Breathings, accents and punctuation τόνοι καὶ πνεύματα

Look again at μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ. Above the letters are small marks. They were not written in Classical times: they were added by scholars in Hellenistic Alexandria (tradition credits Aristophanes of Byzantium, around 200 BC) to help readers, and they became standard in medieval manuscripts.

Breathings sit on a vowel that begins a word. The rough breathing ἁ means an h-sound before the vowel: ἡ is hē. The smooth breathing ἀ means no h: ἀρχή is archē. Every word that starts with a vowel has one, and a word-initial ῥ always takes the rough breathing.

Accents come in three shapes: acute ά, grave ὰ and circumflex ᾶ. In Classical Attic they marked pitch: the voice rose on the accented syllable (acute) or rose and fell on a long one (circumflex). What the grave marked is debated. Today most people read them as stress.

Punctuation. Greek ; is a question mark. A raised dot · works like our colon or semicolon. Commas and full stops look as they do in English.

Three more marks: a small iota under a vowel (ᾳ ῃ ῳ, iota subscript) was pronounced in Classical Attic; two dots ϊ (diaeresis) mean the vowel is said separately (Πηληϊάδεω: Pē-lē-i-a-deō); and an apostrophe ʼ shows a vowel has been dropped before the next word (elision): μυρίʼ for μυρία.