“Aristophanes with his chorus”: Citations and uses of comedy in the lexica of Phrynichus Atticista.

This paper examines the role of comedy in Atticist lexica by focusing on the use of Old Comedy in two works by Phrynichus: the Eclogue and the Praeparatio sophistica. It argues that, despite their different structures and aims, both of these texts privilege the classic Old Comedy triad – Aristophanes, Eupolis, Cratinus – for the purposes of linguistic prescription, reducing the rest of the Old Comedy canon to a much more circumscribed role.