philosophers, botanists, and medical writers.
But to the other semi-barbarous peoples, who settled
near the Danube and in the western, northern, and
eastern coast-lands of the Black Sea, Bulgarians, Ser-
vians, Wallachians, Russians, Georgians, the Greeks
communicated not only their doctrine and liturgy, but
also their music, their architecture, their hagiography,
their civilization, and humanism. Greek monks in-
vented the Slavic alphabet and translated the Bible.
The Christianization of the Slavs, with the single
exception of the Poles, by the Byzantines has a universal
significance; because they feel themselves separate
6 BYZANTINE AND MODERN GREEK
from Europe to this very day, and the famous Easter
question is very largely due to that action of Greeks.
But what does western Europe owe to the Byzantines ?
I shall not mention their long struggles against Persians,
Arabs, and Seljuks, which the peoples of the West repaid
by their attack on Constantinople. I shall not mention
that they forced the Ottomans, as Rambaud insists, at
the zenith of their power to encamp for about a century
under the fortress of Constantinople before they cap-
tured her. But I shall insist on the fact that they have
preserved, propagated, and interpreted the ancient
literature. This fact is usually under-estimated by the
critics, excited by the errata of the manuscripts and the
aboKipov style. The witty Cobet used to say, ' Photius
is stupid, Hesychius stupider, and Suidas stupidest of
all men/ 1 But had not all these stupids preserved the
ancient wisdom, what notion should we have of it ? You
know, gentlemen, better than I, what the mediaeval sci-
ence was, the Greek seeds of which the Arabs, taking
them through the Nestorian Syrians, transported to Spain.
But Constantinople was always a literary centre, where
some of the best epigrams of the Anthology were written ;
its majestic palace dating from the times of Constan-
tine Porphyrogenitus to those of the last Palaeologi,
recalls to mind the court of the Ptolemies. 'The
Byzantines, of course, did not produce any work equiva-
lent to the ancient masterpieces, but at least they have
been the well-equipped guardians of a great literature.'
When at last the dot/Atop wap was approaching, and
some Greek fugitives transferred their homes to Italy,
their superiority became obvious. Manuel Chrysoloras,
Theodore Gaza, Janus Lascaris, Demetrius Chalcon-
dyles, Marcus Musurus, appearing at Florence, at
1 Mnemosyne, vol. x (1861), p. 68.
IN HELLENIC STUDIES 7
Rome, at Venice, as professors, librarians, editors, and
translators of Greek authors, performed for a second
time, and with more success, the great work which
their ancestors sixteen centuries before that had fulfilled
in Rome. The result of that renaissance of Greek
studies is well known ; it appeared after Italy in French,
in English, in German literatures. But they did not
teach letters only. They taught perhaps freedom of
thinking. George Gemistus, who had been their pre-
cursor in Italy, was a great thinker, who left a deep
impression. Even his eccentricity in translating his
name into Plethon, became a fashion for Erasmus
(Gerhard), Melanchthon (Schwarzerd), Capnio (Reuch-
lin), Ceratinus (Hoorn), Coracopetraeus (Ravensberg),
and the others. Attacking the superstitions of the
clergy, he became the forerunner of the German pro-
testantism and, initiating Platonism in the Academy of
Florence, propagated the Greek adoration of beauty.
Giacomo Leopardi, translating one of his orations into
Italian, says, ' It is certain that Gemistus was one of
the greatest and most versatile geniuses of his time,
which was the fifteenth century'; and he adds, 'This
nation is really admirable; for twenty-four centuries it
has been first and without parallel in civilization and
literature ; while conquering, it propagated the one and
the other in Asia and Africa ; when conquered, it com-
municated them to the other peoples of Europe. ... In
the time of the Crusades their towns, splendid with
churches, squares, magnificent palaces, excellent works
of art, were an unwonted sight a genti rozze . . . quasi
salvatiche e inumane.' * Leopardi speaks as a great poet
and scholar. My only conclusion is that the Greek race
1 Opere di Giacomo Leopardi. Edizione da Antonio Ranieri,
Firenze, 1849. Vol. ii, p. 341.
8 BYZANTINE AND MODERN GREEK
formed a great political power till the thirteenth cen-
tury and maintained its intellectual hegemony as late
as the fifteenth century, when Constantinople fell into
the hands of the Turk.
But now we may ask : For what reasons have all these
facts been so long under-estimated? Why have the
Byzantines been considered as declining from century
to century in everything, and why has the name of
Byzantium become synonymous with decay?
It is now recognized that religious and racial rivalries,
owing to the schism and to the pertinacity of the Greeks
in not recognizing the Western Empire, are the chief
causes of that old contempt for everything Byzantine ;
and, as a fact, this very name Byzantine, which the
Greeks never used for themselves, was one of the epithets
of the schismatics.
Prof. Krumbacher, the greatest apologist of the
Byzantines, quotes in explanation of their under-
estimation the words, Weh dtr, dass du ein Enkel bist.
But I fear that there are also other causes, for which
the Greeks themselves are responsible. The germ,
which was sown by Gemistus and his colleagues in Italy,
was purely Hellenic. From Platonism arose a latent
depreciation of Christianity, and the reverse of that
which happened twelve centuries before now took place.
At this time the name Hellas, which these refugees
pronounced with emotion, came back from banishment,
and naturally Christian Greece was despised by the
new Julians of the West. With Platonism an old theory
revived, that of the nobility of Atticism and the barbarism
of later Greek. Charles Ducange, the patriarch of
Byzantinists, inscribed in 1688 his great work, Glos-
sarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae graecitatis> and
in it he speaks of vocabula barbara ac semibarbara.
IN HELLENIC STUDIES 9
This was enough. Henceforth most of the Hellenists
turned their faces away from these scriptores, or read
them only to prove their barbarism when judged accord-
ing to the standard of Attic grammar. This was easy.
But the historians still more easily applied the theories
of the philologists to the whole period of a thousand
years. The more modern, the more barbarous and
evil. But now we are obliged to change the method.
The new science of language has discarded the theory
of barbarism as a mere superstition ; a superstition which
can no longer prevent science from entering into Byzan-
tine history with justice and sympathy.
As the reproach of barbarism is the most serious of
all those brought against the Byzantines and ourselves,
I beg to deal with it at some greater length.
Barbarism is the opposite of Atticism. But what was
Atticism ? Thucydides used this word only in its
political meaning, viz. siding with Athens. But after
the defeat of Athens it meant the unrivalled Athenian
civilization. It is needless to praise the Attic literature.
Then all people were gifted. l Let the boys of Thebes
play the flute,' said Alcibiades ; ov yap to-ao-t 8iaA.<fyeo-0cu,
because they do not know how to talk of course, with
elegance, with presence of mind, and a good deal of
irony. Really, Athenians were incomparable causeurs.
Now, as French became fashionable in the continental
aristocracy from the seventeenth century, Atticism
prevailed in the courts of the Diadochi and in the new
large towns, which were founded during that period
in Asia Minor, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. Then
Atticism meant the Attic education, and thus the other
Greek dialects, defeated by the Attic one, by-and-by
expired with the exception of the Doric, which still
lives in Zakonic. The dialect, so formed, was called
B
io BYZANTINE AND MODERN GREEK
?;; in that mixture it is not astonishing that the
diphthongs began to coincide with vowels, as in Boeotia ;
some other dialectical pronunciations survived also in the
' KOLvri. But of course the genuine Atticism was looked for
everywhere. The triumph of Atticism took place when,
after the submission of Greece, it entered into Rome
herself to such an extent, that one might say, to
use the language of Emilio Castelar, that Rome was
inhabited by Athenian men and Athenian women.
Then Atticizing Greek became a universal language,
and every person who did not speak it well, was
uneducated, pdpfiapos. But Cicero assures us that ' tamen
eruditissimos homines Asiaticos quivis Atheniensis
indoctus non verbis, sed sono vocis . . . facile supera-
vit. J Then Atticism meant rather Attic accent. How
it charmed the Romans, we understand from their
accepting v, which Greeks then (and many centuries
later on) pronounced like French u and Athenians
presumably did it with a special grace. But later on,
when unfortunately the Athenians had nothing that
was enviable except their ancestry, Atticism meant
only the style of the classic authors. The literary
exquisites imitated it, as the Alexandrines had imitated
Homer's verses. At the same time the ammo-rat
appeared; 'those self-constituted guardians of the
honour of the ancient Attic/ as E. A. Sophocles styles
them. Keirai ?/ ov Kctreu ; is it found (in Attic authors) or
not ? they asked for every word. It is; then it is So'/
doretcw, elegant ; it is not found ; then it is tSiam/
KOV, fiapfiapov. Thus Atticism became absolute pedantism.
But the respect of the Greeks for their classic authors
has been always so religious, that the Atticizing style
withstood the contempt of the Stoa and the opposition
of Christianity; and the condemnation of 'barbarism 'sur-
IN HELLENIC STUDIES n
vived with the Attic grammar till recent years. Thus the
word pdppapos, which Greeks used so unjustly for other
peoples, became one of evil omen to their own descen-
dants.
Let us follow very summarily the Greek style from
that time. We find at once two usages, the one boKipov,
noble ; the other <*8o'/a//oz;. The fio'/a/zoj> is, for instance,
the style of Lucian, the aboKipov that of the Gospels.
This difference, which till lately was attributed to
geographical or racial causes, is proved now, after
the discovery of the papyri of Upper Egypt, to be only
a difference of style. Now it is clear that the style of
Aelian, of Pausanias, or Plutarch himself was more or
less artificial. But the style of those wily orators, who
surrounded the Roman emperors, and charmed them
to such an extent, that these granted them the taxes of
whole provinces, was from beginning to end an artificial
one. Therefore, if one asked those eloquent rhetori-
cians to extemporize, they could not open their mouths ;
because they needed many days and nights in order to
patch together their phrases from the Attic orators.
The poor Christians addressing ignorant people were
using current, ordinary Greek. This contrast between
their true language and the affected style of the schools
is very characteristic. I may mention an anecdote.
Saint Spyrido, one of the bishops of the first Oecu-
menical Synod, was present at a o-vwfu in Cyprus, in
which Triphyllius, bishop of Ledri, and formerly
advocate at Beyrouth, preached, of course in a higher
style. But when the learned man, in referring to the
passage, *Apov arov rbv KpdfifiaTOv KOI Tre/wrarei, used instead
of KpdpfiaTos the Attic word O-KL^TTOVS, Spyrido made a
disturbance before the people; he left at once his
archieratical throne, saying to Triphyllius Ov <rv ye
12 BYZANTINE AND MODERN GREEK
v rod Kpa(3Qarov elprjKOTos : You are not better than
He who said /c/>a/3/3aro9. This fact, recorded by Hermeias
Sozomenos and Nicephoros Callistos Xanthopoulos,
proves also that, in the opinion of the early Christians,
Jesus spoke not Aramaic, but Greek, and not Attic,
but the Koivr/.
Now whatwas the fundamental contrast between those
two styles ? To-day it is positively known that by the
second century of our era the equalization of the long and
short vowels, and the prevalence of accent over quantity
had been accomplished in almost every Greek-speaking
country. This is the most serious change in the whole
history of Greek. But, of course, this slow change
could not be accepted in the schools ; they were for a
long time teaching the genuine prosody of the ancients
(the educated persons felt it as late as the^sixth century),
the melodious versification of the poets, the pompous
rhetoric of the orators, especially that of the Asiatic
school, which was equally based on the prosody. The
Christians, as simple catechists, were content to be
aXduv naOrjTai, pupils of the fishermen, and detested
Hellenes. But when, like Triphyllius, many other
learned men, for instance Gregory, Synesius, Apolli-
naris of Laodicea, became bishops, they could not, of
course, forget their erudition, and they continued to write
verse in classical metres. On the other hand, rhetoric
was, like the Miltonian panoply of Christ, necessary to
other bishops, for instance, to Basil and Chrysostom,
to defeat their adversaries or to impress their fol-
lowers. Thus the rhetorical style proved much more
abiding than the idols. In the same manner the official
historiography being always cultivated by men of high
culture remained permanently Attic. From the style of
the Byzantine historians we can only form an idea as to
IN HELLENIC STUDIES 13
the extent and estimation of the ancient studies. For
this reason, any interpretation of them is superfluous to
one who knows their models.
A new style, a new poetry, a new versification, accord-
ing to the modified pronunciation, has been naturally
created in the Church, where no ancient literary tradi-
tion existed, and singers of little education were to be
utilized and illiterate people were to form the audience.
Gregory himself, who wrote hexameter verses for his
own delectation, when composing an evening song
for the Church, used the rhythm, which was based on
accent. This kind of song approached the spoken
language through its pronunciation and its plainer
construction. People having only ecclesiastical culture,
especially monks, used it in writing numerous and long
hymns and canons, and it is significant that the best
of these composers, Romanos, was a simple deacon,
whereas the educated theologists, like John Damascenus,
could not help using archaic words and sometimes
ancient metres. But they did not forget to make a side
hit at Athens. In his famous 'AKC^IOTOJ "T/^os to the
Holy Virgin, the Patriarch Sergius says :
X a ' i P T ^ v ^A.drjvaimv \ ras TT\OKO.S fitooTroxra
X<upc ruv aXieW | ray (rayr^vas irXrjpovcra.
Much nearer to the reality are the o-wafapia or Lives
of martyrs and especially of saints, as they were com-
posed by clergy, irefo) Kal d/caAAcaTrto-r^ Kal ^a/x^Aoi X. a P a ~
KTT/pt . . . cty r6 Swacr0eu Kal T&V IKOTTJZ> Kal rbv hyphwarov CK
T&V \eyontvw ax^eX^^^at, as the first synaxarist, Leontios,
bishop of Neapolis or Nemesos, says ; he really uses
many popular words, but his whole style does not
sound more modern than the Gospel. More vernacular
were the popular summaries of history, which were
written in the monasteries of the East by uneducated
i 4 BYZANTINE AND MODERN GREEK
people, an example of whom was the Syrian John
Malalas, a contemporary of Justinian. But the chroni-
clers, also being taught in the schools, knew a good
deal of the ancient grammar, though, fortunately for
them, they did not proceed very far in the syntax.
The obscure period of ikonomachy, which prolonged
from 726 to 842, inspired by a reforming spirit and
caused by reasons not yet precisely estimated, resulted
in the victory of the monastic party, which was the more
ignorant of the two. And yet from a family belonging
to it a prelate, who concentrated in himself all the ancient
education, Photius, appeared. The illustrious Patriarch,
besides many other attainments, was master of the art
of writing Attic. His marvellous letters, in which his
whole life is reflected, reveal in him a sort of Aris-
totelian interest in everything. Through his Mvpio-
jBifiXos and Ae'ftcoz; a-vva-y^yrj he became a factor in the
philological regeneration of Hellenic studies, which,
after Photius, were cultivated not only by the laity, but
also by bishops. The metropolitans, Eustratius of Ni-
caea, Gregory of Corinth, Michael Acominatus of Athens,
and especially the famous Eustathius of Salonica, are
also priests of the Muses. On the other hand, on ac-
count of the conflict with Latins, which has been caused
by Photius rebutting the claims of the Pope, the rulers
of the Empire come forward as pure Greeks and em-
brace with pride the cause of Hellenism.
But the linguistic result of all that tendency was
again the complete separation of Greek into a written
aTTLKCfova-a language and a spoken a-o\oiKo{3dpj3apos one.
The historians turned for their models to antiquity, and
appeared to address not their contemporaries or genera-
tions to come, but, on the contrary, the demus of ancient
Athens. Their only art was to find archaic and
IN HELLENIC STUDIES 15
uncommon words; they do not allude directly even
to Christian matters and they Atticize even the names
of places and men. For instance, Cinnamus, writing
during the Crusades, calls the Turks Persians. What a
strange evolution of Atticism, which resulted in the very
opposite of its spirit, in the fossilization of its style !
The worst was that, from that time, the Church also
participated in the archaistic fashion, because even the
style of the holy books itself had departed from the
vernacular. These very (rvva(dpia were, under Constan-
tine Porphyrogenitus, translated by Symeon, who is
hereby called ^ra^pda-r^, in order to suit the style of
the educated classes, and a Patriarch of the twelfth
century threw into the fire a crvvagdpw of St. Paraskeue,
as unworthy of her life. Eustathius too, when bitterly
reproaching the monks with being aypd^aroi and hating
the ypawariKot, addresses them in Attic style, full of
classical allusions.
But it is easily understood that all the efforts of the
scholars and the bishops could not prevent the people
from making in their natural language verses scoffing at
the Emperors, forming their proverbs, and praising their
heroes, the oKplrat,, the guardians of the frontiers of the
Empire, which then extended to the Euphrates. As
the written style became more dry and serious, the
vernacular appeared in satirical and light literature.
Theodorus Ptochoprodromus, with his supplicatory
poems, is the type of this style.
Afterwards, when the fatal capture of Constanti-
nople by the Crusaders had taken place (1204), and the
Empire was broken into many Frankish and some
Greek states, Greek education was no longer adequate
to the necessities of life ; the Greeks under the Frank-
ish rule, having remained illiterate, involuntarily used
16 BYZANTINE AND MODERN GREEK
to write as they spoke, without any literary pretensions.
Relics of those times are the Greek chronicles of the
kingdom of Cyprus under the Lusignans and the ver-
sified chronicles of Morea. It is true that the Greek
throne was restored at Constantinople for 192 years
under the diadem of the Palaeologi, and the court his-
torians continued to write in an Attic more strict than
that of the times of Comneni, but their influence, like
that of the Emperors, was now very slight.
Later on, after the Ottoman invasion, during the
servitude of the Greek people, a scholarly tradition, of
course, could not exist, except in slight degree among
the clergy. Therefore, those who wished to express
other feelings than prayers, and felt their eyes in tears
from the 'memories of the past and their hearts full of
hopes for a resurrection of the Empire, the anonymous
bards, while eulogizing the unsubjected heroes of the
Greek mountains, continued the popular poetry which
extolled the d/cpu-ai. This style of writing was first
attempted by the poets of Crete, which was then under
Venetian rule. But in the meantime the dialects had
grown up. And when in the seventeenth century the
enslaved Greeks had succeeded in founding schools, the
scholarly tradition took a new lease of life. Once more
the poor Ulysses opens his arms to embrace the phantom
of Atticism. The polymath Eugenius Boulgaris, in the
eighteenth century, was writing his numerous and
various works in archaistic style, and translated Ver-
gilian verse into Homeric. The famous Coray proved
his genius in restraining that archaistic tendency
within certain bounds. But these appeared insufficient
after the war of independence. On the one hand, the
victories of Botzaris and Canaris turned men's minds
so easily to Marathon, Salamis, and Athens; on the
IN HELLENIC STUDIES 17
other, the multiplicity of new political and scientific
wants resulted in the revival of many ancient words ;
so that a scholarly tradition survives parallel to the
spoken language. The former is followed by the Church
as is but right by the State, and by science ; the
latter by the poets, in accordance with the example of
the inspired Solomos, and by certain novelists and
writers of plays; thus various kinds of literature are
composed in a more natural or archaistic style, accord-
ing as the writers wish to be more lively or serious.
Hence arises a controversy which is sometimes con-
ducted in a way like that of St. Spyrido. Notwith-
standing, in speaking, modern Attic society, now in
course of formation, selects, very calmly and fairly
enough, though somewhat irregularly, from among
the different forms, those alive or likely to live. Thus
modern Attic, eclectic, as the ancient one, is formed
slowly and naturally with the formation of society
itself. Modern times are much more democratic than
mediaeval. Nevertheless, in our souls survives the
same instinct which was living, as we have seen, for
twenty centuries, united with the national Hellenic
feeling. For this reason, I suppose, we shall con-
tinue, voluntarily or involuntarily, to be more or less
vassals to Olympian Pericles.
I have given the above historical outline of Greek
style in the hope of making some facts clear. First,
how it came about that new forms or new expressions,
growing up naturally in Greek, were not welcomed by
the educated classes, and how this contempt for ' bar-
barism' having been accepted by the critics, was
extended to the whole later literature and the whole
history of Greece. There is no doubt that the theory
of barbarism was absurd; but it was based on the
i8 BYZANTINE AND MODERN GREEK
indisputable superiority of the ancient literature, under
which that of the Church came to be included. Such
a literary burden, I think, was never laid on the
shoulders of any other people.
But this colossal attraction of the past explains also
another feature of later Greek ; namely, why its evolu-
tion, in comparison with that of Latin, which was broken
asunder into the modern languages, has been so slow.
One who compares the Greek style of the ten centuries
A. D., not the official, but the monastic, thinks that
he is reading St. Paul. This was because education
tended to maintain the older language as a spoken lan-
guage. Thus the Greek scholars never suspected any
irreparable change in their tongue. Having always
religiously kept Euclides' spelling, they noticed only
the difference of the new forms, which they attributed
to ignorance. But they never felt the principal cause of
the growing difference, that is to say, the changing of
the pronunciation, so natural to every spoken language.
It is now obvious how difficult a task it is to fix
definite chronological limits in the history of Greek.
As we have seen, no old phenomenon passes away
in an abrupt manner, no new form prevails at once.
A type takes centuries to disappear; and even after
its extinction in one place, it survives in another, and
when at last it is forgotten in the spoken language,
it is artificially preserved in the written, or at any
rate in its more literary forms. A splendid example is
the infinitive, which was declining from the times of the
Septuagint and was barely eliminated by Coray in the
last century. And, vice versa, the more we study
the history of spoken Greek, the better we observe that
a form or a word, which we suppose to be modern, had
already presented itself many centuries ago, but it was
IN HELLENIC STUDIES 19
kept away from \apr\v /ecu KaXapapiv, paper and inkstand.
For instance, this very expression is of the seventh
century 1 ; and most of the diminutives, like
, that is to say yepiov and 71-08101; instead
vy, which even to-day are not used in the books of
scholars, are shown by their accent, which follows the
rules of Herodian, to have been formed shortly after
the time of Alexander and reduced to yipw and Trobiv
before Constantine the Great.
Now, gentlemen, you can appreciate the importance
of living Greek. This stands before us as the last
real and trustworthy phase of its history of three
thousand years. The abundant linguistic material which
is preserved from Corfu to Cyprus and from Thrace to
Crete is a test, a commentary, and a supplement to the
marbles, papyri, and parchments. This material is, of
course, an inheritance of all the preceding generations,
but it is the task of science to classify it in chronological
order, and to work back to the past. Thus we observe
that approximately the same language was spoken back
to the times of the Crusades. Thence it shades into its
precursor, the mediaeval language, which was avoided
as pdpfiapov, the style of the Gospels, which was aSoKipov,
the KOIVTJ which was idiomKoV. Nearly all that the ancient
grammarians condemned, has been preserved.
But the great gain from the study of contemporary
Greek is the perception of the whole as a continuous
and living language. I mean that after having defined
every difference arising in its history, and the time
at which it arose, we can conclude that the rest has
remained unaltered. I may give some examples from
my own studies. For instance, hearing in Cyprus
1 \fovriov Na7roXeo>? /3ios 'Iwaypov rov 'E\ff)p.ovos. Edit. H. Gelzer,.
Freiburg, 1893, p. 7, 16.
20 BYZANTINE AND MODERN GREEK
the single and double consonants exactly distinguished
from each other TOV QiXov, and TO $v\\ovwe may
form an idea how the ancients pronounced them. Ob-
serving also how the ending r, owing to its feeble
pronunciation is assimilated with the consonant of the
next word for instance, Q&OW prjXa, eKotya/zep /5o5ta we
understand perfectly the spelling of the ancient inscrip-
tions. The composition and derivation of new words is
also very instructive. Noticing the facility with which
a peasant forms a new word, we explain the immense
wealth of the Greek dictionary. Koumanoudes has
collected the words formed by the scholars of the last
century, and found fifty thousand. But the strange thing
is that in many cases we cannot distinguish whether
a word was coined lately or many centuries ago ; for
instance dypio'tfiyzos is used in a popular Cypriot poem
(pronounced apKoOvpos) and in an Orphic hymn. Euri-
pides says aXouo-ia and the Cypriots not only dXovo-ta,
but also aKTvi(TLd. The Cypriots call the condition of
a servant bovXoorvvrj and the employment of a maker of
sieves navTovvvrj. Both these words occur in Homer, of
course with the different meaning of 5o{5Ao? and ndvris.
Have they been preserved or coined again ? For all
these reasons Prof. Hatzidakis, the best authority on late
Greek, proposed the construction of a colossal Lexicon,
covering all Greek periods, 'from Agamemnon to
George the First/ In this Thesaurus the history of
every word would give us a new pleasure. We now
say, for instance, aXoyov instead of fonros ; but it was
Diodorus who used it first. And if we ask how the
appellative of Calchas came to mean at last a sieve-
maker, the answer will be that Theocritus calls KOVKWO-
HCIVTLS the diviner by a sieve ; thus we understand that
every Ko<mz>a? professed in Cyprus to foretell the future.
IN HELLENIC STUDIES 21
Now, as every language, like a river, brings down
many superstitions, like the above one, legends, proverbs,
topographical data, everybody can guess how many
conclusions we can obtain by searching the Greek folk-
lore. But do not be afraid, gentlemen ; I shall not enter
now into this labyrinth, fearing lest I may not find the
way out. Those interested in this subject may turn to
the works of Professor Polites.
I wish only to anticipate an objection. It may be
said : All these questions are certainly interesting, but
interesting only to the Greeks of to-day. But I think that
it is avaKoXovdov to excavate the earth in the hope to find
some more fragments of antiquity, and to leave the
existing treasure unexplored. Such a search would
give much more often that pleasure of discovery, which is
the best reward of a scientist. I shall go further. The
investigation of Greek as a whole interests not only the
Hellenists, but also every one who philosophizes on
the most wonderful creation of human nature, language.
For Greek elucidates, like no other tongue, the question,
What is the life of a language ? The history of the
modern languages of Latin origin presents many gaps.
The monuments of the Gothic idioms end in the
fourth century, with the translation of the Bible by
Ulphilas. But with Greek we can work quite twelve
centuries back to the past under full light ; the golden
chain has never been broken. Dictionaries, grammars,
commentaries, are always abundant, some of them due
to scholars of first eminence. Thus we can see, without
much guessing, the evolution of the language, that is to
say, in what manner the linguistic elements in the course
of so many centuries appear and disappear, how words
are born, change meaning and die, or die not, and
especially how the whole, though transformed, survives.
22 BYZANTINE AND MODERN GREEK
The ancient Atticists could not know this evolution, and
were stopped by the ov /cetrai. But, we, living after Max
Miiller and Whitney must proceed. The philological
monuments have not, of course, always the same artistic
value. Perhaps by descending to later times and
studying familiar letters, private contracts, monastic
inscriptions, miracles of saints, we shall lose a little of
the romantic admiration of the classic language of the
gods. But I hope, gentlemen, that a feeling, more
positive, will be born in ourselves. Apart from the
colossal literature, apart from its value to the knowledge
of every science, I hope that you will admit that this is a
unique phenomenon, a language which develops itself
for three thousand years, attracts in succession every
civilized nation, civilizes many barbarous ones, enriches
every written language, and is still living in all the
countries where it was born. In fact, passing the Ionian,
the Cretan Sea, the Archipelago, the Propontis, the
Euxine itself, in every town you visit, you hear Ka\&s
Tjptfej, eVe, as in the times of Nausicaa and Iphigenia.
Then you would, perhaps, assign to this not unknown
language the epithet so many times conventionally
applied to it immortal.
With all these questions on which I have touched, I
do not believe, gentlemen, that I have completed my
apology. With some of them I shall deal in my next
lectures. But before concluding, I beg to express my
best thanks to the University authorities, who kindly
invited me here. At this moment a strange thing
happens to me. I come from Athens, and yet I think
that I am in Athens. While entering these halls, in
which Attic is yet echoing somewhat confusedly to
my ears I believe that I am passing into the ancient
Academy, coming from a distant province. My diffi-
IN HELLENIC STUDIES^ ''23
culty is increased by the feeling that I am really
barbarous in your universal language. But, after all,
I hope that I shall be excused. I come to assure you
that TI \a\eovcra Trayd, the speaking spring of Greek, is
not yet exhausted, and that that Greece, in which your
and our Byron saw ' living Greece no more ', did not
die. While studying the continuous history of her
noble language, and acquainting yourselves with her
living pronunciation, you will come, no doubt, into
closer relations with her. I venture to say that you
will extend your biblical and classical studies. Uni-
versal conquerors of to-day, you keep always, like the
Macedonian, the old Iliad ready at hand. Let me
invite you, gentlemen, to join a humble son of Greece
in studying the long and instructive Odyssey of the
Greek nation.
Oxford : Printed at the Clarendon Press, by HORACE HART, M.A.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
WV o"Tj{Xpivcov KuiTpicov (?A6rjva, Vol. VI (1894)
pp. 145-173)
'H ysviKTi Kara Kuirpious ('A07?ra, Vol. VIII (1896), pp. 435-
450)
KuirpicoTiKa Tpa/yo'uSia (AeArtov rrjs 'IOTO/HK?}? KCU '
AoyiKT/s *Eratpeias r^s f EAX(i8os, Vol. V (1897), pp. 327-
346)
FaXXiKai jjico-aicoviKal \|is V Kxnrpco (Mr\va t Vol. XII
(1900), pp. 360-384)
(Nea *H/xepa, 8/21 Feb. 1903, No. 1471 (2459))
'H 'PTyyaiVCl (AeArtoi; Tr/y 'laropiKT/s Kal 'E0vo\oyiKrjs 'Eratpetas
TJ?S ^AAaSoy, Vol. VI (1903), pp. 117-148)
Ilpi TCOV OVO|JLdTCi)V TWV KviTplCOV ('AOqva, Vol. XVI(l904) j
pp. 257-294)
TT)S Kvirpou (AeXrtov TTJ? 'lo-ropiKrjs /cat 'E0z;oAo-
ytKTs 'Eratpe^a? T^J 'EAAdSoj, Vol. VI (1906), pp. 405-
432)
Toira)VV|JLiK6v TTJs KviTpou ('Atfrjm, Vol. XVIII (1907), pp
'PoSicov djji<|)opcov, c-OpcOevrcov kv
15 May, 1907)
Where did Aphrodite find the body of Adonis ?
(Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. XXVIII (1908),
PP. i33- I 37)
14 DAY USE
RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED
LOAN DEPT.
This book is due on the last date stamped below,
or on the date to which renewed. Renewals only:
Tel. No. 642-3405
Renewals may be made 4 days prior to date due.
Renewed books are subject to immediate recall.
subject to recall 1 efter
LD21A-40m-3,'72
(Q1173slO)476-A-32
General Library
University of California
Berkeley
Gaylord Bros.
Makers
Syracuse, N. Y.
PAT, JAN. 21, 1908
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
