The Use of Gamma in Place of Digamma in Ancient Greek

Mnemosyne (2020) 1-22 brill.com/mnem The Use of Gamma in Place of Digamma in Ancient Greek Francesco Camagni University of Manchester, UK [email protected] Received August 2019 | Accepted March 2020 Abstract Originally, Ancient Greek employed the letter digamma ( ϝ) to represent the /w/ sound. Over time, this sound disappeared, alongside the digamma that denoted it. However, to transcribe those archaic, dialectal, or foreign words that still retained this sound, lexicographers employed other letters, whose sound was close enough to /w/. Among these, there is the letter gamma (γ), attested mostly but not only in the Lexicon of Hesychius. Given what we know about the sound of gamma, it is difficult to explain this use. The most straightforward hypothesis suggests that the scribes who copied these words misread the capital digamma (Ϝ) as gamma (Γ). Presenting new and old evidence of gamma used to denote digamma in Ancient Greek literary and documentary papyri, lexicography, and medieval manuscripts, this paper refutes this hypothesis, and demonstrates that a peculiar evolution in the pronunciation of gamma in Post-Classical Greek triggered a systematic use of this letter to denote the sound once represented by the digamma. Keywords Ancient Greek language – gamma – digamma – Greek phonetics – Hesychius – lexicography © Francesco Camagni, 2020 | doi:10.1163/1568525X-bja10018 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0Downloaded license. from Brill.com09/30/2021 01:54:17PM via free access 2 Camagni 1 Introduction It is well known that many ancient Greek dialects preserved the /w/ sound into the historical period, contrary to Attic-Ionic and Koine Greek. This sound can be found usually in dialectal inscriptions, represented by the letter digamma (Ϝ). However, after Koine Greek replaced all other varieties of Greek, the sound /w/ disappeared alongside the digamma that represented it. The only exception is represented by those dialectal words attested in poetry and in lexi- cographical glosses. In these words the sound /w/ is represented in a variety of ways, such as by the letter beta (β), upsilon (υ), omicron-upsilon (ου), or gamma (γ). This paper focusses on the use of gamma to replace the letter digamma, and to represent the /w/ sound in general. This spelling is attested particularly in the Lexicon of Hesychius and certain scholarship believes it is a scribal blun- der, originating in the confusion between the shape of capital gamma (Γ) and digamma (Ϝ).1 Contrary to this theory, this paper will argue that from the second century bc onwards, the voiced velar plosive /g/, represented by the letter gamma (γ), occasionally came to sound like /w/, usually in intervocalic position after a rounded vowel. As a consequence, the letter gamma was at times employed to represent the sound /w/—mostly in dialectal Greek and foreign words, but also as a reinforcement to the Greek diphthongs αυ and ευ, when pronounced /aw/ and /ew/. This paper illustrates and defends the theory of this phonetic shift—already advanced by Gignac2—and extends it to explain the philological question of gamma used in place of digamma. This argument is substantiated by new and old evidence of gamma used to denote digamma and the sound /w/ in general, found in Ancient Greek literature, ancient lexicography and grammar, literary and documentary papyri, and medieval manuscripts. The paper begins by sketching the history of the digamma, for the benefit of those readers who are not well-acquainted with the question. Next, it re- views the available evidence regarding the theoretical knowledge around the digamma possessed by the ancient grammarians and lexicographers, from the first century bc until the Byzantine era. This review aims to evaluate the extent of their theoretical knowledge, in order to assess whether grammarians and scribes failed to recognise the sound /w/ as the one once represented by digamma, thus using other letters to denote this sound. 1 E.g. Sophocles 1854, 21-22; Clayman 1978, 396; Sihler 1995, 183. 2 Gignac 1970, 189; 1976, 74. 10.1163/1568525X-bja10018 |Downloaded Mnemosyne from Brill.com09/30/2021 (2020) 1-22 01:54:17PM via free access The Use of Gamma in Place of Digamma in Ancient Greek 3 Subsequently, the paper provides a brief overview of the graphic solutions adopted to replace the digamma, and introduces the core topic of this discus- sion, that is the letter gamma attested in place of digamma. After discussing the current theories surrounding this question, the paper then proceeds to present the argument for discarding the theory of the scribal mistake. It does so by providing and discussing old and new evidence that indicates that this unorthodox use of gamma is linked to the phonetic evolution of the sound represented by gamma (i.e. /g/), which under some circumstances came to coin- cide with the sound once denoted by digamma (i.e. /w/), through a process of combined fricativisation (or spirantisation) and labialisation (or rounding) of the velar stop, triggered by its proximity to a rounded vowel. The set of the evidence comprises instances of gamma used to represent the /w/ sound found in: (1) the Lexicon of Hesychius; (2) documentary papyri from Egypt from the second century bc to the seventh century ad; (3) medieval Greek manuscripts; (4) a second century bc handwritten ostracon that contains a fragment by Sappho; (5) a second century ad inscription by poet Iulia Balbilla; (6) Ancient Greek transcriptions of Latin words; and (7) Modern Greek transcriptions of English words. Finally, in order to provide a parallel from historical linguistics, the theory of the development of the velar plosive /g/ into the voiced labiovelar approximant /w/ in Post-Classical Greek is compared with the opposite evolution of /w/ into /g/, which can be observed in some Romance languages, in Armenian, and in some Celtic and Germanic languages. 2 Background: A Brief History of the Letter Digamma Ancient Greek inherited from Indo-European the sound /w/, the voiced labiovelar approximant also present in Latin: e.g. uicus, ‘neighbourhood’, ‘village’ (pronounced /ˈwi:kus/).3 Mycenaean Greek, the earliest attested form of Greek, still retained this sound at the end of the second millennium bc: e.g. wa-na- ka, corresponding to Attic ἄναξ, ‘lord, master’, and Doric ϝάναξ (pronounced /ˈwanaks/).4 In the mid eighth century bc, when alphabetic Greek is first attested, almost all of the Greek dialects with the exception of Attic-Ionic still retained the /w/ sound. It was represented by a sign commonly called digamma ( ϝ), due to its capital epigraphic shape (Ϝ), which resembles a capital gamma (Γ) with an added horizontal stroke—hence the name: ‘twofold gamma’. 3 Sihler 1995, 178 and 182. 4 Attested in glosses (e.g. D.H. 1.20.3-4) and inscriptions (e.g. IG VII 3187). Mnemosyne (2020) 1-22 | 10.1163/1568525X-bja10018 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 01:54:17PM via free access 4 Camagni The /w/ sound and its graphic representation ( ϝ) disappeared first from Attic-Ionic, in which the letter is already absent in the earliest attestations of this dialect.5 Following the conquests of Alexander the Great, Attic-Ionic came to constitute the base for Koine Greek, a trans-regional language that substi- tuted most of the Greek dialects, and became the main variety of Greek. For this reason, Koine Greek and the later forms of Greek lack the /w/ sound, while the letter digamma remained in use to denote only the numeral six, although in a different graphic variant (ŝ). In contrast to Attic-Ionic, the digamma is attested in most of the Greek dialects, primarily in inscriptions. The letter digamma and the sound it represented disappeared first in consonant clusters; afterwards between vowels; and lastly in initial position before a vowel, where it persisted well into the Post-Classical period, as late as the second century bc. In addition, a relic of the sound uniquely survived to date in Tsakonian, a rural Laconian dialect.6 Here, it can be observed for example in βάννε, ‘lamb’, pronounced /ˈvane/,7 where /v/ is an evolution of ancient /w/, attested in Cretan ϝαρήν, ‘lamb’, and Mycenaean we-re-ne-ja, ‘made of sheepskin’.8 3 What Ancient Grammarians Knew about Digamma In order to understand how the sound /w/ came to be denoted by gamma, it may be useful to observe to what extent the ancient grammarians were acquainted with the digamma, and with the words that retained this sound— because the alternative forms of denoting the sound /w/ are likely to have originated from a gap in the grammarians’ knowledge about digamma. The digamma did not abruptly disappear from the Greek language. Its prac- tical use died out alongside the writing of Greek dialects. As late as the second and third century ad, it is still possible to find—albeit rarely—instances of digamma in literary papyri containing Aeolic and Doric poetry.9 At any rate, from the first century bc until at least the sixth century ad, the ancient grammarians preserved some theoretical knowledge about the digamma. Observations about digamma are made, for example, by Dionysius 5 Sihler 1995, 182; Colvin 2007, 37. 6 On Tsakonian see Pernot 1934. 7 Comparable to βάννεια, ‘lamb meat’ (Hsch. β 195). 8 Sihler 1995, 182-183. 9 E.g. Corinna in P.Berol. inv. 13284 (2nd c. AD); Corinna in P.Oxy. 12.2370 (ca. 200 AD); Sappho in P.Oxy. 1.7 (3rd c. AD). 10.1163/1568525X-bja10018 |Downloaded Mnemosyne from Brill.com09/30/2021 (2020) 1-22 01:54:17PM via free access The Use of Gamma in Place of Digamma in Ancient Greek 5 of Halicarnassus,10 Apollonius Dyscolus,11 Quintilian,12 Priscian,13 and the Byzantine scholiast to Dionysius Thrax.14 These observations suggest that the use of digamma was already obsolete, mostly a relic of the Doric and Aeolic poetry, hence worthy of explanatory remarks in treatises on historical grammar.

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