Literary Prose

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ANCIENT GREEK LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS Volume 2 G–O General Editor Georgios K. Giannakis Associate Editors Vit Bubenik Emilio Crespo Chris Golston Alexandra Lianeri Silvia Luraghi Stephanos Matthaios LEIDEN t BOSTON 2014 This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV Table of Contents Volume One Introduction .................................................................................................................................................... List of Contributors ....................................................................................................................................... Table of Contents Ordered by Thematic Category ............................................................................... Transcription, Abbreviations, Bibliography ........................................................................................... List of Illustrations ......................................................................................................................................... Articles A–F ..................................................................................................................................................... vii xi xv xxi xxiii 1 Volume Two Transcription, Abbreviations, Bibliography ........................................................................................... Articles G–O .................................................................................................................................................... vii 1 Volume Three Transcription, Abbreviations, Bibliography ........................................................................................... Articles P–Z ...................................................................................................................................................... Index .................................................................................................................................................................. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV vii 1 547 linguistic variation in classical attic Internazionale di Dialettologia greca, ed. by A. C. Cassio, AION(filol) 19:73–107. ――. 2002. “La lengua de Hyperides y Menandro”, Habis 33:73–94. Löschhorn, Bernhard. 2007. “Weniger Bekanntes aus Attika.” In: Hajnal 2007:265–353. Penney, J. H. W., ed. 2004. Indo-European perspectives. Studies in honour of Anna Morpurgo Davies. Oxford. Pfister, Friedrich. 1914. “Vulgärgriechisch in der ps.xenophontischen Athēnaíōn Politeía”, Philologus 73:558–562. Probert, Philomen. “Accentuation in Old Attic, Later Attic and Attic.” In: Penney 2004:277–291. Risch, Ernst. 1964. “Das Attische im Rahmen der griechischen Dialekte”, MH 21:1–14. Schironi, Francesca. “Technical Languages: Science and Medicine.” In: Bakker 2010:339–353. Schulze, Wilhelm. 1896. Rev. of P. Kretschmer, Die griechischen Vaseninschriften ihrer Sprache nach untersucht, Gütersloh 1894, Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeiger, 228–256 (repr. Kleine Schriften, 692–717. Göttingen). Schwyzer, Eduard. 1940. “Syntaktische Archaismen des Attischen”, Abhandlungen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 3–16 (repr. Kleine Schriften, 443–456. Innsbruck 1983). ――. 1968. Griechische Grammatik. Munich. Teodorsson, Sven-Tage. 1974. The phonemic system of the Attic dialect 400–340 B.C. (Studia Graeca et latina Gothoburgensia XXXII). Lund. ――. 1979. “Phonological variation in Classical Attic and the development of the Koiné”, Glotta 57:61–75. ――. 2007. “Diglossie in griechischen Dialekten.” In: Hajnal 2007:463–478. Threatte, Leslie. 1980. The grammar of Attic inscriptions. I: Phonology. Berlin – New York. ――. 1996. The grammar of Attic inscriptions. II: Morphology. Berlin – New-York. Wachter, Rudolf. “chaîre kaì píei eû.” In: Penney 2004:300– 323. ――. 2007. “Attische Vaseninschriften. Was ist von einer sinnvollen und realistischen Sammlung und Auswertung zu erwarten? (AVI 1).” In: Hajnal 2007:479–498. Willi, Andreas. 2010. “Register variation.” In: Bakker 2010:297–310. ――. 2003. The languages of Aristophanes. Aspects of linguistic variation in Classical Attic Greek. Oxford. Paolo Poccetti Literary Prose The phrase literary prose refers to Ancient Greek texts that, written in prose, have a literary purpose. The ancient Greeks’ concern for the formal, stylistic or artistic aspects of their prose leads them to including in this definition some genres that, in modern languages, would be out of the literary sphere, such as history, philosophy or scientific prose. This entry pays attention to the literary use of the Ancient Greek language (dialectal and grammatical elements as well as, collaterally, style and vocabulary) in Classical 371 literary prose, from its origin in the Ionic area of Asia Minor during the second half of the 6th c. BCE, to its development and peak in Athens, in the 5th and 4th c. BCE. For the subsequent development, see → Hellenistic Literary Prose and → Late Antiquity Prose. The earliest Greek literature was composed in verse: metrical rhythms and other stylistic devices related to this poetry correspond to a predominantly oral culture that, besides, interprets the world from its own myths and beliefs. The origin of prose reflects an innovative change of mentality: for the Greeks, the use of ordinary language becomes a suitable tool to express the scientific, philosophical, ethnographic or historiographical thought, in a rational and abstract way which differs from the mythical and religious explanations. Ancient Greeks, like all other peoples, presumably narrated stories in prose, such as fables and tales that were orally spread (there are, for instance, remnants of this in the collection of fables that Demetrius of Phalerum (ca. 350–280 BCE) composed in the 3rd c. BCE). In addition, from the 7th c. BCE onwards, a number of laws, public records, lists of different subjects, private letters, graffiti, etc., were also written in prose. Among these kinds of documents with a mainly practical functionality (in some cases, with remarkable devices of style and vocabulary), we still have the testimony of inscriptions. It is commonly agreed that there was a → Doric scientific prose, which was employed by the Pythagorean School in the Italian Magna Graecia, but none of these works has been preserved for us (the earliest extant Doric prose writings belong to the mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse, ca. 287–212 BCE). Therefore, to us, Ancient Greek literary prose begins on the eastern coast of the Aegean sea, primarily in the city of Miletus, during the 6th c. BCE: for the first time ever, not only philosophers and thinkers like Pherecydes of Syros (6th c. BCE), Thales (ca. 630–545 BCE), Anaximander (ca. 610–546 BCE) or Anaximenes of Miletus (ca. 585–524 BCE), and Heraclitus of Ephesus (ca. 535–484 BCE), but also geographers and logographers, such as Hecataeus of Miletus (ca. 550–476 BCE) use the → Ionic dialect in order to write their works. This very first prose has come down to us in a fragmentary form, through indirect testimonies that may have altered the original language. According to Meillet (1975:229), only This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV 372 literary prose languages belonging to civilizations that have reached a high level of intellectual culture have prose writings. In fact, in the 6th c. BCE, the Ionic strip of Asia Minor and the adjacent islands had become a very important region, not only from a commercial and economic point of view but also from a cultural one. To this fact we may add that, despite the dialectal differences mentioned by Herodotus (1.142) – even though epigraphy does not allow us to confirm them –, the Ionian cities had assumed a kind of eastern Ionic as an official language that was common to the twelve cities that made up the Dodecapolis (→ Ionic). Of all these cities, Miletus was the most innovative center of science and philosophy. Thus, in the absence of previous models, this initial literary Ionic prose became a reference point for subsequent prose writings and such a form of eastern Ionic dialect – the first attempt to find a common language within the Greek world (→ Koine, Origins of ) – became the most characteristic dialect of prose until the final triumph of Attic prose in the 5th and 4th c. BCE. Yet the prestige of literary Ionic was so remarkable that it always remained linked to historiographical and scientific prose: in the late 5th c. BCE, and following the model of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, historians from different origins, such as Antiochus of Syracuse (who intended to write the history of western Greeks) or Hellanicus of Lesbos, wrote in a standard literary Ionic; even later, in the 2nd c. CE, Arrian of Nicomedia still used an artificial Ionic in his Indikḗ or On India. The medical treatises of the Corpus Hippocraticum – ascribed to Hippocrates (ca. 460–370 BCE) and his school of Cos, an island inhabited by Dorians in front of the coast of Asia Minor – are written in literary Ionic, especially the earliest, from the late 5th c. BCE. Ancient prose was meant to be heard, so it presented characteristic devices of oral communication, such as recurrence or repetition phenomena, which helped the audience memorize and follow the plot; besides, many of the earliest prose writers tended to include poetic elements in their works (especially from Homer), and this is why, in Antiquity, they perceived a sort of dependency relationship between them: as illustrated by Strabo’s famous passage (1.2.6), prose emerged as a ‘pedestrian’ imitation of poetry, just leaving the meters behind but maintaining all poetic devices. However, it is not possible to give a simplistic and univocal explanation: despite the fragmentary preservation of this early prose, the influence of poetry is not homogeneous and there are at least some differences between philosophers and logographers. Thus, Pherecydes of Syros (his Theology is considered the oldest prose work we know), Heraclitus or Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (ca. 500–428 BCE) employ some devices, like alliteration and repetition (Pherecyd. Syr. 1; Heracl. D-K B 53; Anaxag. D-K B 12), lexical reminiscences or even hexametric rhythm (Pherecyd. Syr. D-K 7 B 1; Heracl. D-K B 61), displaying great influence from poetry. The logographers, on the other hand, use very simple prose without artifices, and employ a vocabulary that is closer to everyday speech than to the epic artistic language, showing stylistic features of chronicles or inventories. The extant fragments of the logographers’ genealogies and geographical descriptions present a paratactic style, quasiasyndetic in the sense that their members are joined together not by the copulative conjunction (→ Conjunctions (Non-Subordinating)) kaí ‘and’, but by → particles, and especially the particle dé (Hecat. FgrH I F 48, F 80; Pherecyd. Ath. FgrH I F 2). The Milesian philosophers have a recurrent style, similar to that of gnômai (maxims; → Gnomes), with parallelisms and antitheses (Heracl. D-K B 104; Democr. D-K B 256). Therefore, we should not think that, in general terms, prose derived from poetry. There is an unquestionable influence from poetry – from Homeric epic, in particular – throughout the later literature, but it is also true that there are some linguistic structures and stylistic devices that are used in both verse and prose, both being literary vehicles. The first extensive work written in Greek – also the first extensive prose writing that has come down to us – is Herodotus’ historiographical work. Herodotus (ca. 484–425 BCE) was considered to be the last logographer (Thucydides (1.21) used this term when referring to his predecessors, “less interested in telling the truth than in catching the attention of the public”), as well as the father of historiography (Cic. Leg. I 1.5). In his Histories, he relates the wars between Greeks and Persians at the beginning of the 5th c. BCE and, laying the foundations for the universal history that will later be developed by Polybius (ca. 200–118 BCE), he describes the history, geography and ethnography of the peoples who came into contact with the Persians and took part in the confrontation between East and West, This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV literary prose between Greeks and barbarians. Furthermore, he does so with a clear literary purpose. Herodotus was born in Halicarnassus, a city of the Carian coast of Asia Minor governed by a Persian satrap and with a remarkable mixture of ethnic, linguistic and cultural elements (Dorian, Carian, Ionian) (→ Greek and Carian). He traveled along the known world and lived in Athens, which, after the victory over the Persian Empire, had become the center of culture and power in the Hellenic world. There, in 446–445 BCE, Herodotus read some of his passages in public (Euseb. Chron.: Ol. 83,3), written in the Ionic dialect. However, this Ionic was a literary and heterogeneous dialect, which did not correspond to any vernacular dialect and has been always considered as homērikṓtatos ‘the most Homeric’ (Long. Subl. 13.3). In fact, together with Ionicisms (archaic and recent) and Atticisms, there are also epicisms. The basis of Herodotus’ language is the eastern Ionic dialect, but it displays some features that are specifically characteristic of the literary language, like the reflexive pronoun heōutón (‘himself ’; vs. Attic heautón), very little documented in inscriptions, or the use of interrogative, indefinite and relative pronouns with k- (kôs ‘how’, kóte ‘when’, hókōs ‘in such manner as’): the treatment with k- of the original → labiovelar *kʷ- before an o-vowel, instead of the most extended form with p- (pôs, póte, hópōs), is documented in authors of the early prose, like Heraclitus, but also in the poets Anacreon, Hipponax, Mimnermus or Semonides, all of them from Ionian cities, and some later authors of scientific and technical writings. We may think of an eastern Ionic element that was consciously maintained as a characteristic feature of an Ionic literary language. At the same time, the influence of Homeric epic is manifest through reminiscences of phraseology (Hdt. 1.27.3; 3.14.10), catalogues (Hdt. 6.8; 8.1), iterative imperfects in -skon (ékheske ‘he had’), some datives in -essi (Hdt. 7.148,15), formations like poliḗtēs instead of polítēs ‘citizen’, or several words like ameíbeto ‘he answered’, amphípolos ‘handmaid’, eûte ‘when’, etc. However, it is generally admitted that, in the transmission process, Hellenistic copyists and editors modified the original text in order to make it, depending on the instance, more Ionic, more poetic or more Attic, in such a way that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the original form. For example, eastern Ionic was a psilotic (→ Psilosis) dialect, that is, it had no ini- 373 tial aspiration; yet, in Herodotus the Attic script with aspirate appears as generalized, something that is normally explained as editorial intervention, since psilotic forms are maintained in the compound verbs (apiknéetai vs. Att. aphikneîtai ‘he comes to’, apeílonto vs. Att. apheílonto ‘they took away from’); nevertheless, there are some exceptions, such as the Attic aphés (and not Ion. apés) and méthes (instead of Ion. métes) for the imp. aor. act. 2sg. of aphíēmi ‘send forth’ and methíēmi ‘let go’. Given that eastern Ionic did not contract the group [eo] and taking into account the frequent forms of the Homeric language with no → contraction, it could be possible that, both in Herodotus and in Ionic prose, uncontracted forms extended to other contexts like, for instance, verbal endings in -ee, -éesthai, -éein, when contractions of homophone vowels had already taken place in all Greek dialects long before Herodotus’ time: so, Herodotean forms like ekálee ‘he called’ (Hdt. 2.162.12) or kaléetai ‘he is called’ (Hdt. 1.93.18) are not documented either in Homer or in Ionian inscriptions. The use of uncontracted forms, at last, gives an archaic and Homeric air to his prose, but it is difficult to determine if the archaizing choice should be ascribed to the editors or to Herodotus himself. In the same way, we find other forms like oúnoma ‘name’ or heíneka ‘on account of ’, which, in Homer, display an initial long vowel – with metrical lengthening – in order to fit in the dactylic hexameter: these forms did not exist in everyday Ionic but, conversely, are documented in Herodotus, together with the verb onomázō ‘call by name’, with initial short vowel. On the other hand, there is also remarkable influence from Attic in the lexicon (apologéomai ‘speak in defense’, ep’ autophṓrōi ‘manifestly’, from the language of oratory, and drámēma ‘course’ from the language of tragedy) and in some specific forms (like the verb noséō ‘to be sick’, that appears together with the Ionian noun noûsos ‘illness’), announcing the arrival of Attic as a literary dialect, as well as the later formation of the Koine. Already Aristotle (Rh. 3.9, 1409a 27) defines the style of Herodotus as léxis eiroménē (‘beads along a string’), that is, a paratactic style mostly characterized by the use of recurrence: verbal predicates are repeated in simple phrases that are linked through juxtaposition or coordination through dé or kaí ‘and’ (Hdt. 3.1.1) (→ Coordination (includes Asyndeton)); the verb of a clause is repeated as an → aorist participle This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV 374 literary prose at the beginning of the subsequent one (Hdt. 9.106) evidencing that, even if → subordination is certainly used (Hdt. 1.1), it is still not completely handled; after interrupting the narration, the thread is picked up through repetition of words (Hdt. 1.8). Together with the mechanism of recurrence, there is the creative device of Ringkomposition in the sense of narration in ring form with repetition of the initial elements after an excursus (Hdt. 3.601 and 3.60.4), which can be found in Attic prose as well (e.g. Ath. pol. 1.1; Th. 1.13.1 and 1.15.1; Antiph. 1.9–10). The subjects and topics of prose writings imply the formation of new words to express abstract and technical notions, something that emerges from the common vocabulary. Thus, in Herodotus’ Ionic prose, but mainly in philosophical and medical writings, there are many ordinary terms that extend their meanings to more specialized significances (for Anaximander and the Pythagorean school, e.g., kósmos ‘order, ornament’ is also ‘universe’; → Lexical Change), neuter → adjectives are nominalized with articles in order to express general or abstract concepts (adj. ápeiros ‘boundless’ / tò ápeiron ‘the infinite’, is intended as ‘first principle’ in Anaximander) and derivation is highly developed through suffixes applied to nouns or → verbs: -súnē (‘capacity of ’), -íē (corresponding to Att. -ía, to create feminine abstract nouns), -sis (‘action of ’), -ma (‘result of ’), -tēs (agent noun, substituting the ancient -tēr), -tēt(‘quality of ’), -ikos / -tikos (adj., ‘relative to’), -ázō, -ízō (denominative verbs; → Denominal Verbs). In addition, we may include the productive use of prefixes (particularly prepositions forming more precise compound verbs; → Adpositions (Prepositions)) as well as nominal composition (for example, according to Diogenes Laertios 1.12, Pythagoras was the first to use the term philósophos ‘lover of wisdom’ when referring to himself), so frequent in the technical vocabulary of medicine. This is how Attic prose finds in earlier and contemporary Ionic mechanisms of word formation (→ Word Formation (Derivation, Compounding): these belong to a flexible and versatile language giving way to a new stage in ancient Greek literary prose, the artistic prose (→ Greek Lexicon, Structure and Origin of). At the beginning of the 5th c. BCE, Athens was a rural, isolated town, which had maintained the local language, → Attic, as an archaizing and conservative dialect. Ionia, on the other hand, was a multicultural region, where different languages concurred; as a result, eastern Ionic eliminated some archaisms and achieved a faster development. In the mid 5th c. BCE Athens became the economic, political and cultural center of the Hellenic world, favoring its own dialect to genres that, till then, had been written in Ionic, such as philosophy and history, and promoting the development of a new genre, intrinsic to the Athenian democracy, namely oratory. One of the first prose documents written in Attic is a short work entitled Athenaíōn politeía (Constitution of the Athenians), whose author, an old anonymous Athenian oligarch, described at that time (ca. 420 BCE?) a less isolated Athens: thanks to their command of sea, the Athenians were related to other countries; so, by hearing every dialect, they have adopted something from one and something from the other (Ath. pol. 2.8). It is possible that, given the hegemonic situation after the foundation of the Delian-Attic League in 478 BCE, the Athenians tried to internationalize their language, by bringing it closer to other dialects, like Ionic. In fact, in the literary sphere, the first works written in Attic do not show a pure Attic, but a confluence of Ionic and Attic traits. It is important to remember that the only model for Attic literary prose was the Ionic one. The prestige of the Ionic dialect as a literary language (not only in prose, but also in verse) is so remarkable that the upcoming Attic prose avoids excessive local or provincial elements, consciously assuming Ionic features that give it a literary and international status. From this early stage of Attic prose we know the works of two orators, Antiphon of Rhamnus (ca. 480–411 BCE), the oldest Attic orator we know (not to be confused with his contemporary Antiphon, the Sophist), and Andocides of Athens (ca. 440–390 BCE), the last exponent of the 5th c. deliberative oratory; and we have, of course, the work of the historian Thucydides of Athens (ca. 455–398 BCE). Curiously, in the formation of Attic prose, the role of masters and intellectuals who came to Athens from other areas of Greece (Herodotus, for instance, has been already mentioned) is essential. In particular, the rhetor and sophist Gorgias (ca. 485–380 BCE), who arrived to Athens in 427 BCE as ambassador of Leontini (an Ionian city of Sicily), who was a disciple of Corax, traditionally considered inventor of oratory, and This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV literary prose Tisias of Syracuse, who probably wrote a missing rhetoric treatise (Tékhnē) in Doric. Gorgias was the first presumably Ionic-speaker who wrote in Attic, being aware that his audience and the audience of his disciples spoke this dialect. Both through his own works (there are only a few fragments apart from his models for epideictic speeches, Encomium of Helen and Palamedes) and through his teachings, Gorgias is considered responsible for having introduced in prose some resources that, till then, were reserved for poetry (metaphor, allegory, hypallage, anadiplosis, anaphora, alliteration, etc.), as well as a number of rhetorical devices, such as antithesis, homoeoteleuton (successive clauses ending with the same sounds, as in a rhyme) and parisosis (exact or approximate equality in the number of syllables in parallel clauses or phrases); in addition, he tries to give rhythm to his periods by using dactylic or trochaic kôla ‘members’ (in Gorg. B 6, for example). Actually, many of these devices (called schemata Gorgieia) had already been used in earlier and contemporary Ionic prose (Heraclitus, Democritus, Herodotus), but Gorgias systemized and brilliantly developed them, even if they seemed to be the trend in Athens before he arrived there. An excessive use of these devices made ancient people consider his prose cold and artificial. Other foreign sophists who also wrote and taught in Athens were Protagoras, of the Ionic colony Abdera on the Thracian coast (ca. 490–420 BCE) and Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, a Megarian colony on the Bosporus (ca. 459–400 BCE). The latter is believed to have invented the periodic structure and the middle style (fluid diction, clear expression, thought expressed as a rounded unit). He frequently applied metrical clauses with paeonic rhythm at the beginning (–⏑⏑⏑) and the end (⏑⏑⏑–) of the periods. All of these authors were influential with regard to the style, the vocabulary and the organization of speech. However, the influence of rhetoric ‒ especially for its relevance in the training of educated young people – is not limited to forensic or political oratory; it also permeated other literary genres, such as historiography (Thucydides), poetry, tragedy (Euripides; → Tragedy, Diction of) and comedy (Aristophanes; → Comedy, Diction of). As already mentioned, in all these early manifestations of Attic prose there is a tendency to avoid extremely local features. Instead, and 375 given that these works are addressed to the whole Greek world, they start to favor Ionic elements, since they are considered more international and more literary: contrary to the -ttAttic treatment for the groups *-tw-, *-ky-, *-khy-, *-t-y-, *-th-y-, they use forms with -ss-, typical of Ionic and almost every other dialect (thálassa ‘sea’ vs. Att. thálatta); the group -rs- (tharseîn ‘to be of good courage’) is maintained, as in Ionic and other dialects, whereas Attic inscriptions document the evolution towards -rr- by progressive → assimilation; ephelcystic -n is used even before words without an initial vowel. On other occasions, however, they maintain some typical Attic features, such as the comparative meízōn ‘bigger’, kreíttōn ‘stronger’ with first long vowel (cf. Ion. mézōn, kréssōn), the contraction [eo] > [oː] (gen. génous ‘race’) instead of the Ionic forms, the archaic form of the preposition xún ‘with’ (whereas other dialects have sún), the alternating declension of certain nouns, like pólis ‘city’ (pólis, póleōs, alternating the predesinential vowel-grade) or the presence of [aː] after e-, i-, r- (the so-called → Attic Reversion), where the Ionic dialect has [εː]. This situation generates mixed forms like prássō ‘to achieve’, for example, which has the Attic [aː] (práttō), but also the Ionic group -ss- (prḗssō). In the morpho-syntactic sphere, they also started to use some Ionic innovations, such as the first person plural of the verb oîda ‘know’ oídamen, instead of the old zero-grade form ísmen; thematic forms of verbs in -mi (apollúousin ‘they kill’ of apóllumi); the conditional conjunction eán ‘if ’ that is documented in Attic inscriptions also appears with the contracted form ḗn, so frequent in Ionic. Besides, → dual number forms are restrained, whereas periphrastic constructions are employed in lieu of the simple verb (naumakhían poieîsthai / naumakheîn ‘to fight by sea’). However, the language of this early Attic prose is not uniform: not only are there differences from author to author, but also in the same author, what can hardly be explained as a diachronic process. Thus, concerning Antiphon’s oratory, the speeches that were actually performed before the court (we have Against the stepmother, On the murder of Herodes and On the chorus boy) present a more Attic prose, simple and close to the Athenian audience, whereas the Tetralogies, which are mere rhetorical exercises not intended to be delivered in court, show a This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV 376 literary prose more elaborate and ‘Ionicizing’ prose style. For example, in the case of the verb apologeîsthai ‘to speak in defense’, he uses the Ionic form of the aorist in the Tetralogies, with the passive morpheme -thēn (apologēthênai ‘to have defended oneself-inf.’, Antiph. 2.4.3); in forensic speeches, on the contrary, he uses the Attic form of the middle voice (apologḗsasthai, Antiph. 6.8.4). Another illustrative example is offered by the use of -ss- and -tt-: even if there is always a prevailing form, both are documented in every author. Once again, to understand this situation it is important to take into account the weight of Ionic literary prose. Thus the Old Oligarch who wrote the Constitution of the Athenians follows the Attic norm -tt-, but uses -ss- on three occasions, two of them in the word thalassokrátōr ‘master of the sea’ (Ath. pol. 2.2; 2.14): this is probably due to the fact that this form was documented in Ionian literature (Hdt. 5.83), and it did not exist in the non-literary Attic of the time. In the case of Thucydides, the situation is the opposite: he always avoids the Attic -tt-, in favor of -ss-, except for the indefinite átta ‘something’ (Thuc. 1.113.1; 2.100.3), probably because the Ionic form ássa was not attested in the precedent literature (except for Hom., Od. 19.218). We may explain in a similar way the alternation between -ss- and -tt- in the work of other early authors. In fact, this prose reveals a sort of tension between a more conservative Attic (similar to the language of the inscriptions) and an innovative and elevated Attic, Ionicized style, which will become the official language in the 4th c. BCE and will be spoken even outside Attica (the socalled Great Attic or Grossattisch, a term coined by A. Thumb in 1901). Finally, this type of Attic will be the immediate antecedent of the Koine. Thucydides claimed that he addressed the History of the Peloponnesian War to educated people, recognizing that the lack of mythical elements in his narration might not be very appealing for a public lecture: his work was composed “as a possession for all time rather than a competition piece to be heard for the moment” (Thuc. 1.22.4). This initial approach establishes, together with other factors, a significant difference between his historiography and the former, particularly Herodotus’ work. Even if, since Antiquity, the prose of Thucydides has been described as archaizing (a fact that has been linked to the twenty years of his exile from Athens), the truth is that many of his linguistic elements match with the Koine (e.g. final-consecutive infinitive with the article in the genitive, hesitation between active and middle voice, decrease in the use of superlatives instead of comparatives, etc.). Thucydides’ style is quite complex, free with regard to syntactic distribution, parenthesis, anacoluthon and a tendency towards morphological, syntactic and lexical variation (metabolḗ). Along with more complex passages (with subordinate clauses, multiple participial and infinitival clauses), he frequently uses a plain style in narrative sections, with short and paratactic clauses connected with kaí or dé (e.g. Thuc. 6.100–102). The most important things are the ideas, the concepts, presented concisely and brachylogically, which is manifested in the use of abstracts, such as verbal nouns in -sis (e.g. dià tês Leukádos tḕn ou periteíkhisin ‘because of the non circumvallation of Leukas’, 3.95.2), substantivization of neuter adjectives, participles or infinitives with the article (e.g. tò epithumoûn ‘to desire’ instead of hē epithumía ‘the desire’, 6.24.2); he also employs archaic and poetic words that differ from everyday language (such as akraiphnḗs ‘unmixed’ instead of akḗratos, anakōkhḗ ‘truce’ instead of spondaí), word choices that coincide with legal or Hippocratic vocabulary, constructio ad sensum, preverbs and suffixes to achieve accuracy and conceptual rigor. All these devices create many hápax legómena. In this way Thucydides’ debt to the orator Antiphon is also highlighted through the use of abstract vocabulary, compounds and original expressions, together with a poetic and archaic vocabulary. The historian is certainly aware of contemporary rhetoric. In fact, he includes in his account speeches that were pronounced on each side, whether at the beginning or during the war: apart from the famous panegyric of Pericles (Epitaph, Thuc. 2.35–46) and two other forensic speeches (by the Plataeans and the Thebans to the Spartans, Thuc. 3.53– 67), the great majority are deliberative speeches (such as the one delivered by Hermocrates to the Syracusans, cf. 6.3–34). Although in keeping with the trend of his period, using parallelisms, symmetry, antithesis and rhetorical figures (cf. 3.82.4), Thucydides does not imitate Gorgias: he likes variety, practical maxims (or gnômai) and long periods (still within the léxis eiroménē or paratactic style: 3.88.2; 6.100.2–3); he masks antithetic parallelisms under their linguistic form (4.14.3), whereas for him the antithesis is just a This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV literary prose way to attain conceptual clearness and not an end in itself. Thus, Thucydides, Antiphon (in his forensic speeches) and Andocides (in his deliberative speeches with a natural and spontaneous style) represent the improvement of the Gorgian style, giving way to the prime of Attic prose, which will be developed along the 4th c. BCE. After the Peloponnesian War (404 BCE), the so-called Great Attic became the vehicle for international communication, being established as the official language for business and administration among the middle and upper classes. This Attic tends to converge with Ionic, avoiding the most peculiar Attic features in favor of Ionicisms. Gradually, at the end of this century Great Attic will give way to the Koine. Apart from inscriptions, it is represented in literary prose by authors like Aeneas Tacticus and the Stagirite Aristotle (384–322 BCE). At the same time, however, the literary Attic prose of the 4th c. BCE seems to abandon the features most closely associated with Ionic, and reaffirms the use of a ‘purer Attic’: it presents dialectal elements that were avoided before, such as forms with -tt- and -rr- instead of -ss- and -rs-; the conditional conjunction eán ‘if ’ is more frequent than the contracted ḗn; prose writers – some of them more inconsistently than others – use the dual number, reflecting the current language of the time. In this way, it is important to remember again that the language of prose is not homogeneous, since some genres or authors (even some works) tend to show a more elevated style, whereas others use a more colloquial register: as we shall see, these divergences are illustrated by the different types of oratory. Among the genres cultivated in prose, one of the best transmitted and with the most relevance during the 4th c. BCE is oratory. In Athens, the higher classes used to receive rhetorical instruction and, even if Plato did not agree with it, rhetoric permeated every social, political and intellectual circle of this period. Before being delivered, speeches are written and then published, giving way to a real literary oratory. Aristotle (Rh. 1358b7–8) sets up the standard classes of the three well-known oratorical sub-genres: forensic or ‘dicanic’, in the legal sphere; deliberative or ‘symbouleutic’, in political assemblies; and demonstrative or ‘epideictic’, for praise or condemnation, frequently performed in public ceremonies. The most important exponent of forensic oratory is the metic Lysias of Athens (ca. 377 458–380 BCE) who, like other logographers (e.g. Isaeus of Chalcis, who specialized in inheritance law), used to write his speeches to be delivered in court by his clients. Apart from some features that are typical of the forensic genre (rhetorical formulas and recurrent devices) and regardless of authenticity problems in certain cases, Lysias displays a simple and natural style, well adapted in form and content to the needs of his clients (the ethopoeia or character creation in the speeches (1. On the murder of Eratosthenes, and 24. For the disabled man) is exemplary). Thus he shows a pure Attic, relatively current and clear, far from the Gorgian ornaments but using periods that are simpler than those of Thrasymachus. Isocrates of Athens (436–338 BCE), on the other hand, was a master of rhetoric who personally developed the three oratorical genres, although he excelled as an epideictic orator, with speeches like the Panegyric, the Areopagitic or the Panathenaic Orations. Isocrates’ eloquence, with the characteristic Attic of educated classes, tends to find the harmony between content and formal perfection. He moves away from the precepts of his master, Gorgias, keeping to a minimum the accumulation of poetic devices and unnatural antitheses. His eloquence is characterized by the search for euphony; thus, he carefully avoids → hiatus between contiguous words (a collision that is perceived as dissonant, so the negation ou, for example, can be ouk or oukh when the following word starts with a vowel) and, following Thrasymachus, he builds his prose through long and rhythmical periods (with paeonic clauses): taking into account a main phrase or idea, he adds several subordinate clauses in quite a fluid way (Isoc. Or. 4.8). From the paratactic style of the original Greek prose, the periodic or has finally been achieved, the léxis katestramménē that Aristotle (Rh. 1409a24–1489b8) considered better than the eiroménē, for it allowed the audience to grasp the beginning and the end of the periods, something “pleasant and easy to learn”. Demosthenes (384–322 BCE) surpassed all other orators of Antiquity with his brilliant eloquence. He was also a master of rhetoric and author of speeches within the three genres, although his most outstanding works are mainly deliberative or political. With these speeches he used to encourage the Athenians in a highly patriotic way to face the Macedonian expansion (four Philippics, three Olynthiacs, On the peace, etc.). His prose is characterized by perfection of style, This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV 378 literary prose avoiding hiatus between words and sequences of three consecutive short or long syllables (the so-called Blass’s Law), but also by the variety of registers: it is, at the same time, elevated and natural, vibrant, with surprising images and metaphors, interpellations to the audience, colloquial, poetic or rhetorical. In sum, all these more or less elaborated periods are used in the service of persuasion. The mere mention of other well-known orators, such as Aeschines (390–314 BCE), Lycurgus (ca. 396–323 BCE), Hyperides of Athens (ca. 389–322 BCE) and Dinarchus of Corinth (ca. 361–291 BCE), illustrates the relevance of Attic oratory in this century. By this time, Attic prose has already become the model for literary prose and, after Thucydides, other Ionic-speaking historians like Ephorus of Cyme (ca. 400–330 BCE) or Theopompus of Chios (380–323 BCE), wrote their works in Attic. The extant historiography of this period practically belongs to Xenophon’s extensive work (ca. 430–356 BCE). Xenophon distributes the homogeneous material he knows in different monographs, contributing to the process of specialization, which is characteristic of Attic prose after the second half of the 5th c. BCE. Thus he writes historical works (Greek History, Anabasis), but also didactic (Cyropaedia, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians) or even philosophical pieces about his master Socrates (Memorabilia, Apology of Socrates). His prose is characterized by clarity, simplicity, fluency and vividness; his Attic, on the other hand, is less pure than that of other contemporary writers (poetic terms, limitation of dual, vocabulary from other dialects, agreements with the Koine, etc.). This fact has been related to the long time he spent away from Athens. The third great genre of Attic prose is philosophy, which presents two important innovations in the 4th c. BCE: on the one hand, its largely moral approach against the scientific Ionian philosophy; on the other, the origin of a new literary genre, the philosophical dialog, based on the Socratic method of question and answer. In fact, it is Plato (427–347 BCE), Socrates’ disciple, who brings this genre to the highest level of perfection, exploiting all the possibilities of the Attic language in order to create an extraordinary literary prose. Plato employs a pure Attic, which matches the language of the inscriptions of his time (in the use of dual number, for example) and reflects the conversational language of the culti- vated men of Athens. He frequently uses expressions that have never been attested in any other contemporary author, such as ên d’ egṓ ‘I said’, ê d’ hós ‘he said’. The everyday style of spoken language is manifested through different resources, like colloquial idiomatic phrases, proverbs, plays on words, anacoluthon, contamination, zeugma, etc. At the same time, he uses, when necessary, an elevated tone, with poetic terms and a sort of tragic vocabulary. The precision and abstraction required by philosophy is achieved through ordinary language, with mechanisms that were already known in earlier Ionic and Attic prose, like nominalization of neuter adjectives, infinitives and participles or derivation through suffixes (-ikós, -sis, -ma, -tēs, etc.). Sometimes, he gives new meanings to the common vocabulary: thus, ousía ‘property’ means ‘immutable reality’ in Pl. Ti. 29c; stoikheîon is ‘the first component of the syllable’ in Pl. Crat. 424d, whereas in the plural it means ‘elements’, e.g. “the components into which matter is ultimately divided” (Plt. 278d). Plato brings philosophy to real and daily life using certain devices, like anecdotes (La. 183c-d), similes (Ly. 222 c, Euthd. 291b) and allegories (the so-called myth of the cave from Resp. 514 a ff. or the aviary in Tht. 197c–198a). He is a master in the art of adapting his style to his characters and to the topics he is dealing with; not in vain, the platonic dialog has a remarkable dramatic component, and probably it is the closest genre to theater. This is why it is difficult to define Plato’s style in an univocal way, for it can be colloquial, rhetorical, sophistic, pathetic, legal, mythical, etc. In this way, Plato is opposed to the use of rhythmical clauses in prose, as well as other rhetorical devices, but sometimes he uses them in a brilliant way with an ironic or sarcastic intention (the speech by Lysias in Phdr. 231a ff., the intervention of Agathon in Symp. 194e–197e, where he imitates the Gorgian style, or the description of the locus amoenus in Phdr. 230b–c, when he plays with poetic devices). He is able to use a periodic, hypotactic and elaborated style but also the so-called léxis eiroménē, with short and paratactic clauses (Resp. 328b–c, 360a-b, Prt. 320d); besides, he masters the use of hyperbaton and → word order (Prt. 310b, Leg. 763a, Resp. 621d). Therefore, Plato represents the highpoint of Ancient Greek literary prose. In the late 4th c. BCE Aristotle writes his philosophical treatises in prose. Yet, there is a change with regard to his predecessor, for his works (with This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV literary prose raw language and a significant development of technical terminology) have already abandoned poetic and literary devices. Once these genres and variants of Classical literary prose have been created, they become a model for literary style in the subsequent periods (→ Hellenistic Literary Prose, → Asianism, → Atticism and → Late Antiquity Prose). Bibliography Adrados, Francisco R. 1999. Historia de la lengua griega. Madrid. Bakker, Egbert J., ed. 2010. A companion to the ancient Greek language. Malden, MA. Bakker, Egbert J., Irene J. F. De Jong and Hans Van Wees, eds. 2002. Brill’s companion to Herodotus. Leiden. Bers, Victor. 2010. “Kunstprosa: philosophy, history, oratory”. In: Bakker 2010:455–467. Caragounis, Chrys C., ed. 2010. Greek: a language in evolution. Essays in honour of Antonios N. Jannaris. Hildesheim – Zurich – New York. Crespo, Emilio. 2010. “The significance of Attic for the continued evolution of Greek”. In: Caragounis 2010:119–136. Denniston, John D. 2000. Greek prose style. Oxford (repr. 1st ed. London 1952). Dover, Kenneth. 1997. The evolution of Greek prose style. Oxford. García Teijeiro, Manuel. 2010. “La lengua de la primera prosa griega”. In: Perfiles de Grecia y Roma. Actas del XII Congreso Español de Estudios Clásicos, ed. by José Fco. González Castro and Jesús De La Villa Polo, vol. II, 17–54. Madrid. Hoffmann, Otto, Albert Debrunner and Anton Scherer. 1969. Geschichte der griechischen Sprache. Berlin. Horrocks, Geoffrey. 2010². Greek. A history of the language and its speakers. Oxford. Jacoby, Felix. 1912. “Hekataios”. In: Paulys Real Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, neue Bearbeitung, ed. by G. Wissova-W. Kroll, vol. VII.2, cols. 2667–2769. Stuttgart. ――. 1913. “Herodotos”. In: Paulys Real Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Suppl. II, ed. by W. Kroll, 205–520. Stuttgart. López Férez, J. Antonio. 2000. La lengua científica griega. Orígenes, desarrollo e influencia en las lenguas modernas europeas. Madrid. Marincola, John, ed. 2007. A companion to Greek and Roman historiography. Malden, MA. Meillet, Antoine. 1975⁸. Aperçu d’une histoire de la langue grecque. Paris. Morocho Gayo, Gaspar, ed. 1985. Estudios de prosa griega. León. Norden, Eduard. 1983⁹. Die antike Kunstprosa vom VI. Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis in die Zeit der Renaissance (2 vols.). Stuttgart. Tribulato, Olga. 2010. “Literary dialects”. In: Bakker 2010:388– 400. Vessella, Carlo. 2008. “La prosa”. In: Storia delle lingue letterarie greche, ed. by Albio C. Cassio, 292–320. Florence. Willi, Andreas. 2010. “Attic as the language of the classics”. In: Caragounis 2010:101–118. Worthington, Ian, ed. 2007. A companion to Greek rhetoric. Malden, MA. Maria Dolores Jiménez Lopez 379 Local Scripts 1. Ιntroduction to the Greek Alphabetic Script The Αncient Greeks occupied themselves a lot with the question of who was the first to invent the Greek alphabet. Ηerodotus (5.58) believed that Kadmos the Ρhoenician, the founder of Thebes, was the inventor (transl. Loeb Class. Libr. 1922; A. D. Godley): “These Phoenicians who came with Κadmοs . . . at their settlement in this country, among many other kinds of learning, brought into Hellas the alphabet, which had hitherto been unknown, as I think, to the Greeks . . .; [the Ionians] having been taught the letters by the Phoenicians, used them with some few changes of form, and in so doing gave to these characters (as indeed was but just, seeing that Phoenicians had brought them into Hellas) the name of Phoenician.” Ηecataeus from Miletus thought that Danaos was the inventor, while the poet Stesichorus asserted that it was Palamedes (Hecataeus, FgrHist 1 F 20). Τhe model for the Greek alphabet was the Phoenician script, which was a West Semitic script (Jeffery 1982:819: → Alphabet, Origin of). Τhe Ρhoenician alphabet has 22 letters and is syllabic; each letter stands for a consonant and an unspecified vowel, i.e., vowels are not written. Τhe names of the letters are initial consonants of words. Τhe direction of the script is retrograde (from right to left). That the Greek alphabet derives from the Phoenician is proven by certain striking similiarities, namely the shape of the letters, their order, their names, and the direction of the script. Ιt is significant that Ηerodotus calls the letters phoinikḗia and the same word occurs in two archaic Greek inscriptions, one from Τeos (GHI 30.37–38) and another from Crete (Κritzas 2010), while the verb poinikázein and the noun poinikastás are attested in another archaic Cretan inscription (Jeffery & Morpurgo-Davies 1970); in a third one (IC II xii.11.3) the partly preserved word poinika[- -] could be restored either as a verb or as a noun. Also in the new text of the public imprecations of Teos (Herrmann 1981) another word of the same root, phoinikographéōn ‘being secretary’, is attested. Τhe Greeks took the Phoenician alphabet and adapted it to their needs. Τhey gave to five This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV