Multimaterial cements

Back to Greece. Nobody tells us explicitly that the Peloponnesian War brought about the two linguistic consequences of self-differentiation and devaluation of the other's language. In a typological perspective, however, this is not unlikely given the socio-psychological or anthropological similarities with the situations just described. Both language and dialect were clearly felt to be indicators of national and tribal identity. We gather this, for

152 On an isolated attack in 1735 against the word bluff see Mencken (1963: 3–4).

153 Even mere spelling reforms can provoke similar reactions: in November 2000, the British Qualifications and CurriculumAuthority wished to introduce the American (and in the former case etymologically preferable) spellings fetus and sulfate for foetus and sulphate into national school examinations to bring schools in line with international scientific convention, but after immediate violent reactions the School Standards minister was forced to intervene and halt the new guidelines (source: The Independent, Saturday, 25 November 2000).

instance, from the Athenians' famous promise to Sparta to remain faithful to Greece against the Persians: Greek identity is here based on genetic origins and on linguistic community, ὁμογλωσσία (Hdt. 8.144). The same idea that language mirrors ethnic identity and genetic relationships is found very often elsewhere too (Hdt. 2.2, 2.42, 2.105, 4.108, 4.117, 6.138, 7.70, Xanthus of Lydia, FGrH 765 F 15, Hes. fr. 9 M.–W.) and ultimately reflected even in the term βάρβαρος (E. Hall 1989a: 9–10). Furthermore, Morpurgo Davies (1987: 16–18) has shown that an abstract linguistic concept of ‘Greek’ must have existed by the end of the fifth century. Perhaps the most revealing, though often neglected, evidence for the importance of language as a symbol of identity is the fact that everybody, including women and slaves, could become initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, provided he or she could make him- or herself understood in Greek (fωνὴν συνετός: Cels. ap. Orig. 3.59; cf. Hdt. 8.65).

As for the symbolic function of Greek dialects, we read in one of Thucydides' speeches how the rowers on Athenian ships, who were not genetically Athenians, were stimulated to fight for Athens because ‘you have been taken for Athenians and admired throughout Hellas thanks to your knowledge of our language and your cultural assimilation’

(Thuc. 7.63.3: ᾽Αθηναῖοι νομιζόμενοι καὶ μὴ ὄντες ἡμῶν τῆς τε fωνῆς τῇ ἐπιστήμῃ καὶ τῶν τρόπων τῇ μιμήσει ἐθαυμάζεσθε κατὰ τὴν ῾Ελλάδα). In Eupolis' Demes a demagogue is denounced as speaking Attic only in order to be socially acceptable (fr. 99.25; cf. Ar. Ran. 678–81; Ehrenberg 1962: 160–1; Colvin 1999: 36). And during the Peloponnesian War, the two sides were so much associated with linguistic divisions that language acquired strategic importance. In attacking the Dorian Ampraciots, the Athenian general Demosthenes put the Messenians, Dorian allies of Athens, into the front lines; they were to deceive the enemy's outposts by addressing them in their Doric dialect (Thuc. 3.112.3–4;

cf. Thuc. 4.3.3, 4.41.2). The Athenians, in turn, were terrified by the warlike Doric paean of their own Dorian allies in a battle near Syracuse: the enemy suddenly seemed to be everywhere (Thuc. 7.44.6).¹⁵⁴

154 Such passages argue against the views of Hainsworth (1967: 64–5) and J. M. Hall (1997: 170–7) that categories like ‘Doric’, ‘Aeolic’, or ‘Ionic’ had no common linguistic denominator for a speaker of Greek. Hainsworth neglects the fact that the existence of names for local dialects (e.g. Megarian, Corinthian, Laconian) does not exclude another more general classification (e.g. Doric, Aeolic, Ionic), and Hall's reasoning that terms like ‘Doric’ or ‘Ionic’ could not be linguistic in character because ‘it seems barely credible that the Greeks were capable of using linguistic criteria to assign local dialects to dialect groups’ is purely academic. Every adult speaker of Swiss German is capable of establishing general groups like ‘Eastern Swiss German’ for a whole range of dialects (which he or she might well be able to locate more precisely, e.g. ‘St Gall’,

‘Thurgau’, etc.), even though (a ) he or she could not define the relevant isoglosses, and (b ) there is no such thing as an ‘Eastern Swiss’ ethnic identity.

To be sure, in order to find out precisely how much linguistic self-differentiation was going on during the Peloponnesian War, we should need much more material, especially for the language of Sparta. J. M. Hall (1997: 180) boldly suggests that the Laconian linguistic conservatismmight be a ‘conscious and deliberate process, specifically designed to maintain a distinct Lakonian identity and to identify the Spartans as the true Dorians of the Peloponnese’.

In fact, Aristophanes' speakers of Doric very often¹⁵⁵use the dialect word λῶ ‘to wish’, and never the Doric equivalent of Attic βούλομαι, which is attested as δήλομαι in a fourth-century inscription fromthe Tarentine colony (i.e. Laconian granddaughter colony) Herakleia in Lucania (DGE 62.146)—but obviously Aristophanes had, within the limits of linguistic realism, every interest in making the Laconians' speech sound as exotic as possible. The epigraphic divergences between Messenian and Laconian, which seemingly contradict Thucydides' view (4.3.3) that Messenians and Laconians are ὁμόfωνοι, have also been explained as a result of self-differentiation in the early fourth century when the Messenian helots fought for independence (Katičić 1959: 135–6). In this light the ‘Ionicization’ of Attic at the end of the fifth century acquires a new dimension too. It coincides in time with a war where the ethnic frontlines were clear and where it was exceptional that the Argives fought as ‘Dorians against Dorians with the Athenians who are Ionians’ (Thuc. 7.57.9; cf. 1.124.1, 4.61.2, 5.9.1, 6.6.2, 6.77.1, 7.57).¹⁵⁶Was the high prestige of Ionic culture the only reason for ‘reinventing Attic’? And is it not likely that the official adoption of the Ionic alphabet in Athens shortly after the war was a paralinguistic act of differentiation fromthe victorious Dorians?¹⁵⁷

155 Lys. 95, 981, 1105, 1162, 1163, 1188 (but 1080 σέλει ); cf. Ach. 749, 766, 772, 776, 788, 814; Colvin (1999: 244).

156 Cf. Ollier (1933: 78), Rawson (1969: 16), Alty (1982). The ‘Ionian’ identity of Athens is of course established much earlier: Solon fr. 4a West; Connor (1993: 198–201).

157 Cf. D'Angour (1999: 119–25); similarly Roesch, in Taillardat–Roesch (1966: 78–87), argues that Boeotia, threatened by Sparta, officially adopted the Ionic alphabet in 395 or 394 in order to display its goodwill towards its new ally Athens.

Evidence for the depreciation of the enemy's language should not be expected from the Athenian women in Lysistrata.

They must display solidarity, not hatred. But perhaps the name of the enemy serves as a linguistic substitute for their language. When one of Aristophanes' narrow-minded Athenians hears ‘Sparta’ or ‘Laconian’, the reaction is always the same—and always derided by the poet.¹⁵⁸In Wasps Philokleon almost has a stroke when his son Bdelykleon wants him to wear a better type of shoes, called Λακωνικαί (Vesp. 1157–60):

(Βδ.) ἄγε νυν, ὑπολύου τὰς καταράτους ἐμβάδας, τασδὶ δ᾽ ἁνύσας ὑπόδυθι τὰς Λακωνικάς.

(Φι.) ἐγὼ γὰρ ἂν τλαίην ὑποδύσασθαί ποτε ἐχθρῶν παρ᾽ ἀνδρῶν δυσμενῆ καττύματα;

(Bd.) Come now, take off those damned shoes, and hurry up and get into these Laconians.

(Ph.) What, how could I ever endure to put on ‘the hateful soles that fromour foemen come?’

Similarly an unnamed Attic patriot, in a fragment from Aristophanes' Farmers, exclaims (Ar. fr. 110):

… συκᾶς fυτεύω πάντα πλὴν Λακωνικῆς^. τοῦτο γὰρ τὸ σῦκον ἐχθρόν ἐστι καὶ τυραννικόν.

οὐ γὰρ ἦν ἂν μικρόν, εἰ μὴ μισόδημον ἦν σfόδρα.

I plant all kinds of figs—apart fromthe Laconian: for this fig is an enemy, a tyrant. It would not be so small if it did not detest democracy.

And Euelpides' suggestion to name the birds' new state ‘Sparta’ is rejected by a horrified Peisetairos (Av. 812–15):

(Εὐ.) fέρ᾽ ἴδω, τί δ᾽ ἡμῖν ὄνομ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἔσται τῇ πόλει;

βούλεσθε τὸ μέγα τοῦτο τοὐκ Λακεδαίμονος Σπάρτην ὄνομα καλῶμεν αὐτήν; (Πε.) ῾Ηράκλεις^. σπάρτην γὰρ ἂν θείμην ἐγὼ τἠμῇ πόλει;

οὐδ᾽ ἂν χαμεύνῃ. …

158 On the image of Sparta in comedy see Ollier (1933: 61–3, 71–2); Rawson (1969: 25–6); Harvey (1994).

(Eu.) Well, let's see, what shall we have as our city's name? Do you want us to call it by that great Lacedaemonian name—Sparta?

(Peis.) Heracles! Do you think I'd use Sparta as a name for my city? I wouldn't even use esparto cords for a bedstead. …

If we treat all these cultural and literary indications as cumulative evidence and add to them the sociolinguistic patterns that have been observed cross-culturally in more recent ethnic conflicts, it seems safe enough to suppose that the language of the Spartan arch-enemy must have provoked a highly negative psychological response in the average Athenian. In their historical context the dialect parts of Lysistrata are an emotional bomb.