62 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. vented the accents, but closer research has shown that even in the time of Aristotle (fourth century B.C.) some manuscripts were accen- tuated. Thus, Aristophanes was not the in- ventor of accentuation, merely the one who introduced it. His disciple, Aristarch, in the middle of the second century B.C., wrote explicit rules to be observed in written accentuation. It is established that even at the time of Aris- totle the spiritus asper (57 8a(Tsia) was no longer pronounced; that it existed only in writing, and ever since it has not been pronounced except by the Erasmians. No Greek, unless he has learned other languages, has any idea of our " h." Wherever it occurs in a foreign name, as, for in- stance, the German Hans, he writes not ^Jv?, but Writers on the accentuation of the Greek lan- guage are known from nearly all centuries, from the third B.C. to the seventh of the Christian era, from the ninth and tenth, from the twelfth, and all the following, up to our own. In all the works of such authors of these two thousand years, the rules of accentuation, the rules which the Greeks have observed from generation to generation, are given. The Greeks of to-day and of all the intervening times accentuate the words
