36. It is difficult to treat of the Macedonian language, as not only the _ancient_ period of the native dialect must be distinguished from the _second_, in which the Grecian language was partially introduced, after Archelaus, Philip, and Alexander made their people acquainted with Athenian civilisation, but also from a _third_, in which many barbarous words were adopted from the mixture of the Macedonians with Indians, Persians, and Egyptians.(2129) Nevertheless it is possible to form a well-grounded opinion as to the form of the Macedonian language in the first period. In the first place, they had many barbarous words for very simple and common objects,(2130) which may be certainly considered as Illyrian, since among the _very scanty_ relics of the Illyrian and Athamanian dialects(2131) there are some words which are also mentioned as Macedonian.(2132) Indeed, without supposing some barbarous foundation of this kind, we could hardly account for the Macedonian language being still unintelligible to the Greeks in the time of Alexander the Great.(2133) Yet it cannot be doubted that the Greek had passed into the Illyrian dialect _before_ the introduction of Athenian literature, and that their combination produced the mongrel language which was afterwards called Macedonian. The nominatives in α, such as ἱππότα, πολῖτα, &c., could not have been derived from the Athenians; but the Thessalians, the Dryopians, and probably all the Pelasgians, used that form.(2134) That some mixture of Greek had taken place at an early period seems also to be proved by the great and almost inexplicable change which the Grecian words experienced in the mouth of the Macedonians, who appear to have been unable to pronounce the letters Φ and Θ, and hence they always substituted Β for the former, and Δ for the latter,(2135) perhaps from a peculiarity of the Illyrian nation. On the other hand, the Macedonian language had a consonant ΟΥ or V, as _Volustana_, the name of the country round Olympus,(2136) the _Candavian_ mountains,(2137) &c., prove; and thus both in this and the former respect it approximated to the vocal system of the Latin. _Note on the Map of Macedonia._