A GLOSSARY OF LATEK 



employed a niLved diahctr' But this might with equal propriety be said of the lan- 

 guage of Homer and Hesiod. 



THE LATER PERIODS OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE. 



§ 8. 



The history of the Greek language subsequent to the death of Alexander the Great 

 may, for practical purposes, be divided into three periods ; namely, the Alexandrian, the 

 Roman, and the Byzantme. It is hardly necessary to remark here that changes in a 

 language arc not instantaneous, but come on by insensible gradations, and therefore 

 it is impossible to fix the precise time of the transition from one stage to another. 

 Thus, although the period of the highest development of the Attic dialect coincides 

 with the Persian and Macedonian troubles, avc are not to imagine that it began on 

 the day after the burning of Sardes and ended with the death of Alexander. 



The expressions later Greek and later authors are commonly used with reference to 

 the Greek language spoken and written during the Alexandrian and Roman periods. 

 The Greek of the Byzantine period is called Bi/santine Greek. Further, the Greek of 

 the Septuagint and of the New Testament has been called Hellenistic or Hebraistic 

 Greek, because the translators of the former, and nearly all the authors of the latter, 

 were Jews whose mother-tongue was the Greek. The language of the Greek Fathers 

 and of the Greek Ritual is sometimes called ecclesiastical Greek. 



ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD. 



§9. 



From the Death of Alexander the Great (B. C. 323) to the Conquest of Greece bj/ the 



Romans (B. C. 146). 



This period takes the name Alexandrian from the circumstance that Alexandria, 

 under the Ptolemys, was the seat of learning. It begins, strictly speaking, with the 

 reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus. For, although the new capital of Egypt was founded 

 in the year three hundred and thirty-three before our era, the foundation of its literary 

 celebrity may be said to have been laid by that monarch. 



The genius of poetry was now leaving the Greeks, and science, criticism, erudition, 



" Greg. CoRINTII. init. K o i v i) Si, fj iraurts xpajxeda, Ka\ ly ixpri(TaTO IlivSapos, rjyovv rj Ik Tav Teaa-apav crvve- 



