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to supplant the dialect of the conquerors. The western Greeks, though of genuine Hellenic stock, were an uncultivated people, the Aeolians of Thessaly a people destined, together with the Achaeans, to be the nurse of the noblest development of Hellenic poetry. Hence the fact that we find so few Dorisms in Thessaly; e. g. ποτί, κράτος (Lesbian κρέτος), ψαφιξαμένας, etc.,[1] whereas in the land of the crassi Boeoti, a people enkindled by no great love of the humaner arts—for Pindar was really extra flammantia moenia mundi—less resistance was offered to the speech of the invading Dorians. Thus we find such surviving Aeolisms[2] as inf. in -μεν, patronymics in -ιος, dat. in -εσσι mixed with Dorisms; e. g. α for ε in ἱαρός (Thess. ἱερός, Lesbic ἷρος); the accus. pl. in ως, ει < η, by comp. length; ἀπό for ἀπύ, εἶμεν for ἔμμεν, ἄν for ὄν Thess., Lesb.; κά, the change of εο to ιο (?), inflection of θέμις θέμιτι), τοί, ταί, absence of assimilation, reflexive αὐτὸς, αὐτῶν, ἀσαυτῦ, fut. in -ξω, aorist in -ξα from -ζω verbs, Other non-Doric peculiarities of Boeotian speech which find no parallel either in Thessaly or in Lesbos are either individual developments of the dialect or importations from elsewhere; e. g. ττ from Attica or Euboea, as we may assume that the σσ on the most ancient Boeotian inscriptions (Κυπαρίσσι λιβύσσαι) is antecedent to the ττ of the later monuments.
Turning from the eastern to the western portion of North Hellas, we enter upon a field that has heretofore not been systematically explored by the dialectologist. The present investigation of the vowel and consonantal systems of the dialect of Epirus, Acarnania, Aetolia, Phthiotis, and of the dialect of the Aenianes, is the first that attempts to bring together all the phenomena illustrative of the dialect of this extensive region. Before proceeding to a summary of the chief features of this patois, it may be instructive to pass in review some matters of ethnographic and historical importance that will cast light upon this obscure corner of Greek dialectology.
Epirus. The Greeks held that Hellas proper ended at Ambracia, and that therefore the Epirotic tribes were non-Hellenic. Though Thuc. (II 81) expressly states that the Chaones were
- ↑ I regard the use of ἐν for εἰς as originally Hellenic, and not confined to the Doric of North Greece, Some portion of the Dorisms of Thessaly may, of course, be held to be later accessions. The inscriptions of Pharsalia in Thessaliotis are completely Aetolian in character.
- ↑ It is improbable that any of these Aeolisms should have been importations from Thessaly.
