| Author | No. of different double compounds |
No. of pages |
No. of double compounds in 113 pp. | |
| Menander | ||||
| a. In Körte's Menandrea | 18 | 60 | ||
| b. In all fragments | 37 | 113 | 37 | |
| Aristophanes | 123 | [1] | 537 | 27 |
| Thucydides | 240 | [1] | 640 | 67 |
| Plato | 276 | [1] | 2350 | 19 |
| Demosthenes | 151 | 965 | 25 | |
| Polybius | 359 | 1552 | 78 | |
| Plutarch | 959 | 5177 | 65 | |
In the extant fragments of Menander there are 16 double compounds which do not appear in classical writers, with the exceptions noted, as follows: ἀντιπαρατίθημι (Plato), ἀπαμφιέννυμι, ἐπεξετάζω, παρείσειμι, παρεξαλλάττω, περικάθημαι, προεγκαλέω, προσδιατρίβω (Plato), συμπεριπατέω (Plato), συναπαιτέω, συναπαρκέω, συνδιορθόω, συνέκκειμαι, συνεκτίθημι, ὑπεισέρχομαι, ὑπέκκαυμα. Of these, ἐπεξετάζω, παρεξαλλάττω, προεγκαλέω, συναπαιτέω, συναπαρκέω, συνέκκειμαι and συνεκτίθημι appear first in Menander (ὑπεισέρχομαι is found in [Pl.] Axioch.).
In the case of three of the formations listed in these tables, we see that Menander is surpassed by at least one author of the classical period in the frequency with which he uses them. Thucydides uses more double compounds (67, against 37 for Menander); Thucydides and Aristophanes both have a larger proportion of verbs in -ίζω (62 and 73 respectively, against 57); while both Aristophanes and Plato employ adjectives in -ικός more often (20, 33, and 16 respectively). In the other three Menander leads the classical writers considered here. In the use of words in -μός, however, the difference is so slight as to be negligible (17, to 16 for Aristophanes). There remain, then, -μα and -τος, in which Menander's use goes beyond the rest. In -τος, Aristophanes is a fairly close second (64, compared with 69 in Menander); while even in the words in -μα Menander has not so great a lead as Aristophanes has in -ίζω or Thucydides in double compounds, or Plato in -ικός.
By way of a summary, the following table is added, showing the total number of times each of our test authors uses all the above classes combined in 113 pages:
