The Mycenaean script dropped out of use in the 12th century when the Mycenaean palaces were destroyed, perhaps in connection with the Dorian invasions. For a few centuries the Greeks seem to have been illiterate.

In the 8th century at the latest but probably much earlier, the Greeks borrowed their alphabet from the Phoenicians in the framework of their commercial contacts. The Phoenician alphabet had separate signs for the Semitic consonants, but the vowels were left unexpressed. The list of Semitic consonants was adapted to the needs of Greek phonology, but the major innovation was the use of five letters with the value of vowels—α (a), ε (e), ι (i), ο (o), υ (u). The earliest datable inscriptions, both from approximately 725 bce, come from Athens (the Dipylon vase) and the colony of Ischia in the Tyrrhenian Sea (the so-called Nestor’s cup).

During the period from the 8th to the 5th century bce, there were local differences in the forms of the letters and in their values from one city to another. Moreover, the primitive Greek alphabet underwent various reforms—the creation of new letters or a new use of old letters, first ϕ (ph), χ (ch), then ξ (ks), ψ (ps), η (ē), and ω (ō). About 400 bce the alphabet became normalized throughout the Greek world as the Asiatic Ionic form was uniformly adopted.

Greek alphabetic inscriptions are numbered in tens of thousands: dedications, epitaphs, decrees, laws, treaties, religious rules, judicial decisions, and so forth. The majority are of Hellenistic or Roman date. The less numerous Archaic inscriptions (8th–5th centuries bce) are of particular interest for their contribution to the knowledge of the dialects. It is only in Hellenistic papyri, and later in Byzantine manuscripts, that the great works of ancient literature (the originals of which have disappeared) are available in the form of copies, some of which are far removed from the originals.

The Greek alphabet, still in use today in Greece in the form it reached during the Hellenistic period, has enjoyed an extraordinary success as a direct or indirect model for other alphabets (notably the Latin alphabet); on it are based the writing systems employed in a great part of the modern world.

History and development

From the end of the 4th century bce onward, in the Hellenistic period, Greek gradually obtained a high degree of unity throughout the area it covered (see Koine). In the preceding 10 centuries there had been numerous Greek dialects, which differed in phonetic and morphological details but which were mutually intelligible. The features shared by the local speech of different regions allow the delineation of dialect groups, of which the Greeks themselves were aware. The classifications of modern scholars modify in various ways the classifications made by the ancients but still retain these as their basis. Among the dialects there are a West group, an Aeolic group, an Arcado-Cypriot group, and an Ionic-Attic group. Modern scholars have tried in various ways to combine some of these groups—for example, by considering Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot as varieties of “central” Greek or by considering Arcado-Cypriot and Ionic-Attic as varieties of “southern” Greek and West Greek and Aeolic as varieties of “northern” Greek.

In regard to the dialects, two very different situations must be distinguished: that established for the period between the 14th and the 12th century bce and that for the period between the 8th and the 4th century bce.

In Mycenaean times the carriers of West Greek (ancestors of the Dorians and of their relatives) were still living around the Pindus Mountains. In Eastern Thessaly, Boeotia, Attica, and the Peloponnesus and on certain Aegean islands (notably Crete), only varieties of Greek other than West Greek were spoken. The tablets reveal a somewhat artificial chancellery language current in the palace offices and taught as a written language in scribal training. Based essentially on a dialect of the type that was eventually called Arcado-Cypriot, it shows great uniformity in time (during the two centuries or thereabouts covered by documents) and in space (from Knossos to Thebes). The language of the tablets must have been based on the language of the Achaean rulers who inhabited the Mycenaean palaces. The problem of the geographic distribution of the various other forms of spoken Greek in Mycenaean times does not yet have a final solution.

There followed two great events that upset the dialectal distribution within the Greek world. First, about 1100 bce the Dorian invasions brought speakers of West Greek southward, then into the Peloponnese, and finally into the Aegean. Some pre-Dorian Greek populations were expelled from their homes and emigrated eastward to the west coast of Anatolia and to Cyprus. Others, who remained where they were, became more or less thoroughly Dorian in speech. It has long been thought that some of the features that West Thessalian and, even more, Boeotian (both of which are Aeolic) shared in the 1st millennium with West Greek can be attributed to “recent” influences; on the other hand, some Doric dialects of the 1st millennium (e.g., in Crete) show sporadic traces of features attributable to an Arcado-Cypriot substratum. The other subsequent event, which is of a different sort, was the great colonization movement that began in the 8th century bce. Each group of emigrants took the speech of its mother city and planted it in the new foundation. Thus, there developed side by side on the shores of southern Italy and Sicily a totally new grouping of Greek dialects—Euboean Ionic at Cumae; Laconian Doric at Tarentum and Heraclea; Achaean at Sybaris, Croton, and Metapontum; Locrian at Locri Epizephyrii; Corinthian Doric at Syracuse; and so on.

Toward the middle of the 1st millennium bce, the geographic distribution of the dialects (insofar as they are known directly through inscriptions) is, briefly, as follows:

• (1) North-West Greek: Aetolia, Locris (colony—Locri Epizephyrii), Phocis,
• (2) Saronic Doric: the territory of Corinth (colonies—Corcyra, Syracuse), the Megarid (colonies—Megara Hyblaea, Selinus, Byzantium), Eastern Argolid,
• (3) Western Argolid,
• (4) South-East Aegean Doric: Melos and Thera (colony—Cyrene), Cos, Rhodes (colonies—Gela, Acragas),
• (5) Crete,
• (6) Laconia (colonies—Tarentum, Heraclea), Messenia,
• (7) Achaea (colonies—Ithaca, Sybaris),
• (8) Elis.

• (1) Boeotia,
• (2) Thessaly,
• (3) Lesbos and Asiatic Aeolis.

• (1) Arcadia,
• (2) Cyprus,
• (3) Pamphylia (mixed with West Greek and Aeolic).

• (1) Attica,
• (2) Euboea (colonies—Catana, Cumae),
• (3) Northern Cyclades,
• (4) Asiatic Ionia (colonies—foundations in Pontus [Black Sea]).

This linguistic circumstance in the first half of the 1st millennium bce caused literature to develop on a dialect basis. The Homeric epic displays an artificial dialect based on Asiatic Ionic but interspersed with Aeolic and even Mycenaean elements inherited from a long oral tradition. Choral lyric also uses an artificial dialect, which is based on Doric but interspersed with many elements from Ionic epic and some from Lesbian poetry. Prose developed first in Ionic surroundings (Herodotus, Hippocrates), then in Attica (Thucydides, Plato). The dialect of dialogue in Attic tragedy is Attic mixed with some elements from choral lyric poetry. Attic comedy is pure Attic, whereas a Doric comedy developed in Syracuse. Personal poetry employs, depending on the author, Ionic (Archilochus, Hippon), Lesbian (Alcaeus, Sappho), Boeotian (Corinna), and other dialects. It was only in the Hellenistic and Roman periods that Attic became clearly dominant, though in poetry of the later periods artificial imitations of the early genres were common.

Within the alphabetical period of pre-Koine Ancient Greek (8th–4th centuries bce) there is no break between what is termed Archaic Greek (8th–6th centuries) and what is termed Classical Greek (5th–4th centuries).

In the linguistic subdivision of Ancient Greek, the effects of substratum languages played only a minor part. In their penetration into Greece toward the beginning of the 2nd millennium bce, the Proto-Greeks found earlier populations established there, about whom Greek tradition gives only vague hints and whose language or languages are unknown. From this “pre-Hellenic” stratum, Greek vocabulary made numerous borrowings (kyparissos ‘cypress,’ asaminthos ‘bathing tub,’ and so on), and it received from it a number of place-names (e.g., Korinthos), but there is no reason to think that the divergent characters of the Greek dialects (in phonetics and morphology) could be connected with different substrata. The native “barbarian” languages also had little effect on colonial Greek in the 1st millennium, and these contacts show up only in a few local borrowings.

On the other hand, there is a connection between the facts of civilization (in the political and cultural fields) and the evolution of the language. In the Mycenaean period an evident unity of civilization and the organization in the palaces of record offices and scribal training allowed the use of a stable and uniform chancellery language. In the first half of the 1st millennium, political subdivision and rivalry between cities allowed dialectal peculiarities to strike deep roots. As a result of a long oral formulaic tradition of epic poetry in dactylic hexameters, the language of the Homeric epics is an artificial mixture of dialects. This Homeric dialect became the standard for dactylic poetry all over the Greek world. It also influenced the creation of the dialect mixture of other “noble” literary genres of poetry—e.g., that of choral lyric. In the 6th century bce Ionic became the dialect of prose as a consequence of the political and cultural prestige of Ionia. In the course of the 5th century bce, as the prestige of Athens rose, Ionic was gradually replaced by Attic. The predominance of Attic was continued under the Macedonian rulers.