Bible Lexicons

The disappearance of the dual flexion of δύο is in line with the whole tendency of Hellenistic : see Proleg. p. 77 ff. The gen. and dat. δυοῖν appears occasionally in a document where the writer desires to make broad his Attic phylacteries : thus P Giss I. 99.15 (B.C. 80) ἐ ]ν στή [λαι ]ν δυοῖν [ἔ ]μ ̣προσθε ̣ν ἱδρυμέ [ν ]αιν τοῦ [ν ]εώ, P Strass I. 52.33 (A.D. 151) ἀρουρῶν δυο ̣ῖν ἡμίσους τρίτου (or was this δυεῖν ?), P Oxy VIII. 1119.20 (A.D. 254) δυοῖν θάτερον. The literary Hellenistic δυεῖν (late Attic), which arose phonetically out of δυοῖν (Brugmann-Thumb Gr. p. 78), appears in several papyri, as P Par 1.293 (the Eudoxus astronomical treatise—c. B.C. 165) δυεῖν μηνῶν χρόνος, P Ryl II. 109.5 (A.D. 235) πατὴρ τῶ [ν ] δυεῖν —the document has υἱέας later!, ib. 269.5 (ii/A.D.) ἐ ̣κ ̣ δυεῖν οἰκ ̣[ῶ ]ν ̣—this document also betrays artificial dialect by the ";registering"; historic present τελευτᾷ (Proleg. p. 120), ib. 357 (A.D. 201–11) ἀρουρῶν δυεῖν, P Oxy VIII. 1117.16 (c. A.D. 178) ἐκ δυεῖν ταλάντων —here again there is some fine writing in the context, a petition to a Praefect, who would no doubt be impressed by it. Greek dialects pluralized the flexion in different ways—see Brugmann-Thumb Gr. p. 249 f. In Hellenistic we have dat. δυσίν, passim in all our documents, and to a very limited extent gen. δυῶν : see Mayser, Gr. p. 314, who can only quote OGIS 56.62 (B.C. 239–8—the Canopus decree) ἐκ σταχύων δυῶν (in copy A), and BGU I. 287.25 (ii/A.D.) ἀρουρῶν δυῶν —it is ancient Ionic (Herod. and Hippocrates) and Cretan Doric (Gortyn Inscr.). That in MGr δυῶν (ε) occurs occasionally (Thumb Handb. p. 81) may show that the form ran underground to emerge in a few places, but it might be independent analogy. Δυσίν is Ionic (first in Hippocrates), as we might expect from that dialect’s early sacrifice of the dual. With the indeclinable δύο for nom., acc. and gen., it forms the whole of the Κοινή flexion. (The pre-classical δύω, which lived on in δ (υ)ώδεκα, is cited by Mayser (p. 313) from P Leid Ti. 34 (B.C. 164–0) and P Grenf II. 38.12 (B.C. 81)—but there are other cases of ω for ο in this last document by sheer miswriting.) Mayser makes Syll 177.26 (Teos,B.C. 304) the oldest inscriptional warrant for δυσί, which appears in literature before Aristotle. In Attic inscrr. (Meisterhans, p. 157) δυεῖν supplants δυοῖν in Alexander’s time, and lasts a century, δυσί beginning in iii/B.C.

On δύο δύο see Proleg. p. 97 : add to illustrate ἀνὰ δύο δύο P Oxy VI. 886.19 (magical—iii/A.D.) ερε κατὰ δύο δύο, ";lift them up two by two"; (Edd.). It may be noted that οἱ δύο supplants ἄμφω, as in Mark 10:8 etc., P Giss I. 2ii. 5. .14 (B.C. 173) μάρτυ ̣ρες φίλιος Μακεδών, Δημοκρατίω ̣ν Θέσσαλος, οἱ δύο τῶν Κινέου, and οἱ δύο τῆς ἐπιγονῆς —the document has also οἱ τρεῖς MGr has κ᾽ οἱ δυό, ";both,"; οἱ δυό μας, ";both of us.";