The Persistence of Greek Accent

Extract

It is well known that the Greek accent from about the Christian era gradually changed from pitch to stress, and that by about the fourth century stress had become so powerful that, if necessary, quantity was overridden—as in Modern Greek: e.g. νθρωπος came to be pronounced ánthrǒpus, and Xenophon's εЗωνοι are now éfzǒni.

This fact has had some interesting consequences. The influence of Greek was not confined to the Byzantine Empire; even in the West the majority of slaves and freedmen would be Greek-speaking: St. Paul writes to the Christians at Rome in Greek: the Epistle of Clement in the next generation is in Greek, and all the men's names in Petronius are Greek (or Oriental). Vulgar Latin became infiltrated with Greek words, which sometimes assumed characteristic Vulgar Latin forms: e.g. μθοσ > muttus > mot; χωλόπος (stressed on the second syllable) > cloppus > clocker, clopin—forms only explicable by assuming a strong stress accent.¹

As popular influence became ever more overwhelming, we find that even those who must have known better scanned Greek words as they pronounced them: e.g. Ausonius trigǒnus, tetragǒnus, Prudentius Asclepiādem. Sidonius Apollinaris has been much ridiculed for assumed ignorance in scanning Euripīdis: it was not ignorance (we know, for instance, that he read Menander with his son), but the actual pronunciation of his day, both Latin and Greek.

Christians normally scanned abssus, erěmus, idǒlum: even in the time of Plautus we regularly find Phílppus (the coin). Similarly būtrum (βούτρον) > Fr. beurre: Eng. butter seems to have come straight from Vulgar Latin (via Vulgate ?).