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Before the threefold system of gender that marks the Indo-Germanic languages there seems to me to have existed a twofold system still found in many languages of more primitive structure and sometimes styled higher and lower. This division has been commonly identified with that between living and lifeless objects, but as a rule women and children belong to the lower class, while the sword and shield of the warrior are found at times in the higher. When we turn to Greek we find that adjectives in rarer use, like ἄλογος, have often only two forms, and that some, like ἴφθιμος, are of either two or three forms in Homer; cf. ἰφθίμους ψυχάς (Il. 1.3) with θυγατέρ’ ἰφθίμῃ; (Od. 15. 364). So βέβαιος in Thucydides has only two forms for gender, but three in Euripides; χρήσιμος has usually two forms in Attic, three appear in the Orators. In Latin hilaris with two forms changes to hilarus with three. In Roman law women and children are res, as opposed to the free man, the vir sui iuris, who is a persona; and this distinction, which lies at the basis of Roman law, may reasonably be held to represent a distinction of great importance and antiquity in primitive Indo-Germanic society. As we have already noted, there is strong reason for assuming that before the threefold distinction for number which seems to have marked Indo-Germanic, there existed a twofold distinction of the singular and the plural. Older grammarians held that ‘while there may be multeity in things, there can be plurality only in persons’ (Farrar, Gr. Synt. p. 65, note). Irregularities in the use of the singular for the plural, that do not arise out of the disappearance of the dual, seem mainly due to this primary restriction of plurality to persons.

In many of the languages that have only two genders, a higher and a lower, nouns of the lower gender form no plurals. In both Greek and Latin words denoting materials, grain, flocks, and herds of cattle show much confusion in their use of the singular and the plural. This confusion is very familiar to us in English, where we say oats, pease, and beans, but wheat and barley. Greek uses for ‘blood’ αἷμα and αἵματα, and Latin cruor and cruores; in Greek we have ζειά and ζειαί, in Latin far and farra; Greek has for ‘fat’ only στέαρ, but Latin adeps and adipes; in Greek ‘dust’ is κόνις, in Latin pulvis and pulveres. But while in Thucydides we have: ἄμπελον κόπτοντες (4.90.2), but: λίθοις τε καὶ κεράμω βαλλόντων (2.4.2), still there seem traces of a definite tendency here, differing in Greek and in Latin.

For materials Greek tends to use the plural for the general name and the collective sense, while the singular rather means a bit of the material in question. Thus κρέα is usually ‘dressed meat’, as in: κρέα ὠπτημένα (Ar. Plut. 894), while: ἄρνειον κρέας (Pherecr. Δουλ.1) is ‘a bit of lamb’. But in Latin caro is the general term for flesh, as in: carne pecudum famem propulsare adacti (Ann. 14. 24.1), while carnes is used for ‘bits of flesh’, as in: pedes pones super concisis carnes (Vulg. Exod. 29. 17). We find many deviations from these tendencies, however, both in Latin and Greek. While σάρκες is the usual word for ‘flesh’, σάρξ is also in use. Ὕδωρ is Homer’s usual word for ‘water’, except for the sea, where he has ὕδατα ἀενάοντα (Od. 13. 109). But later ὕδατα is much more common and varied in use, being for showers in οὐρανίων ὑδάτων ὀμβρίων (Pind. Ol. 10.2), and for mineral springs in Ὕδατα Σέξτια for the Latin Aquae Sextiae. Homer uses δάκρυ in: δάκρυ χέων (Il. 1. 357) as the collective; and the old grammarians regarded δάκρυα as from δάκρυον, and not from δάκρυ, which seems the older form. While Homer uses either ξύλα or ξύλον for firewood, in later Greek ξύλα is firewood, and ξύλον a plank or bench. It seems clear that in Greek, too, the singular is older than the plural here. In Latin lignum is wood and ligna firewood, and it is natural to regard the specialized term as later than the general.

Turning to grain, we have already cited Bavius’s censure on Virgil for writing hordea for hordeum in imitation of the Greek ἄλφιτα or κριθαί. Later Greek writes ἄλφιτα, but Homer has the singular ἄλφιτον as well; he uses κριθαί thrice, but κρῖ occurs eight times in the Homeric poems. No Greek word ends in θ, and so he cannot write κρῖθ, of which κριθή would be the old form of the plural, κριθαί being a second plural following the analogy of πυροί and ἀλείατα ‘wheat’. He uses πυροί four times, but the singular πυρός five times. He has not ἄλευρα which later Greek uses for wheat. Latin has no plural for triticum, but it uses frumenta for ‘kinds of grain’, as in: tritico vel aliis frumentis (Columella 8. 9.2). Avena is ‘oats’, but avenae ‘wild oats’ in: steriles dominantur avenae (Geo. 1. 154). Here too the plural seems late, and in Latin rare.

For cattle, where in Greek we have πρόβατα, or κτήνεα, pluralia tantum, in Latin pecu is the generic term. This has the plural pecua or pecuda, later pecudes, for members of the herd, and pecora for herds. Latin pluralizes equus and bos freely as does Greek ἵππος and βοῦς; but, unlike Greek, for the smaller creatures of the farmyard it tends to use the singular as a collective, as in: Villa abundat porco, haedo, agna, gallina (Cic. Sen. 56. 16).

We see the same respective tendencies in Greek and Latin, when we turn to bodies of men. In Homer λαός for a body of men, as in λαὸν ἀγείρω (Il. 16. 129), is far more usual than the plural in λαοὶ ... ἀγροιῶται (Il. 11. 676); but in Attic Greek the reverse is the case. Plato has still ὁπολὺς λεώς, but the herald’s cry: ἀκούετε λεῴ, ‘hear, O people!’, our Oyez, oyez, shows the prevalence of the plural. In Aristophanes λεῴ seems the equivalent of plebs; in N.T. Greek λαοί becomes specialized as the opposite of κλῆροι. In Latin populus is pluralized only to designate the peoples of different states, till we reach the African Latin of Augustine and Apuleius. Plebs is the collective, having plebeii for individuals, and is never pluralized till Columella uses it for swarms of bees in: duas vel tres alveorum plebes (9.11.1). But στρατός is singular like exercitus; στρατιώτης like miles is individual or collective; and we find ὁπεζός and ἡἵππος like pedes and eques for infantry and cavalry. Manus is the hand, and the band of hands. Uses like: ὀκτακισχιλίην ἀσπίδα (Herod. 5. 30), or: παρμένοντας αἰχμᾷ (Pind. Pyth. 8. 58) ‘standing by their spearmen’, have their nearest and perhaps only parallel in Cicero’s: hasta infinita (Phil. 4. 9.4) ‘endless auction sales’. The use of pondo for librae arises from a use parallel to that of Pollux for Castor et Pollux, or of uter for alteruter, that of pondo for pondo librae ‘pounds in weight’, where pondo is the ablative of an old pondum, which later became pondus.

The neuter plural in Greek is regularly constructed with a singular verb. The exceptions to this rule are in the proportion of one to three in Homer, but become fewer in later Attic. In many of the Homeric exceptions the neuter plural is accompanied by a numeral as in:

οὐδ’ εἴ μοι δέκα μὲν γλῶσσαι, δέκα δὲ στόματ’ εἶεν (Il. 2. 489)

Many can be explained by the σχῆμα πρὸς τὸ συνώνυμον as in:

ὣς τῶν ἔθνεα πολλὰ νεῶν ἄπο . . . ἐστιχόωντο (Il. 2. 91-2),

where ἔθνεα is constructed as though it were λαοί. The rule is pretty closely followed in Plato and the Drama; but Thucydides and Xenophon show many exceptions, mainly of the classes noted above, as in: τὰ τέλη (=οἱ ἄρχοντες) τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων ... αὐτὸν ἐξέπεμψαν (Thuc. 4. 88.1) or: φανερὰ ἦσαν καὶ ἵππων καὶ ἀνθρώπων ἴχνη πολλά (Anab. 1. 7. 17).

While in the accusative absolute we should have the singular here, as in: δόξαν ἡμῖν ταῦτα (Plat. Prot. 314C), we find also the plural, as in: δόξαντα δὲ ταῦτα καὶ περανθέντα τὰ μὲν στρατεύματα ἀπῆλθε (Xen. Hell. 3. 2. 19), where the δόξαντα seems attracted by the following ταῦτα, just as is ἀδύνατα in: ἀδύνατά ἐστι ταῦτα ποιείν. Just as the use of ἀδύνατα for ἀδύνατον is extended by analogy to phrases where there is no following plural to attract, as: τὴν πεπρωμένην μοῖραν ἀδύνατά ἐστιν ἀποφυγεῖν (Herod. 1. 91), so here, too, we have the plural in the acc. abs. with no following neuter plural, as in: δεδογμέν’, ὡς ἔοικε, τήνδε κατθανεῖν (Soph. Ant. 576). This construction of the neuter plural with a singular verb is not found in classical Latin, but occurs in Plautus: quae imperasti ... factumst ilico (Bacch. 726).

‘There can be plurality only in persons’; is the plural in -a really a plural to begin with? or merely an augmentative? In Homer we find from μηρός the plural μηροί for the separate thighs in: μηρούς τ’ ἐξέταμον (Il. 1. 460), but in: αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ κατὰ μῆρ’ ἐκάη (v.464) μῆρα designates the pile of thighs heaped upon the altar. This view is strengthened by the Homeric use of ὕδατα for the ocean, and of κέλευθα in: ἐπέπλεον ὑγρὰ κέλευθα (Il. 1. 312) ‘they sailed the watery ways’. The use of οἰκία, a neuter plural in Homer, for a single dwelling, and its transition to a feminine singular in Attic, both point strongly in the same direction. There seems good reason to think that abstracts in -α and -η in Greek and in -ia in Latin are really this old neuter plural in a collective sense, used later as singulars to denote the abstract idea deduced from the collection in question.

Just as τὰ οἰκία, a plural of parts, is used to designate a single house in Homer, like μέγαρα ‘the hall’, and then passes to ἡοἰκία in Attic with a new plural αἱ οἰκίαι, so ἀναλκείη ‘a lot of weak acts’ has already in Homer attained the force of ‘weakness’ and has formed a new plural ἀναλκεῖαι ‘acts of weakness’. A like collective in Latin is Italia, which means (1)the collection of Itali, (2)the land where they dwell. Prose usually admits only the second sense of such collectives, but poetry often shows them in their primary meaning, as in: Graecia Barbariae lento collisa duello (Hor. Ep. 1. 2.7) ‘the Greeks ground down in slow warfare with the Trojans’. It is not often that in Latin literature we can see the old plural Graecia passing into the feminine singular; or the collective sapientia ‘a gathering of sages’ passing into the abstract sapientia ‘wisdom’. But in Sallust’s: interea servitia repudiabat, cuius initio ad eum magnae copiae concurrebant (Cat. 56 fin.), does not the syntax of cuius with servitia make it appear a singular rather than a plural?

When in Tacitus we read: Firmius Catus senator, ex intima Libonis amicitia (Ann. 2. 27.2) ‘of the intimate friends of Libo’, or: plures seditioni duces (Ann. 1. 22.1) ‘the mutineers get more leaders’; or in Propertius: turpior et saecli vivere luxuria (1.16. 12) ‘to live in greater shame than the wantons of her time’; or in Virgil: adsit laetitiae Bacchus dator (Aen. 1. 734) ‘let the winegod, bestower of joy, cheer the joyous throng’, we understand the force of virtus in: exigui numero, sed bello vivida virtus (Aen. 5. 754) ‘few in number, but a band of heroes strong for war’; or in: non aliter socium virtus coit omnis in unum (Aen. 10. 410) ‘so all the hero-band of allies gathers together’. It is plain that the collective sense in point is not confined to abstracts in -ia, but may extend to others. We read: ianua Tarpeiae nota pudicitiae (Prop. 1. 16.2) ‘the well-known gate of the virgin Tarpeia’, where the abstract is transferred to a single person; and now we can understand: spes quoque suas ambitioni donant ‘they consecrate their young hopefuls, too, to politics’; ... cruda adhuc studia in forum pellunt ‘they hurry the raw schoolboys into the lawcourts’ (Petron. Sat.4).

Draeger thought it worth his while to collect all plurals of abstract nouns that he found in Latin, and he tells us that of 3,814 found, only 2,500 are used in the plural. Of such plurals rarest seem those which are used in the abstract sense, as in: virtutes voluntariae, quae quidem proprie virtutes appellantur (Cic. Fin. 5. 38. 13). Far more usual is the plural in a concrete sense as in: heroum mira virtutes indicat arte (Catull. 64. 51) ‘exhibits with wonderful skill the deeds of heroes’. So color, the abstract quality in: qui color, nitor, vestitus, quae habitudost corporis (Ter. Eun. 242), passes to ‘blossoms’ in: aurave distinctos educit verna colores (Catull. 64. 90), and to ‘gauds’ in: furtivis nudala coloribus (Hor. Ep. 1. 3. 20). Vitia is usually concrete, in the sense of ‘twists’ or ‘perversities’. Rarest is the transference to the person exercising the quality: artes is commonly used of the various arts, or the works of art in which they are shown; rare and late is the use of ars for the book teaching them, as in: volvitque Palaemonis artem (Juv. 6. 452), and still rarer its use for those skilled in them, as in: Mnemosyne Iovi fecunda novies Artium (i.e. Musarum) peperit chorum (Phaedr. 3, prol. 18-19).