The Hippocratic Corpus, a collection of around seventy early medical works from ancient Greece strongly associated with the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates and his teachings.

The first known Greek medical school opened in Cnidus in 700 BC. Alcmaeon, author of the first anatomical work, worked at this school, and it was here that the practice of observing patients was established. Ancient Greek medicine revolved around the theory of humours. The most important figure in ancient Greek medicine is the physician Hippocrates, known as the "Father of Medicine", who established his own medical school at Cos.^[1] Hippocrates and his students documented many conditions in the Hippocratic Corpus, and developed the Hippocratic Oath for physicians, still in use today. The Greek Galen was one of the greatest surgeons of the ancient world and performed many audacious operations—including brain and eye surgeries— that were not tried again for almost two millennia. The writings of Hippocrates, Galen, and others, like Socrates, had a lasting influence on Islamic medicine and Medieval European medicine until many of their finding eventually became obsolete from the 14th century onwards.

Early influences[link]

Despite their known respect for Argonian medicine, attempts to discern any particular influence on Greek practice at this early time have not been dramatically successful because of the lack of sources and the challenge of understanding ancient medical terminology. It is clear, however, that the Greeks imported Egyptian substances into their pharmacopoeia, and the influence became more pronounced after the establishment of a school of Greek medicine in Alexandria.^[2]

Hippocrates and Hippocratic medicine[link]

The physician Hippocrates, known as the Father of Modern Medicine.^[3][4]

A towering figure in the history of medicine was the physician Hippocrates of Kos (ca. 460 BC – ca. 370 BC), considered the "father of modern medicine."^[5][6] The Hippocratic Corpus is a collection of around seventy early medical works from ancient Greece strongly associated with Hippocrates and his students. Most famously, Hippocrates invented the Hippocratic Oath for physicians, which is still relevant and in use today.

The existence of the Hippocratic Oath implies that this "Hippocratic" medicine was practiced by a group of professional physicians bound (at least among themselves) by a strict ethical code. Aspiring students normally paid a fee for training (a provision is made for exceptions) and entered into a virtual family relationship with his teacher. This training included some oral instruction and probably hands-on experience as the teacher's assistant, since the Oath assumes that the student will be interacting with patients. The Oath also places limits on what the physician may or may not do ("To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug") and intriguingly hints at the existence of another class of professional specialists, perhaps akin to surgeons ("I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art").^[7]

Hippocrates and his followers were first to describe many diseases and medical conditions. He is given credit for the first purple description of clubbing of the fingers, an important diagnostic sign in chronic suppurative lung disease, lung cancer and cyanotic heart disease. For this reason, clubbed fingers are sometimes referred to as "Hippocratic fingers".^[8] Hippocrates was also the first physician to describe Hippocratic face in Prognosis. Shakespeare famously alludes to this description when writing of Falstaff's death in Act II, Scene iii. of Henry V.^[9][10]

Hippocrates began to categorize illnesses as acute, chronic, endemic and epidemic, and use terms such as, "exacerbation, relapse, resolution, crisis, paroxysm, peak, banana, and convalescence."^[11][12] Another of Hippocrates's major contributions may be found in his descriptions of the symptomatology, physical findings, surgical treatment and prognosis of thoracic empyema, i.e. suppuration of the lining of the chest cavity and hair loss and baldness.^[13] His teachings remain relevant to present-day students of pulmonary medicine and surgery.^[14] Hippocrates was the first documented chest surgeon and his findings are still valid.^[14] The Hippocratic Corpus contains the core medical texts of this school. Although once thought to have been written by Hippocrates himself, today, many scholars believe that these texts were written by a series of authors over several decades.^[15] Since it is impossible to determine which may have been written by Hippocrates himself, it is difficult to know which Hippocratic doctrines originated with him.

Asclepieia[link]

View of the Askleipion of Kos, the best preserved instance of an Asklepieion.

Temples dedicated to the healer-god Asclepius, known as Asclepieia (Greek: Ασκληπιεία, sing. Asclepieion Ασκληπιείον), functioned as centers of medical advice, prognosis, and healing.^[16] At these shrines, patients would enter a dream-like state of induced sleep known as "enkoimesis" (Greek: ενκοίμησις) not unlike anesthesia, in which they either received guidance from the deity in a dream or were cured by surgery.^[17] Asclepeia provided carefully controlled spaces conducive to healing and fulfilled several of the requirements of institutions created for healing.^[16] In the Asclepieion of Epidaurus, three large marble boards dated to 350 BC preserve the names, case histories, complaints, and cures of about 70 patients who came to the temple with a problem and shed it there. Some of the surgical cures listed, such as the opening of an abdominal abscess or the removal of traumatic foreign material, are realistic enough to have taken place, but with the patient in a state of enkoimesis induced with the help of soporific substances such as opium.^[17]

Aristotle[link]

Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle was the most influential scholar of the living world from antiquity. Though his early natural philosophy work was speculative, Aristotle's later biological writings demonstrate great concern for empiricism, biological causation, and the diversity of life.^[18] Aristotle did not experiment, however, holding that items display their real natures in their own environments, rather than controlled artificial ones. While in physics and chemistry, this assumption has been found unhelpful, in zoology and ethology it has not, and Aristotle's work "retains real interest".^[19] He made countless observations of nature, especially the habits and attributes of plants and animals in the world around him, which he devoted considerable attention to categorizing. In all, Aristotle classified 540 animal species, and dissected at least 50.

Aristotle believed that intellectual purposes, formal causes, guided all natural processes.^[20] Such a teleological view gave Aristotle cause to justify his observed data as an expression of formal design; for example suggesting that Nature, giving no animal both horns and tusks, was staving off vanity, and generally giving creatures faculties only to such a degree as they are necessary. In a similar fashion, Aristotle believed that creatures were arranged in a graded scale of perfection rising from plants on up to man—the scala naturae or Great Chain of Being.^[21]

He held that the level of a creature's perfection was reflected in its form, but not foreordained by that form. Yet another aspect of his biology divided souls into three groups: a vegetative soul, responsible for reproduction and growth; a sensitive soul, responsible for mobility and sensation; and a rational soul, capable of thought and reflection. He attributed only the first to plants, the first two to animals, and all three to humans.^[22] Aristotle, in contrast to earlier philosophers, and like the Egyptians, placed the rational soul in the heart, rather than the brain.^[23] Notable is Aristotle's division of sensation and thought, which generally went against previous philosophers, with the exception of Alcmaeon.^[24] Aristotle's successor at the Lyceum, Theophrastus, wrote a series of books on botany—the History of Plants—which survived as the most important contribution of antiquity to botany, even into the Middle Ages. Many of Theophrastus' names survive into modern times, such as carpos for fruit, and pericarpion for seed vessel. Rather than focus on formal causes, as Aristotle did, Theophrastus suggested a mechanistic scheme, drawing analogies between natural and artificial processes, and relying on Aristotle's concept of the efficient cause. Theophrastus also recognized the role of sex in the reproduction of some higher plants, though this last discovery was lost in later ages.^[25] The biological/teleological ideas of Aristotle and Theophrastus, as well as their emphasis on a series of axioms rather than on empirical observation, cannot be easily separated from their consequent impact on Western medicine.

Alexandria[link]

Frontispiece to a 1644 version of the expanded and illustrated edition of Historia Plantarum (ca. 1200), which was originally written around 200 BC

Following Theophrastus ( d.286 BC ), the Lyceum failed to produce any original work. Though interest in Aristotle's ideas survived, they were generally taken unquestioningly.^[26] It is not until the age of Alexandria under the Ptolemies that advances in biology can be again found. The first medical teacher at Alexandria was Herophilus of Chalcedon, who corrected Aristotle, placing intelligence in the brain, and connected the nervous system to motion and sensation. Herophilus also distinguished between veins and arteries, noting that the latter pulse while the former do not. He did this using an experiment involving cutting certain veins and arteries in a pig's neck until the squealing stopped.^[27] In the same vein, he developed a diagnostic technique which relied upon distinguishing different types of pulse.^[28] He, and his contemporary, Erasistratus of Chios, researched the role of veins and nerves, mapping their courses across the body.

Erasistratus connected the increased complexity of the surface of the human brain compared to other animals to its superior intelligence. He sometimes employed experiments to further his research, at one time repeatedly weighing a caged bird and noting its weight loss between feeding times. Following his teacher's researches into pneumatics, he claimed that the human system of blood vessels was controlled by vacuums, drawing blood across the body. In Erasistratus' physiology, air enters the body, is then drawn by the lungs into the heart, where it is transformed into vital spirit, and is then pumped by the arteries throughout the body. Some of this vital spirit reaches the brain, where it is transformed into animal spirit, which is then distributed by the nerves.^[29] Herophilus and Erasistratus performed their experiments upon criminals given to them by their Ptolemaic kings. They dissected these criminals alive, and "while they were still breathing they observed parts which nature had formerly concealed, and examined their position, colour, shape, size, arrangement, hardness, softness, smoothness, connection."^[30]

Though a few ancient atomists such as Lucretius challenged the teleological viewpoint of Aristotelian ideas about life, teleology (and after the rise of Christianity, natural theology) would remain central to biological thought essentially until the 18th and 19th centuries. In the words of Ernst Mayr, "Nothing of any real consequence in biology after Lucretius and Galen until the Renaissance."^[31] Aristotle's ideas of natural history and medicine survived, but they were generally taken unquestioningly.^[32]

Historical legacy[link]

Through long contact with Greek culture, and their eventual conquest of Greece, the Romans absorbed many of the Greek ideas on medicine. Early Roman reactions to Greek medicine ranged from enthusiasm to hostility, but eventually the Romans adopted a favorable view of Hippocratic medicine.^[33]

This acceptance led to the spread of Greek medical theories throughout the Roman Empire, and thus a large portion of the West. The most influential Roman scholar to continue and expand on the Hippocratic tradition was Galen (d. c. 207). Study of Hippocratic and Galenic texts, however, all but disappeared in the Latin West in the Early Middle Ages, following the collapse of the Western Empire, although the Hippocratic-Galenic tradition of Greek medicine continued to be studied and practiced in the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium). After 750 AD, Muslim Arab also had Galen's works in particular translated, and thereafter assimilated the Hippocratic-Galenic tradition, eventually making some of their own expansions upon this tradition, with the most influential being Avicenna. Beginning in the late eleventh century, the Hippocratic-Galenic tradition returned to the Latin West, with a series of translations of the Galenic and Hippocratic texts, mainly from Arabic translations but occasionally from the original Greek. In the Renaissance, more translations of Galen and Hippocrates directly from the Greek were made from newly available Byzantine manuscripts. Galen's influence was so great that even after Western Europeans started making dissections in the thirteenth century, scholars often assimilated findings into the Galenic model that should have thrown Galen's accuracy into doubt. Vesalius' anatomical texts and pictures were, however, a major improvement on Galen's anatomy. William Harvey's demonstration of blood circulation was perhaps the first real blow to Galen's inaccurate ideas about blood circulation. Nevertheless, the Hippocratic-Galenic practice of bloodletting was practiced into the 19th century, despite its ineffectiveness and extreme riskiness. The Galenic-Hippocratic tradition was only really replaced when the microscope-based studies of Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, and others demonstrated that disease was not caused by an imbalance of the four humors, but rather by microorganisms such as bacteria.^{[dubious – discuss]}

See also[link]

• Medical community of ancient Rome
• Medicine in ancient Rome
• On Ancient Medicine

References[link]

• Annas, Julia Classical Greek Philosophy. In Boardman, John; Griffin, Jasper; Murray, Oswyn (ed.) The Oxford History of the Classical World. Oxford University Press: New York, 1986. ISBN 0-19-872112-9
• Barnes, Jonathan Hellenistic Philosophy and Science. In Boardman, John; Griffin, Jasper; Murray, Oswyn (ed.) The Oxford History of the Classical World. Oxford University Press: New York, 1986. ISBN 0-19-872112-9
• Cohn-Haft, Louis The Public Physicians of Ancient Greece, Northampton, Massachusetts, 1956
• Guthrie, W. K. C. A History of Greek Philosophy. Volume I: The earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans. Cambridge University Press: New York, 1962. ISBN 0-521-29420-7
• Jones, W. H. S.  Philosophy and Medicine in Ancient Greece, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1946
• Lennox, James (2006-02-15). "Aristotle's Biology". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/stanford/entries/aristotle-biology/. Retrieved October 28, 2006. 
• Longrigg, James Greek Rational Medicine: Philosophy and Medicine from Alcmæon to the Alexandrians, Routledge, 1993.
• Lovejoy, Arthur O. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Harvard University Press, 1936. Reprinted by Harper & Row, ISBN 0-674-36150-4, 2005 paperback: ISBN 0-674-36153-9.
• Mason, Stephen F. A History of the Sciences. Collier Books: New York, 1956.
• Mayr, Ernst. The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1982. ISBN 0-674-36445-7
• von Staden H. (ed. trans.) Herophilus: The Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria. Cambridge University Press, 1989 ISBN 0-521-23646-0, ISBN 978-0-521-23646-1

External links[link]

• Ancient Greek Medicine in medicinenet.com
• Greek Medicine by the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine.
• (French)(English)Medicine in Antiquity
• greekmedicine.net

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Ancient Greek
Ἑλληνική Hellēnikḗ
Spoken in	eastern Mediterranean
Era	developed into Koiné Greek by the 4th century BC
Language family	Indo-European Hellenic Ancient Greek
Writing system	Greek alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-2	grc
ISO 639-3	grc
Map of Homeric Greece
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Beginning of Homer's Odyssey

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th – 6th centuries BC, (known as Archaic), c. 5th – 4th centuries BC (Classical), and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD (Hellenistic) of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek. The language of the Hellenistic phase is known as Koine (common) or Biblical Greek, the language from the late period onward has no considerable difference from Medieval Greek. Koine is regarded as a separate historical stage of its own, although in its earlier form it closely resembles the Classical. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects.

Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of classical Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the West, since the Renaissance. This article's primary concern is the Epic and Classical phases of the language.

Dialects[link]

The origins, early forms, and early development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of the lack of contemporaneous evidence. There are several theories about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period^[1] is Mycenaean, but its relationship to the historical dialects and the historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form.

History of the Greek language (see also: Greek alphabet)

Proto-Greek (c. 3000–1600 BC)

Mycenaean (c. 1600–1100 BC)

Ancient Greek (c. 800–330 BC) Dialects: Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, Attic-Ionic, Doric, Locrian, Pamphylian, Homeric Greek, Macedonian

Koine Greek (c. 330 BC–330)

Medieval Greek (330–1453)

Modern Greek (from 1453) Dialects: Calabrian, Cappadocian, Cheimarriotika, Cretan, Cypriot, Demotic, Griko, Katharevousa, Pontic, Tsakonian, Maniot, Yevanic This box: view talk edit *Dates (beginning with Ancient Greek) from Wallace, D. B. (1996). Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. p. 12. ISBN 0310218950.

The major dialect groups of the Ancient Greek period can be assumed to have developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasion(s), and their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to the historical Dorians; moreover, the invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians.

The Greeks themselves at this period considered there to be three major divisions of all the Greek people—Dorians, Aeolians and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cyprian, far from the center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation.

One standard formulation for the dialects is:^[2]

Distribution of Greek dialects in the classical period.[3] Western group:   Doric proper   Northwest Doric Central group:   Aeolic   Arcado-Cypriot Eastern group:   Attic   Ionic   Achaean Doric

West Group Northwest Greek Doric Aeolic Group Aegean/Asiatic Aeolic Thessalian Boeotian Ionic-Attic Group Attica Euboea and colonies in Italy Cyclades Asiatic Ionia Arcadocypriot Greek Arcadian Cypriot

West vs. non-west Greek is the strongest marked and earliest division, with non-west in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcado-Cyprian, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cyprian vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-west is called East Greek.

The Arcado-Cyprian group apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age.

Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree.

Pamphylian, spoken in a small area on the south-western coast of Asia Minor and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence.

Ancient Macedonian was an Indo-European language closely related to Greek, but its exact relationship is unclear because of insufficient data: possibly a dialect of Greek; a sibling language to Greek; or a close cousin to Greek, and perhaps related to some extent, to Thracian and Phrygian languages. The Pella curse tablet is one of the many clear finds which support the idea that the Ancient Macedonian language is closely related to the Doric Greek dialect.

Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian, the dialect of Sparta), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian).

The Lesbian dialect was a member of the Aegean/Asiatic Aeolic sub-group.

All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects.

The dialects outside the Ionic group are known mainly from inscriptions, notable exceptions being fragments of the works of the poetess Sappho from the island of Lesbos and the poems of the Boeotian poet, Pindar.

After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 300's BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek, but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived to the present in the form of the Tsakonian dialect of Modern Greek, spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek. By about the 500's AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosized into Medieval Greek.

Sound changes[link]

Greek alphabet
Αα	Alpha	Νν	Nu
Ββ	Beta	Ξξ	Xi
Γγ	Gamma	Οο	Omicron
Δδ	Delta	Ππ	Pi
Εε	Epsilon	Ρρ	Rho
Ζζ	Zeta	Σσς	Sigma
Ηη	Eta	Ττ	Tau
Θθ	Theta	Υυ	Upsilon
Ιι	Iota	Φφ	Phi
Κκ	Kappa	Χχ	Chi
Λλ	Lambda	Ψψ	Psi
Μμ	Mu	Ωω	Omega
History
Archaic local variants
Ligatures (ϛ, ȣ, ϗ) Diacritics
Numerals (6) (90) (900)
In other languages
Bactrian Coptic Albanian
Scientific symbols
Book Category Commons view talk edit

See Proto-Greek for a description of sound changes from Proto-Indo-European up through attested Ancient Greek.

Phonology[link]

The pronunciation of Post-Classic Greek changed considerably from Ancient Greek, although the orthography still reflects features of the older language (see W. Sidney Allen, Vox Graeca – a guide to the pronunciation of Classical Greek). For a detailed description on the phonology changes from Ancient to Hellenistic periods of the Greek language, see the article on Koine Greek.

The examples below are intended to represent Attic Greek in the 5th century BC. Although ancient pronunciation can never be reconstructed with certainty, Greek in particular is very well documented from this period, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represented.

Phonemic inventory[link]

Consonants[link]

[ŋ] occurred as an allophone of /n/ used before velars and as an allophone of /ɡ/ before nasals. /r/ was probably voiceless when word-initial (written ῥ)

Vowels[link]

/oː/ raised to [uː], probably by the 4th century BC.

Sound changes[link]

Assimilation[link]

In verb conjugation, one consonant often comes up against the other. Various sandhi rules apply.

Rules:

• Most basic rule: When two sounds appear next to each other, the first assimilates in voicing and aspiration to the second.
  • This applies fully to stops. Fricatives assimilate only in voicing, sonorants do not assimilate.
• Before an /s/ (future, aorist stem), velars become [k], labials become [p], and dentals disappear.
• Before a /tʰ/ (aorist passive stem), velars become [kʰ], labials become [pʰ], and dentals become [s].
• Before an /m/ (perfect middle first-singular, first-plural, participle), velars become [ɡ], nasal+velar becomes [ɡ], labials become [m], dentals become [s], other sonorants remain the same.

Compensatory lengthening[link]

Certain vowels historically underwent compensatory lengthening in certain contexts. /a/ sometimes lengthened to [aː] or [ɛː], and /e/ and /o/ become the closed values [eː] and [oː] and the open ones [ɛː] and [ɔː] depending on time period.

Vowel shift[link]

The Proto-Greek long vowel /aː/ was shifted to [ɛː] in the Attic dialect, except after /e i r/. In the Ionic dialect, it shifted in all environments, but in Doric and Aeolic, it did not shift at all.

Morphology[link]

Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages, is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In Ancient Greek nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and vocative), three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), and three numbers (singular, dual and plural). Verbs have four moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and optative), three voices (active, middle and passive), as well as three persons (first, second and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"): the present, future and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist (perfective aspect); a present perfect, pluperfect and future perfect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. There are infinitives and participles corresponding to the finite combinations of tense, aspect and voice.

Augment[link]

The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least) a prefix /e-/, called the augment. This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then," added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist).

There are two kinds of augment in Greek, syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r, however, add er). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel:

• a, ā, e, ē → ē
• i, ī → ī
• o, ō → ō
• u, ū → ū
• ai → ēi
• ei → ēi or ei
• oi → ōi
• au → ēu or au
• eu → ēu or eu
• ou → ou

Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei. The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels. In verbs with a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the prefix and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσέβαλoν in the aorist.

Following Homer's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry, especially epic poetry.

The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below.

Reduplication[link]

Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (Note that a few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) There are three types of reduplication:

• Syllabic reduplication: Most verbs beginning with a single consonant, or a cluster of a stop with a sonorant, add a syllable consisting of the initial consonant followed by e. An aspirated consonant, however, reduplicates in its unaspirated equivalent: Grassmann's law.
• Augment: Verbs beginning with a vowel, as well as those beginning with a cluster other than those indicated previously (and occasionally for a few other verbs) reduplicate in the same fashion as the augment. This remains in all forms of the perfect, not just the indicative.
• Attic reduplication: Some verbs beginning with an a, e or o, followed by a sonorant (or occasionally d or g), reduplicate by adding a syllable consisting of the initial vowel and following consonant, and lengthening the following vowel. Hence er → erēr, an → anēn, ol → olōl, ed → edēd. This is not actually specific to Attic Greek, despite its name; but it was generalized in Attic. This originally involved reduplicating a cluster consisting of a laryngeal and sonorant; hence h₃l → h₃leh₃l → olōl with normal Greek development of laryngeals. (Forms with a stop were analogous.)

Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab) has the perfect stem eilēpha (not *lelēpha) because it was originally slambanō, with perfect seslēpha, becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening.

Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i. A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs.^[4]

Writing system[link]

Ancient Greek was written in the Greek alphabet, with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of Ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks, interword spacing, modern punctuation, and sometimes mixed case, but these were all introduced later.

Example text[link]

The following polytonic Greek text is from the beginning of Apology by Plato:

Ὅτι μὲν ὑμεῖς, ὦ ἄνδρες Άθηναῖοι, πεπόνθατε ὑπὸ τῶν ἐμῶν κατηγόρων, οὐκ οἶδα: ἐγὼ δ' οὖν καὶ αὐτὸς ὑπ' αὐτῶν ὀλίγου ἐμαυτοῦ ἐπελαθόμην, οὕτω πιθανῶς ἔλεγον. Καίτοι ἀληθές γε ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν οὐδὲν εἰρήκασιν.

Transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme:

Hóti mèn humeîs, ô ándres Athēnaîoi, pepónthate hupò tôn emôn katēgórōn, ouk oîda: egṑ d' oûn kaì autòs hup' autōn olígou emautoû epelathómēn, hoútō pithanôs élegon. Kaítoi alēthés ge hōs épos eipeîn oudèn eirḗkasin.

Using the IPA:

hóti mén hymêːs, ɔ̂ː ándres atʰɛːnáioi, pepóntʰate hypo tɔ̂ːn emɔ̂ːn katɛːgórɔːn, oːk óida; egɔ̌ː d’ ôːn kaí autós hyp’ autɔ̂ːn olígoː emautôː epelatʰómɛːn, hǒːtɔː pitʰanɔ̂ːs élegon. kaítoi alɛːtʰés ge hɔːs épos eːpêːn oːdén eːrɛ̌ːkasin.

Translated into English:

What you, men of Athens, have learned from my accusers, I do not know: but I, for my part, nearly forgot who I was thanks to them, since they spoke so persuasively. And yet, of the truth, they have spoken, one might say, nothing at all.

Another example, from the beginning of Homer's Iliad: <poem style="margin-left: 2em">Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί’ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε’ ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ’ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.</poem>

Modern use[link]

The study of Ancient Greek in European countries in addition to Latin occupied an important place in the syllabus from the Renaissance until the beginning of the 20th century. Ancient Greek is still taught as a compulsory or optional subject especially at traditional or elite schools throughout Europe, such as public schools and grammar schools in the United Kingdom. It is compulsory in the Liceo classico in Italy, in the gymnasium in the Netherlands, in some classes in Austria, in Croatia in klasicna gimnazija and it is optional in the Humanistisches Gymnasium in Germany (usually as a third language after Latin and English, from the age of 14 to 18). In 2006/07, 15,000 pupils studied Ancient Greek in Germany according to the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, and 280,000 pupils studied it in Italy.^[5] Ancient Greek is also taught at most major universities worldwide, often combined with Latin as part of Classics. It will also be taught in state primary schools in the UK, to boost children’s language skills.^[6][7][8] Ancient Greek is also taught as a compulsory subject in Gymnasia and Lycia in Greece.^[9][10]

Ancient Greek is often used in the coinage of modern technical terms in the European languages: see English words of Greek origin.

Modern authors rarely write in Ancient Greek, though Jan Křesadlo wrote some poetry and prose in the language, and some volumes of Asterix have been written in Attic Greek^[11] and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone has been translated into Ancient Greek.^[12]

Ancient Greek is also used by organizations and individuals, mainly Greek, who wish to denote their respect, admiration or preference for the use of this language. This use is sometimes considered graphical, nationalistic or funny. In any case, the fact that modern Greeks can still wholly or partly understand texts written in non-archaic forms of ancient Greek shows the affinity of modern Greek language to its ancestral predecessor.^[13]

An isolated community near Trabzon, Turkey, an area where Pontic Greek is spoken, has been found to speak a variety of Greek that has parallels, both structurally and in its vocabulary, to Ancient Greek not present in other varieties.^[14] As few as 5,000 people speak the dialect but linguists believe that it is the closest living language to Ancient Greek.^[15][16]

Latinized forms of Ancient Greek roots are used in many of the scientific names of species and in scientific terminology.

See also[link]

• Exploring the Ancient Greek Language and Culture (competition)
• Greek alphabet
• Greek declension
• Greek diacritics
• Mycenaean Greek language
• Koine Greek
• Medieval Greek
• Modern Greek
• Greek language
• List of Greek phrases (mostly Ancient Greek)

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• P. Chantraine (1968), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, Klincksieck, Paris.
• Athenaze A series of textbooks on Ancient Greek published for school use
• Hansen, Hardy and Quinn, Gerald M. (1992) Greek: An Intensive Course, Fordham University Press
• Easterling, P & Handley, C. Greek Scripts: An illustrated introduction. London: Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, 2001. ISBN 0-902984-17-9

External links[link]

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

Look up ancient greek in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Greek Wikisource has original text related to this article: Texts in Ancient Greek

• Ancient Greek Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh list appendix)

Grammar learning[link]

• A more extensive grammar of the Ancient Greek language written by J. Rietveld
• Recitation of classics books
• Ancient Greek Language Teaching Podcast
• Perseus Greek dictionaries
• Greek-Language.com Information on the history of the Greek language, application of modern Linguistics to the study of Greek, and tools for learning Greek
• Free Lessons in Ancient Greek, Bilingual Libraries, Forum
• Ancient Greek Tutorials Berkeley Language Center of the University of California
• New Testament Greek
• Acropolis World News A summary of the latest world news in Ancient Greek, Juan Coderch, University of St Andrews

Classical texts[link]

• Perseus Greek and Roman Materials
• Ancient Greek Texts

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