Alternating between ττ and σσ in Achilles Tatius

Achilles Tatius espoused a moderate form of Atticism that left room for koine, Ionicisms, poeticisms and idiosyncratic features.Footnote ⁹ Before addressing our case study, it is necessary to briefly discuss the novel’s textual transmission. The tradition of Leucippe and Clitophon is split into two families, which Vilborg (Reference Vilborg1955) dubbed α and β, both going back to the same archetype.Footnote ¹⁰ As already recognised by Vilborg, neither family is intrinsically better.Footnote ¹¹ This is also shown by the fact that although, on the whole, Vilborg (Reference Vilborg1955) prefers β,Footnote ¹² Garnaud (Reference Garnaud1991) instead tends to prefer α.Footnote ¹³ Given the uncertainty in establishing a better branch of the novel’s tradition, in his recent edition of Books 2–3, Whitmarsh (Reference Whitmarsh2020) thus uses ‘[his] judgment throughout’ (76). As we shall see, these general orientations also influence the editors’ choices concerning ττ/σσ in the novel.

While both ττ and σσ occur in Leucippe and Clitophon, the former is more common. Sonja Gammage’s unpublished doctoral thesis (Reference Gammage2018) on Achilles Tatius’ Atticism demonstrates that of the forty-one words for which the alternation between ττ and σσ is relevant, twenty-eight are invariably spelled with ττ, whereas eight are always spelled with σσ, and five (collected in her Table 4-3, reproduced below: Table 1) exhibit alternation between ττ and σσ (the figures in the table are based on the choices made by Vilborg Reference Vilborg1955 in his critical edition, while figures in brackets refer to forms that vary in the manuscripts: thus, e.g., φυλάττω has seven attestations, six of which have φυλάσσω as a variant).

Table 1 Alternation between ττ and σσ in Achilles Tatius

There is a tendency for ττ to cluster in some lexemes: φυλάττω and γλῶττα are prevalent, while, by contrast, θάλασσα and τέσσαρες are preferred. Concerning γλῶττα/γλῶσσα, in twelve cases we have γλῶττα, in ten of which, however, it has a variant γλῶσσα in the manuscripts, while all the three instances of γλῶσσα (printed by Vilborg) have γλῶττα variants in the manuscripts. Faced with this considerable textual variation, particularly with respect to θάλασσα/θάλαττα, Vilborg concluded that vacillations could be traced back to the novel’s archetype.Footnote ¹⁴ For her part, Gammage (Reference Gammage2018) discards the possibility that this alternation is wholly attributable to manuscript vagaries. However, she stops short of providing a satisfactory alternative explanation, simply assuming an inconsistency, imprecision or even ‘forgetfulness’ on Achilles’ part.Footnote ¹⁵ I argue that this is unsatisfactory and that we should seek grounds to defend the alternation as an authorial choice and not as the default result of a fluid textual transmission.Footnote ¹⁶ Let us focus on the γλῶττα/γλῶσσα pair. One case in which we have a variant γλῶσσα for γλῶττα is 6.10, while two separate instances of γλῶσσα at 2.29 are unanimously transmitted by all testimonies except for a late manuscript (G), which may be disregarded (see below). To defend the hypothesis of an authorial alternation, I shall apply the methodological argument advanced in the Introduction – that linguistic choices (or variants) must be assessed not in isolation but in context.

The two passages with γλῶττα/γλῶσσα on which we will focus share the same broad topic: the wounding effect of language – exemplified by shaming words and slander, respectively – as represented by the arrow metaphor. At 2.29, the two instances of γλῶσσα (unanimously transmitted with σσ) occur in the sententious ‘speech is the missile of the tongue and a missile from another tongue can also cure it’ (λόγος γὰρ γλώσσης βέλος ἄλλης γλώσσης βέλει θεραπεύεται),Footnote ¹⁷ which concludes the narrator’s report of Leucippe’s emotional soliloquy in response to her mother’s accusations of shameful behaviour (she had just admitted Clitophon into her bedroom, but their attempt to make love was interrupted by her mother’s arrival).Footnote ¹⁸

At 6.10, instead, the genitive γλώττης (family β) or γλώσσης (family α) is used in Melite’s speech addressed to her husband, Thersander, in which she refutes the rumour that she has betrayed him with Clitophon.

Melite’s speech plays with the famous Vergilian depiction of Fama at Aen. Book 4,Footnote ¹⁹ but it also shares language and images with Leucippe’s earlier soliloquy at 2.29. Both passages exploit the metaphor of parenthood to characterise speech, and malignant words are credited with causing anger, inflammation and a sense of being overwhelmed. In both passages, speech harms by means of metaphorical arrows, shots, blows and wounds. These common features are summarised in the table 2.

Table 2 Use of metaphor in Achilles Tatius’ 2.29 and 6.10

As we have seen, the manuscript tradition is evenly split between γλώττης (family β) and γλώσσης (family α). According to the general principles outlined above, modern editors make different choices: Vilborg chooses γλώττης because he considers family β to transmit a superior text of the novel; Garnaud instead follows family α. There are no reasons intrinsic to the manuscripts and their chronology to prefer either variant. Attic γλώττης may be considered authentic only for statistic reasons since, on the whole, Achilles Tatius’ manuscript tradition has more forms with ττ than with σσ.Footnote ²⁰ However, the very fact that the tradition is split in the attestation of ττ/σσ brings me to wonder whether some of these alternations may not be original. In the passage at hand, why should the koine variant γλώσσης be defended as an authorial choice in these rhetorically constructed passages? A possible answer to this question may be sought in the role played by sound. At 2.29, the variant with σσ is integral to the alliteration of the sententious statement λόγος γὰρ γλώσσης βέλος ἄλλης γλώσσης βέλει θεραπεύεται.Footnote ²¹ Here, as in many other passages, alliteration is a key element of the novel’s rhetorical texture, as the sibilants evoke the hissing sound produced by the darts.Footnote ²² γλώσσης, therefore, is likely to be intentional rather than an incidental slip into the koine or a textual banalisation.Footnote ²³

At 6.10, however, the opposite is likely to be at play. If accepted, the Attic variant γλώττης of the β manuscript family would introduce a geminate dental immediately before the /pt/ of πτερῷ in a sentence already replete with dental sounds (πνεύματι … ἐξίπταται … τῷ τῆς γλώττης πτερῷ), in which alliteration serves no mimetic purpose (unlike at 2.29) and may sound cacophonic. Vilborg (Reference Vilborg1955) lxxxv retains γλώττης, although he admits that ‘the superiority of β is neither absolute nor undisputed’.Footnote ²⁴ Garnaud ((Reference Garnaud1991) 175) instead chooses γλώσσης of family α, which would disrupt the sequence of dentals.

In sum, Achilles’ deliberate use of the koine form γλῶσσα at both 2.29 and 6.10 – with the latter passage probably internally referring to the former – may be robustly defended as a sound-conscious element that also contributes to the hybrid character of Achilles’ style, which alternates between Attic and koine forms. Perhaps, the koine form was intentionally chosen in images of a popular character (note that, as a referee points out, at 2.29 γλῶσσα occurs in a saying, which is likely to have circulated in its koine form). As a comparandum for the hypothesis that the interchange ττ/σσ is part of an authorial stylistic strategy, we may recall that the novel’s opening sentence contains the interchange between θάλαττα and θάλασσα. Since both forms in the passage are unanimously transmitted by all manuscripts, one might infer that the alternation goes back to the archetype or perhaps to the original text of the novel.

The alternation between θάλαττα and θάλασσα is all the more striking since θάλασσα is by far the predominant form in the novel. The explanation that this alternation is accidental is far from satisfactory. Again, it appears to be motivated by sound: θάλασσα Ἀσσυρίων, likely to have been the common name of that sea, also contains an alliteration in an opening passage that is rhetorically sophisticated and replete with stylistic effects.Footnote ²⁵ Taking this argument further, one would be justified in wondering whether θαλάττῃ should not be corrected to θαλάσσῃ, which, with Σιδών and πόλις, would extend the alliteration of sibilants to the first sentence.

The case study provided here is only a limited example, and further exploration is required to fully appreciate the function of Attic/koine interchange in Achilles’ eclectic style. Apart from phonological features, whose assessment is complicated by their being more obviously susceptible to textual alteration, morphological variations should also be taken into account.Footnote ²⁶ We may consider, for instance, the declension of ἠώς/ἕως ‘dawn’ and κάλος/κάλως ‘rope’. Although for these two lexemes Achilles Tatius’ text usually has the forms belonging to the Attic declension, there are two cases in which the koine form is instead unanimously transmitted by all manuscripts: the nominative singular ἠώς (4x) and the nominative plural κάλοι (2x).Footnote ²⁷ In both cases, the preference for the koine form may be attributable to morphological transparency: Attic ἕως ‘dawn’is ambiguous owing to the fact that it is homophonous with the temporal adverb ἕως, while the Attic nominative plural κάλῳ is less transparent than the koine κάλοι. It is impossible to determine whether this need for disambiguation may be traced back to Achilles himself or was introduced by later copyists. However, the roles that these competing forms play should be analysed on a case-by-case basis in their respective contexts to determine which may be significant and which are unmarked.

Athenian glory and Persian defeat: an archaic locative and a Biblical simile in Aristides

To further demonstrate the need for an assiduous assessment of linguistic variation and its purposes in Second Sophistic style, I shall now turn to the second case study, which is not subject to suspicions of problematic transmission: the lexical choice in a famous passage of the Panathenaic oration of Aelius Aristides, which celebrates Athens’ achievements after Marathon.Footnote ²⁸

The Greek victory in the battle that took place at Marathon in 490 BCE is a pervasive topos in Greek oratory. Here, Aristides recasts it to showcase the perspective of the defeated Persians, compellingly personified by Darius, who ‘did not know what to do’ (οὐκ εἶχεν ὅ τι χρήσεται) in the aftermath of the defeat and collapsed before the city (ὑποπεπτώκει τῇ πόλει), blaming others for the invasion of Greece. The passage abounds in classical reminiscences, beginning with the god-stricken Darius (ἐκ θεοῦ πληγείς, an image that echoes Aeschylus’ Xerxes at Pers. 909–17).Footnote ²⁹ Aside from the Attic texts, Herodotus is also very present here. The expression εἰς τὸ πρόσω τοῦ λόγου (‘on to the next stages of the story’) is particularly striking. In the entire extant Greek literary corpus, the expression is employed only twice – here and once at Hdt. 1.5, where Herodotus distances himself from the Persian and Phoenician logoi and announces that he will identify the most trustworthy story and proceed with his own account on the basis of it (τοῦτον σημήνας προβήσομαι ἐς τὸ πρόσω τοῦ λόγου).Footnote ³⁰ Darius dying ‘before he could do himself another mischief’ (πρίν τι δεύτερον κακὸν αὑτὸν ἐξεργάσασθαι) may echo the very similar expression in Hdt. 3.127.3 πρίν τι ὦν μέζον ἐξεργάσασθαί μιν Πέρσας κακόν (Darius’ speech on the necessity to kill Oroetes): both passages share πρίν τι, ἐξεργάσασθαι and κακόν.Footnote ³¹

Two elements of Aristides’ carefully crafted passage stand out in particular. The first is the locative Μαραθῶνι, located between the article and τολμήματος, which qualifies the Persians’ ‘daring deed’ at Marathon. The second is the powerful image of the Persians driven out of Greece like dust. Although classical Attic preserved locatives, such as Μαραθῶνι, Ἐλευσῖνι and Ἀθήνησι, they soon disappeared from both Attic epigraphy and the koine to be replaced by ἐν + dative in all contexts. Only Ἀθήνησι makes a slight comeback in Attic inscriptions of the imperial age, revealingly in typologies such as decrees and imperial letters: probably, an archaising revival.Footnote ³² The locative is the norm in classical Attic poetry (both tragic and comic) and prose (where it occasionally competes with ἐν Μαραθῶνι, which instead is the only option in Herodotus). While ἐν Μαραθῶνι gains traction from Aristotle onwards and is the norm in high-koine prose (e.g., Diodorus and Plutarch), the simple locative disappears from all prose texts until its revival at the hands of Second Sophistic authors: it returns in orators such as Polemon and is ubiquitous in Aristides, Pausanias and, to an extent, Philostratus.Footnote ³³ In five of his speeches, Aristides uses a total of thirty locatival expressions employing the toponym Marathon, of which twenty-seven are of the simple locative Μαραθῶνι.Footnote ³⁴ This locative is especially common in the Panathenaic Oration, where the occurrence at chapter 114, quoted above, is the first instance of a series of nine: Μαραθῶνι thus adorns the style like a recherche ‘gem’ that lends a patina of archaic solemnity to Athens’ praise.

I believe, however, that the choice of Μαραθῶνι should not be considered mere Atticising routine in this passage of the Panathenaic Oration, for two reasons. First, elsewhere in his works Aristides does not refrain from using the less archaic prepositional phrase ἐν Μαραθῶνι and this includes one instance in the same oration.Footnote ³⁵ Secondly, in chapter 114 the archaic locative is paired with non-Atticising features. Aristides begins by saying that Athens’ deeds lead him further in his speech (εἰς τὸ πρόσω τοῦ λόγου), where, as seen above, the construction εἰς τὸ πρόσω + genitive is entirely post-classical except for its use in Herodotus (1.5.12). The battle of Marathon is presented as the deed with which Athens surpassed itself after having surpassed all the others. The greatness of this deed, iconically cast within the genitive absolute γενομένου γὰρ τοῦ Μαραθῶνι τολμήματος, is immediately contrasted with the image of Darius at his wits’ end, which is expressed through the structure οὐκ ἔχω ὅ τι + subjunctive (οὐκ εἶχεν ὅ τι χρήσεται). Although already classical (cf. Isoc. 17.22 for a parallel use with χράομαι), this structure also occurs frequently in post-classical Greek and thus cannot be considered an exclusive Atticism. More importantly, Μαραθῶνι is followed by the powerful simile ὥσπερ κονιορτοῦ ‘like dust’, said of the Persians driven out of Greece. The lexeme κονιορτός is amply attested in Attic texts, the comparison of armies to clouds of dust is already Homeric,Footnote ³⁶ in the Persians Aeschylus describes the heaps of Persian corpses after Plataea using θίς (literally ‘heap of sand’),Footnote ³⁷ while Herodotus uses κονιορτός for the ominous dust that rises from Eleusis on Attica ravished by the Persian army and announces the Persian defeat at Salamina.Footnote ³⁸ Aristides, however, curiously recasts this classical image with a lexical choice that is, strikingly, the perfect match of a Biblical expression that qualifies the fate of sinners and the wicked.Footnote ³⁹ Apart from this passage of Aristides and later Christian authors who refer to the Biblical loci,Footnote ⁴⁰ the representation of someone driven away – rather than advancing, falling wounded, or lying dead – like dust is completely absent in Greek and Roman literature. Whether Aristides took it from the Bible is impossible to say. The most likely scenario is that the simile seeped into the koine, sustained by the fact that Septuagint Greek, despite its idiosyncrasies, was a form of Hellenistic koine that was not devoid of literary reminiscences.Footnote ⁴¹

Neither Schmid in his Atticismus nor Oliver (Reference Oliver1968) commented on this usage of Aristides. My impression is that this non-classical image was intentionally selected to convey Darius’ annihilation and provide an iconic counterbalance to the symbolic Μαραθῶνι. Aristides thus reverts to a hybrid style, mingling archaisms, literary allusions and koine, to contrast Athens’ greatness with the Persian annihilation, which is framed between the eternity of Marathon and the dust covering the Persians’ dreams of glory, just as Darius’ disgrace is framed between Marathon and the emblematic image of his timely death.

Displaying status and paideia at Eleusis through Atticism

I have selected these two examples from Second Sophistic literature to claim that the Second Sophistic’s ‘artificial’ style is not simply classical but rather a linguistic mélange in which Atticising features interact with the koine to create a distinctive – and, in fact, anticlassical – new language. I shall now turn to my third case study: the use of Attic ττ in inscriptions contemporary with Second Sophistic literature. This is part of a broader investigation exploring the Atticist influence on imperial epigraphic production, a topic that is another desideratum: although some unsystematic work on papyri has been completed,Footnote ⁴² inscriptions have been wholly neglected.

Several complex issues underlie this investigation. The most salient question is whether we may assume that a form of Attic dialect survived in Athens in the imperial age. In this respect, two brief points may be made. In principle, it is far from impossible that the Greek spoken in Athens at this time was a distinctive local variety. The koine was not a monolithic block, and many studies have demonstrated the effect of dialect and linguistic contact on its development across different regions.Footnote ⁴³ However, we have no reliable information to support the survival of classical Attic into the imperial age. Orthographic conservatism makes it difficult to determine which epigraphic spellings may underlie a conservative pronunciation, and this is particularly true for vocalism. Much of what we read in works concerned with this question – including, most recently, Carlo Vessella’s (Reference Vessella2018) study of orthoepic prescriptions in Atticist lexicography – is not based on robust evidence and often relies on subjective interpretations. For instance, Sven-Tage Teodorsson, who authored three provocative and – in many respects, pioneering – books on the phonemic systems of Attic and the koine, argued that in Attica, ‘the conservative pronunciation was carefully preserved by esoteric purist groups’ (Teodorsson (Reference Teodorsson1978) 111) well into the Hellenistic age, encouraged by Athens’ rhetorical schools and oligarchic government.Footnote ⁴⁴ However, no evidence currently suggests that the educational and political systems affected the preservation of Attic into the Hellenistic and Roman periods, nor do epigraphic data easily support the idea of a conservative variety resisting in some strata of Attic society. As noted above, theoretically, this is not an impossible scenario: however, as linguists, we cannot identify a conservative Attic variety in the Roman age.

The Atticist lexica also do not offer unambiguous information on the survival of Attic in imperial Athens, despite some cautious endorsement of this scenario in Vessella (Reference Vessella2018).Footnote ⁴⁵ The Atticists had notions of historical pronunciation, which they derived primarily from their study of classical Attic texts with their orthography and metre, as well as from the Hellenistic exegetical and editing activities on these texts. However, this does not amount to proof that these scholars based their precepts on the knowledge of a variety of Attic still spoken by educated Athenians in the second century CE.Footnote ⁴⁶ In fact, the only references to a conservative Attic variety come from literary texts and constitute an ostensibly nostalgic topos. As an example, we may cite Philostratus’ famous description of the encounter between the purist Herodes Atticus and the fabulous savage Agathion, who, despite being uneducated, spoke flawless Attic because he lived in the innermost part of the region, unspoiled by urban refinement and multilingualism. Anecdotes such as this are informative on the language ideologies of the period; they are not, however, linguistic evidence.Footnote ⁴⁷

These substantial questions form the backdrop to the more modest analysis that I undertake in this section. Instances of preservation of ττ in Attic imperial inscriptions may serve as diagnostic examples of the kinds of issues and challenges that we must confront when assessing whether a real dialect survived into the Roman period or whether conservative features are an archaising revival. In Attic inscriptions of the post-classical period, the koine σσ was the norm from the end of the Hellenistic age. Threatte (Reference Threatte1980) 540 lists only seven instances of ττ in Attic imperial inscriptions.Footnote ⁴⁸ As in many other cases, the presence of these elements is unlikely to be attributable to a single factor. For instance, there are no reasons to believe that the numerals τετταρακοσταίαν (IG II² 1365.22) and τετταράκοντα (IG II² 1366.7) are instances of an Atticist revival, given that the texts in which they occur – both regulations concerning the cult of Men established by Xanthus of Lycia in the first century CE – are not marked by a particularly archaising or even high-register language.Footnote ⁴⁹ In the absence of more satisfactory explanations, therefore, ττ may be considered an accidental vestige of earlier epigraphic practices in these texts.

For other occurrences in the dossier, the situation looks significantly different. I shall focus here on a single case, the optative πε]ριττεύοι in I.Eleusis 489.20 (= IG II² 1092B.6, probably 169/70 CE), to demonstrate that (1) Atticising traits may also be used in inscriptions to embellish texts with chosen archaisms and (2) such an interpretation must be accepted only if further contextual evidence points in the direction of archaism. I.Eleusis 489 is a decree concerning an endowment made by one Xenion, on how any surplus that the endowment generates should be administered by the synedrion that issued the decree and how it should be distributed among sacred officials and members of the boulē (mentioned from l. 43 onwards). Controversies have raged over the identification of the issuing synedrion, the dating of the text, the identity of the Xenion involved in the endowment and of the Roman prefect Severus involved in its administration. Evidence suggests that the synedrion was the Panhellenion, the institution founded by Hadrian in CE 131/2 to fulfil religious, cultural and ceremonial duties.Footnote ⁵⁰ The decree is likely to be dated to approximately CE 169/70, based on the identification of Xenion with T. Flavius Xenion, archon of the Panhellenion AD 165/6–168/9 and a prominent personality in contemporary Graeco-Roman society.Footnote ⁵¹ Flavius Xenion was a senator of the equestrian order, who had obtained Athenian citizenship in the deme of Marathon thanks to the accomplishments of his father, the Cretan senator Flavius Zenophilus. He was also close to Lucius Verus and the imperial family, as attested by an inscription from Gortyna (I.Cret. IV 300) that commemorates the donation that he made in his will for the celebration of imperial birthdays.Footnote ⁵²

Other useful background information on the decree comes from the second person mentioned in the inscription, the prefect (ἔπαρχος, l. 32) Severus, who issued a declaration (ἀπόφασις) to protect the endowment by imperial authority. As proposed by Simone Follet, this Severus is to be identified with Cn. Claudius Severus (PIR ² C 1024), a native of Asia Minor (perhaps Paphlagonia), twice consul and son of Cn. Claudius Severus Arabianus (PIR ² C 1027), possibly a teacher of Marcus Aurelius.Footnote ⁵³ Moreover, our Cn. Claudius Severus was no less than the son-in-law of Marcus Aurelius, having married one of his daughters (probably Annia Galeria Aurelia Faustina). Severus was close to Roman intellectual circles, as attested by Galen (14.613, 14.651) and Fronto (Ep. 1.1.164); the rhetor Hadrian of Tyre addressed to him a celebratory letter and an epigram preserved in I.Ephesos 1539, while Herodes Atticus honoured him with a dedicatory inscription (IG II² 4780). Severus too, then, brings us into the inner circle of those learned admirers of Athens who lived at the height of archaising trends.

In I.Eleusis 489, ττ occurs only once in the optative περιττεύοι, employed at l. 25, in a sentence dealing with the eventuality of a further surplus: εἴ τ[ι πε]ριττεύοι κα[θάπερ τι] καὶ ἐπε[ρίττε]υ̣σεν ἤδη (‘if something advances as it has already advanced before’). A second occurrence is restored in the lacuna occurring in the aorist of the same verb (ἐπε[ρίττε]υ̣σεν) in the same sentence. Attic epigraphy of the Roman age includes no other forms with ττ from the adjective περισσός and its denominative περισσεύω, and Threatte (Reference Threatte1980) 540 notes that the use of ττ in the decree stands in contrast with the plural genitive περισσῶν of a coeval ephebic catalogue (IG II² 2130.45 = AIUK XI 10.46, CE 192/3). Ι therefore suggest that linguistic analysis helps us to interpret these instances of ττ as marked elements.Footnote ⁵⁴ The use of the optative is itself a noteworthy feature: in the koine, the optative was a recessive mood in dependent clauses, the protasis of if-clauses and the oratio obliqua.Footnote ⁵⁵ Rather than εἰ + optative, the koine favours ἐάν + subjunctive or εἰ + indicative. At l. 25 of I.Eleusis 489, ἐάν + subjunctive would have been possible according to the rules of both classical Attic and the koine, but the optative was preferred. πε]ριττεύοι, further marked by ττ, is therefore an Atticism.Footnote ⁵⁶

The aorist ἐπε[ρίττευ]σεν is also noteworthy for the position of its augment. περισσός and περισσεύω are derived directly from περί rather than being forms prefixed with this preposition: the augment should therefore be placed at the beginning, just as in our ἐπε[ρίττευ]σεν. However, by analogy with prefixed verbs in περι- (e.g., περιλαμβάνω), περισσεύω also began to develop forms with the augment after περι- (i.e., περι-ε-). Our ἐπε[ριίττευ]σεν is likely to have been chosen to mark a distance from the spoken koine forms περιέσσευσ-, which were not acceptable in the literary koine of the time, as testified by the fact that they begin to appear only in late-antique lower-register texts.Footnote ⁵⁷ The low status of περιέσσευσ- aorist forms is further suggested by an entry in the Eclogue of Phrynichus the Atticist that condemns the analogical form περιέσσευσεν (περιέσσευσεν ἀλλοκοτέρως· ἐχρῆν γὰρ ἐπερίσσευσε λέγειν ‘περιέσσευσεν [is said] in rather a strange way. For one should have said ἐπερίσσευσε’, Phrynichus, Eclogue 19 Fischer).

A further useful point for our analysis of the aorist in I.Eleusis 489 is that Phrynichus recommends ἐπερίσσευσε with the koine σσ rather than ἐπερίττευσε with Attic ττ. This preference need not be perceived as an involuntary slip towards the koine on Phrynichus’ part: his selection of the form with σσ was probably guided by the occurrence of the exact form ἐπερίσσευσε in Thucydides (2.65.13), who shuns Attic ττ in his writings. Given that even the strict Phrynichus appears to have preferred the forms of περισσεύω with σσ, the restored aorist ἐπερί[ττ]ευσεν of our Eleusis decree stands out as a recherché form. It privileges the Attic ττ, as do the Atticising authors of the time (e.g. Dio Chrysostomus, Aristides, Philostratus, but also Philo of Alexandria, Josephus and Plutarch, among others), who exclusively used forms of περιττεύω and περιττός precisely because these forms sounded more distinctive than their koine counterparts in σσ, even if the variants in σσ were perfectly classical, as demonstrated above.

To determine the extent to which occurrences such as our περιττεύοι and ἐπερί[ττ]ευσεν may be significant elements of a linguistic revival, let us consider other linguistic features of the text. At l. 35, the declaration of the prefect Severus contains another remarkable optative, the third-person singular aorist optative τολμήσειεν. This is not the normal koine form (which would be τολμήσαι). It is, instead, an instance of the so-called ‘Aeolic optatives’, where the -ει- suffix replaces -αι-.Footnote ⁵⁸ The ‘Aeolic’ optatives were standard in fifth-century literary Attic (for instance, they occur frequently in Aristophanes).Footnote ⁵⁹ Such Attic peculiarities were soon obliterated in the koine: already in Middle and New Comedy, only the third-person forms of the Aeolic optative were still in use. Therefore, our τολμήσειεν constitutes another Atticism, on the basis of three facts: (1) the use of the optative here is not required by koine syntax (see above); (2) Aeolic optatives frequently feature in Atticising authors such as Philostratus, while in Attic inscriptions, they occur in archaising texts, such as the curses set up by Herodes Atticus and an imperial letter (SEG XXIX 127, CE 174/5);Footnote ⁶⁰ and (3) ancient erudition also singled out the Aeolic optative as the preferable form for high-register Greek.Footnote ⁶¹

As in the cases of Achilles Tatius and Aristides discussed in Sections 2–3, the archaising linguistic traits of I.Eleusis 489 may have been selected with a view to embellishing the bureaucratic koine and thus giving prominence to the synedrion, the endowment and the members of the Graeco-Roman elite mentioned in the text.Footnote ⁶² An interesting example of how the bureaucratic koine is apparently adapted to a higher style is, in Severus’ declaration, the articular infinitive πρὸς τὸ μὴ σαλευθῆναί ποτε τοῦτο τὸ κεφάλαιον (‘in order that this capital investment be never endangered’), which curiously pairs the technical term κεφάλαιος ‘capital investment’ (already classical: see LSJ s.v. II.5), with σαλεύω, a verb that typically means ‘to cause to rock, to make oscillate’ and which is here used metaphorically to refer to a financial alteration, perhaps in an attempt to adapt administrative language to a more recherché style. This metaphorical extension of σαλεύω must derive from the epigraphic vocabulary concerning provisions against the displacement of monuments, such as the curses that feature in a funerary bilingual inscription from EleusisFootnote ⁶³ or in a second-century CE funerary epigram from Cos.Footnote ⁶⁴ A similarly metaphorical use of the verbal adjective ἀσάλευτος ‘unshakeable’ occurs, in addition to other denotations,Footnote ⁶⁵ in reference to an ἀπόφασις regarding sacred land,Footnote ⁶⁶ to the ‘existing rights’ of the city of Aphrodisias in a letter of Septimius Severus and Caracalla,Footnote ⁶⁷ to an official provision (διάταξις) in a decree from MagnesiaFootnote ⁶⁸ and to an agreement (ὁμολογία) from Sardis.Footnote ⁶⁹ The closest comparandum, however, is an honorific from Rhodiapolis, in which ἀσάλευτος is used to qualify a donation (δωρεά) made by the Lycian magnate Opramoas to ensure that it may remain untouched in the future.Footnote ⁷⁰

Further elements pertaining to orthography (such as the use of diacritics) and mise en page (such as the framing of Severus’declaration between two blank spaces) make this text stand out as a particularly refined product in the epigraphy of the time, arguably aiming at linguistic precision and distinction (see the analysis of both aspects in Tribulato, Reference Tribulato, Probert and Willi2025). It is unsurprising that an inscription produced by an institution intimately connected with an archaising conception of Greek identity, such as the Panhellenion (Romeo Reference Romeo2002), afforded particular care to language and presentation. The unusual attention to matters of language, orthography, prosody and punctuation that, although individually also attested in other coeval texts, are nevertheless particularly frequent here suggests that special care was taken with the redaction of the text.Footnote ⁷¹ This should not only be regarded as a means of highlighting the provisions registered in the decree; the display of power, status and wealth also certainly informs these choices. They fully locate the decree and the important individuals it mentions within the period’s classicising ideology, which is expressed by local dialectal revivals (see the case of the Aeolic and Spartan areas) and graphic archaism.Footnote ⁷²

The sound of Attic: embellishing contemporaneity

In this paper, I have explored the role of language, including its sounds, in the refined interweaving of nostalgic motifs and innovative practices in the prose style of Greek imperial texts. Through three different case studies, I have demonstrated that high-register texts of this period entail a mixture of contemporary koine features and archaising elements that recall classical Attic literature and language. In the two literary texts (Achilles Tatius and Aristides), the mixture is programmatic and it is the insertion of koine elements to be marked. While scholars of Greek language and literature largely take for granted the notion that post-classical prose imitates Attic, they are less ready to ascribe an artistic role to the koine elements that are also found in such prose. Through my first two case studies, I have sought to demonstrate that koine features are as integral to the creative efforts of imperial style as the classicising motifs. No high-register text of this period – either literary or epigraphic – attempts to pass for a flawless piece of fifth-century prose, composed in an entirely classical phonological, morphological and syntactical system. This is not because the imitation of classical canons is imperfect but rather because a deliberate step towards a form of alternative classicism has been taken. Contemporary traits (whether linguistic, stylistic or graphic) allow imperial authors to anchor their mimetic act in the present and thus expose their archaism as a conscious artefact: not a slavish imitation but a refined re-use.Footnote ⁷³ In the Eleusis inscription, on the contrary, it seems that the bureaucratic koine of this kind of texts has been embellished with some Atticising traits (ττ for σσ, optatives) and less common lexical choices, arguably in an attempt to make the bureaucratic style of the text more distinctive.

High-style texts of the imperial period may thus be regarded as mosaics in which classical Attic features function as skilfully selected tesserae that embellish texts otherwise written in high-register koine. The selective use of ττ (Sections 2and 4) or the archaic locative Μαραθῶνι (Section 3) may be counted among such tesserae. They are used with the aim of lending distinction to the text and its diction (I use this term intentionally) but in the context of the finer interweaving of archaising gems and contemporary elements (such as σσ in Achilles Tatius, the simile ὡς κονιορτοῦ in Aristides or the metaphorical σαλεύω in I.Eleusis 489). This mixture thus exposes mimesis as a multifaceted cultural operation that responds to the ideology of a complex social system in which city institutions, politicians, emperors and intellectuals used language to represent their statuses and display their militant adherence to the ideal of adapting the classical past to the present.