Note 227 — Chapter II

Filelfo says, in one of his epistles, dated 1441, that the language spoken in Peloponnesus ad eo est depravata, ut nihil omnino sapiat priscæ ilius et eloquentissimo Græciæ. At Constantinople the case was better; viri eruditi sunt nonnulli, et culti mores, et sermo etiam nitidus. In a letter of Coluccio Salutato, near the end of the fourteenth century, he says that Plutarch had been translated de Græco in Græcum vulgare. Mehus, p. 294. This seems to have been done at Rhodes. I quote this to remove any difficulty others may feel, for I believe the Romaic Greek is much older. The progress of corruption in Greek is sketched in the Quarterly Review, vol. xxii., probably by the pen of the Bishop of London. Its symptoms were very similar to those of Latin in the West; abbreviation of words, and indifference to right inflexions. See also Col. Leake’s Researches in the Morea. Eustathius has many Romaic words; yet no one in the twelfth century had more learning.