Page:Vocabulary of Menander (1913).djvu/31

Rh popularity. We are not here concerned with the source of the suffix; we are content to note its relatively greater frequency in later times than in the period of the best Attic.

In this connection a passage from Cleomedes, a mathematician of the second century A.D., is interesting. He is criticizing Epicurus, and says (de motu circ. corp. cael. 2.1. p. 166 Ziegler): (i. e. ),   ( M, edd.; coni. Ziegler).

Each of the phrases criticized contains a word in with one exception; and that one has a word in, the use of which also increased in later Greek. It is apparently this aspect of the diction of Epicurus that Cleomedes is censuring. We seem therefore to have the direct testimony of an ancient Greek in condemnation of this formation.

How Menander compares with other writers in the use of words in may be seen from the following table: