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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 June 2012
I have the honour to transmit to you herewith a paper containing copies of several ancient Greek Inscriptions discovered by me on the walls of a family catacomb at Alexandria in Egypt, together with a Plan and short description of the Tomb, and some remarks on the writings.
page 152 note a See Plates IX–XIV.
page 153 note b Plate IX.
page 160 note c No. 1—7. Plate X.
page 162 note d I speak of the pronunciation of the letters and diphthongs as used by the modern Greeks, a pronunciation which differs but little, if at all, from that generally prevalent two thousand years ago. The modern language has suffered changes in its words and grammar, but not in the sounds of its letters and diphthongs. It has acquired some new sounds by new combinations of letters, but the old sounds have remained nearly unaltered. The sound of upsilon (the French u or German ii has become the same as that of the iota—a very natural corruption and one observable in many parts of Germany, where the ii is vulgarly pronounced like i or the English ee (as in feet). I have been told by a gentleman of Salonica that in some districts of Thessaly, the ancient legitimate sound of upsilon is still retained: for example, the word ἐκυρή (did it survive) would be pronounced like the French écurie. I have never myself, however, met with any Greek who spoke in that way. With the exception of this degeneration of upsilon I believe the common language of the Greeks, as spoken now by the better classes, does not differ in the sounds of its letters and diphthongs from the usual pronunciation in the time of the Ptolemies.
The mode of pronouncing Greek introduced by Erasmus, his splitting of diphthongs, and Latin accentuation, would have appeared as absurd to an ancient as to a modern Greek. But notwithstanding this resolution of the diphthongs into two distinct sounds in rapid succession (which the Greeks called Συνɛκφωνήσɛις and not διφθόγγους), I venture to say that if any one among the tonoclastic followers of the great Rotterdam heresiarch will take the trouble of reading out loud by himself the Iliad of Homer all through, with the endeavour, while he strictly preserves the measure, of giving the words their proper Greek accentuation instead of the Latin accentuation, with which he has hitherto abused them, he will find before he gets to the end, and probably before he gets half through, provided he have a good ear, that he can accommodate the new method to most of the verses with sensible pleasure to himself. As he advances, he will by degrees be able to master all the verses and give each accented syllable even the most violent blow without losing his time. Some lines he will find much more difficult than others, and he will for a time feel a relief when he casually comes upon those verses (which are few) where the accents happen to fall upon the first syllables of the dactyls. I remember the two following consecutive lines as an example (Book Z. 421, 422). The first to a beginner is a difficult line and he falls upon the second with evident satisfaction.
But he will soon lose the taste for exclusive jog-trot, and will find at last no more difficulty in reading lines with the most diversified accentuation than he does in the second of the above verses.
He will be able to effect what at first will appear most difficult, namely, to pronounce strongly the two accents which fall sometimes upon the two short syllables of a dactyl, as in the following. —
or in the fifth line of the annexed inscription marked A.Πατρ ὶ γόους, &c.
A strict preservation of time is of course absolutely essential, and he whose ear cannot appreciate the intervals need not take the trouble to try to get out of his old habit. But the reader whose ear, after a little practice, does appreciate the relative length of syllables independently of their relative loudness, will find at last that he can give any kind of accentuation he pleases to all the regular metres. Such being the case, he will follow the accentuation of the language itself, renouncing the errors of the foreign tonoclasts, who at once destroy the beauty of the whole class of enclitics and the charming variety of intonation in the cases of the Greek nouns and conjugations of the verbs, changing and disfiguring as they do almost every word of the language.
I admit that the assimilation of sound of different vowels and diphthongs was the cause of a great deal of bad spelling among the uneducated Greeks of old, as it is among their modern descendants; and the artificially fabricated system of Erasmus and his disciples, from its perspicuity, may be the most convenient for teaching the schoolboys of the West, who however can never hope to have any conception of what Greek was as a spoken language.
page 164 note e No. 8—15. plate XI.
page 166 note f No. 16—22. Plate XII.
page 168 note g Plates XIII. XIV;