Page:The Termination -κός, as used by Aristophanes for Comic Effect.djvu/12

438 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 forms are employed to reflect the new spirit of the times. They are used either by the character himself who represents the new fads and fashions, or by others with direct reference to him.

In the latter part of the Acharnians where a contrast is made between the joys of peace and the miseries of war in the parallel and antithetic commands of Dicaeopolis the inventor of a new kind of peace (cf. 972) and Lamachus the advocate of war (620) as of old, Dicaeopolis who models his injunctions on the form of expression used by Lamachus answers the old soldier's words (1141) with  (1142, cf.  Vesp. 1496). Previously (1080) he had ridiculed Lamachus with a long, pompous form  coined for the purpose. 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 and the comically formed  to describe his skillful and dainty preparations for the feast. In the same way the chorus in the Peace used (856, cf.  Pl. 802) in speaking of the success of another innovator Trygaeus, who had drawn up Peace out of the pit and brought down Plenty from heaven to be his bride, and the chorus in the Ecclesiazousae designated Blepyrus as a  (1134) in view of the good things in store for him.

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 (451) and  (453), and then the Knights salute their newly found chieftain with  (457) which, like  (421), also addressed to the Sausage-seller, is a humorous combination of words decidedly unsuited to each other. Besides, takes the place of the usual word, and the sophistic suffix  makes still more striking the contrast with the grossly material word. Again