A grammar of the Homeric dialect - Wilbourhall.org

FICKS THEORY. 393
5. In his earlier work on the Odyssey Fick recognised both oV and
KC> as Homeric ;
but subsequently he came to the conclusion that ay
is everywhere due to the Ionic translators (Ilias, p. xxiii).
His main
argument is that of the 43 instances of oV in the Ionic poets (Archilochus,
&c.) there are not more than 2 1 in which it could be changed
into Key (ice,
K S )
without affecting the metre, whereas in Homer the
of cases. The
change can be made in a much larger proportion
inference is that in making the change in Homer we are restoring the
original form. But his induction is far too narrow. In the first three
books of Apollonius Rhodius there are 46 instances of oV, and only
13 in which it cannot be changed into Ke(y). Again in JEschylus
(excluding chorus) there are 212 instances of dV, of which 73 are
unchangeable. In the (Edipus Tyrannus the number is 31
out of
107. In the Iliad, without counting %\v
and eiryjy,
the instances of
unchangeable civ are 43 out of 156. This is nearly the same proportion
and we admit that in a few cases o> has replaced an original
;
Kev. Moreover it has been already shown, on quite independent
grounds, that the combination OUK oV is Homeric ( 362). There can
be little doubt, therefore, that while Ke(y)
is distinctive of ^Eolic, as
oV of Ionic and Attic, the Homeric dialect possessed both Particles.
It may seem strange that which ce(i>), is commoner than oV in Homer,
should have died out of Ionic. On the other hand ai> was the
more emphatic Particle, and the desire of emphasis is a frequent
cause of change in the vocabulary of a language.
It may be objected that we have still to explain the remarkable
coincidence on which Fick's argument rests, viz. the fact that in so
many cases the non-Ionic forms are precisely those which are
different in metrical value from the Ionic equivalents. The answer
is that the same coincidence would be found with archaisms of any
dialect. It is only the metre of Homer (generally speaking) that
has preserved or could preserve such things. Why do we find (e. g.)
(TT^ofieVj oriyeTf, but (rrfjr/s, orjfo, ar^coo-i (not CTTYJCIS, arrjei,
1
orqovcn)
Evidently because the metre admits the modernised forms in the
latter case, not in the former. Thus all words or inflexions which do
not belong to the New Ionic or Attic dialect, be they Old Ionic or
Old ^Eolic, will be found to be metrically different from the later
forms.
It has been sought thus far to show that phenomena which Fick
explains by supposing a translation from JEolic into New Ionic may