Note a — Chapter IX · [a] (continued 4)

Du Cange, Præfatio ad Glossar. Græcitatis Medii Evi. Anna Comnena quotes some popular lines, which seem to be the earliest specimen extant of the Romaic dialect, or something approaching it, as they observe no grammatical inflexion, and bear about the same resemblance to ancient Greek that the worst law-charters of the ninth and tenth centuries do to pure Latin. In fact, the Greek language seems to have declined much in the same manner as the Latin did, and almost at as early a period. In the sixth century, Damascius, a Platonic philosopher, mentions the old language as distinct from that which was vernacular, τὴν ἀρχάιαν γλῶτταν ὑπὲρ τὴν ἰδιώτην μελετοῦσι. Du Cange, ibid. p. 11. It is well known that the popular, or political verses of Tzetzes, a writer of the twelfth century, are accentual; that is, are to be read, as the modern Greeks do, by treating every acute or circumflex syllable as long, without regard to its original quantity. This innovation, which must have produced still greater confusion of metrical rules than it did in Latin, is much older than the age of Tzetzes; if, at least, the editor of some notes subjoined to Meursius's edition of the Themata of Constantine Porphyrogenitus (Lugduni, 1617) is right in ascribing certain political verses to that emperor, who died in 959. These verses are regular accentual trochaics. But I believe they have since been given to Constantine Manasses, a writer of the eleventh century.

According to the opinion of a modern traveller (Hobhouse's Travels in Albania, letter 33) the chief corruptions which distinguish the Romaic from its parent stock, especially the auxiliary verbs, are not older than the capture of Constantinople by Mahomet II. But it seems difficult to obtain any satisfactory proof of this; and the auxiliary verb is so natural and convenient, that the ancient Greeks may probably, in some of their local idioms, have fallen into the use of it; as Mr. H. admits they did with respect to the future auxiliary θελω. See some instances of this in Lesbonax, περὶ σχημάτων, ad finem Ammonii, curâ Valckenaër.