Attic-Ionic 101

4.4 Central Ionic 1: Naxos and Paros

Central Ionic is located predominantly in part of the Cyclades: Naxos, Paros (and its
colony Thasos), Delos, Ceos, Amorgos, and other adjacent islands, with inscriptions
since c7. An eminent early literary source is the lyric poet Archilochus of Paros/Thasos
[c.714–676]. Semonides of Amorgos [fl. c7m] was by origin a colonist from Samos.

4.4.1 Naxos: Nikandre [c.650]

From the Cycladic area of Central Ionic comes the Nikandre inscription in archaic
Naxian, on the oldest monumental statue in Greece, incised boustrophedon (indicated by
arrows below) vertically up and down the left side of a female statue found in Delos.
(DGE 758; Buck 6; EG i. 154ff.; LSAG 291, 303, 411 pl. 55 (2); TDGI ii #76;
Heubeck 1979: 124; CEG 403; commentary: Lejeune 1971; Powell 1991: 169ff.)

!"#$%!&! '( )%*𐌈+"#+% !#!#,$-". /"-%+&0&!. !

ϙ-"'&! (+.%-!0#!- 1-) !&!*0-" 2!*-%-* )$!-% "
(+.%-'*%+-* !3 #&*.+%+"'1! 4!&$!*-" !( 5$-%-* %,[6%?] 2
!

Nikandra dedicated me to the free-shooter, arrow-handed,

daughter of Deinodikes the Naxian, preeminent among other (women),
sister of Deinomenes, (now?) wife of Phraxos’

The inscription contains two special letters, ! and !. The first is a boxed H and occurs
for eta in Cnidian (Jeffery 1961: 291). One of its values is /h/ (as in the curious
4!&$!*-", which scans with two syllables) or [he], as in the first letter of !#!#,$-"..3

The last visible letter is often read as 7 (Lejeune 1971: 210) but Powell (1991: 171) claims ! is correct.
2

The use of ! for [he] derives from the acrophonic name of its Phoenician source [xe!], and is commonly
3

found in early inscriptions. Attic vases, for instance, often have 89:!8 (Helén"#), 8;7:< (Herm"$s), etc.
(Kretschmer 1894: 97f.). Threatte (1980: 435ff.) denies this use in Attic, claiming that Attic examples are
“careless omission” or in the Ionic script. Wachter (1991; 2010: 55) considers it abbreviated writing.
102 Ancient Greek Dialects and Early Authors

The second special letter is related to the first by removal of the crossbar. It represents a
variety of /k/ that occurs only before /s/ and is probably different from both [kh] and [h],
both of which are written before /s/ in other Naxian inscriptions. It may be a fricative
[%], which would agree with its derivation from !. Apart from those uses, ! appears
wherever Attic-Ionic /-/ would be etymologically justified. Note in particular the
widely attested %-stem ϙ-"'&! /k.r-/ (/kórw// > Att.-Ion. *kórw& > Ion. #-=&> ‘girl’)
and #&*.+%+"'1! ‘sister’ (< *kasi-gn't% < *km(ti–)n(*h1-téh2- ‘born with’; cf. GrS ii. 119).
The word is Arcado-Cyprian, Aeolic, Homeric, and poetic (§§8.1.1, 8.3.1, 9.3.3(1)).
In this text, : is used for /e/, /0/, and /1"/, and ? represents /o/, /2/, and /3"/ (there is no
omega in the Naxian alphabet until c5: Jeffery 1961: 290). Boxed eta has its original
value /h/ and its special Attic-Ionic value /-/. Additionally, it is used for short /æ4/ in
several places where shortening or quantitative metathesis has applied. One of those is
gen. sg. (+.%-!0#!-, in which -!- scans as [æ3"] with synizesis, like the scansion of
Homeric -+@, e.g. AB!+C!+@ (.-'D!+-E (16.74) ‘of Diomedes, son of Tydeus’,
F&,%-G 5$HE )+#G$-'D1+@ ## (2.205, 319, 4.75, etc. [8x]) ‘son of crooked-
counseling Kronos’ (Miller 1982: 118–21). The other place is the gen. pl. )$!-%, in
which [allæ'3"n] with synizesis is metrically guaranteed.4 The older form of )$$æ'@%
(standard 5$$@%) occurs as )$$&"@ ' % in Homer and Hesiod (cf. Edwards 1971: 129).
The text is in three dactylic hexameter lines and contains a number of Homeric/epic
words, such as #&*.+%D1> ‘sister’, 5$-%-E ‘spouse’ (HGD ii. 229). The traditional
character of the composition is guaranteed by formulas like 2I-%-E 5$$@% ‘preeminent
among others’. In Homer, acc. 2I-%-% 5$$@% occupies verse-final position at 6.194,
9.631, 641, 13.499, 17.358, 20.184; iv.171, v.118, vi.158, xix.247; and several examples
occur in the Homeric hymns: Pan 28, Batrach. 21, also 2I-%-E 5$$@% Batrach. 260.
The words J#>#,$@. and /"-%+&0&>. are in their normal formulaic slots. The switch in
traditional language is provided by the transfer of J#>#,$-E ‘free-shooter’ from Apollo
to his sister with the bow, Artemis, whose epithet is always and exclusively /"-%*&.&&,

The use of eta for short /æ/ is well known (Smyth 1894: 167; Wackernagel 1916: 103 n.1; GD iii. 35,
4

48; GG i. 245, 635; HGD ii. 252, 255; Lejeune 1971, 1972a: 257; Miller 1982: 61, 106; Gallavotti 1986:
233). Méndez Dosuna (1993) and Jones (2008) more accurately interpret /æ/ as a glide, i.e. [æ63"].
 Attic-Ionic 103

mostly line-final in Homer (e.g. 5.53, 447, 6.428, 9.538, 20.39, 24.606; vi.102, xi.172,
198, xv.478; Hymn to Demeter 424).5

4.4.2 Paros/Thasos: monument of Glaucus [c.625/00?]

Paros, Naxos’s neighbor and perpetual enemy, had ties with Miletus in the archaic
period. Most likely, Miletus was the source of Paros’ omega that Naxos initially lacked
(Jeffery 1961: 294). Thasos was colonized from Paros at the end of c8 and maintained
ties with Paros long afterwards. The settlers brought the Parian alphabet with with them
(Jeffery 1961: 299–303). They thus had the letters omicron and omega, but, unlike the
Ionians of Asia Minor, used them in reverse: ? = /3"/, broken/open 3 (later 7) = /2/
and /8/ (LSAG 290. 294, 300).
The oldest Thasian inscription, from the agora, is the marble-block monument of
Glaucus from Thasos, incised boustrophedon.
(EG i.162f.; LSAG 300f. pl. 58 (61); TDGI #77; Pfohl 1967a: #15; Meiggs and Lewis
1969: #3)

9$&=ϙ@ +/'K '%1)|'& 1L 9+510%+- · !|"

2|:+*&% !* '+ @M N&*%1|+- 5&O!+* !|"

‘I am the memorial of Glaucus, son of Leptines;

the sons of Brentes erected me’

Given the Parian conversion, the genitives are 9+510%+@, N&*%1+@, both with
quantitative metathesis (< *-&o), as expected (Miller 1982: 107).
Whether or not the text is metrical is disputed. Pfohl gives the above arrangement,
with two eleven-syllable trochaic trimeter catalectics. Both would be exceptional in
Ionic verse (from Homer on), which featured exclusively monosyllabic -+@ (Smyth

Analogous to Vedic í+u-hasta- ‘having a hand (provided) with arrows’, epithet of Indra in RV 10.103.2
5

(Euler 1979: 89, 143; ChEG 7 (2002), w. lit), /"-%*&.&& is from /",E ‘arrow’ plus a preform of %+.&-
‘hand’. See Peters (1980: 223–8) for the form and Schindler (1986: 395ff.) for the compound type.