shown by his early morning visit to Socrates whom he aroused from sleep before daylight and begged for an introduction to the great sophist.
The "New Culture" brought with it an increasing use of derivative adjectives in -κός (usually -ι-κός). In the early literature such words are rare: Homeric παρθενική occurs also in Hesiod, two of the Homeric Hymns, Alcman, Pindar, and Bacchylides, and besides this the only other words, exclusive of derivatives from proper names, are ὀρφανικός (Homer), βαρβαρικός (Simonides), μουσικός (Pindar), and παιδικός (Bacchylides).[1] They become more numerous in Aeschylus (12 examples). When the influence of the philosophers and sophists began to be felt in Athens, just those writers who were most affected by them in other respects show relatively the largest use of -κός formations. Compare, for example, Sophocles and Euripides who died the same year: the one, orthodox in religion, of a calm, tranquil mind that was apparently undisturbed by the problems of philosophy; the other, not bound by tradition but deeply imbued with the scepticism and rationalism of the times. Now, while Sophocles uses only 8 adjectives in -κός, Euripides has 24.[2] Take for further comparison the history of Herodotus with its quaint stories and "running" style, and the critical work of the philosophic Thucydides which shows in its periods the influence of the rhetoric of his day. Though separated by only two decades, Herodotus employs 13 and Thucydides 38 words in -κός. Again, Isocrates the most illustrious of the disciples of Gorgias has 55 such forms, while Isaeus whose ornamental figures of language are few uses only 7 forms in -κός, and three of these are in one of the latest of his speeches, the seventh, which is noteworthy as having something of the epideictic style and embellishment of Isocrates.[3] Three others occur in short fragments (fr. XLVI) of only two or three words found in Pollux, so that there is left but one word in -κός in the remaining eleven extant orations of Isaeus, not counting the seventh.
- ↑ The MSS. give also κασωρικός Hippon. 68 and σκυβαλικός Timocr. 1, 6.
- ↑ This count covers the fragments too. Derivatives from proper names are not included in any of these statistics. The difference in bulk of the two authors must be kept in mind, but the exact effect of this difference is indeterminate. No account is here taken of the number of times the same word recurs, that is, the sum total of all the occurrences in each author.
- ↑ Cf. Blass, Att. Bereds2. II 499, 513 sq., 555.
