A full discussion of the Ionic dialect would be out of place here, but the following import ant characteristics may be listed: (1) The of the original common Greek becomes v in Ionic (dame to Otivc, /Amp to is+rqp ) although in the Attic form of this dialect a is found after e, 1, and p. In the earliest Attic Greek, however, even in these cases we have every rea. son to believe that the Ionic t7 prevailed for a considerable time until the influence of the surrounding mainland dialects caused a to be pronounced; (2) A metathesis of quantity is ob served in words like 13aeaVecand the Ionic flaaa hac. So Raltc to Aek and the genitive rtpotov to rviecov, or by synizesis to the dissyllabic rqu0v, (3) Two vowels in the interior of a word were very early contracted: rtliewei, to nisch% igaiv) to elki:), yeveor to ylvevr, etc: (4) The letter F, long ed in the other dialects in words like Ftpyov, preserved Foida, disappeared very early in Ionic (800 B.C. or earlier) though the Iliad and Odyssey show clear traces of its use at the time the poems were composed; (5) Instead of an original /wit, iveivn), and tipl, etc., the Ionic uses the forms /vielc, iphv and Vpac, on the analogy of adjectives like /140c; (6) v movable seems to have come in on the analogy of *v (cf. Homeric in), where the v is an original third person plural ending extended to thesingular); (7) The infinitive ending -vat was an Ionic late formation; (8) The Ionic av, perhaps corresponding to the Gothic interrogative particle AN replaces se or sly of the older Greek; (9) irp6c instead of wort and el for al and /7 were also char acteristic of this dialect.
In the Attic form of the Ionic to, e was assimi lated to the following 0-sound and the vowels were then contracted to ev, whereas, in other Ionic, to was contracted to ev. The use of rr for ad was a second peculiarity of the Attic-Ionic (86aarra for OaAaaaa, rparrw for apdaato), and the change of v into 0 first made its appearance in this dialect. The common Ionic shares with the )Folic the early loss of the rough breathing.
A contemporary or slightly later wave of immigrants whom we may call Achzeans, settled first in the plain of Thessaly and the adjacent regions to the south. Colonists from here, the Argeioi, the Danaoi, and the Ac.hzoi of Homer, crossed the northern )Egean and settled in the northwest or 7E0lian part of Asia Minor, where they developed the Greek epic. The heroes of the Iliad, the great god Zeus, geo graphical names like /Eons and Olympos, seem to have been transplanted, along with the Achaean or lEolic language, to the new Asiatic abode. In their first home in Greece proper these invaders learned much from the more civilized inhabitants by whose wealth in gold, in raiment, and in cattle they had been origi nally attracted and their language too, as we might expect, was greatly enriched from this contact. Homer's word aeallevays, a bath-tub, with its Pelasgic termination (cf. Corinthos), proves the adoption by the conquerors of the custom of hot-water bathing, complicated ar rangements for which have been found in the splendid pre-Greek palaces excavated during the last few decades in Gnossos and Phaestos in Crete. The simple houses of these Achman Greeks had been in older times constructed of wood and clay ( 66/10c, a house, roixoc a mud wall), by builders called rterevec. They now learned to use the massive Cyclopean masonry of the natives, and built for themselves, using the indigenous names, houses of many cham bers, 011aapvi (for the termination cf. the pre Greek name rlivYalwr) with a men's living room, IsiYaPvs' (cf. the Asiatic word Mfyapa). Fort resses, ninel (cf. word Ittpyalloc), towers for defense, rVpaels (cf. Tvpavvol, Etrurians, the robber barons who built their forts on the Mediterranean coasts against the natives whom they pillaged), and vaFol,permanent temples of the gods, were now for the first time built by these rude Greeks and along with the new thing they learned to use the native name. Al most the only one of the old Indo-European divinities that survives is Zek rar6P. the daughter of Zeus, IThas duhita Divas, of the Sanscrit, surrenders her divine birthright to Athana, a local divinity (cf. the pre-Greek names Mvsavat and Iliphva the fountain-god dess Pirene in Corinth). Among more general influences the change of the common-Greek a to )7 in the Attic-Ionic may have been due to Pelasgian influence, as also that of rt to at in Jaren and rptax,inot (cf. ixarov).
The old view that S influence played a large part in the formation of the Greek lan guage has now been given up, for apart from a few words that were imported with the objects that they named, e.g., xtr6v, a tunic, a linguistic phenomenon that we can parallel in such Eng lish words as caoutchouc and chicle, this in fluence was limited to names of characters in story and myth that wandered in with the tales themselves.
The names Altaic and Ala* are unknown to Homer and seem to have been brought by later immigrants from inland Thessaly (cf. Herod., VII, 176). The dialect remains of Thessaly agree fully with the dialect of Alcaeus and Sappho. Achza, the northern district of the Peloponnesus was settled at about the time of the fall of Troy and a mixture of the Ionic and .1Eolic dialects resulted. Into the southern part of Arcadia, Elis and some other parts of the Peloponnesus, the Xolians penetrated carrying with them names like Agamemnon and Menelaos. Thus is probably to be explained the fact that the Epic regarded these heroes as indigenous an Southern Greece. Everywhere except in the mountains of Arcadia and in the sacred region of the Olympian Zeus in Elis the 1Eolians were forced toward the end of this second milleniluim ac. to yield to the Dorians who swarmed down from the mountainous region west and northwest of Thessaly, gradually driving the Achteans be fore them. In Crete, too, which the Achzans had invaded, the Dorians later gained the upper hand and imposed their dialect. Only in the central part of Crete do we find in words like 6viwa and the article 0i, in the prepositions iv and reda, traces of the old Achnan dialect. In Cyprus, however, the dia lect inscriptions show this Achnan character more clearly persisting, though the alphabet in which they are written is entirely different from any Greek alphabet of which we know. We have then the lEolic of Middle Thessaly, that of Asia Minor, that of Bceotia, where it was strongly tinged with Doric, that of Arcadia and that of Cyprus. Common to these are the following peculiarities: (1) The change of common Greek ap, pa into op, arpor6i orpark PpaxIk; (2) by for ava; bviBnKc for aviiiiike; (3) detcoroc, itcor6v for &Ka, iKardv; (4) ant a for (5) relau, reiaat for raacd, reieai; arrilaai=.anorciaai; (6) The words Kvisepva_ rac for KvilepoOtIC, Trr6Xtc for vats; Oaf xoa for deiceva; (7) The contract verbs in -h.), -66, and 66, appear as -p4 verbs; (8) Endings and -Bay form infinitives of the aorist passive; (9) The demon strative pronouns bee and bet (6ev in Arcadian and Crian); (10) The particle xi (Doric tcd, Ionic av); (11) re156 for pird of the Ionic and Doric. In the three northern dialects we find double nasals and liquids arising out of -CIA-, -?.a-, etc. tp,oz, crrWai, etc., the dative ending a perfect participle in (yey6vcav, yeyovovroc) and perhaps yivvyac for yiyoopoi. In the two southern dialects we find cic for ric, a genitive in -av for the mascu lines of the first declension, by?) for Ode (see above), an infinitive in (Opev), iv for iv, roc for iron, Kcig for Kai and -Kptrtic in proper names for -Kparric The latter group we may assume came from the Spercheios valley, while the former was originally settled in the Peneios valley in Thessaly. Toward the end of the second mil lennium B.c., from their mountain fastnesses in northern Epirus, Illyria and upper Mace donia the Dorians began to spread out toward the east and south into Thessaly and the rest of Greece. From the tribe which was chiefly instrumental in subduing the Peloponnesus the Greeks gave the name Dorian to the whole group of invaders whose speech, as Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens (tDe dialecto Dorica,) 1843) recognized, is closely related to the dialects of Epirus, Acarnania, "Etolia, Locris, Phocis and Delphi. The Bceotians (the name comes from the mountain Boiov in northern Epirus) came into Thessaly first, and then driven on by the Thesprotian Thessalians at their heels (cf. Herod., VII, 176), they came into Phocis and Bceotia, where mingling with Achnan /Eolians, they formed the Bceotians of historic times. The later Dorian hordes settled on the northern shores of the Corinthian Gulf and then by way of Naupactus passed over into Peloponnesus. Herodotus (VIII, 73) tells us that of the seven peoples of Peloponnesus, three—the Arcadians, the Ionians of Cynuria and the Achmans — were autochthonous, while the Lemnians in Triplrylia, the Dryopians in the Argolid and the Dorians and /Eolians were invaders. In Elis we find certain /Eolian-Locrian peculiari ties of speech, a third declension dative ending in -oic (ralcloic, 4cparroic), an open pronuncia tion of e as d before p (cf. the English clerk as which justify us in distinguishing a west and an east Doric. Ahrens' distinction of a Doris severior and a Doris mitior later philologists tend to explain as a chronological breaking down of the older, harsher Doric in contrast with the other dialects. In the former, spoken in Laconia, Tarentum, Hera cleia, Crete and Cyrene the genitive singular ending of the second declension is to, while N and id found in compensative lengthen ing from Itrrids from imrovc, while else where Attic-Ionic forms are found in these cases.