THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

'
THE HOMERIC DIALECT. 677
literary Ionic of Herodotus and Hippocrates. As writers of
Pseudo-Ionic, such as Arrian and Lucian, continued to employ
these forms, it is plain that such forms were inseparably
bound up with literary
Ionic. But if the /c-forms were such
an essential part of the literary Ionic from the date of the
settlements in Asia down to the time of Lucian, how comes
it that the Iliad and Odyssey, if they were composed either
in whole or in part in Ionia, show no trace of the great
characteristic of the literary Ionic ? This is a question which
those who allege an Ionic origin for the poems or parts of the
poems will have to answer. On the other hand, if the poems
were composed on the mainland of Greece in either Thessaly
or Argolis under the domination of the labializing Acheans,
then the non-appearance of the /c-forms is explained un the
same principle as that by which we have already explained
the appearance of Trirrape^, Triavpe'i, and 'ltttto'^. The partially
Acheanized Pelasgians of Thessaly, Argolis, and Laconia,
would have learned to labialize, whilst the non-Acheanized
Pelasgians of Attica, and those who were driven from their
homes in north Pelo})oniiesus by the Achean refugees from
Argolis and Laconia, would have retained the /c-forms and
brought them with them to their new homes.
This ai-gumont fi'om the /c-forms only holds good against
Ionia, and not against the Aeolid, as the ])ossible place of
origin for the Homei'ic poems.
The weight of evidence is, however, in favour of a Europi'an
origin for the two great e})ics.
The (piestitju of their date now
remains.
'V\\(i fact that n(jt a single Greek colony in Asia Minor or
Italy or Sicily is mentioned in uiliuT of tlio [)oeins is a prinni
facie indication that they wi'i-e composed Ix'tore the Dorian
inxasion. This is (()noboratcd by the fact that there is not
a single allusion to the Doi'ians in Peloponnesus. \'et. if
the ])oenis had been composed postt'rior
(juest;,
to the Dorian ceii-
il^ is
hardly possible that a \u>vl
who sang
{\iv the
aristocracy could ha\f refi-ained from alluding
loi'ds
(if
to the Dei-ian
Ai'giijis
and Sparta. Xot^ ''d\' is there no allusion
to coined nioiie\, hill, the talent is not the larLje weight known
678 THE HOMERIC DIALECT.
in Greece from the dawn of the historical period, but the
ancient gold unit, the value of a cow\ in gold, the stater of
the classical times. Neither mina nor drachma is yet employed
either as weight or unit of account, and all values are
computed in cows, vae primitive unit of barter over Europe,
Asia and Africa.
Severalty in land is practically unknown, for it is only in
the temenos granted by the people to the chief for his separate
use that we find any ownership of land in severalty, while
there is abundant evidence that the people in general had the
primitive common-tield system-. This is in strong contrast
to the foot that by the time of Hesiod (700 B.C.) not only
was severalty in land the regular practice in Boeotia, but
land was connnonly bought and sold, and also to the fact that
from the earliest historical period land was held in
severalty in
Attica, and also in Crete. A considerable period must have
therefore elapsed between the composition of the epics and the
Works and Days of Hesiod.
All these considerations render it
unlikely that the poems were originally composed at any period
later than 1000 B.C.
Our examination of the language of Homer and the Greek
dialects leads us to the conclusion that the earliest
of (ireece spoke a language of the type called Aryan
inhabitants
(r Indo-
Germanic by the philologists.
We have shown that the authors of the Aegean culture
were that race of which the Arcadians and the Athenians
with
their respective
offshoots of Cypriotes and lonians remained
most typical.
It has also been shown that tlie dialect of
Arcadia is the ti'uest representative of the language spoken by
the (jldest inhabitants of Peloponnesus. P)ut, as Arcadian is a
well-defined (ireek dialect, it is therefore one of the group of
languages known as Aryan. ludo-Gernianic or Indo-European.
Xow as It has been shown that this oUlvv race in Greece
was distinguishi'd by
])lack hair and black eyes, the objection
will at once be i-ais\