APPROACHING THE GREEK DIALECTS

‘The question of the interrelationship of the Greek dialects’, Carl Darling Buck wrote in 1907, ‘has an unceasing attraction, not only to the grammarian, but to every student of Greek history. For it always has held and will continue to hold the first place in any discussion of early Greek tribal relations.’ The reason is obvious: the way in which the Greek dialects are distributed in the historic period shows beyond doubt that this situation could not have been the original one. Even a casual look at the dialect map of historic Greece makes it clear that something went wrong (Map 3). Of the so-called Aeolic dialects, Boeotian and Thessalian are found in Greece but Lesbian in Asia Minor only; Attic-Ionic and Arcado-Cyprian, as is indicated by their names, are also split by the Aegean; Doric is wedged in between Arcadian on the one hand and Attic on the other, and Doric and Northwest Greek between Arcadian and the Aeolic dialects. ‘Migration would certainly give rise to the dialect geography we observe’.