Page:The Suffix -μα in Aristophanes.djvu/7

464, none of them high, dignified, or serious words in meaning. They are all used in the plural by Aristophanes. The last occurs in Eq. 332 preceded by and. To these words (Dinarchus) would have corresponded in form; but, if a less abstract word with the meaning 'knavish deeds' had been desired, then  (Eq. 417) or  (Pherecr. 162) would have answered the purpose. The comic poet, however, preferred, a good verse-close, a word of imposing sound and length and formed with the suffix , familiar in tragedy, to give it additional pretentiousness. (Eq. 902, Pac. 748, cf. Eq. 1194), (Lys. 762, cf. Nub. 318), and  (Ach. 63, 87, cf. Eq. 290, 903) are less common in the literature than the formations in  from these same stems, and, in general, more derivatives in  than in  are formed from the verbs in  and  of this class that denote the possession of some quality. It would be difficult to show the influence of Euripides upon the comic poet in the use of these four words or to give any evidence that Aristophanes even had him in mind when he used them. For, after all, nouns in were not new—witness the three score and more of them in Homer, nearly as many in Pindar, and the goodly number found in inscriptions of the seventh, sixth, and following centuries—and, besides, they were perfectly natural and easily made formations. It must be remembered too that most verbs in are of late origin, and that derivatives in  from these verbs would in consequence be slower to emerge. Yet the remarkable thing about Euripides' usage is that he employed substantives in in a variety of meanings and in very great numbers, thus anticipating the development of the Greek language in a later age, as seen in the Koine; that he apparently created new words in. (Schirlitz implies that there were as many as 80 of these); that his free use of forms in stands in striking contrast to their paucity in Herodotus, Thucydides, and the orators; and that the ratio