| Author | including -τος |
omitting -τος | |
| Menander | |||
| a. In Körte's Menandrea (60 pp.) | 129 | 100 | |
| b. In all fragments | 259 | 190 | |
| Aristophanes | 253 | 189 | |
| Thucydides | 247 | 197 | |
| Plato | 162 | 133 | |
| Demosthenes | 172 | 132 | |
| Polybius | 268 | 234 | |
| Plutarch | 389 | 279 |
The position of Menander in the grand totals is hardly worse than that of Thucydides or Aristophanes; not so bad as Thucydides, indeed, if we omit -τος. The result attained, then, by the use of these tests is ample vindication for Menander's vocabulary.
Conclusion.
We have noticed, then, in chapter I, about sixty words used by Menander which are criticized by the grammarians. This seems at first sight a large number to be found in less than 3400 lines, but it must be borne in mind that a considerable number of these lines have been preserved to us solely on account of their deviation from the Attic norm. When we take into account the bitterness of the attacks of his critics upon him, it is reasonable for us to suppose that they allowed but few of his faults of diction, as measured by their standards, to escape. Since we are informed that Menander wrote over one hundred plays,[1] and since these probably averaged from 1000 to 1100 lines in length, a total of fully 100,000 lines, or at least six times as much as the extant works of Aristophanes, the proportion is reduced to perhaps one in 1700 lines, which is by no means so bad a proportion as we should expect to find. This, however, is mere conjecture, and the problem is complicated by the fact that we have not the works of Phrynichus in their complete form. Moreover, we have no evidence that Phrynichus read all the plays.
A list of Menander's words which are approved by the
- ↑ Suid. s. v. Μένανδρος says 108.
