Men. Cymindis.
Il. Υ 74.
Gods. Xanthus
Men. Scamander.
All these words, except one, are plain Greek,—and that one is a word of men. It is impossible, therefore, that the gods' language could have been the antiquated Greek language.
In the Odyssey (Κ 305.) Mercury says that a certain plant is called Moly by the gods, and that it is very difficult for men to find. The answer to the question, What do men call it? therefore would probably have been, that they have no name for it at all. It is an odd word, not easy to derive, and ending in _u_; which Aristotle says is the ending of only five words in Greek, and one of those, ἄστυ, was obsolete as an appellative in Aristotle's time.
Ichor, though applied in Homer to the gods, he does not say was a word of the gods; and as it is used in Hippocrates, it is more probably a dialectic than an antiquated word. Its termination, however is rare; and in another instance, τεκμωρ, was obsolete in Aristotle's time (Rhet. init.).
As to the Lycian language, the alphabet is said, in the appendix to Fellows, to resemble partly the Greek, partly the Zend, and one or two letters the Etruscan. The language is said (ib. 430.) to resemble the Zend more than any other known language; but to differ too much to be considered as a dialect of Zend, and must rank as a separate language.
I would observe, that one of the peculiarities mentioned, as compared with all the Indo-Germanic languages—namely, the having no consonant at the end of the masculine or feminine accusative—existed in the old Latin, as in the Scipionic tombs, "optimo viro, omne Loucana."
Sir Edmund Head, in the Classical Museum, No. II., considers the people to be the Solymi of Homer.