Note 107 Emanuel Chrysoloras, and his colleagues, are accused of ignorance, envy, or avarice, (Sylloge, &c., tom. ii. p. 235.) The modern Greeks pronounce the Ancient Greek

as a V consonant, and confound three vowels Ancient Greek

and several diphthongs. Such was the vulgar pronunciation which the stern Gardiner maintained by penal statutes in the university of Cambridge: but the monosyllable Ancient Greek

represented to an Attic ear the bleating of sheep, and a bell-wether is better evidence than a bishop or a chancellor. The treatises of those scholars, particularly Erasmus, who asserted a more classical pronunciation, are collected in the Sylloge of Havercamp, (2 vols. in octavo, Lugd. Bat. 1736, 1740:) but it is difficult to paint sounds by words: and in their reference to modern use, they can be understood only by their respective countrymen. We may observe, that our peculiar pronunciation of the Ancient Greek

is approved by Erasmus, (tom. ii. p. 130.)

The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire —Fall In The East —Chapter 66