Charles William Peppler

“ The Sausage-seller in the Knights is an upstart and one of the latest products of the times. Hence the chorus tells him to strike the Paphlagonian ἀνδρικῶς [22] (451) and ἀνδρικώτατα (453) , and then the Knights salute their newly found chieftain with ὦ γεννικώτατον κρέας (457) which, like ὦ δεξιώτατον κρέας (421) , also addressed to the Sausage-seller, is a humorous combination of words decidedly unsuited to each other. Besides, γεννικός takes the place of the usual word γενναῖος, and the sophistic suffix -κός makes still more striking the contrast with the grossly material word κρέας. ”

“ Philosophy is the peculiar sphere of these adjectives in -κός and their adverbs. Plato has 347 of them in the dialogues accepted by Christ (391 according to Ast's lexicon) , and Aristotle between six and seven hundred. The extant fragments of the early philosophers and sophists do not justify us in attributing the sudden prominence in literature of this class of words to the example set by some one individual of commanding influence. [5] It is due rather to the increased intellectual activity of the age and the consequent need of additional means for the expression of thought. ”

“ It occurs nowhere else in the literature.
The sphere of use of forms in -ευμα derived from verbs in -εύω and -εύομαι may be defined with more exactness. Their great frequency in Euripides and rarity in Herodotus, Thucydides, and the orators are the striking facts about them. ”

“ When the new ways are brought in contact with the old, when one who is up-to-date, progressive, or on the road to fortune, or at least to better things, confronts another who clings to the past, when innovations are made, clever tricks performed, or smartish things done,—it is chiefly under these circumstances that -κός forms are employed to reflect the new spirit of the times. ”

“ Croiset characterizes Xenophon as "a perfect specimen of the καλὸς κἀγαθός, . . . . . . of sound, well-balanced mind, judicious, not over enthusiastic, obedient to reason, thoughtful of good order and harmony, and as highly educated as was possible for a well-bred Athenian in the time of the sophists and Socrates". [9] It is interesting to note the effect that the "New Culture" produced on this typical Athenian of the early part of the fourth century, as regards his use of words in -κός. He employs an unusually large number of them, about 136 ”

“ Furthermore, it is true in many cases that these derivatives in -μα express in the form of a noun a thought which might be expressed very naturally by some form of the verb, [4] and nouns both give greater elevation to style and admit of more precise modification than verbs. [5] Aeschylus employs 218 substantives in -μα, [6] Sophocles 188, and Euripides 302. Euripides' use of them is in some respects the most remarkable. ”

“ Following close upon these theorists and speculative philosophers came the sophists, the practical teachers of education, Protagoras, Prodicus, Hippias, Gorgias, and others, who in response to a demand of the times for a higher mental culture than that given in the schools professed to furnish practical instruction of a kind that would fit men for every sphere of life, but especially for public life. ”

“ Then it appears that Aeschylus has 12 forms in -ευμα, Sophocles 9, and Euripides 38, while on the other hand Herodotus has no example, Thucydides uses only ἱκέτευμα, νεῦμα, and σκύλευμα, and of the orators only three have examples: Isocrates and the pseudo-Demosthenes use παίδευμα, Aeschines ἀλαζόνευμα, and Demosthenes πονήρευμα. Formations of this kind that had such a large and varied use in tragedy, [17] Aristophanes felt free to take up and employ for his own purposes. He has 16 forms in -ευμα, some of them drawn from Euripides. ”

“ We pass now to the Clouds, the play which attacks the sophists in the person of Socrates whom Aristophanes took as the representative of the class. When at the suggestion of the chorus (476) Socrates proceeds to give Strepsiades his first lessons and asks him whether he has a good memory (ἦ μνημονικὸς εἶ;) , the comic poet makes Socrates employ a form in -κός in conformity with his character as a sophist ”

“ In comedy, when these nouns in -μα are used of persons by metonymy, abstracts taking the place of the related concretes, it is natural that they should have a reproachful or contemptuous force, [8] and the neuter gender contributes something to the depreciatory tone. ”

“ As the opposition of the new and old culture, of the new and old fashions, is not primarily the subject of any of the other plays, the remaining instances of the comic use of forms in -κός are more scattered and the circumstances that call them forth more varied. ”

“ On the other hand, χορεία occurs only once in Euripides, namely Phoen. 1265—the only place in tragedy, according to the Thesaurus—and here it is in iambic trimeter. Aristophanes' word is χορεία, even in choral passages, cf. Th. 956, 968, 980, 982, Ran. 336, 398, 1303. That there is parody in Av. 746 is most likely, since parodies both precede and follow, cf. Rossbach u. ”

“ Aeschylus had a great fondness for derivatives in -μα from verbs in -όω, [14] perhaps because besides having greater length they produced a grandiose effect. Euripides used nearly the same number of forms in -ωμα, [15] and some of them frequently. πέπλωμα, a more pretentious word than πέπλος, occurs in all three tragic poets, and is put in the mouth of Euripides by Aristophanes in a parody in Ach. ”

“ Just as it is the sophists in the Clouds, so it is fashionable society in the Wasps, that he ridicules in this way. The scene of 143 lines (1122–1264) in which Bdelycleon prepares his father for the dinner-party contains about one-third of all the words in -κός in the play, and the Wasps has a larger number of these words than any other play of Aristophanes, both absolutely and in comparison with the number of lines in the play. ”

“ Greek proper names with this suffix signified men who had the characteristics of a people or a community, and when substituted in familiar speech for the usual name of a people were not far removed from character names, being used chiefly for the purpose of ridicule. ”

“ And this is a part of Aristophanes' caricature in Eq. 1378–81. Besides, the Knights, Clouds, and Wasps, comedies which more than any of the others attack the sophists and the new fashions of the day, together have 19 instances of the personal use of -κός words out of the 28 in the eleven plays, and the ratio of the number of instances of this personal use in any play to the total number of occurrences of -κός forms in that play is higher for these three comedies than for the others. [13] About one-half of the comic words in -κός that are mentioned in this paper are applied to persons. ”

“ No account is here taken of the number of times the same word recurs, that is, the sum total of all the occurrences in each author. ↑ Cf. Blass, Att. Bereds2. II 499, 513 sq., 555. ↑ Parmenides, Zeno, Anaxagoras, and Diogenes of Apollonia, all of whom came to Athens, have none of these words in their fragments. Protagoras, Prodicus, and Gorgias have one or two each, and Democritus, Philolaus, and Archytas from six to nine each. The Hippocratean tract on the art of medicine, entitled περὶ τέχνης, which Gomperz ascribes to Protagoras, has nothing more than the word ἰητρική. ”

“ Still earlier (1015–6) the chorus in calling attention to the happiness and good fortune that Dicaeopolis enjoyed in his newly made peace had employed two adverbs μαγειρικῶς and the comically formed δειπνητικῶς to describe his skillful and dainty preparations for the feast. ”

“ II 476. ↑ Passages in which adjectives in -κός modify such collective nouns as γένος, λεώς, στράτευμα, κ. τ. λ. are not regarded as examples of the personal use. ↑ Derivatives from proper names, which are discussed later in a separate chapter, are not here included. ↑ The Birds too has a high ratio, but may be neglected because of the smallness of the number (2) of instances in it of the personal use. ”