Page:The Suffix -μα in Aristophanes.djvu/5

462 they produced a grandiose effect. Euripides used nearly the same number of forms in, and some of them frequently. , a more pretentious word than, occurs in all three tragic poets, and is put in the mouth of Euripides by Aristophanes in a parody in Ach. 426 ; cf. in 423. A few lines farther on in the Acharnians (432) the same character, the rag-stitcher Euripides, is made to employ in the same position, the end of the line, and with the same tragic swagger. He had used in succession first the poetic (423), then, and now. , the poetic form of the homely word rags ( 433, 438, 412, 415) has the appearance of being a comic coinage, the tragic ending being added for the sake of bombast. It occurs nowhere else in the literature.

The sphere of use of forms in derived from verbs in  and  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. This becomes evident if one leaves out of account, and , which are common in both poetry and prose, and , which are common in prose, and the familiar words  ,  ,. Then it appears that Aeschylus has 12 forms in, Sophocles 9, and Euripides 38, while on the other hand Herodotus has no example, Thucydides uses only , and , and of the orators only three have examples: Isocrates and the pseudo-Demosthenes use , Aeschines , and Demosthenes. Formations of this kind that had such a large and varied use in tragedy, Aristophanes felt free to take up