30 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. turbing factor can be seen from the mixed lan- guage* of classical poets and from the prose of Xenophon. In making this mixture of old and new elements both were given the old forms. During the time of the Atticists and the Byzan- tines, as well as afterward and down to the pres- ent, the old elements were always considered as beautiful and noble ; the new ones, however, as ugly and hurtful. The new elements were in- troduced for the sake of distinctness and conven- ience; the elegance was looked for in the old words. This middle way prescribed by history was to unite the Greeks, living, as we have seen, so to speak, in groups remote from each other, in the most satisfactory manner, even before the war of independence. The origin of the Greek of to-day has been discussed a great deal. In the early part of this century some authors, especially Athanasios Christopulos, said that the new Greek was an -^olo-Doric dialect. This opinion has been criti- cised by Hatzidakis. He found that such asser- tion had no foundation. Although traces of Doric dialect could be found, the fundamental
- lu speaking of mixed language in regard to Greek it is not
meant to imply that Greek had any foreign elements. In this latter sense Greek was never a mixed language. The living Greek is the genuine daughter of the old Greek,
