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14 Positive evidence from the extant writings of Phrynichus as to which writers were approved we find for the orators at pp. 37 L., 103 R., and 379 L., 474 R.; for Plato p. 37 L., 103 R. al.; for Thucydides p. 312 L., 366 R. al.; for old comedy p. 37 L., 103 R. al.; for Aristophanes p. 323 L., 370 R., al.

To these Atticists, whose literary souls lived in the glorious age of Athenian ascendancy, the speech of their contemporaries was barbarous and unfit for the purposes of literature, composed as it was of words from every dialect spoken in Greece, with the addition of Hebrew, Egyptian and other foreign elements. Attic alone was the medium of good literature; words from any other dialect were at once condemned (e.g. Phryn. p. 358 L., 463 R., al., esp. p. [270 L. adn. cr.] 338 R.).

This attitude of theirs met with a good deal of opposition even in their own day, and many writers like Galen and Plutarch refused to be bound by rules so strict; though Galen himself has been accused of lapsing into the critical spirit of the Atticists. The influence of the Atticists, however, affected them also. This school is represented among grammarians by the Antiatticist in Bekker's Anecd. Graec. I p. 75–116, and by Pollux. They approved of words used in Homer and Ionic writers, and even in new comedy.