Herodotus

A multifactorial account of differential agent marking in Herodotus

Passive agents in ancient Greek exhibit a well-known alternation between dative case and prepositional phrase. It has long been recognized that grammatical aspect plays a crucial role in this alternation: dative agents preponderate among aspectually …

The synchrony and diachrony of the Greek dative of agent

Variation versus change: Clausal clitics between Homer and Herodotus

Enclitic distribution in Greek (and archaic Indo-European generally) is governed by a set of generalizations known as Wackernagel’s Law, according to which enclitics occur in “second position.” As has long been known, surface …

Classical Greek syntax

I offer the first theoretically informed study of second-position clitics in Ancient Greek and challenges the long-standing belief that Greek word order is ‟free” or beyond the reach of systematic analysis. On the basis of Herodotus’ Histories, he …

Wackernagel’s law and the fall of the Lydian empire

This paper offers a novel reading of the Delphic oracle’s response to Croesus’s question of whether he should attack Persia (Herodotus 1), by focusing on a previously unacknowledged feature of the oracular answer: the preposing of the …