ABSTRACT
The Greek dual was lost at an early period in the colonies, where the civilization was relatively advanced, while it was kept more tenaciously in continental Greece, e.g. in Lacedremon, Boootiu., and Attica. In Homer duals are frequent, but they appear to be an artificial archaism used for poetical purposes, especially for the sake of the metre, while the plural is often used in speaking of two even in the same breath as the dual (cp. collocations like amphO kheiras, Od. 8. 135). In Gothic dual forms are found only in the pronouns of the first and second persons and in the corresponding forms of verbs, but these latter are few in number; and in the other old Gothonic languages only the pronouns 'we' and 'ye' keep the old distinction, which was later generally given up. (Inversely the duals vi~, pi~ have ousted the old plurals ver, per, in modern Icelandic, and possibly also in Dan. vi, 1.) Isolated traces of the old dual have been found in the forms of a few substantives, such as door (originally the two leaves) and breast, but even in these cases from the oldest times the forms were understood not as duals, but as singulars. The only words which may now be said to be in the dual are two and both, but it should be noted that the latter when used as a "conjlIDction" is often applied to more than two, as in "both London, Paris, and Amsterdam"; though this is found in many good writers, some grammarians object to it.1
