Introduction:
Read more...The following discussion falls into three main parts. The first (§1) makes an inventory of all the forms in the two epics which show a specific phonological innovation that is independently attributable to comparatively recent Ionic. The second (§2) is an attempt, for the sake of completeness, to specify in some detail the precise phonological history – which has been debated – of the innovatory forms in question. The final section (§3), which constitutes the main purpose of the exercise, examines the inner-Homeric dictional status of these Neo-Ionic forms and on that basis proposes an account of exactly how – and to some extent why – they entered the epic repertory and spread there.