Ancient Greek accents (τόνος)

Ancient Greek in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE was spoken with a pitch accent: that is, the pitch of your voice would rise or fall on different syllables. Later, this evolved into a stress accent: as in English or modern Greek, accented syllables came to be pronounced instead with extra stress. Ancient scholars worried about the “correct” pronounciation as pitch accent began to disappear, and devised a system of three accent marks to indicate the proper pitch for a syllable. Their word for these accents, τόνος, was also used to refer to systems of pitch in Greek music, and is the source of the English word “tone.”

The acute accent indicated that your voice should rise on the accented syllable, and was called ὀξύτονον, the “sharp” or “high pitch”. The grave accent indicated that the voice should fall. It was called the βαρύτονον, the “heavy” or “low pitch”. The circumflex signaled that your voice should rise and then fall on a single syllable. Its name was the περισπόμενος τόνος, a pitch that is bent or wrapped around as it travels up and then down. On an alpha, they could look like this:

• acute: ά
• grave: ὰ
• circumflex: ᾶ

Because English speakers are accustomed to stress accents, we will pronounce any accented syllable, regardless of type of accent, with a stress accent. If you are comfortable speaking a language that uses pitch to distinguish meaning, feel free to add pitch to your pronounciation of ancient Greek!

Accented words

Every Greek sentence was a flow of higher and lower pitches, and every word had its own accent, except for a very small number of special cases. One group of small words that do not carry an accent or affect the accents of other words are called proclitics. These include some forms of the article (“the”), ὁ, ἡ, οἱ, αἱ; a few prepositions like εἰς (“into”), ἐκ (“out of”) , ἐν (“in”), and some conjunctions like εἰ (“if”) and ὡς (“as, that, since”). There are also enclitics, short words that affect the accents of other words in a sentence but do not have their own accent. We’ll learn more about enclitics in Module 2.

General rules

Accents are always written over vowels. If a diphthong is accented, the accent is written over the second vowel of the diphthong (e.g., εὖ, or Ἀθηναῖοι).

Accents appear on only the last three syllables of a word. Rather than refer to “the second syllable from the end,” for example, it’s traditional to use these names for the last three syllables:

• the ultima is the last syllable
• the penult is the penultimate, or next to last, syllable
• the antepenult is the one before the penult, or third from last

Each accent can appear only in certain positions depending on the length of the vowels in the word. Remember that η, and ω are always long, ε, and ο always short. α, ι, and υ may represent either long ᾱ, ῑ, ῡ or short ᾰ, ῐ, ῠ. Diphthongs are long, expect for final –αι, -οι in some forms.

1. The grave accent appears only on the ultima.
2. The circumflex appears only on the ultima and penult.
3. The acute accent appears on ultima, penult and antepenult.

Let’s consider each individually.

The grave accent

A grave accent is really just a replacement for an acute accent. Within the context of a phrase or sentence, when a word with an acute accent on the ultima is followed directly by another accented word, its accent is changed from acute to grave. After a pause (indicated in our texts by a comma or period), the acute can remain unchange.

Consider the word αὐτήν (the pronoun “her with acute accent on the ultima) in these two sentences from Lysias 1.

1. ἀπώλεσεν αὐτήν. (“He killed her.”)
2. ἐκέλευον αὐτὴν ἀπιέναι. (“I ordered her to leave.”)

αὐτήν is the last word of the first sentence: we’ll pause at the period, and the accent can remain unchanged. In sentence 2, however, αὐτήν is followed by the accented word ἀπιέναι (“leave”); we have to change its acute to grave for the preferred sound and rhythm to the whole sentence.

Notice that since the grave accent occurs only in the context of a sentence, when you encounter isolated examples of noun, adjective, or verb forms in this textbook, you will not see or use a grave accent!

The circumflex

The circumflex can only be used on long syllables (that is, over a long vowel or diphthong). It can appear on the penult only when the ultima is short.

Consider these examples from a pair of common Greek words. As we’ll see in Module 2, nouns and pronouns use different endings to show their function (a little like adding “s” to a noun to make it plural in English). Here are two forms of a noun meaning “divinity, god, goddess” (compare English words like “theology” and “theocracy”):

1. θεός
2. θεῶν

In both examples, the accent is on the ultima, but in the first example, the accent cannot be a circumflex, because the ultima is short. In the second form, the ultima is long and is accented with a circumflex.

The next pair of examples are a pronoun meaning “that person”.

1. ἐκεῖνος
2. ἐκείνη

Both forms are accented on the penult, and both forms have a long penult (the diphthong ει). In the first example, the ultima is short, so we can use a circumflex on the penult, but in the second example, the ultima is long, so a circumflex is not possible.

The acute accent

An acute accent can appear on any of the last three syllables. It only appears on the antepenult if the ultima is short. It can be used on the penult anytime the ultima is long, or when both the penult and ultima are short. These two pattens complement the use of the circumflex on the penult when the penult is long and the ultima short: taken together, these three patterns cover all instances of accent on the penult, as summarized in the following table, where syllables are marked as – for long, ‿ for short, and × for a syllable that can be either long or short.

Accent to use	Syllable length	Example
Acute	× –	ἀνθρώπου
Acute	‿‿	φόνος
Circumflex	– ‿	τοῦτο

Summary table

Accented syllable	Syllable length	Examples
Acute on antepenult	× × ‿	ἄνθρωπος
Acute on penult	× –	ἀνθρώπου
Acute on penult	‿‿	φόνος
Circumflex on penult	– ‿	τοῦτο
Acute on ultima	×	αὐτή, αὐτός
Circumflex on ultima	–	αὐτοῦ