INTRO TO ART AND ARCH

Lecture 1 – material encounters with classical antiquity

• what is classical archaeology? – DIVERSITY

• Greco-Roman worlds through their material remains
• ‘art’ (visual/material culture)
• architecture and monuments (Parthenon, Temple of Hera at Paestum, Ara Pacis
Augustae)
• pottery (most likely to survive) – amphora signed by Exekias BUT mundane object as
well
• military armour
• everyday objects (e.g. terracotta lamps)
• not just objects: buildings, foundations – interest in how people lived their everday
lives (houses at Olynthos)
• no need to dig in every case: geophysics surveys, field surveys
• death: osteoarchaeology (human remains): e.g. shipsheds (fornici) at Herculaneum
• ecology and environment (e.g. paintings of gardens in Pompeii)
• numismatics (coins)
• epigraphy (inscriptions)
• an incomplete dataset: barrels, textiles, combs etc.

• datasets: e.g. distribution maps (for kouroi statues for example), quantitive datasets,
trading routes
• global framework/cultural contacts: granite statue of Mentuemhet – New York kouros;
exotic statues in Pompeii (e.g. statuette of goddess Lakshmi); schist relief; Rudston
Venus mosaic
• how does it fit into the degree?
• relative value of literary/visual material
• material remains of antiquity give us texts to study (Monumentum Ancyranum of Res
Gestae, Linear B Tablet from Pylos, Phaistos disk – Linear A)
• contextualising texts: e.g. Greek theatre
• literary texts are objects themselves: e.g. revolution from scroll into codex (Tabula Iliaca
4N – ecphrasis: shield of Achilles in Iliad)
• picture-poems (technopaegnia): Simmias; Optatian

• history: art and archeology can tell us about groups of people underrepresented in
literature (women, slaves, ex-slaves: Tomb of The Baker [Eurysaces]), architecture
(opus incertum –> opus reticulatum)
• sex and gender: satyrs, sex-scenes
• racism: Aryballos (oil jar) in the shape of an ‘Ethiopian’ head
• philosophy: stoics (Stoa Poikile [‘painted stoa’]), mirrors (the question of self-
understanding)
• linguistics: ‘Rosetta stone’

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• legacy and reception: part of our urban fabric (layout of Lucca in Italy still defined by
the ancient one), Christian basilicas built around Roman ones, influence on Western
art, repatriation of statues

Lecture 2 – art history/archaeology

• classics + art history + archaeology = classical art and archaeology

• origins: enlightenment – Winckelmann (Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764)): four
styles (Der ältere/hohe/schöne Stil and der Stil des Nachahmer)
• archaic (7th–early 5th), classical (early 5th to c. 323 BC), hellenistic (c. 323–31 BC)
• art history: Courtauld Institute of Art – no classical Greek and Roman – ‘all art is
material culture’ (James Whitley) – is it so?
• archaeology: Schliemann – Mycenae, Troy [modern day Hisarlik] (excavations,
destruction)
• art history vs. archaeology
• ‘Baldrick’ effect: art history about aristocrats, arch about different sociological agenda
• aesthetics, a problem of value, attribution of comparative value – this can be
problematic with archaeologists
• is it art? – ars, artifex, technê – ancient or modern category (Kristeller: Renaissance Thought
and the Arts) – museum, art etc. modern inventions – anachronisms
• museums: frames, Cycladic art figurine (displayed standing but orginally lying) [cf.
artworks by Henry Moore]
• the privileging of the idea of artist: Sir John Beazley (attributing pots to individual
painters)
• antiquities: these objects have been traded for money (illegally selling objects from
tombraiders without archaeological context)
• Sarpdeon Krater (kalyx-krater): MET gave it back to Italy because it was an illicit
antiquity
• what is common?
• stratigraphy: archaeology relies on art history
• absolute dating (coin of 1546), relative dating based on typology (e.g. pottery) –
terminus post/ante quem
• art history relying on archaeology: amphorae (90% survives from Etruria and not from
Athens), Venus de Milo (discovered in 1820 – no real archaeological context, just
anecdotes), mosaic about Alexander from Pompeii (originally situated on the floor
of the exedra)

Lecture 3 – mobility, exchange etc.

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• definitions: mobility, migration, colonisation

Colonization (traditional explanation)

• Apoikia – home away from home • Emporia – trading posts • Dominant lens: Hellenisation

• a divided Mediterranean? – Phoenicia and Greece and their respective colonies

• who moves? – artisans, slaves, diplomats, elites, warriors, nomads, pastoralists, ship crew,
traders, workers, people of marriageable age
• scales of connectivity: local, regional, supra-regional, Pan-Mediterranean
• how can we see movement archaeologically? – settlement patterns, pottery, metals,
shipwrecks, money, strontium isotopes, aDNA

• different types of mobility have different material signatures

• Late Bronze Age mobilities: voluntary and forced; Mycenaen kingdoms (Greece) – Arzawan
states (Western Anatolia) – Hittites (Central Anatolia)
• forced? – samples of toponymics (with occupations often listed) attested in the Linear
B tablets
• elite and non-elite: Ahhiyawa letters – Tawagalawa letter
• Early Iron Age long distance trade: role of metals; emerging empires/states; elite
relationships, gift exchange; commerce; context of consumption
• trade versus ‘presence’: pottery – what do distributions of artefacts tell us? the case
study of pendent semi-circle skyphoi (protogeometric)
• Al Mina: earliest Greek pottery (stratum 10, c. 770–750 BCE), but earlier Cypriot and
Phoenician pottery (c. 850–800 BCE)
• a Greek ‘colony’? is presence of Greek pottery enough? – the case of the
Subprotogeometric Euboean pendant semicircle skyphoi; but: other pottery types
presents; emphasis on function

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• the alphabet: connections between Phoenician, Greek, and Phrygian alphabets

• Nestor’s cup – text written after the manufacturing
• Archaic period mobilities and mercenaries
• Greek and Carian mercenaries in Saite Egypt (manning garriots)
• Greek, Phoenician and Carian graffiti at Abu Simbel, Temple of Ramses II
• stelai from Saqqara: becoming local – settling and intermarriage
• maritime connectivity – shipwrecks: examples of failed movement; event rather than a
process but result of journey
• Uluburun – supra-regional: Late Bronze Age, 1300 BCE; Southwestern Turkey
• Pabuc Burnu – local/regional: Archaic Period; Southwestern Turkey; difference in
cargo
• it’s not only about the ‘Greeks’/people from the Aegean – ‘Phoenician’ sailors in the
Western Mediterranean (Bajo de la Campana shipwreck)

Lecture 4 – Etruscan art

• Etruscans: geographically and chronologically sandwiched between the Greeks and the
Romans
• Etruscan: not part of the Indo-European language family – no extant literature (Clodius
taught himself Etruscan; Virgil’s underworld probably draws on Etruscan sources)
• Etruria conquered –> Augustus’s tota Italia
• D. H. Lawrence: Etruscan Places (anti-industrial, anti-fascist: trying to find an alternative to
the 20th century) – on the book: Married Couple sarcophagus (women had more rights than
in Roman families?)
• Aristonothos Krater from Cerveteri: used for mixing wine with water; Etruscan reception
of the Polyphemus story (Etruscans entertained by Greek stories? – not Lawrence’s view!)
• but there are raw Etruscan story jars as well – but Greek is also somehow part of it – so if
it’s repeated, is it a culture?
• ambiguity in this perception of the culture – e.g. happy slaves?
• wives taking part in symposiums – not orthodox Greek version with heterai
• decorated ostrich eggs at the British Museum
• the Etruscans emulating the Greek or being Hellenised? is it so? – trying to understand the
Tomb of the Bulls (story of Troilus) through Latin or Greek terms
• Etruscology (developed mainly by Pallottino)

Lecture 5 – collecting classical art

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• why do textbooks privilege a certain subset of a vast material culture

• Greek/Classical sculpture – what comes to mind: Doryphorus by Polyclitus 460 BCE,
Discobolus by Myron 460 BCE, Aphrodite of Knidos by Praxiteles in the middle of the
fourth centure BCE have become classical, canonical (not extant today) – also Hellenstic
period (The Laocoon Group [Aeneid and Pliny’s Natural History], the Dying Gaul, Farnese
Hercules) famous from the 16th century/Enlightenment
• previous ones stocky, blocky to our eyes – kouroi and korai (covered in paint traces – 1693)
• original function and context: made for sanctuaries (such as at Deplhi), not art in the modern
sense of the world but gifts to the gods (Aphrodite of Knidos in Asia Minor as a god); they
asked to be compared with other (aesthetic properties)
• Alexander the Great: expanding the Greek world as far as India –> complete kingdoms after
him (Attalids and Ptolemies: competing for the ownership of Greek culture: started selecting
paintings, sculptures and books – what to conserve, what to catalogue?) –> Pergamum:
discovered statue bases, Myron and Praxiteles inscribed on them, displayed in public!, altar
to Zeus (Pergamum’s answer to the metopes on the Parthenon, to draw a competitive
relationship), colossal statue of Athena – the Attalids copied her too (made of marble not
of golden ivory) – turning her into a commodity that becomes decoration and symbol of
status
• Romans transporting artefacts to be displayed in porticoes, gymnasia, baths and temples to
show their dominance of the worlds (making selections, maybe not thinkingly) – on the
border of sacrilege, moving statues from sanctuaries (Romans feel that too) –> statue of
one of the Niobeds (genuine 5th century BC Greek work, now in Palazzo Massimo),
bringing in also Egyptian art (obelisks, sculptures of pharaohs) –> Roman viewers fascinated
– artists are paid to copy those sculptures (surviving Roman copies!), sculptures are made
celebrities (turning them kitsch)
• Augustus: what does a princeps look like? sculptors have to lift him (Romanising of the
spear-barer) – classicism and naturalism become characteristic of the emperors until the end
of the 3rd century CE –> Roman empire expanding, empire under tension, divided in four
parts (2 augustuses, 2 caesars – tetrarchy) – not a statue with sole autocratic power
(threatening civil war if you had four of those), premium on unity
• that doesn’t mean that we get rid of the vocabulary of the classical style – lives on in the
Byzantine empire –> Spinario on public display, now in Capitoline museum (Absalom? –
biblical figural appropriation) –> Venetians sacking Byzantium and brining it to Venice (four
kings)
• Rome: everytime sb dugged a foundation, they’d hit a statue
• 15th and 16th centuries (Renaissance), everybody in Rome gains a more self-conscious
relationship with the fragments of the past –> The Laocoon Group found on the Esquiline
Hill (Michelangelo was supposedly there), it is gorgeous, a group mentioned in Pliny’s
Natural History (Titus’s palace), a famous story from the Aeneid in book II (so
dissemination of Graeco-Roman literature going on) –> popes as most powerful collectors,
also elites (cf. Hellenistic dynasties)

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• –> court societies around Europe – turning it into a European language of power –> also
learning to draw from sculptures (such as Belvedere Torso, Hercules torso, Venus torso
etc.)
• Andrea Odoni (man)handling sculpture – collecting becomes more venal as well (also
Hadrian in the painting: he collected too)
• not restricted to Italy: the Strand in London (Arundel’s house) – trying to rival the
continental collections
• also books of plates: even if you can’t own casts, you can have plates (also selection of the
‘great’ pieces) –> Marble Hall in Derbyshire: rather than collect original statues, he wants to
copy the canon (real version of what he has in the print media books)
• English aristocrats in Batoni’s paintings (Fitzwilliam) – we know what we’re doing,
performing their masculanity (looking like sculptures)
• Isabella Stewart Gardner’s museum: collector in the USA, in Boston – a story of men largely
though
• public enterprise, nationalistic as well: Napoléon brining pieces to Paris in triumph –>
Louvre, left over are pieces that were bought legitimately – gaps in collections in British
Museum and Louvre, these hinder the sculptural changes in time –> that’s where cast
galleries come in: such as one in Boston: chronological story to be told! – change from art
to scientific study (middle of the 19th century), aided by photography
• Parthenon frieze coming to London – genuine Greek sculpture coming to London!
challenges everything they had though Greek sculpture was
• elite –> popular culture: Sandow and the Farnese Hercules
• opening up of Greece after centuries of Ottoman rule: 19th c. we come face to face with
early Greek sculptures – coincides with the birth of modernism, also Etruscan art
influencing the figures of Giacometti (also see Archipenko)
• Hitler: perfect pinup for his ideas – it should knock it off of its pedestal, certainly makes us
question it –– but the canon has not fallen out of favour
• today: Farnese Hercules as the object of female gaze – also all over the world, artist playing
with the canon
• auction houses still selling: Cobham Hall Hadrian (sold for six million dollars)
• we are studying just a tiny part of it

Lecture 6 – replication

Some key questions

1. Why do the Romans covet Greek cultural production?

2. What do they do to this production?
3. And is ‘copy’ an adequate description?
4. How ‘Greek’ are the resulting artefacts?
5. Where do miniaturization and material fit?
6. How important is setting to the stories these artefacts make available to us?

• relationship between Greek and Roman art

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• what is Roman about Roman art? – general’s portrait: likeness, embodying ethos, far away
from the airbrushed Greek portraits; Prima Porta: images of power and imperalism; frizes
from Trajan’s column: no mythological stories but historical narratives (historical relief);
copies: Doryphoros, Pericles etc. (imitative rather than inventive – slavishly and greedily
trying to fill a void – this makes Greek art seem all the greater)
• Winckelmann: looking at the Albani relief of Antinous (found in Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli,
looks classicising Greek); liked best Belvedere Apollo (although turned out to be a Roman
copy) –> Roman art seemed decadent
• BUT Romans copied arcahising sculpture as well (kouroi) – e.g. Louvre’s Apollo Piombino
• discovering actual Greek works after the Ottoman Empire: people confused (Rome: a
different kind of antiquity) – 1807, Parthenon marbles; pedimental sculpture of the Temple
of Zeus at Olympia
• can we salvage Roman art?
• how do I know that that’s a copy? – many replicas, must have an important referent, look for it in
ancient texts – Kopienkritik
• Doryphoros copy – but just the bust (postmodern thing to do), and it’s signed by Apollonios (you
have to recognise that this is a Roman version)
• Greek originals and casts of Greek sculpture in Italy
1. The fifth-century BCE pedimental sculpture re-used in the Augustan Temple of Apollo
Sosianus, now in the Capitoline collection (Museum of Montemartini).
2. Fragments of casts (the head of Aristogeiton included) from an ancient workshop at Baiae
on the Bay of Naples.
• Romans could identically reproduce but they decide to change a bit: hair, drapery, material
etc. – is copying the right word? (we shouldn’t privilege the Greek end but the Roman ideas)
• similarity and difference: sculptural pendants in the domus under the Via Cavour, Rome:
pothoses (Scopas): different drapery, birds (maybe from Hadrianic and Claudian periods???)
– people can enjoy the act of connoisseurship; satyr (Praxiteles) and general statue (Roman
with Greek style) – meditation on male body – now on display at Montemartini
• colour: Marsyas (prototype for crucified Jesus): red type – red raw material (Esquiline Hill,
now in the Cap. Museums)
• miniaturisation: taming the vast cultural production, making it cute

1. Martial and Statius on the power of Vindex’s table top Hercules sculpture (e.g. Silvae 4.6.32-
46 overleaf):
haec inter castae genius tutelaque mensae
Amphitryoniades multo mea cepit amore
pectora nec longo satiavit lumina visu:
tantus honos operi finesque inclusa per artos 35
maiestas. deus ille, deus! seseque videndum
indulsit, Lysippe, tibi parvusque videri
sentirique ingens! et cum mirabilis intra
stet mensura pedem, tamen exclamare libebit,
si visus per membra feres: 'hoc pectore pressus 40
vastator Nemees; haec exitiale ferebant
robur et Argoos frangebant brachia remos.'
ac spatio tam magna brevi mendacia formae!

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quis modus in dextra, quanta experientia docti

artificis curis pariter gestamina mensae 45
fingere et ingentes animo versare colossos!

Of all it was Hercules, Amphitryon’s son, guardian

Spirit of the modest table, that captivated my heart.
My eyes were not satisfied with any swift appraisal.
Such was the nobility of the work, the majesty caught
In narrow limits. The god himself, the god, who let
You behold him, Lysippus; small to view, but large
To the appreciation; and though he’s no more than
Twelve inches tall, yet if your gaze travels his limbs
You’ll be tempted to say: ‘This was the breast that
Crushed the Nemean predator; these were the arms
That bore the deadly club, and broke Argo’s oars.’
So great the illusion that renders a small form large.
What precision in the work, what daring in the art
Of a skilled master, fashioning a table ornament yet
Conceiving the power of a giant in his imagination!
• antithesis, the colossal: Farnese Hercules (Baths of Caracalla, 216 CE, now in Naples Arch.
Museum) – original by Alexander the Great’s court artist, Lysippus, but signed ‘Glykon’
• only half the story: the lesser Gaul group (original on the Acropolis by the Attalid dynasty;
in the copies: just victims)

context
1. The House of the Vettii, Pompeii, one of the dining rooms to the east of the peristyle with
its paintings of Pentheus, Dirce and Hercules.
2. The Farnese Bull group, from the Baths of Caracalla, and now in the Naples Museum.
Also note second colossal version of the Weary Hercules type from the Baths, now in
Caserta.
3. The large sculptural groups from the elite dining room at Sperlonga (Polyphemus, Scylla
and so on). On a plaque on the marble ship’s tiller, an inscription reads: Athanadorus, son
of Hagesandros, Hagesandros, son of Paionios, and Polydorus, son of Polydorus, all from
Rhodes made [this]. Compare Pliny, Natural History 36.37 on the Laocoon.
4. Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli and its Scylla group, plus the other sculptures from the Canopus
area (e.g. caryatids and Silenoi), 123-4 CE.

Old bodies, new identities

1. Statue of Antinous from the Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, 130-138 CE. Delphi Museum.
2. Earliest (?) freestanding sculpture of Christ, as the Good Shepherd (note that the legs are not
ancient), c. 300 CE. Vatican Museums. – Moscophoros –> hellenised –> chrisitianised
3. Endymion sarcophagus, Mid-Imperial, Severan, early 3rd century A.D. Metropolitan
Museum. And Christian sarcophagus, Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome.

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• instead of the word ‘copy’: installation, imagination

Lecture 7 – portraiture

Key questions for today

1. What is a portrait?
2. Is portraiture peculiarly Roman?
3. Is Roman Republican portraiture particularly ugly?
4. How would you describe the portraits of the Roman Republic and empire?
5. How ‘realistic’ are they?
6. Where does Roman portraiture come from and what does it speak to?
7. Do Augustus and his successors change the formula?
8. How does a portrait do power?

• genre that purports to be more real; about more than capturing a likeness – about not just who, but
what the person is –> politics of portraiture: intrinsic to what it’s trying to do
• rarely know anything about artists from antiquity (only have the objects)
◦ portrait bust from Otricoli – type is typical for artists working for patrons in late republic
▪ why did he choose a representation which is so uncompromising + frank, obviously
thought there was some kind of status to be seen looking like this
• Greek precedent
◦ eikon – effigies – say more about ‘job description’ rather than character
1. Roman version of a ‘portrait’ of Athenian statesman, Themistokles, conceived c. 470 BCE
??? but found in Ostia, the port of Rome.
2. Harmodios and Aristogeiton, radically restored Roman versions of statues made by Kritios
and Nesiotes in c. 477.6 BCE for the agora in Athens. Naples Archaeological Museum. –
seen as 1st Greek portraits
3. Roman version of bust of Pericles originally conceived of by Kresilas, c. 425 BCE???, found
at Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli, just outside of Rome. British Museum. – meant to look like a
general
4. Roman version of head of Socrates, originally conceived by Lysippos ???, Louvre. – meant
to look like a philosopher
◦ not getting a sense of what the real person was like!

Pliny the Elder, Natural History 35.153:

Hominis autem imaginem gypso e facie ipsa primus omnium expressit ceraque in eam formam gypsi
infusa emendare instituit Lysistratus Sicyonius, frater Lysippi, de quo diximus. hic et similitudines
reddere instituit; ante eum quam pulcherrimas facere studebant.

The first man to mould a likeness in plaster from the face itself, and to institute the method of making
corrections upon a casting produced by pouring wax into this plaster mould was Lysistratos, brother
of Lysippos…. He introduced the practice of making likenesses, for before him they used to try to
make portraits as beautiful as possible.

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5. Roman version of a statue of Demosthenes after original by Polyeuktos, 280/79 BCE???

Copenhagen. – posthumous, based on his reputation + character
6. Roman ‘portrait’ of Homer, second century CE of second century BCE original???, Louvre.
– posthumous, fictionalizing, historicising
7. Head of Alexander the Great, c. 320 BCE, Getty Villa, Malibu. – many posthumous,
artists in his court were tasked with creating an image that sets a model for the portraiture
to come

• jump between Demosthenes etc. AND republican Rome

1. ‘Brutally realistic’ head of an old man from Osimo in the Marche, Italy, mid first century
BCE, Palazzo del Municipio, Osimo. – putting a premium on being 'well-worn', aged +
experienced
2. Portrait bust of a man, note – first century CE, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
3. Portrait bust of a man, first century BCE, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.
◦ Veristic style – truth
▪ look like real people in way that others looked like philosophers, generals, orators,
world-conquering heroes
▪ claimed that you are staring the man in the face
▪ style that immediately tells you that they’re Roman
◦ made in late Republic (time of crisis, war, conflict, politics etc.) – in order to rise above
others, must have an image like this
4. Portrait statue of a Roman general from the sanctuary of Hercules at Tivoli, first century
BCE. Palazzo Massimo, Rome. – old, wrinkled face with a body seemingly imported from
naturalistic Greek art – it's the body of a god: closely compared to statue of Poseidon
5. Portrait of Pompey, said to be from the Licinian Tomb. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek,
Copenhagen. – slight experimentation: looks Roman, but hair of Alexander – sort of
saying, this is a different kind of Roman: 'the Great'
6. Head of Octavian, Alcudia, Mallorca, c. 40 BCE. – use imagery to try and win the fight,
similar to Alexander again
7. Portrait of a woman from Palombara Sabina, north of Tivoli, end of first century BCE.
Palazzo Massimo.
8. Portrait of a woman of late Republican or early imperial date, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York. – women tend to look less lined: in a society where women were supposed to
be seen + not heard, main purpose: having children, youthful look signifies fertility

shifting aesthetic?
• cast from life? – Polybius - 2nd cent BCE
◦ Roman elite funerary procession
◦ Masks made from death or life - literally a mould of their face
1. ‘Togatus Barberini’, Roman togate-man, carrying portrait heads, ca. 30 BCE (Centrale
Montemartini, Rome).

Polybius (second century BCE), 6.53.4–6:

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μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα θάψαντες καὶ ποιήσαντες τὰ νομιζόμενα τιθέασι τὴν εἰκόνα τοῦ μεταλλάξαντο
ς εἰς τὸν ἐπιφανέστατον τόπον τῆς οἰκίας, ξύλινα ναΐδια περιτιθέντες. [5] ἡ δ᾽ εἰκών ἐστι πρό
σωπον εἰς ὁμοιότητα διαφερόντως ἐξειργασμένον καὶ κατὰ τὴν πλάσιν καὶ κατὰ τὴν ὑπογρα
φήν. [6] ταύτας δὴ τὰς εἰκόνας ἔν τε ταῖς δημοτελέσι θυσίαις ἀνοίγοντες κοσμοῦσι φιλοτίμως
, ἐπάν τε τῶν οἰκείων μεταλλάξῃ τις ἐπιφανής, ἄγουσιν εἰς τὴν ἐκφοράν, περιτιθέντες ὡς ὁμ
οιοτάτοις εἶναι δοκοῦσι κατά τε τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὴν ἄλλην περικοπήν.

After the burial and the performance of the usual ceremonies, they place the image of the deceased in
the most conspicuous position in the house, enclosed in a wooden shrine. This image is a mask
(prosopon) reproducing with remarkable fidelity both the features and complexion of the deceased. On
the occasion of public sacrifices they display these images, and decorate them with much care, and
when any distinguished member of the family dies they take them to the funeral, putting them on men
who seem to them to bear the closest resemblance to the original in stature and carriage.

See also Pliny, Natural History, 35.6-7 (written in honour of the emperor Titus).

2. Terracotta head of Republican date from the Campana collection, Louvre.

3. Terracotta head of Republican date from between Pozzuoli and Cumae, Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston.

• Dependence of republican sculptures on heads found in Etruria – Etruscan-Italic ancestry?

1. Lid of urn of husband and wife, found at Volterra, and dating to the first century BCE, now
in the Museo Etrusco Guarnacci.
2. The Arringatore, bronze, c. 170 cm, discovered near to Lake Trasimene in Italy, inscribed
with his name, ‘Aulus Metellus’. Etruscan, c. 90 BCE. Archaeological Museum, Florence.
3. ‘Capitoline Brutus’, bronze head of contested date, Capitoline Museum, Rome.

• Roman portraiture shows what it takes to be a Roman

• They have cursus honorum - takes a lot of effort + work
• They are trying to look anything but Greek – Alexander’s successors and art of the Hellenistic
period more broadly:

1. Roman version of portrait of Seleucos I Nicator found in the Villa of the Papyri,
Herculaneum. Naples Archaeological Museum.
2. Drunken old woman, versions in the Capitoline Museum, Rome and the Glyptothek,
Munich.

Impact, local and further afield

‘Freedmen art’ – Style co-opted by non-elites too

1. Roman funerary relief of couple from the Via Statilia, Rome. Centrale Montemartini, Rome.
2. Group of Gratidia M. L. Chrite and M. Gratidius Libanus (so-called Cato and Portia), last
quarter of first century BCE. Vatican Museums. – clear that his name is Greek, but must
have Roman citizenship due to depiction

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3. Grave relief of Lucius Vibius and family, 13 BCE-5CE, Vatican Museums.

• ‘Verism’ in Greece: Delos had similar portraiture – Roman heads + Greek bodies; Agora in Athens,
priests adopt Roman style as they know that that = power
1. The ‘Pseudo-athlete’, House of the Diadumenos, near the Agora of the Italians on Delos,
late second or first century BCE, marble. National Archaeological Museum, Athens.
2. Portrait head of a priest, mid–first century B.C., Marble. Athens, Museum of Agora.
3. Portrait head of a priest, third quarter of the first century B.C., Marble. Athens, National
Archaeological Museum.
• Style doesn’t go away
Verism in the imperial period
1. Head from a marble statue of Vespasian, 70-80 CE, Carthage. British Museum.
2. Statue of Vespasian from the Sacellum of the Augustales at Misenum, last quarter of first
century CE. – Nero compared to Vesp. (Roman head with Greek body)
3. Portrait of a Roman woman known as ‘Marcia Furnilla’, 98-117 CE, Ny Carlsberg
Glyptotek. – serious head with Aphrodite’s body

Imperial portraiture from Augustus to Constantine

1. The Primaporta type, named after the statue of Augustus, usually thought to be from the
Villa of Augustus’ wife Livia at Prima Porta but perhaps from the neighbouring barracks
(some 148 replicas according to Boschung’s catalogue), c. 27 BCE.
2. Meroe head of Augustus (Prima Porta type), 27-25 BCE, Sudan. British Museu
3. Coin of Augustus, mint of Rome, 13 BCE, with heads of Gaius, Lucius and Julia on the reverse
(RIC I 404; RSC 1 (Caius, Lucius, Julia, and Augustus); BMCRE 106 = BMCRR Rome 4650).
4. Head of Caligula (and its painted replica), c. 40 CE. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.
5. Ancient head of Claudius on modern bust, 25-49 CE. Archaeological Museum, Naples.
6. Head from statue of Nero as a boy, 50 CE, from basilica at Velleia, and now in the Museo Nazionale
di Antichità, Parma.
7. Portrait of Nero, 55–9 CE, National Museum, Caligliari.
8. Worcester head of Nero, 64-8 CE, Worcester Art Museum.
9. Trajan’s Column, 113 CE and other portraits of Trajan.
10. Colossal head of Hadrian from the frigidarium at Sagalassos in Turkey (see C. Vout, ‘Putting
the Art back into Artefact’ in S. Alcock and R. Osborne (ed.) Classical Art (2nd edition).
11. Commodus as Hercules, found on the Esquiline in Rome and now in the Capitoline Museums.
12. The porphyry tetrarchs, c. 300 CE, now on the façade of San Marco, Venice.
13. Colossal head of Constantine, 313–24 CE, from the Basilica of Maxentius, Courtyard,
Capitoline Museums.

• Octavian, Primaporta - looks more like figures of Greek athletes from the past - type that is
disseminated all over the empire
◦ His imagery doesn’t age
◦ He lives until his 70s
◦ Increasingly making him seem more and more godlike as his reign progresses
◦ Gaius + Lucius - the heirs - portrayed as ‘mini Augustus’ - they aren’t his children
◦ Augustus + Caligula’s busts look similar - the blurring is the power
◦ Claudius looks like Augustus

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◦ Young Nero looks like Gaius + Lucius - only as he grows up and reigns longer does his
image change
◦ Trajan looks like Augustus - statue like an updated Primaporta
◦ Trajan’s column - originally had his statue on the top, and multiple portraits up it - is
different from what Augustus did, but keeps with the style
◦ Hadrian - where the chain breaks
▪ Has a full beard - in some ways this is what makes it different (1st emperor with a full beard)
- but not fully
▪ The bodies of Hadrian are in breastplates like the primaporta - the beard might just be a
Roman military-esque thing to do
▪ Emperors then get bolder: Commodus - gladiator, image that presents him as Hercules, sort
of ridiculous, same beard as Hadrian - an image that revels in the fact that it’s an image,
unlike the earlier ones
▪ Augustus establishes a template, verism comes to the surface at times, but classicism is there
too
• Starts to change after this - the empire is split into four
▪ Ditch traditional portrait of power, replace it with something more abstract - about unity in
face of grim death + instability
▪ Constantine brings empire back under one man’s leadership - make him look like a cross
between blocky, stocky frontality of the later imperial images + Augustus’ classicism.
Imagemakers had literally put his face onto existing imperial images, to show the
continuity during imperial flux

Lecture 8 – art as history

Key questions for today

1. What can visual culture tell us about antiquity that texts cannot?
2. Is archaeological context the be all and end all?
3. How might visual analysis help us access ancient mentalités?
4. And what about the relationship of the iconography with epigraphy?
5. How does art (as we now call it) speak to politics, religion, relationship history?

• art and history, art as history: objects as fabrics of society

• lack of cameras –> the image of the emperor (princeps): exemplarity, godhead – a good
sense of what politics at the time looked like
• a woman giving birth on a tomb from Ostia: tells a lot about her role in life
• asking new questions: fatness/thinness – no archeological context
• was it a unicum? – no
• getting ill in antiquity: doctor/sanctuary; dedicating the body part that they were hoping
to get cured
• different kind of symmetry
• cold metal – good to run one’s hands through it
• what do they remind us of? – Roman world as place of haves and have nots

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Key object: Statuette of an emaciated youth, Roman, probably first century BCE–1 century st

CE (a copy of a Greek original of the second century BCE?), bronze, h. 11.5 cm, said to
have been found in France. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D. C., inv. no. 47.22 (illustrated
for its artistic merit in the catalogue of The Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition of Ancient Greek
Art (London, 1904), pl. 52). Inscribed ΠΕΡΔΙΚ on the hem.

See also: G. M. A. Richter, Catalogue of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the Dumbarton Oaks
Collection (Cambridge, MA, 1956), 32–35, no. 17.
Picón and Hemingway, Pergamon & the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World (New York,
2016).

Comparanda: (1) Votive bas-relief found at the Sanctuary of Amphiaraus near

Oropos, Greece, fourth century BCE.
(2) Terracotta statuette of an emaciated woman, Smyrna, first century BCE.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 89.2.2141.
(3) Fasting Buddha, third–fifth century CE, from the ancient region of Gandhara,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 1987.218.5.
(4) Statuette of a magistrate, first century CE, discovered in Tralles, present-day
Aydin in Turkey. Louvre, inv. no. CA 97 (1887).

• love and loss

• complicated attitude to the underworld
• altar: picture panel (couple reclining on daybed) – skeletons are rare on Roman funerary
art (rather in dining rooms—cf. skeleton butler in Pompeii [idea of carpe diem])

Key object: Marble funerary altar (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, Liverpool, inv. no.
is LLAG 12), findspot unknown. The inscription is CIL VI 17050.

INGRATAE · VENAERI
SPONDEBAM · MVNERA
SVPPLEX · EREPTA COIVX
VIRGINITATE · TIBI PERSEPHO
NE · VOTIS INVIDIT PALLIDA NOS 5
TRIS ET PRAEMATVRO FVNAE
RE · TE RAPVIT · SVPPREMVM
VERSVS · MVNVS DONATVS
ET · ARAM · ET GRATAM SCAL
PSIT · DOCTA PEDANA 10
CHELYN ME NVNC TORQVET
AMOR TIBI · TRISTIS CVRA
RECESSIT · LETIHAEOQVE
IACES · CONDITA SARCOPHAGO

Ingratae Ven<e>ri spondebam munera supplex,

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erepta, coiux, virginitate tibi.

Persephone votes invidit pallida nostris
et praematuro fun<e>re te rapuit.
Su<p>remum versus munus Donatus et aram
et gratam scalpsit, docta Pedana, chelyn.
Me nunc torquet amor, tibi tristis cura recessit,
Let<i>haeoque iaces condita sarcophago.

To ungrateful Venus I was making offerings as a suppliant, after you had lost your virginity, wife.
Pale Persephone envied our prayers and snatched you away in an untimely death. Donatus carved a
last offering of a verse, an altar and a pleasing lyre, learned Pedana. Now love tortures me, but for
you sad care has departed, and you lie buried in a sarcophagus of forgetfulness.

Comparandum (1) Inscription CIL I. 2.1732: ‘Si quaeris quae sim, cinis en et tosta favilla, ante
obitus tristeis Helvia Prima fui’.

‘If you ask me who I am, behold, I am ash and burnt embers; before my sad death, I was Helvia
Prima’/

And (2) Ovid, Heroides 15: from Sappho to Phaon (extracts from):

nil de te mecum est, nisi tantum iniuria. nec tu,

admoneat quod te, pignus amantis habes.
non mandata dedi. neque enim mandata dedissem
ulla, nisi ut nolles immemor esse mei.

‘You have left me nothing, nothing except my wrong; and you – you have no token of my love to
put you in mind of me. I gave you no behests – nor would I have given any, save not to be
unmindful of me’.

inde chelyn Phoebo, communia munera, ponam,

et sub ea versus unus et alter erunt:

‘Then will I consecrate to Phoebus my shell, our common boon, and under it shall be writ one verse,
and a second…’

• enslavery: can we access their language?

• slaves tatooed (objectifying them)

Key object: Stele of Aulus Caprilius Timotheus from Amphipolis in Greece, first century
CE?

Comparanda: (1) Stele of Longidienus and Longidiena, marble, c. 27 BCE–14 CE, h. 1.4 m.
Ravenna, Museo Nazionale inv. no. 7.

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(2) Tondo inside Attic drinking cup of c. 490–80 BCE. National Museum of Antiquities,
Leiden.
(3) Floor mosaic from the entrance to the calidarium of the House of Menander, Pompeii.

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1st lecture – language and languages

why study language?

• human vs. animalistic or non-human languages (Hoover the talking seal) and forms of
communication
• Isocrates: we are superior to other beings because of our language (George Norlin’s
translation: more words in the English version, words omitted, the question of word choices)

Why study language?

For in the other powers which we possess we are in no respect superior to other living
creatures; nay, we are inferior to many in swiftness and in strength and in other resources; but,
because there has been implanted in us the power to persuade each other and to make clear
to each other whatever we desire, not only have we escaped the life of wild beasts, but we have
come together and founded cities and made laws and invented arts; and, generally speaking,
there is no institution devised by man which the power of speech has not helped us to
establish.
Isocrates Nicocles 3, 5-6. Translation George Norlin [102 words] (1928)

τοῖς μὲν γὰρ ἄλλοις οἷς ἔχομεν οὐδὲν τῶν ἄλλων ζῴων διαφέρομεν, ἀλλὰ πολλῶν καὶ
τῷ τάχει καὶ τῇ ῥώμῃ καὶ ταῖς ἄλλαις εὐπορίαις καταδεέστεροι τυγχάνομεν ὄντες·
ἐγγενομένου δ᾿ ἡμῖν τοῦ πείθειν ἀλλήλους καὶ δηλοῦν πρὸς ἡμᾶς αὐτοὺς περὶ ὧν ἂν
βουληθῶμεν, οὐ μόνον τοῦ θηριωδῶς ζῆν ἀπηλλάγημεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ συνελθόντες πόλεις
ᾠκίσαμεν καὶ νόμους ἐθέμεθα καὶ τέχνας εὕρομεν, καὶ σχεδὸν ἅπαντα τὰ δι᾿ ἡμῶν
μεμηχανημένα λόγος ἡμῖν ἐστιν ὁ συγκατασκευάσας. [70 words]

• the difference between language and a language (a particular realisation of the abstract one)
• how is human language (‘natural language’) distinctive?
• vocal articulation (usually, but see sign language)
• arbitrariness (but see onomatopoeia)
• double articulation (small set of elements – sounds – that combine to make something
bigger [e.g. words, sentences]), also called discreteness
• redundancy (languages generally give more information than is needed)
• modularity (similar and different modules between languages, independent parts of a
language system [e.g. pronunciation generally separate from syntax])
• productivity/creativity
• adaptability (at least one sentence each day which hasn’t ever been uttered before)
• learnability
• verifiability (sarcasm, jokes)
• understanding a language
• levels of knowledge: beginner, advanced, fluent, native

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• native is qualitatively different – they are not aware of what they know (internal vs.
external knowledge)
• natives might judge things to be correct or incorrect but might not be aware of what
they know (count and non-count nouns)
• for natives, the spoken form of language is primary
• the primacy of spoken form in linguistics
• the case of ancient languages: textual remains
• what’s going on in a native’s head?
• survives in Greek: literary texts (via manuscripts mostly), papyri, insciptions (including
Linear B) – 1 million unpublished papyri and ostraca in Greek

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• survives in Latin: inscriptions and graffiti, papyri and tablets, literary texts; 12 latin
inscriptions before 200 BCE, less papyri

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• Cicero: 1.2 million words (Dickens in his 15 novels: 3.8 million)

• not too much survives + fragments (the case of losing so many Athenian tragedies:
Reviel Netz estimates 1000 Athenian tragedies were written and performed; 33
survive intact, a rate of 3.3 %)
• Saussure: diachronic vs. synchronic linguistics

2nd lecture – where words come from

• vocabulary in linguistics: lexicon (can be mental), which is expandable, maybe an infinite

number of them
• OED (ca. 0.75 million words, but 20,000 used if you have a wide vocabulary)
• etymology (‘study of the true meaning’): where words come from; words change their
meaning
• anti-woke (anti prefix + past tense of English ‘wake’), kawaii (borrowed from Japanese),
Trussonomics (proper name, portmanteau word)
• third of the words are loanwords, a very small portion (ca. 3.5%) survives from Old English
(Borrowed Words)

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• English written down since the 8th century CE (earliest texts survive written on stone in
runes, Ruthwell Cross from Dumfriesshire)
• English through time – main source: Bible – e.g. Gospel of John 1:1-3
• extra letters in æ (ash – that), (ð: eth, voiced th – this), (þ: thorn, voiceless th – thin),
(ȝ: yogh, as in Scots lough)
• earlier translations didn’t have loanwords (‘existed’, ‘created’ in newer versions)
• excursus:
• English verbs from Latin: many derive from the present (exist < exsisto), the passive
past participle (create < creatus)
• explanation: participles were borrowed as adjectives AND verbs can be formed directly
from adjectives (dry [adjective] > dry [verb])
• ANALOGY (generalising patterns): verbs made out of the Latin borrowed participles
• -ate as a general verb-forming suffix, making new verbs where there wasn’t one in Latin
(a productive suffix): facilitate < facility < facilitas; vaccinate < vaccine < vaccinus
(variolae vaccinae); conversate < conversation, coronate < coronation (a back-
formation)
• languages from which English borrows words: Latin, French, Greek, German etc.
• Latin: wall, wall, vallum; wine, win, vinum; cheese, caese, caseus
• Norman Conquest (1066): beef, pork, mutton, dine, robe

• later: paternal, maternal, carnal, piscine, biped, quintuple (c. 1400–modern day) –
double vocabulary (not really in the sister languages of English)
• Greek: via Latin (from ca. 300 BCE on, many scientific terms: borrowing or calquing:
prosodia as prosody or as accent); English adopts Latinate spelling even when there’s

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no Latin intermediary: phylogenetic (but there’s no Greek equivalent) BUT

sometimes people return to the Greek style (Aiskhylos)

3rd lecture – the Indo-European language family

• 17-18th c. – family type relations between languages (e.g. Gaston-Laurent Cœurdoux) –

BUT the classics statement for ‘some common source’ is Sir William Jones

"The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect
than Greek, more copious than Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either; yet bearing to
both of them a stronger affinity both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than
could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed that no philologer could
examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source,
which perhaps, no longer exists. There is a similar reason though not quite so forcible, for
supposing that both the Gothick and the Celtick, though blended with a different idiom, had
the same origin with the Sanskrit; and the old Persian might be added to the family. »
Sir William Jones, Third Annual Discourse to the Asiatick Society of Calcutta, 1786

• The language family is called ‘Indo-European’ (IE) – a term first used by Thomas Young
(of Emmanuel Coll.) in 1816
• Indo-European: Sanskrit is the key (Sir William Jones: it is not an ancestor of Latin and
Greek)
• Anatolian: died out by 200 CE –> Hittite (cuneiform texts discovered by Bedřich Hrozný,
in 1915); Luwian (language) recently decyphered too – Cuneiform texts – from Hattusa and
elsewhere shown definitively to be Indo-European

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• Romance language family – the Roman Empire (and where Latin was the spoken language
in it)
• over time, speakers lost the diference between the nom. and the acc. – that becomes
the words in modern langauges
• losing the ’t’ in amat – happens already in Pompeii
• family tree for English (West-Germanic, North-Germanic)

• model of the Romance languages mirrored elsewhere in the world – although usually parent
langauge attested – reconstructing ancestor languages
• reconstructing PIE

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• last spoken c. 6000 years ago, never written down

• putting an asterisk to show that it’s not attested, just a guess
• correspondences: pater–father–pitár–patēr; ped–foot–pád–pod; piscis–fish (also Old
Irish, Tocharian B, Hittite etc.)
• Grimm’s Law – fricatives in Germanic languages (*t > þ *d > t *dh > d )
• Indo-Europeans spreading from Ponto-Caspian steppe in chariots? – farming?

• the genomic formation of South and Central Asia

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• speech from 100 000 years – how far back can we go? (Nostratic family – c. 15 000 ago)

4th lecture

• Chomsky: language acquisition device in babies – all human languages share the same
underlying universal grammar
• Linguistics has many sub-disciplines
• Phonetics = the rules for the production, transmission and reception of sounds used
in human languages.
• Phonology = the use of speech-sounds to convey meaning with a language, the way
sounds can combine in a language. study of sounds as used in particular languages!
• Morphology = the ways words can be formed from sounds and split up into e.g. roots
and endings.
• Syntax = the rules governing the ways in which words can combine to form sentences.
• Semantics = the meanings of words and sentences.
• Pragmatics = the interpretation of utterances in context.
• Lexicology and etymology = the study of vocabulary and its origins
• Aspects of the 'external' manifestations of a language, utterances, texts etc. can also be
studied:
• Writing / Alphabets = the ways in which spoken language is represented; the
adaptation of scripts to different languages.
• Sociolinguistics = the use of different varieties of language by different groups, and in
different social situations. Literary languages.
• Discourse analysis = the ways in which texts hold together; the way information is
ordered and presented.
• Language acquisition = the way children or second language learners make sense of
language
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Different languages have a wide range of speech sounds, which can be divided into
consonant and vowel sounds
• Consonant sounds are described through their place and manner of articulation – e.g.
dental fricative, alveolar lateral click
• Vowel sounds are described through cardinal vowels, corresponding to tongue
positions during their utterance
• Some technical terms: phones (e.g. [t], [th] etc.); phonemes (e.g. /t/, d/); allophones
• Phones are universal, phonemes and their allophones are specific to individual
languages
• Phonemes are in contrastive distribution and they can be found through minimal pairs (pat
– pad: here, d and t)

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• Allophones of the same phoneme are in complementary distribution (aspirated and

unaspirated p in English: pin – spin [whereas in Ancient Greek, there was a
phonemic distinction!])
• Greek, Latin, and English: bilabial, dental, velar, and stop consonants

In English [t] and [th] are allophones

In Ancient Greek (and modern Chinese) /t/ and /th/ are separate phonemes
In English /d/ and /ð/ are phonemes minimal pair: dose /d/ vs those /ð/
In Spanish [d] and [ð] are allophones dado [d̪að̪o] ‘die (single dice)’

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———————————————————————————————————
——

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5th lecture – morphology

• etymology of ‘morphology’ (morphē) – also in Morpheus (good of dreams, shaping one’s

dreams)
• sīc: /s/ /i:/ /k/ – phonemes that don’t cover meaning in themselves, analysable only in
phonoligical terms
• Morphology is the branch of grammar that deals with the internal structure of words. Words
like sīc, crās have no internal grammatical structure while amā-ns, longi- tūdō, dom-in-ī
clearly have: ama-, longi-, dom- are the lexical roots and patently have meanings; but so do
-ns, indicating the present active participle nominative singular, - tūdō, giving an abstract
meaning “long-ness”, i.e. “length” -in- indicating that something or somebody belongs to
what is expressed by the lexical root meaning “house”, -ī indicating either genitive singular
or nominative plural. The smallest meaningful elements into which words can be analysed
are known as morphemes; and the way morphemes operate in language provide the subject
matter of morphology. Thus, sīc and crās would not be considered by morphology while
amāns, longitūdō and dominī would be.
• below the word level but above the phonological level: amā/ns (lexical and grammatical
meaning)

• Morphology can be concerned with different sorts of variations in the form of words. First
of all, inflections distinguish different categories, e.g. nom. sg. domin-us vs. gen. sg. domin-
ī. Inflectional morphology studies the way in which words vary in order to express
grammatical contrasts such as sg. vs. pl., nom. vs. gen. etc. On the other hand, longitūdō is
clearly not a form of longus but rather a new lexeme with its own, idiosyncratic meaning; it
is an abstract noun, derived from the adjective longus. Thus, derivational morphology
studies the principles governing the formation of new lexemes, without reference to the
specific grammatical role a word might play in a sentence. Derivational morphology is often
simply known as word formation. This division of morphology into two branches is known
as the split morphology hypothesis. Both inflectional and derivational morphology are
realised with the help of affixes. In both Greek and Latin the great majority are suffixes:
longi-tudin-is ama-bili-bus Structure : Root – Derivational suffix – inflectional suffix (R-S-
E) General rule: inflectional affixes are more peripheral than derivational affixes (hence
“endings”). Root + derivational suffix(es) = stem. Both derivational and inflectional
morphemes can have two or more allomorphs. Typically, they are not in free variation but
context-conditioned: -tudo nom. sg. : -tudin- in all other cases -īs dat./abl. pl. 1st and 2nd
declensions : -(i)bus 3rd, 4th, 5th declensions
• inflection to change the shape and the function of a given word
• word (phonological unit: amo and amas different words) – lexeme (amo, amas etc. all belong
to the same lexeme, this abstract entity)

• Prefixes are rare. In Latin, there is only really an abstract prefix, the reduplication, serving
to form some perfect stems like mordeo, mo-mord-ī. (Note: inter- con- etc. as in inter-ficio,

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con-cord-ia are often called prefixes but they are, in fact lexical and inter- ficio is a
compound verb).

• Infix: Most remarkably, Latin has a grammatical infix, the -n- (assimilated to -m- before a
following labial stop) that is inserted into the root of some verbs: fundo, rumpo, tango.
Function? Also found in Greek: pres. μανθ-άν-ω but aorist ἔ-μαθ-ο-ν, λαμβ-άν-ω, ἔ-λαβ-ο-
ν.
• nasal infix: goes back to PIE (also in English: to stand, stood)

• Inflectional morphology deals with words forms. For example, dominus, dominī, dominos
etc. differ as words forms. They express different morphosyntactic categories (such as
nominative, genitive, accusative, singular, plural etc.) and are opposed to one another within
the paradigm. All the morphosyntactic categories that are directly, i.e. on the same level,
opposed to one another form a morphological dimension. Thus, nom., acc., gen., etc, are all
morphosyntactic categories that together form the dimension case. (Note: some authors
refer to “dimensions” as “categories” while they call the elements within this “position”.
There is thus room for confusion - be aware.) Cases are realised through case markers,
namely affixes (such as -us, -um, -ī), a case form is a complete word (e.g. dominī the genitive
case form of dominus etc.). In inflecting languages like Latin and Greek, these markers are
polyfunctional as they realise more than one morphosyntactic category. Thus, -ī in dominī
indicates both case (genitive) and number (singular) and this marker is not segmentable. This
principle is called multiple or cumulative exponence. On the other hand, it can occur that
one morphosyntactic category is expressed by more than one marker. In Latin and Greek,
this is often found in the inflection of verbs. Thus, in rēg-s-ī the category “perfect” is
expressed by a) the long root vowel (as opposed to present reg-ō), b) -s- and c) the perfect-
specific ending -ī. This is known as extended or overlapping exponence.

• The notion of “paradigm” A characteristic of inflectional morphology (though some have

claimed that derivational paradigms also exist), a paradigm is a set of all the inflectional
forms, ordered according to morphological dimensions, that a given lexeme can take.
However, the number of morphological categories is not always easy to determine. E.g.
number of cases in Latin - 6 or 7? Locative lexically highly limited. Morphologically, the
locative always falls together or is syncretic with other cases: the genitive/dative in the first
declension (Romae), the genitive in the second (hum-ī) and the dative in the third
(Karthagin-ī), thus showing different patterns of syncretism. The locative is therefore known
as a non-autonomous case.

6th lecture – cases in Latin

• What is “case”?
a) A particular form in which a nominal (noun, adjective, pronoun, article, some numerals)
can appear. Thus, dominus, dominum, domino etc. are all different case manifestations of one
and the same lexeme dominus.

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b) A system of marking dependent nominals (most prominently nouns, but also adjectives,
articles, pronouns, numerals) for the type of relationship that they bear to their head. These
relationships can be of various kinds:
Marcus in horto magistro librum dat.
The nominative Marcus indicates that this word is the subject of the verb; the accusative
librum indicates that this word is the direct object of the verb etc.
aedes matris - the genitive matris indicates that this word is in a “possessor” relationship to
its head aedes.
locus regno - the dative regno indicates that this word is in a “purpose” relationship to its
head locus.
c) The head of a clause is the verb. The other elements are called modifiers as they modify the
verb in a certain way. The head of a phrase can be a noun as in aedes patris etc. or a preposition
as in in horto. On a clause level, therefore, cases are adverbal, on a phrase level they can be
adnominal or dependent on a preposition or postposition.
d) Cases have certain functions. They express syntactic relations such as “subject”, “direct
object” etc. and semantic roles such as “source”, “location” etc. Thus the nominative has the
main function of encoding the subject of a clause: Marcus magistro librum dat - Marcus is the
grammatical subject and has to be encoded in the nominative. So the case here has syntactic
function.
e) The grammatical subject is a purely syntactic entity. It is typically the topic of a clause, i.e.
“what is spoken about”. On a semantic level, the subject can have different roles, most
prominently agent, i.e. the instigator of an action (Cornelia panem edit), its direct opposite the
patient, i.e. the entity undergoing an action (Cornelia a serpente mordetur) or the experiencer,
i.e. the recipient of an emotion or sensation (Cornelia musicā gaudet). –––– semantic roles:
Cornelia (agent) panem edit OR Cornelia a serpente mordetur – although syntactic function
doesn’t change – in other languages, agency might be marked in use of case (e.g. ergative
languages – absolutive?)
f) In syntax, it is common to distinguish complements and adjuncts. Complements of a verb
are all those entities that need to be present in order to make the predication syntactically and
semantically complete. Thus in Marcus in horto librum legit, e.g., Marcus and librum are
complements as the verb legere is a two-place verb, i.e. needs to have 2 complements, namely
the entity that reads and the entity that is read. In horto on the other hand is an adjunct, an
optional addition that is neither syntactically or semantically necessary. –––– zero-place verb:
pluit
g) A case whose only or main function is to express syntactic functions is called a syntactic or
core case. A case that normally expresses a semantic role is called a semantic or peripheral
case. Many cases can have both syntactic and semantic function. Thus the accusative has
syntactic function (direct object) in example 1) but semantic function (spatial extension) in
example 2):
1) Cornelia librum legit.
2) Cornelia tria milia ambulat.
h) When a case is not realised by a distinctive marker or form, case is often said to be abstract.

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Thus, one can argue that English basically has a distinction nominative : accusative (I/me,
who/whom etc.) but that only a small subclass of nominals, namely some pronouns, show any
case marking while in The man saw the dog case is much more abstract and according to some
linguists realised not by morphological but syntactic means, namely word order.

• The use of the cases in Latin

• 2.1 Nominative
a) Case of the grammatical subject:
Marcus litteras scripsit. Cornelia a serpente mordetur.
b) Case of the predicative:
Marcus agricola est. c) “Topic” case:
ecce homo
d) Occasionally, the nominative can be used as the case of address in Latin and Greek even
where it is not syncretic with the vocative. This, however, normally happens only when the
address is marked already, either by a pronoun or by another vocative:
audi tu, populus Albanus. (Livy)
The nominative has no peripheral functions.
• 2.2 Accusative
a) Case of the direct object (syntactic function):
Cornelia canem vidit. b) Topic case:
me miserum/miseram
c) subject under special circumstances (in the AcI construction):
Romani credebant Iovem regnare Αdverbial usage:
d) - direction: in Latin only with names of towns or small islands: Romam ire;
e) - extension in distance or time: tria milia ambulat, tres menses mansit
Both can be subsumed as spatial and in this respect the accusative is a semantic, local case.
f) Dependent on an adjective as in Tacitus’ nudus lacertos but this is an imitation of Greek
usage.
• Genitive
a) The adnominal case, normally indicating the possessor: aedes patris
b) Partitive, indicating an entity that is partially affected:
centum militum,
c) The genitive can encode the complements of verbs but this is quite rare:
meminisse mortuorum
d) One of its most important functions is to provide a means of expressing the adnominal
equivalent of an adverbal complement:
Catilina adversus rem publicam coniurat > coniuratio Catilinae
metuit mortem > metus mortis
In the first example the genitive corresponds to the subject, in the second one to the object of
the verbal clause - clearly a syntactic function. Cf. also examples like Caesar, B.G. 1.30.2 pro
veteribus Helvetiorum iniuriis populi Romani with both subjective and objective genitive.
• Dative
a) In three-place verbs, the dative encodes the “indirect object”:

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Cornelia magistro librum dat.

b) The dative also marks the non-subject complement of certain intransitive verbs such as
auxiliari, parere, fidere.
According to one theory, the central function of the dative is to encode entities that are the
target of an activity or emotion. Traditional definitions refer to “indirect objects” as also
patients but nearer to the neutral or unaffected end of the patient spectrum. In the last instance,
case assignment is arbitrary; thus, videre and amare take the accusative. However, in Latin
there exist some verbs that can take either the dative or the accusative as their complement.
moderor equum meum
moderor orationi meae
The dative here usually encodes a lesser degree of transitivity.
c) The dative thus indicates personal closeness. It is therefore also used to indicate the
possessor, but much less commonly so than the genitive. Compare
illi sunt duae filiae
as opposed to
illius sunt duae filiae.
d) A particular problem is posed by the ethical dative which can be hard to render as a dative
in English:
quid mihi Celsus agit? “What on earth is Celsus doing?” quid hoc sibi vult? “Just what is this
supposed to mean?” ne mihi clamaveritis “Please, don’t shout!”
These datives can be analysed as either indicating personal closeness or indeed indirect
affection - the ethical dative can be a good way of saying “please”. However, these are clearly
semantic usages of the dative.
e) The dative can mark the agent in the passive. This is clearly difficult to reconcile with the
core function of the dative. However, these constructions are usually restricted to the perfect
and the gerundive. However, it is arguable the case that in sentence like
haec provincia Caesari erat defendenda
Caesari is not really the agent but rather indicates the person indirectly involved (and thus a
typical indirect object) in the action: “It was up to Caesar/for Caesar to defend the province.”
• ablative
The Latin ablative case is the semantic or peripheral case. It is used as a case of complements
of verbs only with a few deponents such as uti, frui, fungi, potiri. However, even these govern
the accusative in older Latin.
a) “True” ablative, indicating source or origin: Athenis redire. This usage is rare, normally
reinforced with a preposition (de, e, ex, a, ab, abs). However, in this metaphorical usage as a
causal ablative it is frequent at all times: gaudio lacrimare.
The frequent ablative of comparison as in melle dulcius “sweeter from the point of view of
the honey” also belongs here.
b) Locative: Caesar idoneo loco castra posuit. Again, this is normally reinforced with a
preposition (in) and in classical times is restricted to expressions containing locus and totus.
c) Related to b) is the so-called ablative of sphere, delimiting the area in which something
happens and therefore in some sense also local:
Galli lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt.
Agesilaus altero pede claudus erat.

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This corresponds to the Greek accusative of respect.

d) Very frequent at all times is the usage of the ablative as instrumental: naufragi piscibus et
ovis avium vivebant.
pedibus ire
The complemental ablative found in deponents as discussed above also arguably belongs here:
lacte, caseo et carne vesci (Cicero) “to consume milk, cheese and meat” = “to feed on...”

• Case syncretism
Case syncretism literally means the “mixing together”, i.e. the “falling together’’ of cases. The
expression is used in two different ways:
On a diachronic or historical level, it means the merging of formerly distinct grammatical
categories. Mergers of various kinds are responsible for the fact that the related languages
Latin and Greek have a different number of cases each: for the Proto-Indo-European parent
language, 8 paradigmatic cases are usually assumed but different patterns of syncretism – we
will see this in the discussion of case uses as well – are responsible for a reduction to 7 in Latin,
5 in Greek.
On a synchronic level, it means the neutralisation of grammatical categories in certain
environments. This often happens where 2 cases overlap in use or are particularly close.
Feature specification of the Latin case system:

• case syncretism: max. 5 forms of a noun

Does this match with the patterns of case syncretism found in Latin?

ancient terminology
• verbum/rhēma (ῥῆμα) – word and verb
• cāsus/ptōsis (πτῶσῐς) – falling, why?
• cāsus rectus/ptōsis orthē vs. cāsus obliqui/ptōseis plagiai
• nominativus/onomastikē

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• vocativus wasn’t recognised by ancient grammarians – maybe because it plays no syntactic

rule; extrasyntectic case par excellence
• name of cases in Greek

7th lecture – number, gender, agreement

• Number
Two-fold opposition singular vs. non-singular (i.e. plural).
Vestiges of a dual (still found in Classical Greek) are to be seen in duo (acc. also duo) and
ambo, where -o is the old dual ending.
However, there is no 1:1 correspondence between form and content: Kalendae “first day of
the month tenebrae “darkness”, nuptiae “wedding”, castra “camp” occur only in the plural
but can be interpreted as semantically singular. Cf. also Pompeii vs Roma.
• Gender
In Classical Greek and Latin: 3 grammatical genders, called ἀρσενικόν, θηλυκόν,
οὐδέτερον in Greek and masculinum, femininum, neutrum respectively. Natural
gender/biological sex in part basis for classification.
However,
a) such a tripartite division is not particularly common;
b) only a small subclass of nouns can be captured in this way, yet every noun has a gender;
c) gender often not overtly marked even in nouns denoting animate beings.
Gender is thus best regarded as a number of agreement classes, with only limited semantic
content. To a large extent: unpredictable and even arbitrary.
What gender are
A. daps sacrificial feast f
B. porticus colonnade f
C. as name of a coin m
D. vās vessel n
E. vas bail, security m
F. cōs whetstone f
G. rōs dew m
H. marmor marble n
The 3-way arrangement of Latin (and Greek) may not be the original state of affairs, cf.
(a) the lack of any formal distinction in mater : pater (matrem : patrem...);
(b) adjectival declensional type fortis : fortis : forte (even in audax : audax : audax,
cf. acc. audacem : audacem : audax)
(c) agreement patterns as set out below.

• cornu, pecu, genu, gelu, veru (javelin, dart)

• Agreement or concord between subject and verb

In linguistic terms, agreement is the formal marking of a relationship between words that share
one or more morphosyntactic features (such as case, gender etc.). This operates on the phrase
level: urbs magna

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and on a clause level: multi liberi in horto ludunt.

The subject controls the verb: grammatical categories on the verb referring to the subject must
be in agreement with those on the subject itself; more specifically, control means that
morphosyntactic categories that are marked on the subject and for which the verb is capable
of marking must be copied from the subject onto the verb. Leaving aside personal pronouns,
noun and verb in Latin and Greek only share the category “number” and, in verb forms
involving participles, “gender”; in practice, therefore, agreement is limited to these two
categories. Thus in a sentence liberi in horto ludunt there is agreement between the subject
liberi and ludunt in number, i.e. the fact that liberi is plural also has to be marked on the verb.
But: It is important to note that the number of the whole subject and not that of the individual
elements is decisive. Thus, in Marcus et Cornelia in horto ambulant the verb is marked for
“plural” although both Marcus and Cornelia are marked for “singular”. The subject controlling
the verb is thus [Marcus et Cornelia]. Agreement can thus not be conceived as a purely
morphological phenomenon.
• Agreement and gender
There are exceptions to the principle of agreement, however. The rules of agreement can be
broken through
(a) the constructio ad sensum: magna multitudo hominum in foro erant (= multi
homines in foro erant)
(b) limited reference: in case of subjects with more than one element, the verb can agree with
only a part of the subject, namely the one it is closest to: Cingetorig principatus atque imperium
est traditum (Caesar, BG 6.89; alternat.: sunt tradita). Example (b) also shows another
important feature. In pater et mater mihi mortui sunt the form of mortuus used has to be the
masculine plural one. Limited reference is not possible in the case of animate beings. Also, the
alternative construction under b) sunt tradita has to be in the neuter. This is so because the
entities described are inanimate. There is thus a clash between grammatical gender on the one
hand and a basic animate/inanimate distinction on the other. As a sign of inanimateness, the
neuter is used in all instances in Latin (same in Greek), even if neither constituent member is
grammatically neuter, thus porta et murus de caelo tacta erant (Livy 32.29.1).

8th lecture – the verb

• General remarks Significantly more paradigmatic categories are realised on the verb than
on the noun: person, number, tense, mood, voice, aspect/mode of action and sometimes
gender. In addition, there are non-finite forms such as infinitives, participles, verbal nouns
(gerund), verbal adjectives (gerundives in -nd-), supines. All this means that the verb is much
more complex (and contested) than the noun.
• The categories of the verb
• 2.1 Person “Person” is a category describing the nature of the participants in a given
situation: 1st person is “speaker”, 2nd person “addressee”, 3rd person a third party. This
category is marked only on verbs and, lexically, personal pronouns. From a morphosyntactic
point of view it is important to note that the 1st person overrides the 2nd person and the
2nd person overrides the 3rd person: tu et ego amici sumus. tu et Gaius amici semper fuistis.
Note that Latin (like English) makes no distinction regarding clusivity of person.

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• 2.2 Number A self-evident category; Latin has 2 (singular, plural), just like the nouns.
• 2.3 Voice A grammaticalised way in which sentences may alter the relationship between the
complements of the verb [subject and object(s)] without changing the semantic content of
the sentence: Cornelia Marcum videt is semantically identical to Marcus a Cornelia videtur.
However, morphology and syntax often diverge in Latin: many Latin verbs have passive
morphology but active syntax and meaning (deponents): iam ego te sequar (Plautus Cist.
773), or even shifting morphology depending on the tense: audeo but ausus, -a, -um sum
(semideponent). In practice, voice is thus often lexicalised.
• 2.4 Mood Mood indicates the attitude of the speaker towards the factual content of the
utterance. It is common to distinguish between epistemic (< ἐπιστήμη “knowledge”) and
deontic (< δέω “I lack, I want”) modality. Epistemic modality denotes the speaker’s
evaluation of the truth of the utterance; expressions of certainty, possibility, doubt etc. are
all examples of epistemic modality. Deontic modality indicates that the speaker desires or
expects things to be different. Deontic modality is discourse- oriented and it refers to acts
rather than propositions. It is concerned with obligation and permission. Directives,
commands and commissives (promises) are typical examples of deontic modality. Latin has
3 moods, indicative, subjunctive and imperative. It is commonly said that the indicative is
the “unmarked” mood and that it conveys a neutral attitude, namely stating verbal events as
a fact (epistemic modality – the speaker evaluates the content of the proposition as true).
However, both claims are hard to sustain. The imperative is formally less marked than the
indicative (audi, lauda, etc. are simpler than the corresponding indicative forms audi-s, lauda-
s) and as far as its usage is concerned, it can be used to express irreality. Compare examples
like melius erat angustias praesidio occupare “It would have been better...” The imperative
is used to express commands (deontic modality) and is relatively unproblematic. However,
in Latin (and in Greek) there is overlap with the subjunctive in negative commands: hic
mane – noli hic manere or ne hic manseris. The subjunctive removes the verbal event from
reality and can be semantically divided into a) expectation: nemo sapiens mori malum dicat;
(epistemic) b) intent: proficiscamur (deontic) It is obvious that there is considerable
semantic overlap between the subjunctive and the imperative in b) and between the
subjunctive and the future tense in a). It is unsurprising, then, that from a morphological
point of view the two share a good number of markers and are sometimes even identical:
audiam can be future or subjunctive and the markers -a- and -e- found in the subjunctive
(laudem, audiam) are the same as those found in the futures of the third and fourth
conjugations, albeit in a slightly different distribution. There is thus substantial overlap
between tense and modality. In Latin, which has no optative, the subjunctive can
additionally be used to indicate distance or remoteness. Thus, for example, subordinate
clauses containing the statement or thought of another person will be in the subjunctive
while those of the speaker will be in the indicative: Galli dolent quod libertas iis erepta est
but Galli dolent quod libertas sibi erepta sit.
• 2.5 Tense Tense is the grammaticalised expression of locating an event in time. From the
point of view of the speaker We should therefore expect only three tenses: present, past
and future. This is manifestly not the case in Latin and therefore it is helpful to distinguish

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between absolute tenses, tenses used to locate an action with reference to the present, the
time of the speaker, and relative tenses where the reference point for location of a situation
is not the present but some point in time given by the context. Relative tenses typically
cannot be used on their own, therefore. A good example for a relative tense is the Latin
pluperfect: Graeci cum Troiam deleverant, domum redire paraverunt. In sum, while it is
true that tenses are primarily used to locate action in time and moods to indicate the attitude
of the speaker towards an action there is very considerable overlap, and phenomena such as
“closeness” and “remoteness” can be realised with both.
• 2.6 Infectum vs. Perfectum If tense was solely used to locate an action in time then why do
we find both a perfect and an imperfect in Latin? Difference in meaning: librum legebam
cum intravisti. Imperfect: infectum (“action in progress”) Perfect: perfectum (“action
completed”). In Latin this distinction is often analysed in terms of aspect. Aspect is the
grammaticalised way of indicating how the speaker views an action or event, the
fundamental distinction being between perfective and imperfective. The perfective aspect
presents the action “as a single, unanalysable whole, a global unit, with beginning, middle
and end rolled into one” (thus B. Comrie, Aspect, Cambridge 1976 p.3). It presents it as a
complete, a point, and “no attempt is made to divide up the situation into the various
individual phases that make up the action” (Comrie 1976 p.3). The imperfective aspect on
the other hand presents an action as ongoing. Tense locates actions in time; aspect is not
concerned with relating the situation to any other time point but rather with the “internal
temporal constituency” (Comrie 1976 p.5) of an action. It could be said that aspect realises
time that is internal to the situation, while tense realises real-world, situation-external time.
It is true that there is contact between tense and aspect. Thus, the present is by nature
“ongoing” and consequently there is no aspectual differentiation: the “present” can only be
formed from the imperfective stem. Aspect can be inherent in the lexical semantics of a
verbal root. Thus, a verb like “to be” is naturally ongoing, i.e. imperfective, and therefore
esse does not have a perfect stem. On the other hand, a verb like “to give” is clearly goal-
oriented. The internal temporal constituent, the actual process of giving is normally less
important than the fact per se, and therefore such a verb is much more likely to occur in the
perfect than in the imperfect. Roots with inherent perfective semantics (give, take, kill etc.)
are called telic, those with imperfective semantics (be, carry) atelic. In Latin paradigms, telic
and atelic roots are often used in complementary distribution to indicate aspectual
differences: fero – tuli – latum. The use of the perfect subjunctive in negative imperatives
is also originally the reflex of an aspectual opposition: ne clamaveritis “don’t shout” = “don’t
start shouting”. The perfect denotes the perfective aspect in the past: ibam sacra via; accurrit
quidam nomine tantum mihi notus. But the Latin perfect can also have present meaning:
novi, odi, memini; but also in sentences like urbs nostra deleta est; fuimus Troes “Our city
is destroyed. We Trojans are gone.” The perfect can thus be a primary tense for the purpose
of the sequence of tenses: Ea adhibita doctrina est quae vel vitiosissimam naturam excolere
possit (Cic. ad Quintum fratrem 1.1.7). The Latin perfect is the conflation of two formerly
distinct categories, a perfective past and a (resultative or stative) present perfect.

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• Some remarks on the morphology of the Verb in Greek and Latin - It is typical for
the verb in Latin and Greek to show not just cumulative exponence but also multiple
exponence, meaning that one grammatical category is realised by more than one marker.
Thus, in rēxī, “perfect” is indicated by a) lengthening of the root vowel (: regō, b) affix -s-,
c) distinct set of personal endings. On the other hand, the personal endings are a good
example of cumulative exponence. In Latin, they indicate person, number, voice and tense:
-i is the first person singular active ending only in the perfect.

23
 How Greek Works:
I - Sounds
Some key concepts in Phonetics and Phonology
Phonetics is the study of how sounds (phones) are produced by the speech organs and perceived by
speakers.

Phonology is the study of how sounds are used in particular languages. Phonology deals not with
individual phones but with groups of different but similar phones which all “do the same job” in the
particular language. These groups are called phonemes.

(Standard British) English has two “t sounds”: one is the sound in top, an aspirated alveolar stop [th],
the other the sound in stop, an unaspirated alveolar stop [t]. In phonetics these are different phones
because they have different acoustic properties (aspirated vs unaspirated); but in the phonology of
English they both function as variants (realizations) of an underlying abstract “t sound”, the
phoneme /t/. Notice the notation: phonetic transcriptions (phones) are un square brackets,
phonological transcriptions (phonemes) are between slashes. We say that in English [th] and [t] are
allophones of the /t/ phoneme.

Phonemes are particular to specific languages. In English [th] and [t] are allophones of the same
phoneme /t/; but in Classical Greek /th/ and /t/ are two different phonemes represented by the
letters θ and τ respectively. Changing [t] and [th] in English doesn’t produce new words, it produced
weird pronunciations of the same word, [top] instead of [thop], [sthop] instead of [stop]. But in Greek
[tis] (τίς) is who while [this] (θίς) is “seashore”.

How do we know what Greek sounded like?

We can’t assume that the sound system of ancient Greek was the same as that of modern Greek
because all aspects of language, including phonology, change over time. In MGk β is [v] and η is [i]. In
Attic comedy the bleating of sheep is represented as βῆ βῆ. Hesychius has a gloss βηβῆν· πρόβατον.
The verbs μηκάομαι and βληχάομαι “bleat” are probably onomatopoeic. All of this suggests the
sound of η in Classical Greek was [ē̜] — an open “e” as in air — not [i]. (But why does English bleat
have [i]? What does the spelling suggest?).

In MGk φ θ χ are fricatives [f, θ, x] (as in fin, thin, loch) but in Classical Attic Greek they are probably
aspirated stops [ph, th, kh] — how do we know?

1. Statements of grammarians. Although grammarians are mostly post-classical and lack a scientific
descriptive framework they can be useful. Dionysius Thrax (C2 BCE):

α ε η ι ο ω υ are called φωναί (“voices”)

σ is called ἡμίφωνον (“half-a-voice”)

π τ κ are called ἄφωνα (“not-voices”)

But β δ γ are also called ἄφωνα. So φωναί and ἄφωνα don’t correspond to what modern linguists
call voiced (= vocal folds are vibrating) and voiceless (= vocal folds are not vibrating). Instead φωναί
= “vowel”; ἄφωνα corresponds to the modern category stops (sounds produced by blocking the
airstream completely; aka plosives); and ημίφωνον = “continuant”. And φ θ χ are also classed as
ἄφωνα.

1
Dionysius further calls φ θ χ δασέα “rough, shaggy” vs π τ κ which are ψιλά “smooth”. Ps-Aristotle
De audibilibus says φ θ χ “expel the air simultaneously with the sound”. So δασέα = “aspirated”.

2. Transcriptions into Latin. Early Latin borrowings and spellings of Greek names turn φ θ χ into P T
C, e.g. Φίιππος → PILIPVS. Later spelling uses digraphs PH TH CH e.g. PHILIPPVS. But if Latin wanted
to render a sound [f], wouldn’t it use its sign F? (So why do we pronounce Philip with initial [f]?)

3. Other versions of the Greek alphabet. Each polis had its own local variant of the alphabet. What
we think of a “the Greek alphabet” is just the variant used in Athens after a spelling reform of 403
BCE. Other versions (including the one used in Athens before 403 BCE) used the sign Η (eta) not as a
vowel [ē̜] but as the consonant [h] (≈ rough breathing). Some of these use digraphs ΠΗ and ΚH
instead of φ and χ which implies φ = [p] + aspiration and χ = [k] + aspiration.

Why does it matter?

Knowing the phonology allows us to explain various phenomena, e.g.:

Transfer of aspiration. When a word-final π τ κ stands next to a word beginning with a rough
breathing (i.e. an aspirated vowel) it is replaced by the corresponding φ θ χ. Thus frequently οὐκ →
οὐχ.

When a preposition is elided: κατὰ ἡμέραν → καθ’ ἡμέραν, ἐπὶ ἡμῖν → ἐφ’ ἡμῖν.

This is also common in crasis where a word ending in a vowel doesn’t elide but “merges” with a
following word beginning with a vowel: καὶ ὅπως → χὤπως (where ω is the result of the merger of
αι and ο, similar to contraction, and the sign which looks like a smooth breathing is actually called a
coronis).

Mysterious verb and noun forms. Consider the verb ἔχω “I have”:

Present ἔχω
Imperfect εἶχον
Aorist ἔσχον
Future ἕξω

The present, imperfect and aorist have -χ- [kh] and smooth breathing. The future has [k] (in -ξ-) and
rough breathing. The aorist has gained -σ- before the -χ-. This looks very irregular, but from a
historical perspective it’s perfectly regular. The root of the verb is actually *sekh- (the asterisk
indicates a reconstructed rather than attested form).

The initial ἐ- of the aorist is the augment — compare unaugmented infinitive σχεῖν. The aorist has
lost the -ε- of the root (a common way of forming strong aorists, cf. λείπ-ω ~ ἔ-λιπ-ον).

To form the present we take the root and add the person ending: *sekh-ō. The future is formed the
same way with the addition of the -s- marker after the root: *sekh-s-ō. A sound change in Greek
turns /s/ to /h/ when it occurs at the start of a word before a vowel, so:

Present *sekh-ō > *hekh-ō

Future *sek -s-ō > *hekh-s-ō
h

Another sound change in Greek, known as Grassmann’s Law, says that if a word has two aspirates in
a row the first loses its aspiration. Thus present *hekhō > ἔχω (ekhō) by a regular sound change.

2
In the imperfect we augment the root: *e-sekh-on. A sound change deletes between vowels. Why do
we have εἶχον?

The future still has its /h/ — why has Grassmann’s Law not applied? The answer is yet a third sound
change which says that an aspirated stop loses its aspiration when an /s/ follows it; so *hekhsō >
*heksō (call this the aspirate+s rule) The word now has only one aspirate, at the start. The condition
for Grassmann’s Law is no longer met and the initial /h/ is not lost. We know the relative chronology
of these changes (the order they must apply in).

Consider how reduplication works:

Present Perfect
παύω πέ-παυκα “stop”
καλέω κέ-κληκα “call”
τρέφω τέ-τροφα “feed”

What’s the rule for reduplication? So how do you explain the following:

Present Perfect
φύω πέ-φυκα “grow”
χέω κέ-χυμαι “pour”
θάπτω τέ-θαμμαι “bury”

How do you explain the consonant changes in τρέφω “I nourish” vs. future θρέψω, aorist ἔ-τρεψα?

Consider the nom. φύλαξ “guard” and its gen. φύλακος. What is the stem, and how is the
nominative formed. Now explain why the gen. of θρίξ “hair” is τρίχος.

Further reading
W. S. Allen, Vox Graeca. The Pronunciation of Classical Greek. 3d edn. CUP, 1987.

L. R. Palmer, The Greek Language. Faber & Faber, 1980. Ch. 7 and 8.

Philomen Probert, “Phonology”, in Egbert Bakker (ed.) A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language.
Blackwell, 2010. Ch. 7.

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 How Greek Works:
II - Forms—the verb
Some key concepts in Morphology

Morphology is the study of the structure of words and the categories which are realised by them.

Categories (aka dimensions): abstract properties of a word e.g. NUMBER which take one of several
values e.g. {SINGULAR, DUAL, PLURAL}. The possible values of a category/dimension are called
(morphosyntactic) features (aka morphosyntactic categories …)

A morpheme is the smallest possible abstract unit of lexical or grammatical meaning, e.g. the lexical
morpheme {“dog”} or the grammatical morpheme {PLURAL}.

A morph is a string of phonemes which realise a particular morpheme in a particular word-form, e.g.
in /dogz/ {“dog”} is realised by /dog/ and {PLURAL} by /z/; whereas in /kats/ {PLURAL} is realised by
/s/. Both /z/ and /s/ are allomorphs of the {PLURAL} morpheme (cf. phone, phoneme, allophone).
But confusingly some people use “morpheme” for what I’m calling morph as well.

Morph and morpheme

ἐ - λιπ - ε
{PAST} {“λείπω”} {THIRD}
{INDICATIVE} {PERFECTIVE} {SINGULAR}
{INDICATIVE}
{ACTIVE}
{PAST}
Three morphs express seven morphemes. Each morph expresses more than one morpheme
(multiple or cumulative exponence) and some morphemes (e.g. {PAST}) are expressed by multiple
morphs (overlapping or extended exponence).

The lexical item {“λείπω”) has three allomorphs with different values of the ASPECT category:
{IMPERFECTIVE} λειπ-, {PERFECTIVE} λιπ-, {STATIVE} λελοιπ-.

Tense and Aspect

TENSE locates a scenario on a timeline; ASPECT expresses the “internal temporal constituency”: is
the scenario viewed as a process ({IMPERFECTIVE}) or as occurring at a single, unanalysable “blob” of
time ({PERFECTIVE}) or as a state ({STATIVE}) rather than as an event. {IMPERFECTIVE} doesn’t imply
incomplete action (“Fred was singing yesterday [but isn’t today]”) and {PERFECTIVE} doesn’t imply a
momentary action (“Fred sang all day yesterday”).

What we call “tense” is a combination of TENSE and ASPECT:

Aorist ἔλιπε {PAST} {PERFECTIVE}

Imperfect ἔλειπε {PAST} {IMPERFECTIVE}
Present λείπει {PRESENT} {IMPERFECTIVE}
Future λείψει {FUTURE} {IMPERFECTIVE}
Pluperfect ἐλελοίπειν {PAST} {STATIVE}
Perfect λέλοιπε {PRESENT} {STATIVE}
Future Perfect λελείψομαι {FUTURE} {STATIVE}

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Imperfective (“present”) and perfective (“aorist”) stem

For verbs with a “weak aorist” (aka “first aorist” because it is the more common) the perfective stem
is derived from the imperfective stem: λύω ~ ἔ-λυσ-α, τρέφω ~ ἔ-θρεψ-α. Sometimes the -σ- is
disguised by sound change: μένω ~ ἔ-μειν-α < ἔ-μενσ-α by compensatory lengthening.

For other verbs the perfective stem seems to be basic, and the imperfective stem is derived: λείπ-ω
~ ἔ-λιπ-ον, φεύγ-ω ~ ἔ-φυγ-ον, μανθάν-ω ~ ἐ-μάθ-ον, εὑρίσκ-ω ~ ηὗρ-ον, βάλλ-ω ~ ἔ-βαλ-ον.

Sometimes both imperfective and perfective stems are derived:

φυλάσσω < φυλακ-j-ω ἐ-φύλαξα
ἐλπίζω < ἐλ-πιδ-j-ω ἤλπισα
ἁρπάζω < ἁρπαδ-j-ω ἥρπαξα ~ ἥρπασα
στέλλω < στελ-j-ω ἔ-στειλα < ἐ-στελ-σ-α
φθείρω < φθερ-j-ω ἐ-φείρα < ἐ-φθερ-σ-α
καίω < καυ-j-ω ἔ-καυ-σ-α

Some verbs have stems from what are originally different lexical items (suppletion). cf English I go vs
I went: ἔρχομαι ~ ἦλθον, ὁράω ~ εἶδον, λέγω ~ εἶδον. But regular sound change can lead to what
looks synchronically like suppletion but isn’t: *mlō-sk-ō > βλώσκω, aor. ἔ-μολ-ον.

Aorist vs. perfect and pluperfect

The aorist indicative is {PAST} {PERFECTIVE}. Greek makes no distinction between an “I did” and an
“I have done” past perfective. The aorist (not the perfect!) is often the equivalent of an English “I
have done” past tense:

ἔλεγε Ξέρξης τάδε· “ὑμέας νῦν ἔγω συνέλεξα, ἵνα …”

Xerxes spoke as follows: “I have now called you together so that …” (Herodotus 7.8)

ἔδοξε τῇ βουλῇ …
The Council has decided …

Equally all Greek indicatives are absolute tenses. The aorist also expresses an action in the past
anterior to another past action (= English and Latin pluperfect):

τοὺς … Ἱμεραίους ἔπαισαν τοῖς ἐκ τῶν νεῶν τῶν σφετέρων ναυταῖς … ὅπλα παρασχεῖν· τὰς γὰρ
ναῦς ἀνείλκυσαν ἐν Ἱμέρᾳ.
They persuaded the Himerans to provide weapons for the sailors from their ships. For they had
beached their ships at Himera. (Thucydides 7.1.3)

The perfect is {PRESENT} {STATIVE}. It’s sometimes the equivalent of an English “I have done” past
tense, but really expresses a state in the present (possibly but not necessarily as a result of a past
action). It’s not a {PAST} tense — no augment!

ἔτι δὲ χρήματα μὲν ὄλιγα, φίλους δὲ πολλοὺς κέκτηται

As of now, he is in possession of little money but many friends (Isocrates 21.9)

γέγραφε δὲ καὶ ταῦτα ὁ αὐτὸς Θουκυδίδης

The same Thucydides is the author of this too (Thucydides 5.26.1)

τί κέκραγας;
What are you screaming about? (Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazousai 222)

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 πέφυκα “am by nature” φύομαι “grow”
μέμνημαι “remember” μιμνήσκομαι “call to mind”
πέποιθα “trust”
πείθομαι “obey”
ἕστηκα “am standing” ἵσταμαι “come to a standstill”
δέδοικα “fear”
ἔοικα “am likely”
εἴωθα “am used to”
οἶδα “know”

The pluperfect is {PAST} {STATIVE} - a state in the past which may or may not result from an action
in the past:

σπανιώτερα τὰ ἐπιτήδεια ἦν· τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἀνήλωτο, τὰ δὲ διήρπαστο.

The supplies were more scarce: some of them had been consumed, others had been stolen.
(Xenophon Hellenica 6.5.50)

It’s not simply an action in the past anterior to another past action (like the English or Latin
pluperfect). Greek can use a pluperfect for this, if the emphasis is on the resulting state; but it can
also use an imperfect or an aorist if the emphasis is on an imperfective or perfective event:

ἐνταῦθα πόλις ἦν ἐρήμη … ᾤκουν δ’ αὐτὴν τὸ παλαιὸν Μῆδοι. (imperfect)

There there was an abandoned city. Medes had lived there in the past.

τοὺς … Ἱμεραίους ἔπαισαν τοῖς ἐκ τῶν νεῶν τῶν σφετέρων ναυταῖς … ὅπλα παρασχεῖν· τὰς γὰρ
ναῦς ἀνείλκυσαν ἐν Ἱμέρᾳ. (aorist)
They persuaded the Himerans to provide weapons for the sailors from their ships. For they had
beached their ships at Himera. (Thucydides 7.1.3)

The future perfect is {FUTURE} {STATIVE}. It’s not a future action anterior to another future action
(= Latin future perfect) nor necessarily an “I will have done” tense (= English future perfect):

σὲ δὲ ἄλλη τις γυναῖκα κεκτήσεται

Some other women will own you. (Euripides Alcestis 181)

With the exception of ἑστήξω “I will be standing” and τεθνήξω “I will be dead” almost all are
middle/passive.

Further reading
Andrew Spencer, Morphological Theory, Wiley 1991.

Peter Matthew, Morphology, 2nd edn., CUP 1991

Evert van Emde Boas et al. The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek, CUP 2019, ch. 11–20.