Some Points in the Later History of the Greek Language

Abstract

It is, I believe, at least a tolerated doctrine within the precincts of the Society for Promoting Hellenic Studies that the Hellenic tongue is not dead. Nay, I trust that it may be also a tolerated doctrine if I hold that the Hellenic tongue is now alive, not in the sense of having come to life after ages of death, but in the sense of never having been dead at all. At the meeting which called our body into being, words were spoken, not casual words from the lips of any casual speaker, but words of authority spoken from the chair, which ruled, plainly enough at least for me, that our researches, whether into art or language or any other branch of the study of Greek history and Greek life, were not to be shut up within the bounds of a few arbitrarily chosen centuries. When, five years back, I stood on the plain of Olympia, the hills which looked down on, that plain looked down on a living summary of the life of the Greek people from the days of Iphitos to the days of Justinian. Among the buildings of which the foundations, and something more than the foundations, had been brought to light, there were representatives of at least four distinct epochs. There were two stages of purely native work, two stages of work in which other elements were added to those which were native.