Language and the Ancient Greeks and On the Decipherment of Linear B (A Pair of Essays)

Language and Ancient Greeks

This historical essay reviews the development of the art and science of grammar and philosophical views toward language among the Ancient Greeks. Although the early Greek writers, including Homer and Hesiod, commented on language (for example, in the Iliad Homer referred to the Miletians and other Ionians as "barbarophonoi," literally, “foreign speaking”), it was not until the fifth century B.C. that the explicit study of language emerged in Ancient Greece when rh...