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Aspects of the Vocabulary of Chariton of Aphrodisias*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Consuelo Ruiz-Montero
Consuelo Ruiz-Montero
Affiliation:
University of Murcia
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Extract

There has been little research on the vocabulary of the Greek novelists. Gasda studied that of Chariton in the last century. He compared some of his terms with those of other authors and he concluded he should be placed in the sixth century A.D. Then Schmid considered that Chariton's language was not Atticist, and dated his novel in the second century or beginning of the third. In 1973 Chariton's language was studied by Papanikolaou. His research dealt above all with several syntactic aspects and the use of some vocabulary, which led him to conclude that this language was closer to the koiné than that of the other novelists. But Papanikolaou went further in his conclusions: finding no trace of Atticism in Chariton, he considered him a pre-Atticist writer and, using extra-linguistic data, such as the citing of the Seres, the Chinese (6.4.2), placed him in the second half of the first century B.C. This chronology has been accepted by some, but already Giangrande has observed that this lack of Atticisms could have been intentional, in which case that date would be questionable.

Type
Articles
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , December 1991 , pp. 484 - 489
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

1 Gasda, A., Quaestiones Charitoneae (Diss. Olesnae, 1860)Google Scholar, which includes some data on syntax and textual criticism.

2 See ‘Chariton’, RE iii.2.2168–70.

3 Papanikolaou, A., Chariton–Studien (Göttingen, 1973).Google Scholar

4 See his review of Papanikolaou in JHS 94 (1974), 197–8.Google Scholar

5 MacDougall, J. I., Lexicon in Diodorum Siculum (Hildesheim, 1983)Google Scholar; Mayer, G., Index Philoneus (Berlin, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rengtorg, K. H., A Complete Concordance to Flavius Josephus, 4 vols. (Leiden, 1973–1983)Google Scholar; Koolmeister, R.–Tallmeister, T., An Index to Dio Chrysostomus (Uppsala, 1981)Google Scholar; Wyttenbach, D., Lexicon Plutarcheum, 2 vols. (Hildesheim, 1962)Google Scholar. I have used Blake's edition, Charitonis Aphrodisiensis, De Chaerea el Callirhoe amatoriarum narrationum libri octo (Oxford, 1938)Google Scholar. I have also checked, where necessary, the recent Chariton. Le roman de Chairéas et Callirhoé, texte établi et traduit par G. Molinié, revisé par A. Billault (Paris, 1989).

6 See Sandmel, S., ‘Philo Judaeus: An Introduction to the Man, his Writings, and his Significance’, ANRW ii.21, 2 (Berlin–New York, 1984), pp. 3–46Google Scholar; Conley, T. M., ‘Philo's Rhetoric: Argumentation and Style’, ANRW iii.343–71Google Scholar; Pelletier, A., Flavius Josephe, adaptateur de la lettre d'Aristée (Paris, 1962)Google Scholar; Feldman, L. H., ‘Flavius Josephus Revisited: the Man, his Writings and his Significance’, ANRW iii.763–862Google Scholar; Weissenberger, B., Die Sprache Plutarchs (Würtzburg, 1895)Google Scholar; Schmid, W., Der Atticismus, 4 vols. (Hildesheim, 1964).Google Scholar

7 See Palm, J., Über Sprache und Styl des Diodors von Sizilien (Lund, 1955)Google Scholar; Lasserre, F., ‘Prose grecque classicisante’ in Le classicisme à Rome, ed. Flashar, H. (Vandoeuvres–Genève, 1979), pp. 135–63Google Scholar; here 169.

8 See Bauer, W., Griechisch–deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments6 (Berlin, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. also Preisigke, F., Wörterbuch des griechischen Papyrusurkunden, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1925–1931)Google Scholar; Liddell, H. G.–Scott, R.–Jones, H. S., A Greek–English Lexicon (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar; Sophocles, E. A., Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods2 (New York, 1983)Google Scholar. I have also used Ibycus Computer System. On Atticist lexica see Lara, C. Hernandez, ‘Rhetorical Aspects in Chariton of Aphrodisias’, paper presented at the Dartmouth Conference, in GIF 42 (1989), 267–74.Google Scholar

9 Op. cit. (n. 3), pp. 161–2.

10 Schmid, op. cit. (n. 6), iv.597ff.; Thumb, A., Die griechische Sprache im Zeitalter des Hellenismus (Berlin–New York, 1974), pp. 206ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Op. cit. (n. 3), pp. 30ff.

12 See his paper mentioned above, note 8.

13 Evidence of the optative in papyri raises a similar question: see Anlauf, G., Standard Late Greek oder Attizismus? (Diss. Köln, 1960), pp. 122ffGoogle Scholar. Atticism, as a whole, should be revised. I hope to focus on this field in the near future.

14 Char. 3.3.11; 4.9; Th. 7.12.3.

15 Char. 1.1.7. Papanikolaou, op. cit. (n. 3), p. 29; Schmid, op. cit. (n. 6), iii.204; iv.306.

16 Boulanger, A., Aelius Aristide et la Sofistique dans la province d'Asie au IIe siècle de notre ère (Paris, 1968).Google Scholar

17 Op. cit. (n. 3), pp. 27–9.

18 On poeticisms in the koiné see Thumb, op. cit. (n. 10), pp. 221–5; on Ionicisms, ibid., pp. 209ff.

19 See Thumb, op. cit. (n. 10), pp. 225–6.

20 νταμεβομαι appears in papyri.

21 A. Ag. 1195; S. O.C. 1097; E. Or. 1667. It is found also in Hdt. 4.69.

22 See Thumb, ibid., pp. 225–6.

23 See Higgins, M. J., ‘The Renaissance of the First Century and the Origin of Standard Late Greek’, Traditio 3 (1945), 49–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rydbeck, L., Fachprosa, vermeintliche Volkssprache und Neues Testament (Uppsala, 1967)Google Scholar. Unfortunately, and in spite of its title, the recent work by Bubenfk, V., Hellenistic and Roman Greece as a Socio-Linguistic Area (Amsterdam-Philadelphia, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, does not help us in this matter.

24 Lasserre, art. cit., pp. 147, 158; Thumb pointed out the close ties of Flavius Josephus with the koiné (op. cit. (n. 10), p. 212), following the study of Schmidt, W., De Flavii Josephi elocutione (Leipzig, 1894).Google Scholar

25 I have drawn the same conclusion by comparing the novel of Chariton with its social and cultural environment: see my ‘Caritón de Alfrodisias y el mundo real’, in Piccolo mondo antico, ed. Furiani, P. Liviabella and Scarcella, A. M. (Naples, 1989), pp. 107–49Google Scholar. My attention has been drawn to the fact that Marie-France Baslez proposed a Hadrianic date for Chariton at the Colloque in Paris (December 1987); this is possible, but cannot yet be considered as proved.