COLLEGE SERIES OF GREEK AUTHORS EDITED UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF JOHN WILLIAMS WHITE arp CHARLES BURTON GULICK INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE GREEK DIALECTS GRAMMAR SELECTED INSCRIPTIONS GLOSSARY BY CARL DARLING BUCK PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT AND INDO-EUROPEAN COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO | GINN AND COMPANY BOSTON . NEW YORK - CHICAGO - LONDONPREFACE The aim of this work is to furnish in concise form the essential material for an introductory study of the Greek dialects. Hitherto there has been no single volume intended to fulfill the requirements of college and graduate students who wish to gain a first-hand knowledge of Greek dialects, whether for a better understanding of historical Greek grammar, or for a greater appreciation of the vari- ety of speech in the Greek world, only half suspected from the few dialects employed in literature, or as a substantial foundation for a critical study of these literary dialects, or merely for the ability to handle intelligently the numerous dialect inscriptions which are important in the investigation of Greek institutions. It is now more than ten years since the author formed the plan of publishing a brief collection of Greek dialect inscriptions with explanatory notes for the use of students, and made a selection for this purpose. At that time Cauer’s Delectus inscriptionum Graeca- rum (2d ed. 1883), which proved useful for many years, had already ceased to be a representative collection of dialect inscriptions. In the case of several dialects the material there given was quite over- shadowed in importance by the discoveries of recent years. In the meantime this situation has been relieved by the publication of Solmsen’s Inscriptiones Graecae ad inlustrandag dialectos selectae. But another need, which it was equally a part of the plan to supply, namely of more explanatory matter for the assistance of beginners in the subject, has remained unfilled up to the present time, though here again in the meantime a book has been announced as in prep- aration (Thumb’s Handbuch der griechischen Dialekte) which pre- sumably aims to serve the same purpose as the present one. With regard to the explanatory matter, the first plan was to ac- company the inscriptions not only by exegetical, but also by rather full grammatical notes, with references to the grammars where the v7 PREFACE peculiarity in question was treated as a whole. But the desire to include all that was most essential to the student in this single vol- ume led to the expansion of the introduction into a concise “ Gram- mar of the Dialects,” and the author has come to believe that this may prove to be the most useful part of the work. Without it the student would be forced at every turn to consult either the larger Greek Grammars, where, naturally, the dialectic peculiarities are not sifted out from the discussion of the usual literary forms, or else the various grammars of special dialects. For, since Ahrens, the works devoted to the Greek dialects, aside from discussions of special topics, have consisted in separate grammars of a single dia- lect or, at the most, of a single group of dialects. Some of the ad- vantages which this latter method undoubtedly possesses we have aimed to preserve by means of the Summaries (pp. 129-163). Highly important as are the dialects for the comparative study of the Greek language, this Grammar is distinctly not intended as a manual of comparative Greek grammar. It restricts itself to the discussion of matters in which dialectic differences are to be ob- served, and the comparisons are almost wholly within Greck itself. Furthermore, the desired brevity could be secured only by elimi- nating almost wholly any detailed discussion of disputed points and citation of the views of others, whether in agreement or in oppo- sition to those adopted in the text. Some notes and references are added in the Appendix, but even these are kept within narrow limits. Several of these references are to articles which have ap- peared since the printing of the Grammar, which began in Septem- ber 1908, was completed. Especial pains have been taken to define as precisely as possible the dialectic distribution of the several peculiarities, and it is be- lieved that, though briefly stated and without exhaustive lists of examples, fuller information of this kind has been brought together than is to be found in any other general work. But, as the most com- petent critics will also be the first to admit, no one can be safe from the danger of having overlooked some stray occurrence of a given peculiarity in the vast and still much scattered material; and, further- more, such statements of distribution are subject to the need of contin- ual revision in the light of the constantly appearing new material.