Greek With No Models, History or Standard: Muslim Pontic Greek *

This chapter focuses on the Atticist lexicographers of that period and their lexicographical methods. The introductory dedication of the Ecloga to the imperial civil servant Cornelianus states the aim of this work. His lexicon is hard to date, but he tend to agree with Swain, who puts it in the early third century AD, as 'it was apparently influenced by the views of Phrynichus'. The author examines that favoured the restoration of 'standard Attic' in preference either to some new artificial Kunstsprache, or to maintaining the koine, were the same forces that helped to maintain the relative uniformity of this standard in the educated Greek language of the second century AD. Modern Greek dictionaries in particular have engendered debates on similar topics, so that scrutiny of the second-century lexica may be considered as one of two possible starting points for the discussion of meta-lexicographical issues in the perspective of the Greek language over time.