A GRAMMAR OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE. PART FIRST. A PRACTICAL GRAMMAR OF THE ATTIC AND COMMON DIALECTS, BY ALPHEUS CROSBY, PROFESSOR OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY BY EXCHANGE JAN 8 1937 "The LANGUAGE OF THE GREEKS was truly like themselves, it was conformable to their transcendent and universal Genius. * * * * THE GREEK TONGUE, from its propriety and universality, is made for all that is great, and all that is beautiful, in every Subject, and under every Form of writing."— Harris's Hermes, Bk. III. Ch. 5. "Greek, the shrine of the genius of the old world; as universal as our race, as individual as ourselves; of infinite flexibility, of indefatigable strength, with the complication and the distinctness of nature herself; to which nothing was vulgar, from which nothing was excluded; speaking to the ear like Italian, speaking to the mind like English; with words like pictures, with words like the gossamer film of the summer; at once the variety and picturesqueness of Homer, the gloom and the intensity of Eschylus; not compressed to the closest by Thucydides, not fathomed to the bottom by Plato, not sounding with all its thunders, nor lit up with all its ardors even under the Promethean touch of Demosthenes! - Coleridge's Study of the Greek Classic Poets, Gen. Introd. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1841, by in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE: UNIVERSITY PRESS. PREFACE. THE volume which is here offered to the public is designed to contain, 1. the Elements of General Grammar, 2. the Rules of Greek Grammar, so far as they apply to the Attic and Common Dialects, and 3. a Series of Tables illustrative of Greek Inflection. The importance of the study of General Grammar as an introduction to the Philosophy of the Mind, and an essential part of it, is too universally acknowledged to require any argument in its favor. And there is scarcely less unanimity in the belief, that the principles of General Grammar are best studied, at first, in connexion with a particular language, and that no language, either ancient or modern, illustrates them so well as the Greek. An additional motive for incorporating these principles in the present work, has been the wish to provide a manual for the study of the Greek, which should demand no previous acquaintance with the grammar, either of the Latin or of any other language. Without agitating the question, what language should be first made the subject of formal study, there are so many who are disposed to give the precedence to the Greek, that, at least, facilities ought to be furnished for such a course. At the same time, from a regard to those who may prefer a different method, the |