t.  0. The 0th century miniscule revolution in texts did not "maintain" the three accents, but ADDED them. They were not being pronounced in the 0th c..  This is what is confusing though. If they weren't pronouncing the accents....then why were they added??  For the same reason that we have "knights" (without pronouncing 'k') running around "at night" (without pronouncing 'gh'), but with a vengeance. They wanted to preserve what they were taught about 0th century BCE Greek. By the time the accents were added the Greek language had reduced its vowels to five, and without distinction of long and short phonemes. The NT manuscript tradition becomes a fairly clear record of this, among other evidences. By the way, while the acute vs. circumflex was only vestigially visible (the circumflex did not drop out to grave), the tone/accent was both phonemic and important to Greek speech. Many practical and common word pairs were only distinguished by stress and to this day modern Greek speakers are very particular about stress. It changes the word and learners of modern Greek are expected to learn it correctly. When the orthography was simplified three decades ago, modern Greek kept and required the tone to be written on all polysyllabic words.  So in effect, at the end of the first millenium Greek scribes decided to record the stress/accent system. They could have recorded the status of their language at the time, or they could impose an artificial grid from an earlier time. Since their spelling system reflected an earlier time and since they held the classical model in the highest esteem, they choose the artificial, earlier grid. It was quite an intellectual achievement.  However, things do not usually disappear neatly without a trace. For example, a word like αὐτὸν 'him' would have no accent in context ("grave" means 'no accent in context, but with a potential high accent at phrase end') and a word like αὐτῶν 'of them' would always have it accent in context. So final-syllable circumflex accents would maintain the circumflex memory, even after it reduced to a high tone  The circumflex reduced to a high tone, you mean it became used the same way as the acute accent? This is the stuff I need clarification on. Did the grave reduce the same way or did it maintain its lower-pitch function or did it come to signify nothing at all (i.e., no accent or stress, just flat tone as if the grave wasn't even there to being with)?  Yes, phonetically the acute and circumflex became the same. And yes, the grave never was different. It marked an absence of acute. It showed where an acute existed 'ideally', but where it was/could be ignored because of context. Think of it as marking an acute that should be ignored because of context.  0. The 0th century miniscule revolution in texts did not "maintain" the three accents, but ADDED them. They were not being pronounced in the 0th c..  This is what is confusing though. If they weren't pronouncing the accents....then why were they added??  For the same reason that we have "knights" (without pronouncing 'k') running around "at night" (without pronouncing 'gh'), but with a vengeance. They wanted to preserve what they were taught about 0th century BCE Greek. By the time the accents were added the Greek language had reduced its vowels to five, and without distinction of long and short phonemes. The NT manuscript tradition becomes a fairly clear record of this, among other evidences. By the way, while the acute vs. circumflex was only vestigially visible (the circumflex did not drop out to grave), the tone/accent was both phonemic and important to Greek speech. Many practical and common word pairs were only distinguished by stress and to this day modern Greek speakers are very particular about stress. It changes the word and learners of modern Greek are expected to learn it correctly. When the orthography was simplified three decades ago, modern Greek kept and required the tone to be written on all polysyllabic words.  So in effect, at the end of the first millenium Greek scribes decided to record the stress/accent system. They could have recorded the status of their language at the time, or they could impose an artificial grid from an earlier time. Since their spelling system reflected an earlier time and since they held the classical model in the highest esteem, they choose the artificial, earlier grid. It was quite an intellectual achievement.  