. It will be of service to present a brief outline of the history of the Greek tongue. And yet it is not easy to give. See the discussion by Sophocles in his Greek Lexicon (p. 11 f.), inadequate in view of recent discoveries by Schliemann and Evans. The following is a tentative outline: The Mycenæan Age, 1500 B.C. to 1000 B.C.; the Age of the Dialects, 1000 B.C. to 300 B.C.; the Age of the Κοινή, 300 B.C. to 330 A.D.; the Byzantine Greek, 330 A.D. to 1453 A.D.; the