Page:Vocabulary of Menander (1913).djvu/14

10 writers of old comedy. As regards tragedy, the practical difficulty is much slighter than the theoretical. It is difficult, indeed almost impossible, to separate the "good" words in tragedy from the "bad". And yet, in spite of the large element in tragedy of Epic and Ionic words, the dialogue portions furnish a large body of the best Attic usage, though generally of a style more elevated than that of Menander's comedy. However, since the latter is the basis of our investigation, and the element of paratragedy in it is relatively small, for practical purposes the dialogue of tragedy supplies a fair test of Menander's vocabulary and has been accepted in this treatise along with the approved writers. For the same reason I have not taken into account paratragedic passages in the comic writers. No word in such passages would incur the censure of the Atticists. In the case of Plato, who is included by the Atticists, and whose stylistic excellence is unquestioned, I adopted the following plan. In view of the large number of words which he employs which are not found in earlier Attic writers, I regarded the purity of his diction as doubtful. Indeed, his long absence from Athens might well have caused his vocabulary to become tainted. But after considerable progress had been made in this investigation, and various tests, as will be seen below, had been applied, the purity of his diction in the main seemed amply vindicated. The found among the works of Xenophon, which has often been ascribed to Critias, has been accepted in this study as pure Attic. To these we must add the old Attic inscriptions.

The canon of good writers, then, in following discussion contains the ten orators, Plato, Thucydides, Aristophanes and the fragments of old comedy, the dialogue of tragedy, Attic inscriptions previous to the death of Alexander, and