Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers (review)

Reviews 253 However, his introductory discussion of masturbation as 'a specific sexual activity, shown in the process of becoming psychologically fraught' (p. 246) again asks the reader to assent to either a brilliantly transhistoricist Lacan, or a precociously modern Early Modern mindset. Also, while the extended intertextual examination of the use of the owl in Early Modern texts shows an admirable attention to detail and intertextual breadth, it unfortunately offers thin proof for Hillman's contentions. Like much of this book, Hillman's enthusiasm and flair for close textual and intertextual reading (evident in his previous books) are often weakened by the obligatory theoretical gloss. Still, those w h o are very well versed in either Lacan, or any (or all) of the texts Hillman focuses on should find this book useful to some degree. Christine Couche Scarborough Western Australia Horrocks, Geoffrey, Greek: A History of the Language and its Speaker (Longman Linguistic .Library), L o n d o n and N e w York, Longman, 1997; pp. xxi, 393; 1 map; R.R.P. £19.99. This is a fascinating volume which gives a thorough overview of the history of developments in the Greek language within their cultural context from the Mycenaean period until the present day. Each section is illustrated by one of more passages from selected texts, which are given in the original, translated into English, and transcribed in the pronunciation of their time with a further literal translation following the word order of the original. Furthermore, detailed historical summaries introduce the reader to the civilisations of Byzantium and Modern Greece and the factors 254 Reviews within them which influenced linguistic change. Though there are sections of some technical complexity, the work as a whole is extremely readable. The brief summary of the prehistory and early development of Greek is followed by a look at the official and literary 'standards' of classical Greek and the rise of Attic as a literary standard and administrative language. Horrocks then continues with an in-depth study of Greek in the Hellenistic world, not omitting a discussion of the ancient Greek dialects, including Macedonian. Inscriptions from the Hellenistic and R o m a n worlds, such as IG VII 3352, IX.ii.517, and SIG 11.646, illustrate dialectical" variation within the koine, sound changes, and morphological developments. The Septuagint is also discussed as an example of the koine as a literary dialect. Private documents of the relatively uneducated provide valuable information about the evolution of the spoken koine in the R o m a n period, while Epictetus, the N e w Testament and later Christian literature are used as examples of 'colloquial' literature and different stylistic levels. The passages studied under the heading of 'Byzantines belles lettres', illustrating the 'centrality of the ancient Greek literary tradition in high Byzantine culture', comprise the three rather obvious examples of Procopius, Psellos, and Anna Komnene. (Niketas Choniates, that master of Byzantine prose writing, is not even in the index.) The chapter on 'Middle Styles in Byzantium', however, is far more imaginatively constructed, and sections from Malalas, Theophanes Confessor, Moschos, St Germanos (Patr. 71530 ), Constantine Porphyrogennetos' De administrando imperio, and Kekaumenos are used to demonstrate the characteristic features of the chronographic and hagiographic style. Further in-depth knowledge of Byzantine civilisation is shown by the appearance of a passage from the Palaiologan 'metaphrasis' of the Alexiad, in Reviews 255 which Anna Komnene's work was rewritten into a more readerfriendly register, thus demonstrating the return of a wider reading public in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries w h o were unable to cope with the intricacies of archaising literature. Academic Greek in the late period is here represented by Maximos Planudes and official Greek of the later empire by a decree of Andronikos II ( M M VI, 248). Horrocks argues that the range of middle-register writing in Byzantium was 'not the product of more or less incompetent archaizing, but rather reflected a continuously evolving tradition that was subject to conventions controlling the mix of ancient and modern according to period, register, and style' (p. 204). A key theme of this work is the development of the koine into a single standard language...