GREEK PRIMER

GREEK PRIMER

COLLOQUIAL AND CONSTRUCTIVE

BY

J. STUART BLACKIE

EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

Scribendo dicimus diligentius, dicendo scribimus facilius.

Quinctilian.

London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1891

All rights reserved

PREFACE

One cannot have moved much in the world without hearing complaints, both from parents and young persons, about the amount of time and brain spent in the learning of languages, and the little profit derived from this outlay. These complaints, no doubt, arise partly from the want of judgment on the part of the parents, and the want of capacity and inclination on the part of their young hopefuls: parents often acting thoughtlessly on the vulgar notion that far birds have fair feathers, and preferring what is foreign to what is native, and what lies at a great distance in time or space to what is near; and young persons being forced to submit themselves to a grammatical indoctrination in which they feel no interest, and from which they derive no benefit. But it is no less true that these complaints are due in no small measure to false methods of linguistic training generally, or to some cherished prejudices in favour of certain languages on the part of the teachers; and it becomes therefore, at the present day, a matter of great practical importance to inquire how far our traditional methods of teaching languages are in conformity with the method of Nature in her great art of thought-utterance, and how far they may justly be called on to submit themselves to a revision and a reconstitution. We say at the present day emphatically, because it is quite evident that education, following in the train of democratic reform, is one of the watchwords of the hour, to which every good citizen must lend an obedient ear; and not only so, but circumstances have so changed since our schooling received its traditional form, that the wants which were satisfied by our school curriculum and school practice in the days of Milton and Locke now demand an altogether different treatment. In particular, the so-called learned languages, two hundred years ago the only medium of culture to an accomplished English gentleman, have now become the luxury of the leisurely, or the arsenal of the professional few, while other languages, such as German, not named in those days, are now sought after as the keys to the most valuable storehouses of all sorts of knowledge. Add to this that Great Britain, which was then a secondary naval power, and following the French and the Spaniards slowly in the great world-transforming process of colonisation, is now mistress of a world-wide empire from the Ganges to Vancouver Isle, through which stretch she exercises a dominant influence, combining the political virtue of ancient Rome with the commercial activity of Carthage. In these circumstances it becomes the special duty of every British man to acquire a familiar knowledge of the languages of the various races with which he may be brought into political or commercial relations; and, as languages after all are not valuable in themselves, but only as tools by which effective work in certain fields falls to be performed, we ought to see to it, both that we get the proper tools for doing the work, and that we learn to use them in such fashion as to work pleasantly and profitably; and in this view it may be truly said that, while the wrong language in the wrong place is of no use at all, even the right language in the right place, when imperfectly learned, is a tool with which the best workman can do only bad work, and perhaps cut his own fingers in the process.

As language is a function which belongs as much to every normal human creature as seeing or hearing, there can be no difficulty in finding out the method of Nature in its acquisition. We have to answer only two questions: first, What are the factors of the process by which the human babe, from being capable merely of inarticulate cries, like any of the lower animals, is developed into an easy and graceful manipulator of articulate speech? and again, How far, and in what respects, does this model require to be modified in order to enable the expert handlers of the mother tongue to use any second or third language with like expertness? That this cannot be a very difficult matter demands no far-sought induction to prove, as the fact lies before us; for from the Greeks in the South-East to the Highlanders in the North-West we find bilingual and trilingual peoples largely scattered over Europe. It is in fact as easy to learn two or three languages as to learn one, if only the learner be habitually submitted to the natural influences, and guided by the steps of a natural process.

What then, in the first place, are the steps of the process which analysis presents as elevating the inarticulate babe to the significant-speaking boy or girl? There is (1) the direct connection of certain objects with certain sounds and gestures; (2) these objects are such as stand in the nearest relation to the learner, and are presented to him in an atmosphere of the most natural and most pleasant surroundings; (3) the imitative faculty, by which he appropriates the proper sounds, is encouraged and cherished by frequent repetition, till the original impression becomes permanently stamped into his soul, and, so to speak, jumps up spontaneously with the object. Let us, in the next place, ask how far this child’s linguistic ladder is affected by the performer being an adult. Manifestly the difference lies only in one point, and that altogether in favour of the adult, viz. the application of a regulated system to the accidental sequences by which the child learns its mother tongue, easily indeed and pleasantly, but slowly; for he learns not architecturally as a mason builds a house, but by the way, as one picks up a pebble on the shore or a daisy from the meadow; whereas the adult, with his firm will and his reasonable purpose, wishing to learn a language can submit himself to a reasonable and a calculated treatment; and in so doing experience has shown that in favourable circumstances, and under wise training, he can learn a foreign language more perfectly in six months than a child can do in as many years. Why then, you ask, is this not always done? Why does it seem such a difficult business to acquire a familiar knowledge of any foreign language, and why is so much brain and so much time spent so frequently on their acquisition with such scanty results? The answer can be only one: because your teacher has ignored the method of Nature, and given you a bad substitute for it in his own devices; instead of speaking to you and making you respond, in direct connection of the old object with the new sound, and thus forming a living bond between the thinking soul, the perceptive sense, and the significant utterance, he sends you to a book, there to cram yourself with dead rules and lifeless formulas about the language, in the middle of which he ought to have planted you at the start. The evil results of this neglect of the living model of Nature are only too manifest. Books are useful, but they are only secondary; in all matters of observation and practical exercise they may form an apt accompaniment or a supplement, but they never can supplant the vital function of which they are only the dead record. No one learns dancing, or fencing, or golf, or lawn-tennis from a book. The evils caused by this unnatural delegation of the work of a living teacher to the formulas of a dead book are three: (1) The direct connection between the reasonable soul and the new articulate sign of the object is lost; the learner does not shake hands, so to speak, with the object, but he cumbers himself with the phraseology of his mother tongue, and instead of saying at once δός μοι ἄρτον, give me bread, he must first ask what is the Greek for bread. In this way the new term remains a stranger to his thought, and he uses it uncomfortably, as when a man puts on a pair of shoes which have only an occasional acquaintance with his feet. (2) Then again, when, after being sufficiently tortured with mere grammatical forms, he acquires a certain vocabulary from the elementary reading books, the objects for which this vocabulary supplies the new names are seldom the objects with which he is familiarly surrounded and in which he has a living interest, but they relate to something Julius Cæsar did in Gaul or Cicero said in Rome some 2000 years ago, a region of strange sounds, in which the linguistic neophyte of this nineteenth century has no particular inclination to move, and to which his memory cannot ally itself with any feeling of kinship; and he easily forgets the word, because he does not care for the thing. But (3) even when he does care for the thing, the mere reading of a lesson every day does not in the least ensure that frequent repetition of a new vocable in connection with an object, on which the familiar knowledge of a language depends; whereas, if the teacher had commenced by making his schoolroom an echo-chamber of daily repeated sounds in connection with interesting and familiar objects directly in the view of the learner or near to his daily life, familiarity with a new language, be it Greek or be it German, would come as naturally and as pleasantly to a clever lad of seventeen as the use of the mother tongue to a dainty girl or a rattling boy of seven.

These things being so, and the method of Nature being so plain in the matter, we now ask what are the causes that have led so many of our teachers, even the most accomplished of their class, to neglect so infallible a guide, and to follow methods of linguistic inculcation equally unpleasant in the process and unprofitable in the result? These causes, fortunately, are as patent as the consequences to which they have led. The first cause is ignorance. In not a few of our educational institutions it is to be feared there are teachers—an over-worked and under-paid class—who are employed to teach languages of which they have only a very superficial knowledge and no firm hold. With persons of this class the whole process of linguistic training amounts to this, Read your book, Get your lesson, and I will hear you. Of a living appeal from the tongue of the teacher and a living response from the tongue of the learner these gentlemen have no conception. They must do the most they can, confine themselves within page and chapter of a printed book, where they require no knowledge beyond the marked limits of the lesson, and where the scantiness of their linguistic furniture and the feebleness of their linguistic vitality cannot be exposed. Let them pass. But what of the men of high accomplishment, exact scholarship, and fine taste: why should they scorn the practice which is the foundation of the rules, and the conversation which made great speeches and great poems before rules or schools were heard of? Simply because they have forgotten the lesson taught in a well-known dialogue of Plato,[1] that the printed papers which we call books, useful for record, are rather prejudicial than profitable to the culture of memory; they have become the slaves of their tools, and defrauded the ear and the tongue of their natural rights in the field of significant speech by a wholesale transference of their functions to the eyes. The scholar, in their conception, is a reading animal, and without books he is nowhere. Why then, they will argue, when our object is to read and to understand books, should we trouble ourselves with conversation? We do not learn Latin in order to talk with Cæsar and Cicero, but to read their books; and in like manner we do not study German to drink beer and smoke pipes and sing songs with rollicking students in a kneipe, but to ponder with many-sided thought over the poems of Goethe or the speculations of Hegel. So be it. Let books and not living converse be the final end of the study of languages; so they certainly are with the dead languages; but even with regard to them it is quite certain that the familiarity and frequent repetition which are the special virtues of the conversational method both render the mastery of books, as in the case of the mother tongue, more complete, and the hold of the printed signature at once more firm in the grasp and more easy in the approach. But some one will say, Does not speaking in a language imply thinking in it, and is not thinking in a foreign tongue one of the most difficult and rare attainments even with the most accomplished linguists? Not at all. The difficulty lies merely in starting from the wrong end and following the false direction thus given till it culminates in the persistency of a bad habit and the imagination of an impossibility. It is as easy to look the Sun in the face and say שׁמּשּׁ, Shemish, as to say Sun, and there is no more difficulty in saying λαβὼν τὸ σκάλευθρον κίνει τὸ πῦρ, than in saying, take the poker and stir the fire. In both cases the direct connection of thought, thing, and word is equally obvious, equally easy, and equally natural; only at the start the habit of thinking exclusively in the mother tongue must be broken.

There is one other objection to the conversational method in the teaching of languages, viz. that it makes a man a parrot. Well, a parrot is an imitative animal, and so is a man, and so far must not be ashamed to own his kinship with the plumy prattler. But he is a parrot and something more; and this something more every sensible teacher will take into account. For myself, I have no preference for random talk: my contention is for regulated talk; the talk first and the regulation afterwards, in the order of gradation so succinctly stated by Lord Bacon—speaking makes a ready man, reading makes a full man, writing makes an accurate man;—all the three. But have your nails first before you pare them; this is the common sense of the matter.

In conclusion, I have a word or two to say with regard to the occasion and the plan of this little book. In the first place, whatever may be said of Hebrew or Latin, Greek is a living language, and must be treated as such even by those who persist in the notion that, while the method of living vocal appeal applies in its full extent to modern languages, it is certainly out of place in the treatment of the two ancient languages which justly claim the first place in the linguistic culture of our highest schools. The delusion that Greek is a dead language, springing as it does mainly out of our “insular ignorance,” as Professor Seeley calls it, and partly, I fear, our national insolence, will be dispelled in a moment by a glance at any current Greek newspaper; as for instance the following paragraph, the first that met my eye, from the 2d November number of the Athenian “Ἀκρόπολις,” giving a short notice of the application of Koch’s remedy for consumption.

ΝΕΑ ΚΑΙ ΠΕΡΙΕΡΓΑ.

Ἡ φθίσις ἐν Ρωσσίᾳ.

Ἡ ἀνακάλυψις τοῦ μεγάλου Κὼχ δίδει ἀφορμὴν εἰς τὰς ρωσσικὰς ἐφημερίδας νὰ ἐξετάσωσι πόσοι εἰσὶν οἱ πάσχοντες ἐκ τῆς νόσου ταύτης. Ἐκ τῶν 120,000,000 τῶν κατοίκων τῆς Ρωσσίας, ἂν ὑπολογίσῃ τις μόνον 5 ἐπὶ τοῖς (0)0 πάσχοντας ἐκ φθίσεως, 6,000,000 μόνον Ρῶσσοι ἔχουσι τὴν ἀνάγκην τῆς θεραπείας τοῦ περικλεοῦς καθηγητοῦ. Ὁ ἀριθμὸς εἶνε μάλιστα ἐν τούτοις ἀκριβής. Ἐν Ρωσσίᾳ καὶ ἰδίως εἰς τὰ βορειότερα αὐτῆς μέρη ἡ φθίσις κάμνει μεγίστην θραῦσιν. Ἐν Πετρουπόλει ὡς ἐκ τῆς ἀθλιότητος τοῦ κλίματος καὶ τῆς κακῆς διαίτης τάξεών τινων τῆς κοινωνίας ἡ φθίσις καταστρέφει φρικωδῶς. Ἑν ταῖς οἰκίαις ἀπομεμακρυσμένων τινῶν συνοικιῶν, εἰς οἰκίας εἰς ἃ σπανίως διεισδύει ἀκτὶς ἡλίου βλέπει τις νέας καὶ νέους ὠχροὺς αἱμοπτύοντας καὶ ἐκεῖ εἰς ἀνήλια δωμάτια ἀναμένοντας τὸν θάνατον. Μειδιάσατε δυστυχεῖς· ὁ Κῲχ ἐργάζεται ὅπως ἁρπάσῃ ἀπὸ τὰς χεῖρας τοῦ θανάτου ὅλα αὐτὰ τὰ ἑκατομμύρια τῶν ὑπάρξεων.

Any person who can read classical Greek without a dictionary will have no difficulty in understanding this passage; and, if he is familiar with the New Testament in the original, he will find that some of the principal peculiarities which distinguish the Greek used by the living political and public men of Athens, so far from being corruptions, are no less distinctive features of the κοινὴ διάλεκτος of the Greeks now than they were in the days of the Apostle Paul and the Evangelist John. But this is not all. It requires only a superficial acquaintance with the most patent facts of Greek literature to know that some of the most popular and the most profound teachers of Greek wisdom—Plato, Aristophanes and Xenophon—use the conversational style. The Greeks, in fact, were, as they are still, a lively and a talking people, and Socrates, their greatest name, cannot be better described than as a talking street preacher of reason and common sense. Well, then, on this double basis that Greek is a living language, and that the colloquial style is that in which its highest and best thoughts are expressed; and knowing, moreover, by large experience, that the most effective way to get a firm grasp of any language is to begin by speaking it, some twenty years ago I published a small volume of Greek and English dialogues,[2] which I used in my class in as far as it was possible to do so in such a multitudinous huddlement of untrained lads as the Scottish Universities, contrary to the practice of all educated nations, admit into the junior classes of the Faculty of Arts. The little book came to a second edition; but that it was in anywise generally used by classical teachers I have no reason to believe, partly because, of all classes of men, teachers are the most closely wedded to old bookish habits, and partly because Scotland is not a country to which the world, governed as it is by authority and by names, would look for anything worthy of imitation in the Greek line: “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” This, as the world goes, was quite legitimate, and gave me no concern. But since that time, as a natural consequence of the great educational movement of the age, some very distinct voices have come to my ear, to the effect that there is something radically wrong in our way of dealing with languages, and that the method of teaching by rules and grammar mainly can no longer be tolerated. I therefore felt it my duty to appeal a second time to the public and to teachers on this important matter, the more so that my little book stood too far apart from the educational attitude of the teachers, and, if it was to find its way into general school use, required a more elementary book as an introduction. This elementary book I now send forth under the title of a Greek Primer, Colloquial and Constructive, indicating by this title that the lessons in talking go hand in hand with the grammatical forms naturally educed from them, each lesson being regulated talk, according to a natural progression from the more simple to the more complex forms in ordinary use. This progressive incorporation of the grammar is the feature which distinguishes the lessons of this introductory book from the dialogues in its predecessor; and the necessity of having constant reference to grammatical forms prevented me from giving that unity of subject to the dialogue as dialogue which belonged to the previous volume.

I have only further to state, with regard to the use of this little primer in the hands of a teacher, that I have no desire that he should bind himself slavishly to the text. The scraps of talk that are given under each lesson are meant to lend him a helping hand in the use of a new organ; and, to enable both teacher and learner to furnish themselves with a living vocabulary of Greek words in direct connection with their daily surroundings, I have added an alphabetical list of the names of the most familiar objects that belong to the field of life in town or country where the learner may happen to be. When the young Hellenist has stamped its Greek designation directly on every object that meets his eyes, and connected it with some single verb that belongs to its significance in familiar life, I would then suggest that the teacher, besides the daily repetition of certain forms of common conversation, should give a vivâ voce description of pictures hung on the wall two or three times a week, which the learner shall be called on to repeat without any written notes; the principle of the method being always to maintain the direct action of the mind on the object, through the instrumentality of the new sound, without the intervention of the mother tongue. As to when, and how far, and in what kind the usual furniture of elementary books of grammar, reading, and exercises should go parallel with colloquial practice, this I leave altogether in the hands of the practised teacher, being well assured that easy reading and accurate writing, so far from being inconsistent with, are the natural blossom and the ripe fruit of the root of living utterance from which I start.

One other matter requires special notice—a matter not necessarily connected with the colloquial method, but which may be wisely used as a help. To each lesson I have appended a short list of English words, either by family affinity, or by direct borrowing, or by indirect borrowing through the Latin, radically identical with the Greek. The habit of identifying such words under an English disguise will perform the double function of facilitating memory and giving a lesson on the transmutation of sounds and meaning, the tracing of which gives so peculiar a charm to comparative philology. In [Appendix I]. I have added some of the principles on which these transmutations depend, so far as they are suggested by the words used in the text.

But what of the pronunciation? After what has been shown of the living continuity of the Greek tongue, from Byzantium downwards to the present day, there cannot be the slightest doubt that Greek orthoepy should be treated in the same fashion that the orthoepy of French, German, or any other living tongue is treated. The pronunciation is ruled by the practice of the present, not by philological facts or fancies as to the pronunciation of the past. No doubt, as Heraclitus says, πάντα ῥεῖ, all things flow, as in the universe, so in language, there is no fixation—there is always change. But the changes which take place in living languages, like English or Greek, are of a very different kind from those which take place when a language like Latin becomes dead, and rises to a new life in the form of such specific varieties as Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. They are of the nature of a normal growth, and are at all events only exaggerations or expansions of a native tendency. To such exaggerations every spoken language is subject, and few more than our insular English, as any one may see who will compare the accentuation of English in the time of Chaucer with the orthoepy of the present hour. But in respect of accents at least Greek has been far more conservative than English, so much so indeed that the accentual marks placed on Greek words by the Alexandrian grammarians two hundred and fifty years before Christ, in the practice of the Greek Church and the Greek people still indicate the same dominance of voice on the accented syllable that the Athenian ear recognised as classic in the orations of Demosthenes and the apostolic eloquence of St. Paul. There can therefore be no greater barbarism than to disown this legitimate music of Greek speech, as is done both in England and Scotland, when we pronounce ἀγαθὸς ὁ θεός, like Latin or English, ἄγαθος ὁ θέος; not to mention the staring absurdity and loss of brain implied in the practice of the great English schools of first pronouncing the word with a false accentuation, and then stultifying the daily practice of the ear by learning a rule to say where the accent ought to have been placed! Nothing could more distinctly show the falseness of our habit of flinging the burden of learning languages on formulas of the understanding and leaving the living organ of linguistic practice altogether out of account. Therefore, by all means, either drop the accents out of the grammar, or use them whenever you give the written word voice in the air. As to the quantity of the vowels, which is the stumbling block with most English scholars, we have no lack of words, even in our own unmusical English, such as lándholder, in which, as in the Greek ἄνθρωπος, the antepenultimate has the rising inflexion, while the penult is long; and if the modern Greeks pronounce ἄνθρωπος as if written ἄνθροπος, that is only a natural curtailment of the unaccented syllable which lies in the nature of human speech, and will be found exemplified more or less in all languages. As to the vocal value of the separate vowels and consonants, this, no doubt, is a point in some cases of considerable difficulty; but it is quite certain that a, both in Latin and Greek, has the broad sound as in Italian and Scotch, not the sound of the English in pātent, that ι is the most slender of the vowel sounds, not the broad semi-diphthongal sound of the English in prime or sigh, that ου has the soft sound of oo in boom, not the bow-wow sound of ou as in howl; also that αι in all probability was pronounced as in the English vain, not as in the German Kaiser. On the whole matter of pronunciation, however, the English scholar should bear in mind that the poetry of the ancients was composed on musical principles, with a strict regard to the quantitative value of the vowel on which the rhythmical accent fell, a practice which necessarily caused the spoken accent to be dropped in verse, or very much subordinated; and again, if his ear should happen to be very much offended by the predominance of the slender sound of ι in the familiar πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης of Homer, there is no reason why he should not adopt a special vocalisation for the reading of the Greek poets, just as we in our reading of Chaucer must constantly put a final accent on words that, if applied to the spoken tongue, would render the speaker either ridiculous or unintelligible. But in whatever fashion the teacher of Greek in this country may choose to settle this delicate point, the matter of pronunciation has nothing radically to do with the great principle of linguistic practice which this little book inculcates. To start with the practice of speaking will facilitate the acquisition of a new language under any system of pronunciation; only this must distinctly be said, that the scholar who has learned to read Greek with a vocalisation and an accentuation invented by himself for himself has deliberately cut himself off from all intelligible communion with the people whose literary tradition he values so highly, and with whom to maintain a familiar intercourse, both in a political and a literary point of view, should be no secondary consideration with the wise.

In conclusion, I have great pleasure in returning thanks to the learned Hellenists who kindly undertook the task of revising the proofs of this little work as they came from the press, viz. Mr. Hardie, Balliol College, Oxford; Principal Geddes, Aberdeen; Principal Donaldson, St. Andrews; and Mr. Gardiner, Edinburgh Academy; and if I have not in every instance taken advantage of their suggestions, it is because on principle I have no sympathy with the nice sensibility which refuses the stamp of classicality to all forms and idioms unsanctioned by the usage of Attic writers, preferring to float my skiff freely on the great Catholic Greek of all ages, from Plato to Polybius, from Polybius to Chrysostom, and from Chrysostom to Thereianos and Paspati.

Edinburgh, April 1891.

CONTENTS

THE ALPHABET

ACCENT AND QUANTITY

THE GREEK LETTERS

The Greek letters, borrowed as they were from the East and adopted by the Romans, are substantially the same as the Roman letters of our common English usage, and in fact differ from them both in figure and power scarcely more than our present English type differs from the old English black letter or the common German type. A few remarks will suffice to show where or how far the pronunciation varies from our English use of the same letters.

NOTES

Α is always the broad a (=ah) of all European languages, and never softened down to the English ā, as heard in pātent, nátion.

Β in the spoken Greek of the present day is softened down to the cognate v, exactly as in Gaelic b with the h appended becomes v, as ban, fair, with h, bhan = van.

Γ, when followed by the broad vowels a and o, is pronounced hard as in English and Gaelic; but when followed by soft vowels the Greeks now give it the sound of the English y in yes, yellow—γέλως, γέρων,—just as in German the g in the third syllable of Göttingen is so softened down as almost to disappear.[3] This euphonic action of a weak vowel upon a strong consonant preceding is natural and found in most languages; exactly as the Italians in their soft dialect of Latin have changed Κικέρων into Chichero, ch being pronounced as in the English church.

Before κ, γ, χ and ξ, the letter γ has the sound of n, as in ἄγγελος, in Latin angelus, English angel.

Δ, or D, is in like manner softened into th as in the English mother; thus δέν not, from οὐδέν, pronounced οὐθέν.

Ε is our short e, as in get; never long ē.

Η, or ἦτα, was in ancient times always a long ē, English ā as in gate; now it is always ee as in seem or theme.

Θ is the English th, as in mouth, south.

Ι is always the slender English ee, either short as in peep or long as in scēne.

Ξ is ks, gs, contracted into x.

Υ, from which our y came, was in ancient times identical with the delicate ü, ue, of the Germans, halfway between οὐ = oo and ee, into which in the living language it is always softened, exactly as in some parts of Germany Brüder is pronounced Brēēder.

Χ is an aspirated k, but pronounced like milch in German or loch in Scotch, which the English, who do not possess this beautiful soft guttural, generally sharpen into a k, as in lake.

Ω, omega, as the name indicates, is simply a long o, as in πῶλος, a foal.

For the English h the Greeks used a simple mark of aspiration turned to the right thus, ἱερός sacred, pronounced hee-er-ŏs, while the same mark turned to the left, as in ἔρως, simply signifies the absence of the h. Whether this spiritus lenis, as it is called, was put on the initial vowel to indicate the presence of an original h which had vanished, I cannot say; but one can readily fancy that if the Cockney fashion of calling Highgate Igate were to become general, every such curtailed word might receive a mark thus, ’igate, as the survival of a lost breathing.

Besides the vowels in the alphabet we find in Greek, as in other languages, compound vowel sounds called diphthongs. They are seven—αι, ει, οι, αυ, υι, ευ and ου. Their ancient pronunciation is very difficult to expiscate, and in them we note the partiality of the Greeks for the slender sound of ee, called by a Latin writer gracilitas, and by modern scholars itacism. This tendency has wiped off the diphthongal character altogether from οι, υι, and ει, which are all pronounced like a single ι, English ee. To balance this, αι becomes the English ai, as in vain; ου retains its full soft roundness as in gloom; while in αυ and ευ in the living Greek the υ has assumed a consonantal value and become v, from which usage the εὐαγγέλιον of the Gospels has become the evangelium of the Latin Church, and the evangel of English; so αὐλός, a flute, is pronounced avlóss, and this v is aspirated into the kindred ƒ, when the following consonant is κ, π, τ, θ, χ, ξ, σ, or ψ, as in αὐτός, aftos, εὔξεινος, efxeinos. That the ancients, at least in poetry, did not do this is evident from the full diphthongal value of a long sound given to the εὐ in εὐαγής and such-like words by the dramatic writers.

ACCENTUATION AND QUANTITY

In respect of accentuation the Greek language has the advantage above most others that, while in Latin, English, or German the proper intonation of a word in doubtful cases can only be known by an appeal to a dictionary or to an authoritative speaker, in Greek every word in a book, as it stands before the eye, exhibits and perpetuates the tonic relation of the syllables to one another. The student has but to observe the rise or fall of the syllables on his page as he would do the notes in a piece of music, and he cannot go wrong. Only a few characteristic points require to be laid down to make the principle on which the practice depends intelligible.

The word accent, taken from the Latin grammarians, evidently signifies a certain music of speech, a singing to or with (ad and cano) an articulate word; while the expression used by the Greek grammarians, τόνος from τείνω, indicates a stretch, stress, or intension of the voice on the syllable so affected. Taking these two elements together we see that a Greek word, say καλός, beautiful, with the mark of the acute accent on the last syllable—hence called oxytone, from ὀξύς, sharp—is pronounced with an elevation of the voice, which brings along with it a dominance of the syllable on which it stands above the other syllables with which it is connected. It stands to reason that after such a dominance given to one syllable the voice, if there be a subsequent syllable, will fall; and so, as in πραγμάτων, the final syllable will be pronounced in a lower tone which is called grave. In the general use this lower-toned syllable requires no special mark, being sufficiently indicated by its necessary subservience to the accented syllable; with the Greeks, however, it seems to have been the practice to pronounce an oxytone word, when it occurs in the middle of a sentence, in a lower tone than at the end, and so the word καλός in the middle of a sentence, as in καλὴ παρθένος, is marked with a grave accent from left to right instead of from right to left; but this, though it lowers the tone, does not affect the dominance of the syllable. It is just as if in music the same note, with the same rhythmical dominance, were sung an octave lower. Practically, the learner need not concern himself curiously about the matter.

It is a rule, both in Greek and Latin, that no word can be accented farther back than the third syllable from the end, the antepenultimate, the favourite accent of the English language. But, while this rule, in a musical point of view, preserves the language from such a rattle of insignificant sounds as in lámentable, mílitary, and not a few other quadrisyllables in our unmusical English tongue, it manifestly requires a correction from the side of penultimate and oxytone accentuation to achieve the just balance of the music of speech. In this respect Greek is decidedly superior to both Latin and English; for, while Latin rejects the sonorous cadence of the accent on the last syllable altogether, English uses it only in some verbs, remnants of the past participle of Latin verbs, as in rejéct, suppóse, accépt, and such-like; and in the case of the penult the fine swelling cadence of the Greek words, in which the acute accent of the penult is followed by a final long syllable, altogether fails, as in πραγμάτων, which an Englishman, following his English ear, will pronounce not only πράγματων but πράγματον, as if ω were ο. The student, therefore, will carefully train his ear to give all oxytone words their full value, and never to say ἄγαθος ὁ θέος instead of ἀγαθὸς ὁ θεός, or κάλος ὁ ἄνηρ for καλὸς ὁ ἀνήρ.

By the quantity of a word we mean the comparative duration of the sound, exactly as in music a

is related to a

;
and in Greek the accentuation stands in a very marked relation to the quantity of the syllables, which in practice asserts itself prominently as follows:—

(1) It is an invariable condition of the antepenultimate accent that the last syllable be short, as in ἄνθρωπος, a man; and in consequence,

(2) If in the course of flexion a word with an antepenultimate accent takes a long final vowel, as in the genitive and dative singular of the second declension, the accent of the first syllable is advanced to the penult, as in ἀνθρώπου.

(3) The converse takes place in verbs, where the accent is naturally on the root, as in λέγω, of which the imperfect is ἔλεγον; but in the aor. mid. indic., while the third person is ἐλέξατο, the first person is not ἐλέξαμην, but ἐλεξάμην.

A long syllable of course, as in προφήτης, may have an acute accent on a long vowel with the same right as a short syllable; but there are many long syllables in Greek which are marked neither with an acute nor a grave but with a circumflex, which is a prolonged accent compounded of a rise and a fall marked thus ^, or for greater ease, ~. These words are generally compounds of which the elements are quite plain, as in φιλοῦσι for φιλέουσι, τιμῶσι for τιμάουσι; in other words, as in σῶμα, a body, or the genitive plural of the first declension, as πολιτῶν, and some others, the single elements from which the complex tone arose were either historically known to the grammarians or legitimately assumed. At all events, every syllable in Greek with a circumflex accent is practically treated as if it had two accents; σῶμα as if it were σάὸμα, χρῶμα as χρόὰμα, πρᾶγμα as if it were πράὰγμα, and so on. It follows from this, and the principle that no word can be accented farther back than the antepenultimate, that, if in the course of flexion a word with a circumflex on the penult receives an additional syllable so as to become, in accentual value, a quadrisyllable, the accent must be advanced; thus from τιμῶμαι,[4] I am honoured, we can say τιμᾶσθε in the second person plural, but we cannot say τιμῶμεθα, so must say τιμώμεθα. The change of accentual marking in this instance is of no practical value to the student, but in the case of enclitics, of which we shall now speak, it affects the ear most decidedly.

Enclitics are small words, which, so to speak, have not force enough to stand on their own legs, but lean (ἐγκλίνω) on the weightier word that precedes them for support, and become absorbed in it; just as in English we say don’t for do not, and in Italian dimmi for the Latin dic mihi. These enclitics are πού, ποτέ, γε, and a few others, the oblique cases of the personal pronouns, the indefinite pronoun τις, and the verbs εἰμί, I am, φημί, I say, except in the second person singular. The effect of their being thus taken up by the previous word and forming a new whole must, in not a few cases, materially affect the position of the accent; for, while in καλός τις, a certain good-looking fellow, there is no change in the intonation of καλός to the ear, the moment I say κάλλιστος τις, I either violate the rule which forbids the accent on the fourth syllable from the end, or I keep to the rule and say κάλλιστός τις. In the same way when I say ὁ διάβολος, the devil, simply, I preserve the antepenultimate accent with full effect in its natural place; but if I apply the reproachful term to a special person, and say, as in John vi. 70, ἐξ ὑμῶν εἷς διάβολός ἐστιν, one of you is a devil, I immediately, to give the ἐστιν something to lean on, must make the διάβολος oxytone. Similarly, I cannot write πνεῦμα ἔστιν, which in accentual value would be a compound word of five syllables, but I must say πνεῦμά ἐστι (John vi. 63), when the last syllable of the supporting word with the two syllables of the enclitic become accentually a new word of three syllables with a legitimate antepenultimate accent.

If the position of the accent, a point often not a little troublesome even to natives in the orthoepy of their own language, has been relieved of all practical difficulty by the curious prevision of the Alexandrian elders, the quantity is even more simple. With the double aid of the two separate signs for long vowels, η and ω, and the quantity of the final vowel as determined by its relation to the previous accented syllables, the only difficulty that remains is obviated by the mark ¯ over the long vowels, and the ◡ over the short ones found in all good dictionaries. In the present little work it will be sufficient to mark the long vowel where it occurs in doubtful cases, and leave the short ones to be understood as short from the absence of the long mark. But the real difficulty that prevents both accent and quantity from being easily acquired by English scholars is the negligent practice of transferring Latin or English habits of accentuation to Greek words, as when θεός is pronounced like Déus, and Σωκράτης as Sócrates, and again the supposition that the accent cannot be put on a syllable without making it long, or removed without making it short. Let only the honest attempt be made to pronounce ἄνθρωπος, not as anthroāpos, but as in lándhōlder, córndēaler, and other such words, and the α in Σωκράτης, not like a in claw or maw, but like the a in lattice and scatter, and the difficulty will vanish like the gleam of a mirage before the firm foot and the cool eye of the traveller.

LESSON I.—NOUNS

Nominative and Objective Case

First and Second Declension

VERBS

Three Persons Singular,
Present Indicative

A noun is the name of a thing or person, a verb signifies an action, an adjective a quality as good or bad belonging to a noun. The nominative case is the person who is or may be doing what the verb means; the objective case is the thing or person to which or towards which the action of the verb tends. The verb to be, denoting simple existence, not action, of course is followed by the nominative, not the objective case.

Nouns are masculine, feminine, or neuter.

Masculines generally end in ος.

Feminines in η or α, a few in ος—ὁδός, a way,

βίβλος, a book, παρθένος, a maiden.

Neuters in ον.

The objective case ends in ν, the ν being added to the termination of feminines, and substituted for the ς in masculines. In neuters the nominative and objective are the same. Adjectives follow the same rule.

Verbs: first person ends in ω, second in ς, and third in ει or ᾳ, as—

• ὁρῶ, ὁρᾷς, ὁρᾷ, I see, thou seest, he sees.
• ἀκούω, ἀκούεις, ἀκούει, I hear, etc.
• So—
• θαυμάζω, I wonder.
• μῑσῶ, I hate.
• φιλῶ, I love.
• ἔχω, I have.

Useful Imperatives

• φέρε, bring.
• δός, give.
• ἰδοῦ, behold! here!

The article the is declined masculine, feminine, and neuter like the nouns, thus—

It never has α in the feminine.

The verb to be, εἰμί, has second person εἶ, third ἐστί, or before a vowel ἐστίν, and in plural ἐσμέν, ἐστέ, εἰσί.

The pronouns of the first and second persons are—

λαμπρός ἐστι ὁ ἥλιος,  the sun is bright.

καὶ καλὴ ἡ ἡμέρα,  and the day beautiful.

ὁρᾷς τὸν ἥλιον;  do you see the sun?

ὁρῶ νεφέλην,  I see a cloud.

νεφέλην στυγνὴν ὁρῶ,  I see a dark cloud.

ὁρᾷς τὸν καπνόν;  do you see the smoke?

ὁρᾷς τὸν οὐρανὸν τὸν κυανοῦν;  do you see the blue sky?

ἀκούεις τοῦ ποταμοῦ;  do you hear the river?

ἀκούεις τῆς βροντῆς;  do you hear the thunder?

θαυμάζεις τὸ δένδρον τόδε τὸ ὑψηλόν;  do you admire this tall tree?

θαυμάζω καὶ μ́ᾰλα γε,  I admire it extremely.

ὁρᾷς τὸ ῥόδον τοῦτο τὸ καλόν;  do you see this beautiful rose?

καὶ τὸ λείριον τὸ λευκόν;  and the white lily?

καὶ τὴν πόαν τὴν χλωράν;  and the green grass?

καλός ἐστιν ὁ κῆπος,  the garden is beautiful.

καὶ σοφὸς ὁ κηπουρός,  and the gardener wise.

ὁρῶ ἄκανθαν,  I see a thistle.

κᾰκόν, κᾰκόν,  bad, bad!

αἰσχρόν, αἰσχρόν,  ugly, ugly!

μῑσῶ τὴν κακὴν ἄκανθαν,  I hate the ugly thistle.

φιλῶ τὸ ῥόδον τὸ καλόν,  I love the lovely rose.

μῑσεῖς τὴν ἀκαλήφην;  do you hate the nettle?

μάλιστα,  certainly.

σφοδρός ἐστιν ὁ ἄνεμος,  the wind is strong.

φιλῶ τὴν σκιάν,  I love the shade.

καὶ τὴν σκέπην,  and the shelter.

φέρε τὴν τράπεζαν,  bring the table.

ποῦστι ὁ πέτασος ὁ ἐμός;  where is my hat?

δός μοι τὸν πέτασον,  give me the hat.

φιλῶ πῖλον ἐγώ,  I love a cap.

κ́ῑνει τὸ πῦρ, or τὴν ἐσχάραν,
stir the fire.

δός μοι τὸ σκάλευθρον,  give me the poker.

ἔχεις πυράγραν;  have you tongs?

ἰδοῦ,  there.

ὁρᾷς τὸ κάτοπτρον;  do you see the mirror?

ἔχεις ἕδρᾱν;  have you a seat?

ἔχεις ὑποπόδιον;  have you a footstool?

ἔχεις κλ́ῑνην;  have you a sofa?

δός μοι τὴν βακτηρίαν,  give me my stick.

τὸ παιδίον τόδε τίς ἔστι;  who is this little boy?

ὁ ἀδελφὸς ὁ ἐμός,  my brother.

ἔστι σοι ἀδελφή;  have you a sister?

φιλῶ δεῖπνον,  I love dinner.

ἔχεις ἄρτον καὶ βούτῡρον;  have you bread and butter?

καλὸν τὸ ἀργυροῦν ποτήριον τοῦτο,  this silver cup is beautiful.

φέρε τὸ καλαμάριον,  bring the inkstand.

λάβε,  take it.

οὐχ ὁρῶ κάλαμον,  I do not see a pen.

ἰδοῦ,  here.

χάριν ἔχω,  thanks.

δός μοι χειρόμακτρον,  give me a napkin.

ἔτι δὲ τοῦ σάπωνος,  and some soap.

ἰδοῦ σάπωνα τὸν τοῦ Πεαρσίου,  here it is, Pears’ soap.

θεῖον πάνυ χρῆμα τοῦ καθαρτικοῦ,  a splendid cleanser!

νῦν δὴ λευκαί μοι αἱ χεῖρες ὥσπερ ἡ χιών. Ἔρρωσο.
now my hands are white as snow. Farewell.

English Affinities

Panorama. Lamp. Heliotrope. Calisthenics. Ephemeral. Urania. Acoustics. Thaumaturgy. Rose. Lily. Chlorine. Sophist. Cacophony. Misanthrope. Democrat. Animation. Philanthropy. Fire. Optics. Ophthalmia. Cathedral. Clinical. Philadelphia. Adelphi Court. Soap. Chiromancy. Cathartic.

LESSON II

Cases, Genitive and Dative

The genitive case signifies the source from which a thing comes and to which it belongs, as the folly of fools, the fool’s folly, the folly that comes from the fool. The dative case means either the secondary or more distant object of an action, as I gave the book to the boy; or it signifies rest or residence in a thing, for which in English there is no special form; also in Greek it signifies the instrument with which, or by which, a thing is done, as to cut with a knife. In Greek masculines in ος have the genitive in ου and the dative in ῳ; feminines in ρᾱ or ρᾰ and ίᾱ have the genitive in ας and the dative in ᾳ; other feminines in α—as τράπεζᾰ, a table—and feminines in η have ης in the genitive and ῃ in the dative.

ὁρῶ νεφέλην ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ,  I see a cloud in the sky.

θαυμάζω τὴν σοφίαν τὴν ἐν τῷ σῷ ἀδελφῷ,
I admire the wisdom that is in your brother.

δὸς τῷ ἀδελφῷ τὸν κάλαμον τόνδε,  give your brother this pen.

καὶ τὸ καλαμάριον,  and the inkstand.

ὁ ἀδελφὸς ὁ σὸς θαυμάζει τὸ λευκὸν ῥόδον τὸ ἐν τῷ κήπῳ,
your brother admires the white rose in the garden.

ἀκούεις τῆς τοῦ ποταμοῦ βροντῆς;
do you hear the thunder of the river?

ἡ βία τοῦ ἀνέμου ταράττει τὸν κῆπον,
the violence of the wind disturbs the garden.

καὶ τόν γε πέτασον ἐπὶ τῇ ἐμῇ κεφαλῇ,
yes, and the hat on my head.

κ́ῑνει τὸ πῦρ τῷ σκαλεύθρῳ,
stir the fire with the poker.

ὁρᾷς τὴν ἕδραν τὴν τοῦ ἐπισκόπου;
do you see the bishop’s seat?

ἰσχυρός ἐστι· ἐσθίει τὸν τῶν πονούντων ἄρτον,
he is strong; he eats the bread of labour.

δός μοι τὸν κάλαμον τὸν τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ,
give me your brother’s pen.

φέρε τὸ καλαμάριον τὸ τῆς ἀδελφῆς,
bring your sister’s inkstand.

κόπτε τὸν κάλαμον τῇ μαχαίρᾳ,
cut the pen with the knife.

English Affinities

Bishop. Kinetics. Seat. Cathedral. Hydrocephalus.

LESSON III

Plurals, Numerals, Diminutives

The plural of verbs is in ομεν, ετε, and ουσι for the three persons. In pure verbs αομεν becomes ῶμεν, ᾶτε, and ῶσι; ε becomes οῦμεν, εῖτε, and οῦσι.

The plural of nouns in ος is in

• οι, nominative.
• ων, genitive.
• οις, dative.
• ους, objective.

Neuters have nominative and objective α.

The plural of feminines is in

• αι, nominative.
• ῶν, genitive.
• αις, dative.
• ᾱς, objective.

The relative pronoun, ὅς, ἥ, ὅ, who, which, is declined all through, like masculine nouns in ος, and feminines in η, and neuters in ον.

The numerals are—εἷς, μία, ἕν; δύω, τρεῖς, τέσσαρες, πέντε, ἕξ, ἑπτά, ὀκτώ, ἐννέα, δέκα, in their order; εἴκοσι, twenty; ἑκατόν, a hundred; χίλιοι, a thousand; μύριοι, ten thousand.

Diminutives are mostly neuter, ending in άριον, ίον, and ύλλιον: as ἵππος, a horse—ἱππάριον, a pony; παῖς, a boy—παιδίον, a little boy; βρέφος, a babe—βρεφύλλιον, a little babe. Masculine is ίσκος, as παιδίσκος, a young boy, with feminine παιδίσκη, a little girl.

The adjective πολύς, many (German viel), is declined in the nominative—

πολύς πολλή πολύ

and objective—

πολύν πολλήν πολύ

otherwise regularly, as if from πολλός-ή-όν.

It is a peculiarity of Greek syntax that neuter plurals are joined with a singular verb, as καλῶς ἔχει τὰ πράγματα, matters are going on well.

γράφομεν καλάμῳ, ὁρῶμεν τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς,
we write with a pen, and see with our eyes.

τὴν ἐπιστολὴν ἥν σοι γράφω δὸς τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς,
the letter which I write for you give to your brothers.

πόσους ἔχεις ἀδελφούς;  how many brothers have you?

ἕξ, ἀδελφὰς δὲ ἑπτά,  six, and seven sisters.

δεινὰ ταῦτα,  that is too bad!

πόσα ἔχεις ῥόδα ἐν τῷ πετάσῳ;
how many roses have you in your hat?

δώδεκα, λείρια δὲ ἕξ,  twelve, and six lilies.

πόσους ἔχει ἵππους ὁ ἀδελφός;
how many horses has your brother?

τρεῖς,  three.

ὁρᾷς τοὺς κύκνους καὶ τοὺς γεράνους ἐν τῇ λίμνῃ;
do you see the swans and the cranes in the loch?

ὁρῶ, δεινὸν τὸ πλῆθος,
yes, a very great number.

καὶ δὴ καὶ τρεῖς μόσχους κομψοὺς ἐν τῷ ἀγρῷ;
also three pretty calves in the field?

ἔτι δὲ ἱππάριον, κόσμιον, βαλιόν;
also a neat little piebald pony?

τί γελᾷς;  what are you laughing at?

ἐκεῖνο τὸ παιδίον ἱππαζόμενον ἐπὶ τοῦ ἱππαρίου,
that boy riding on the little pony.

καὶ δὴ καὶ τρέχει ὀπίσω ἡ παιδίσκη ἡ κομψή,
and behind runs the pretty little girl.

τερπνὸν τὸ θέαμα,  a pleasant sight.

ὁ θαυμαστὸς οὑτοσὶ δύο ὁρᾷ ἡλίους ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, ἡμεῖς δὲ ἕνα μόνον ὁρῶμεν,
this strange man sees two suns in the sky; we see only one.

μῑσοῦμεν τὴν φωνὴν τοῦ μωροῦ,  we hate a fool’s voice.

τοῦ δὲ σοφοῦ φωνὴν φιλοῦμεν,  but we love the voice of the wise man.

οἱ ἀστρονόμοι πολλὰ ὁρῶσι τοῖς τηλεσκοπείοις ἃ ἡμεῖς οὐχ ὁρῶμεν,
the astronomers see many things with their telescopes which we do not see.

πολλὰ μὲν ἔχει δένδρα ἡ ὕλη, λόγους δὲ πολλοὺς ἡ τῶν μωρῶν γλῶσσα,
there are many trees in the forest, and many words in a fool’s tongue.

πολλὰς κόπτομεν ἀκάνθας ἐν τοῖς ἀγροῖς,
we are cutting down many thistles in the fields.

καὶ οὐκ ὀλίγας, ὡς ἐλπίζω, ἀκαλήφας,
and not a few nettles also, I hope.

ἃς σὺ μῑσεῖς, ἀκαλήφας,
the nettles which you hate.

δικαίως ἔγωγε, πάντες γὰρ μῑσοῦσιν τὰς ἀκαλήφας τὰς κακάς,
with good reason too. All hate the evil nettles.

τί πράττετε;  what are you about?

γράφομεν ἐπιστολάς,  we are writing letters.

ἐπιστολὰς λέγεις;  do you say letters?

καὶ μάλα γε, πρὸς τὴν βασίλισσαν,  yes, to the queen.

θαυμαστὰ λέγεις,  wonderful!

ἀγαθὴ ἡ βασίλισσα, καὶ πρὸς τὰς εὐχὰς οὐ κωφὴ τὰς τῶν πιστῶν πολιτῶν,
good is the queen, and not deaf to the prayers of loyal citizens.

δίκαια λέγεις,  you say what is just.

English Affinities

Epistle. Graphic. Hippodrome. Euphony. Astronomy. Telescope. Polyglot. Agriculture. Basilica. Basil. Police. Two. Triad. Pentarchy. Hexagon. Heptarchy. October. Decade. Myriad.

LESSON IV

Third Declension, Singular

The third declension of nouns in Greek is more rich and varied than the other two, and, besides, is distinguished by a peculiarity from which the others are free, viz. while in the first and second declensions all that requires to be done in forming the cases is to change the last syllable of the nominative commencing with a vowel, leaving the main body of the word unchanged, as ἡμέρα,-ας, ἄργυρ-ος,-ου, in the third we observe that the final consonant of the root seems in many cases to have been assimilated or absorbed by the termination of the nominative, and reappears in the other cases, as in ἐλπίς, genitive ἐλπίδος. Sometimes also the vowel of the last syllable of the nominative is shortened before the addition of the genitival termination, as in ποιμήν, ποιμένος. In some classes of nouns no change is made, and the analogy of the two other declensions is followed throughout. We shall take our examples from the more simple classes, leaving the more complex and exceptional to be learned in the course of reading.

The general type is—

and a number of words signifying a dwelling-place, as—

and nicknames of men:

γάστρων, -ωνος		paunchy.
φύσκων

And to this class which follows the analogy of the other declensions our first colloquy is confined.

(1) ὁρᾷς τὸν ἀροτῆρα τῷ ἀρότρῳ κόπτοντα τὴν γῆν;
do you see the ploughman cutting up the ground with his plough?

χρήσιμον τὸ ἔργον τοῦτο καὶ ἀναγκαῖον,
this is a useful and necessary work.

ἰσχυρὸν ἔχει ἵππον ὁ ἀροτήρ,
the ploughman has a strong horse.

τίνος ἐστὶν ἡ εἰκὼν ἐκείνη;
what likeness is that?

τοῦ Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν,
the likeness of Jesus Christ our Saviour.

θεῖον πάνυ τὸ πρόσωπον,
an altogether divine countenance.

τίς ἐστιν ἡ βίβλος ἐκείνη ἡ λαμπρά;
what is that grand book?

ἡ γεωγραφία τοῦ Στράβωνος,
the geography of Strabo.

τί πίνεις ἐκ τοῦ κρατῆρος ἐκείνου;
what are you drinking out of that bowl?

πίνομεν τὸν οἶνον,  we are drinking wine.

δός μοι τὸν τρίβωνα τὸν παλαιόν,  give me my old cloak.

ἐκ μικροῦ σπινθῆρος δεινὴ πολλάκις ἀνάπτεται φλόξ,
from a small spark often a fearful flame arises.

ὡς γράφει ὁ Ἀπόστολος Ἰάκωβος,
as James the Apostle writes.

καίτοι τί ταῦτα λέγεις;  but why do you say this?

φοβεῖ μὲ ὁ πολὺς ἐκεῖνος καπνὸς ὁ ἐκ τῆς καπνοδόχης,
I fear that quantity of smoke from the chimney.

ἀκούω τοῦ κώδωνος καὶ τῆς τοῦ κλητῆρος φωνῆς ὃς ἐγείρει τοὺς πολίτας,
I hear the bell, and the voice of the crier who wakes the people.

οὐ σμικρὸς ὁ κίνδῡνος,  there is great danger.

ἀκούω τοῦ ἀλεκτρυόνος,  I hear the cock.

(2) Nouns in ωρ and ην shorten the long ultimate vowel of the nominative, as ῥήτωρ, ῥήτορος; ποιμήν, ποιμένος; ὕδωρ, ὕδατος, water.

ὁρᾷς τὸν ποιμένα ἐκεῖνον μετὰ τῶν προβάτων ἐν τῷ λειμῶνι;
do you see that shepherd with the sheep in the meadow?

ὁρῶ, καὶ τὸν κύνα,  I see them and the dog.

ἆρα οὖν ἀκούετε τῆς φωνῆς τοῦ δεινοῦ ἐκείνου ῥήτορος;
do you hear the voice of that great orator?

ἀκούομεν· μᾶλλον δὲ ἀρέσκει ὁ τῶν χελῑδόνων
τρισμὸς καὶ τῆς ἀηδόνος τὸ ἆσμα,
we hear; but like better the twitter of the swallows
and the song of the nightingale.

δίκαίως· αὗται γὰρ κινοῦσι τὸ βαθὺ τῆς ψυχῆς,
with good reason; for these stir the depths of the soul.

(3) Feminines in ́ῐς and ́ᾰς, with the radical δ before the case terminations, as λαμπ́ᾰς,-άδος; ἐλπ́ῐς,-ίδος. Neuters in α have the genitive in τος. Words ending in ψ = πς or βς, as λαῖλαψ, λαίλαπος, a storm; φλέψ, φλεβός, a vein; Κύκλωψ,-ωπος, a Cyclops, Giant Round Eye, lose the σ of the nominative and present π or β before the case termination. In the same way nouns in ξ = κς or γς, by losing the final σ of the compound consonant, cause the single κ or γ to reappear in the oblique cases, as ἱέραξ, a hawk, ἱέρᾱκος; ἀλώπηξ, a fox, gen. ἀλώπεκος; κόραξ, κόρακος, a crow,

ἔρχεται ὁ ὑετός,  the rain is coming.

οὐδαμῶς,  not at all.

τὴν ψιλὴν ψεκάδα οὐκ ἔγωγε ὑετὸν λέγω,
a thin drizzle I do not call rain.

ἐκείνη ἡ νεφέλη σημαίνει λαίλαπα,
that cloud foretells a storm.

λαμπρὰν ἔχω ἐλπίδα καλῆς ἡμέρας,
I have bright hope of a beautiful day.

ὁρᾷς ἐκεῖνο τὸ γυναικάριον ἐν τῷ ἀγρῷ;
do you see that little woman in the field?

λέγουσι μαινάδα εἶναι,  they say that she is mad.

καὶ πιστεύω ἔγωγε,  I for one believe it.

δός μοι τὴν κρηπῖδα, καὶ τὸν πέτασον καὶ τὴν χλαῖναν,
give me my boot, my hat, and my plaid.

ποῦστι τὸ ὑπόδημά μου τὸ ἕτερον;
where is my other shoe?

τί ἔχεις ἐν τῷ στόματι;
what have you in your mouth?

ἄρτον· χάριν ἔχω τῷ Θεῷ,
bread, thank God!

τί γράφεις;  what are you writing?

ποίημα,  a poem.

πότερον νοῦς ἔστιν ἐν τῷ ποιήματι;
is there any sense in the poem?

πῶς οὔ; οὐ φυσῶ φυσήματα ἐκ σαπῶνος,
of course; I don’t blow soap-bubbles.

ὁρᾷς ἐκεῖνον τὸν κόρακα;
do you see that crow?

ὁρῶ, περιπατεῖ ὡς κληρικὸς σεμνῷ τῷ βήματι,
I do; he walks like a clergyman, with a grave step.

τί ἐστι τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ ἐνδόξου ἐκείνου ῥήτορος;
what is the name of that famous orator?

Γλάδστων,  Gladstone.

ὄνομα Σκωτικόν,  a Scotch name.

καὶ μάλα γε· ἔχει γὰρ ἑρμηνείαν τὸ ὄνομα, λίθος ὁ τοῦ ἱέρᾱκος,
certainly, for the interpretation of the name is the stone of the hawk.

ἔστι Γλάδστων ὄνομα δήμου τινὸς ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ τοῦ Μεσολωθιᾶνος,
Gladstone is the name of a parish in Midlothian.

τί πράττει ὁ παῖς ἐκεῖνος;  what is that boy doing?

μαστιγοῖ τὴν βέμβῑκα,  he is whipping his top.

αὐτὸς μᾶλλον ἄξιος τῆς μάστῑγος, κακοῦργον γὰρ τὸ θρέμμα,
himself is more worthy of the whip, for he is a wicked creature.

ἔτι δὲ ἀργός· οὐκ ἄξιος τοῦ ἄρτου,
also idle; not worthy of his bread.

νομίζω ἔγωγε τὸ νῶτον αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν μάστῑγα ἐγγὺς προσήκειν γένει,
I think the whip and his back are nearly related.

κακός ἐστιν· ἀλώπεκος καὶ ἄρκτου μῖγμα παράδοξον,
he is bad; a strange mixture of a fox and a bear.

(4) Nouns in ῑς and ῡς have ν in the objective, as σῦς, a pig; ἰχθ́ῡς, a fish, κ́ῑς, a woodworm. Also those in ῐς and ῠς, as πόλις, a city, πόλιν; ὄφις, a snake, ὄφιν; πῆχυς, a forearm, πῆχυν. These have the genitive in εως, and the dative in ει, as πόλεως, πόλει.

πατήρ, a father, and μήτηρ, a mother, have πατρός and μητρός in genitive, and πατρί and μητρί in dative; but the objective is in the regular form with the short penult πατέρα. θυγάτηρ, a daughter, follows the same rule, ἀνήρ has ἀνδρός, ἀνδρί, ἄνδρα.

βασιλεύς, a king, and ἱερεύς, a priest, have the genitive in έως, and the dative in εῖ, like πόλις, but the objective is έα. βοῦς, an ox, has βοός, βοί, and βοῦν.

γυνή, a woman, has genitive and dative -αικός, -αικί, and objective -αῖκα.

ὁρᾷς τὸν καλὸν ἰχθ́ῡν ἐν τῷ ὕδατι;
do you see that beautiful fish in the water?

ὁρῶ, στίλβει τὸ θρέμμα, ὥσπερ μαργαρίτης,
yes, the creature glances like a pearl.

ἕτερον πάνυ ὁ σῦς ὁ ῥυπαρὸς ἐν τῷ συφεῷ,
very different is the filthy pig in the sty.

μῑσῶ τὸν σῦν,  I hate the pig.

ὅμως χοῖρος σιτευτὸς λαμπρὸν ἄγαλμα τοῦ δείπνου,
nevertheless a fatted pig—bacon—is the great glory of a dinner.

ὁρᾷς τὸν ὄφιν ἐν τῇ πόᾳ;
do you see the snake in the grass?

μῑσῶ τὸ θρέμμα,
I hate the creature.

διὰ τί;  why?

ἔχει κίνδῡνον,  it is dangerous.

φρίττω τὸ ζῷον,
πρόσωπόν γε τοῦ διαβόλου,
I shudder at the creature, a mask of the devil.

ἔχει πατέρα ὁ ὄφις τὸν Σατανᾶν,
the snake has Satan for his father.

πολλὰ ἔχει πρόσωπα ὁ διάβολος,
the devil has many masks.

αἱρετώτερον δὲ καλῆς γυναικὸς τὸ πρόσωπον,
specially that of a fair woman.

καὶ δὴ καὶ ἱερέως ὑπερηφάνου,
and that of a proud priest.

ἔτι δὲ βασιλέως ἀνόμου καὶ τυράννου ὠμοῦ,
also of a lawless king, and a cruel tyrant.

καὶ ἀνδρὸς ἑκάστου τῶν ἐν πόλει ὅσοι πονηροί,
and of any bad man in the town.

(5) Adjectives of this declension occur most commonly in one of these three forms—