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): ἐπεί γε πρὸς τοῖς ἄλλοις καὶ τὰ κατὰ τὴν ἑρμηνείαν αὐτῷ (i. e. τῷ Ἐπικούρῳ) ποικίλως διεφθορότα ἐστί, 'σαρκὸς εὐσταθῆ καταστήματα' λέγοντι καὶ τὰ περὶ ταύτης 'πιστὰ ἐλπίσματα' καὶ 'λίπασμα ὀφθαλμῶν' τὸ δάκρυον ὀνομάζοντι καὶ 'ἱερὰ ἀνακραυγάσματα' καὶ 'γαργαλισμοὺς σώματος' καὶ 'ληκήματα' καὶ ἄλλας τοιαύτας κακὰς ἄτας· ὧν τὰ μὲν ἐκ χαμαιτυπείων ἄν τις εἶναι φήσειε, . . . τὰ δὲ ἀπὸ μέσης τῆς προσευχῆς καὶ τῶν ἐπ᾽ αὐλαῖς (αὐταῖς M, edd.; coni. Ziegler) προσαιτούντων, Ἰουδαϊκά τινα καὶ παρακεχαραγμένα καὶ κατὰ πολὺ τῶν ἑρπετῶν ταπεινότερα.
Each of the phrases criticized contains a word in -μα with one exception; and that one has a word in -μός, the use of which also increased in later Greek. It is apparently this aspect of the diction of Epicurus that Cleomedes is censuring.[1] 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 -μα may be seen from the following table:[2]
| Author | No. of Different Words in -μα |
No. of pages |
Words in -μα in 113 pp. | |
| Menander | ||||
| a. In Körte's Menandrea | 32 | 60 | ||
| b. In all fragments | 63 | 113 | 63 | |
| Aristophanes | 85 | 14 | 537 | 53 |
| Thucydides | 104 | 640 | 44 | |
| Plato | 265 | 2350 | 43 | |
| Demosthenes | 116 | 965 | 47 | |
| Polybius | 181 | 1552 | 58 | |
| Plutarch | 498 | 5177 | 89 | |
- ↑ Buresch, K., Pseudosibyllinisches, in Rh. Mus. 47 (1892) p. 347 holds this view, and calls attention to the use of words in -μα in the work which he is there discussing.
- ↑ In this and the following tables only those works of Plato and Demosthenes are considered which are commonly regarded as genuine. For Demosthenes I have followed the fourth edition of Blass (Leipzig, Teubner, 1888–92); for Plato the Teubner edition, except that the
