ματα, 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 πανουργίᾳ and θράσει. To these words κοβαλείᾳ (Dinarchus) would have corresponded in form; but, if a less abstract word with the meaning 'knavish deeds' had been desired, then κόβαλα (Eq. 417) or κόβαλα ἔργα (Pherecr. 162) would have answered the purpose. The comic poet, however, preferred κοβαλικεύματα, a good verse-close, a word of imposing sound and length and formed with the suffix -μα, familiar in tragedy, to give it additional pretentiousness. βωμολόχευμα (Eq. 902, Pac. 748, cf. Eq. 1194), τεράτευμα (Lys. 762, cf. Nub. 318), and ἀλαζόνευμα (Ach. 63, 87, cf. Eq. 290, 903) are less common in the literature than the formations in -ια from these same stems,[1] and, in general, more derivatives in -ια than in -μα are formed from the verbs in -εύω and -εύομαι 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 -μα 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 -εύω are of late origin, and that derivatives in -μα from these verbs would in consequence be slower to emerge. Yet the remarkable thing about Euripides' usage is that he employed substantives in -μα 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 -μα. (Schirlitz implies that there were as many as 80 of these); that his free use of forms in -ευμα stands in striking contrast to their paucity in Herodotus, Thucydides, and the orators; and that the ratio
- ↑ A comparison of βωμολοχεύματα Eq. 902 with ἀλαζονεῖαι 903 and θωπεῖαι 890 shows that in the plural at least the forms in -μα and those in -ια have the same meaning, since "pluralizing abstract nouns makes them concrete", Gildersleeve, Syntax, § 44, cf. Kühner-Gerth, Griech. Gram. 1, p. 16 f. Of the two sets of derivatives those in -μα are by nature nearer to concrete nouns than those in -ια.
