Page:The Termination -κός, as used by Aristophanes for Comic Effect.djvu/11

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THE TERMINATION -κός IN ARISTOPHANES.
437

στικῶς), and to tell some witticism of Aesop or a joke from Sybaris (1260):

Αἰσωπικὸν γέλοιον ἢ Συβαριτικόν.

With the last passage compare Philocleon's Αἰσώπου τι γέλοιον in 566, the expressions οἱ Αἰσώπειοι λόγοι in Aristot. Rhet. II 20, 2, and Αἰσώπειοι μῦθοι in Hermog. Progymn. init., Theon Progymn. 3, and in the scholium on Av. 471, and especially a fragment of Aristophanes' Banqueters (fr. 216) in which a father while reprimanding his son for adopting the innovations of the sophists is careful to avoid all -κός words, and so uses Συβαρίτιδας εὐωχίας (cf. Theocr. V 146; Dio Cass. LVII, 18, 5) and even goes so far as to say Λάκαιναι [κύλικες] instead of Λακωνικαὶ κύλικες (cf. Phryn. 341 Lob.).

On his return from the banquet Xanthias (or Sosias) is so much affected by contact with these Athenians of rank and fashion and by his master's conversion to the new views of the times that he employs some of the stylish -κός forms, νεανικῶς (1307, cf. 1362), the ridiculous νουβυστικῶς (1294), used later by the younger Cratinus (fr. 7) with reference to the philosophers and sophists, and the long superlative παροινικώτατος (1300) in place of the corresponding form of παροίνιος.[1] The chorus too has been affected, and in the same way: the second parabasis (1265–91) which, as Zielinski, Müller-Strübing and others think, should exchange places with the canticum 1450–1473, contains two other remarkable superlatives of -κός formations, χειροτεχνικώτατος 1276 and θυμοσοφικώτατος[2] 1280, that are applied to the sons of Automenes and especially to the dissolute and bestial Ariphrades.

φωνάριον ᾠδικὸν καὶ καμπτικόν Ar. fr. 644 "was probably written in derision of some fashionable, foppish advocate of the new order of things". Comic Termin., p. 26.

As the opposition of the new and old culture, of the new and old fashions, is not primarily the subject of any of the other plays, the remaining instances of the comic use of forms in -κός are more scattered and the circumstances that call them forth more varied. When the new ways are brought in contact with the

  1. Cf. παροίνιος Ach. 981; Anacreont. 2, 8; Athen. 629 E; Luc. Salt. 34, Laps. 2; Plut. Dem. 4; Schol. Ar. Vesp. 20, 1239, 1240; and πάροινος Pratin. 1, 8; Lys. IV 8; Antiphan. 146.
  2. Cf. θυμόσοφος Nub. 877; Schol. Vesp. 1280.