Greek Fire

(-fir.) (Pyrotech.) A highly inflammable and combustible composition, supposed to have originally consisted of bitumen, or asphaltum, nitre, and sulphur. It was projected either on blazing tow, tied to arrows, or through a tube, the precursor of cannon. Wherever the combustible fell, it made great havoc, from the inextinguishable nature of the fire. It was invented by the Greeks in the reign of the third Const an tine, and was used with destructive effects (if we may believe the extraordinary accounts handed down to us) against the Arabs and Turks; and later, by the Saracens, against Richard Cœur-de-Lion's crusading army at Acre. A somewhat similar composition is employed to charge the modern bomb-shells. Greek Language. The G. L. is a branch of that widespread family of tongues usually called Aryan or Indo-Germanic. It prevailed not only in the different parts of Greece, but also in the numerous Greek colonies which fringed the shores of the Euxine and the Mediterranean. From the great number of Hellenic tribes of the same race, it was to be expected that there would be different dialects; and it is customary to distinguish three principal ones, according to the three leading branches of the Greeks, the Eolic, the Doric, and the Ionic, to which is added the Attic. At what time this language first began to be expre ed in writing has long been a subject of doubt. According to the general opinion, Cadmus, the Phœnician, introduced the alphabet into Greece. His alphabet consisted of but 16 letters; 4 more are said to have been invented by Palamedes in the Trojan war, and 4 by Simon ides, of Ceos. As the Ionians first adopted these letters, the alphabet with 24 is called the lo nic. In Homer's time all knowledge, religion, and laws were preserved by memory alone, and for that reason were clothed in verse, till prose was introduced with the art of writing. In Poetry the chief writers were Homer (long the reputed author of the Iliad and the Ody ey, but his individuality has been doubted); Hesiod, who wrote the " Works and Days," more than 200 years B. c.; Sappho, Alcæus, and A nacre on, writers of lyrics in the 6th cent. B. c.; Simon ides, another writer of lyrical pieces; Pindar, who composed odes; Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripi des, who wrote tragedies; and Aris toph anes, a writer of comedies; these flourished in the 5th century B.c.; Bion, Moschus, and Theocritus, who wrote idyls; Call i mach us, hymns and epigrams, in the 3d cent. B. C. In other departments of literature, the following were the leading men whose writings have survived: Hero dot us and Thucydides, both historians in the 5th cent.B.C.; Xenophon, the historian; I so crates, Demosthenes, and Æchines, orators; Plato and Aristotle, philosophers, in the 4th cent. B. C.; Euclid and A poll on i us, mathematicians, in the 3d cent. B.c.; Polybius, the historian, in the 2d cent. B. c.; Diodorus Siculus, the historian, in the 1st cent. B. c.; Strabo andPausanias, geographers; Plutarch, the biographer; and Epictetus, the philosopher, in the 1st century after Christ; Lucian, a writer of dialogues; Ptolemy, the geographer; Arrian, the historian; Galen, the physician; and M. Aurelius Ant on in us, the philosopher, in the 2d cent. after Christ. In this and the following centuries flourished the Fathers of the Church (see FATHERS), and a number of minor writers on Greek, whom want of space obliges us to pa by, except Heliodor us, who, in the 4th cent. of our era, wrote " The a genes and Chariclæa," the first of extant novels. The G. L. seem sto have preserved its purity longer than any other known to us. But this majestic dialect ceased to exist as a living language when Constantinople was taken by the Turks in A. D. 1453, and in the lower cla es only did the common Greek survive the dialect of the polished cla es. But the liberation of Greece has done much to revive the knowledge of its noble tongue in the regions in which it was originally spoken. The Romaic or modern Greek, in which the ancient letters are still used, like the Italian or modern Latin, differs from the anc. chiefly in having exchanged the terminations of the different cases, ., for prepositions. In it, also, accents are confounded, and, though marked, are not noticed in pronunciation; diphthongs, anciently distinct, have the same pronunciation, ei, oi, é, and u, being pronounced e; the form and signification of ancient words are changed in various ways, the dual number and oblique cases are lost; auxiliaries have and will are employed to indicate the past and future; personal pronouns are used with verbs; and orthography is without fixed rules. But it differs le from the original Greek than the Italian from the Latin. The dialect of the common people is the least corrupt; that of Attic a is the worst. [s. 423]