Notes on how to write like an Atticist

Atticists (fl. -100 to +600) tried to write like the great writers of Athens of the -400s and -300s. They were reacting against the long-winded, flowery “Asiatic” style of the -200s and -100s. And also against the everyman’s mishmash that street Greek had become in their own time – the Koine Greek that you see in the New Testament.

As Toynbee put it in “A Study of History” (1946):

“Yet, in spite of this wide diversity of origin [in time and place], the neo-Atticists display an extraordinary uniformity of vocabulary, syntax and style; for these are, one and all, frank, shameless and servile imitators of the Attic of ‘the best period’.”

Examples: Atticists wrote mainly in Attic Greek, of course, but they affected writers in other languages too:

• Greek: Lucian, Herodian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Phrynichus Arabius, Josephus, Procopius, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, Aelian, Julian, Dio Chrysostom, John Chrysostom. (Some of these were more hardcore than others.)
• Latin: Calvus, Catullus, early Virgil, Horace.
• English: Matthew Arnold?, Joseph Addison.

My notes on how to write like an Atticist:

1. Learn Attic Greek, the Greek of Athens in the -400s and -300s. If you are only going to write in English, you could skip this, but in general the more steps you follow the better.
2. Read the great Attic orators, preferably in the original Greek, but even in translation. Shamelessly model your writing on them, especially Demosthenes. WWDD. In alphabetical order, the greats are:
   • Aeschines
   • Andocides
   • Antiphon
   • Demosthenes
   • Dinarchus
   • Hypereides
   • Isaeus
   • Isocrates
   • Lycurgus
   • Lysias
3. Read other Attic writers: Plato, Thucydides, Xenophon, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes – in fact, pretty much any Greek writer from the -400s and -300s that has come down to us. The main exceptions are Herodotus and Aristotle – they were not native speakers of Attic Greek. For Plato in English, the Bloom translation is best.
4. Read other Atticists – see above under “Examples”.
5. In English:
   • Hot: Hemingway, Orwell, Jane Austen, C.S. Lewis, Audubon Field Guides.
   • Not: Shakespeare, King James Bible, Coleridge, most English-language authors since 1600 – English is in an Asiatic phase.
6. Keep it clear and simple – without sacrificing truth.
7. Less is more – suggest, make the reader think. English writing tends to be overblown and long-winded.
8. Truth is beauty – no need to paint it, exaggerate or adorn it.
9. Prefer fact over feeling.
10. Prefer old, plain words over newer, glitzier ones. Stick to the vocabulary of the -300s. But:
11. Avoid archaic words, ones that have fallen out of use. You want to be understandable both to the time of Demosthenes (-384 to -322) and to your own time. The Atticists were so good at this that Plato could have read something written a thousand years later.
12. Be direct: say who did what. In written, educated English the who and the what tend to get clouded over by the passive voice and abstractions linked together with weak verbs. For example: “A suspect is in critical condition after an officer-involved shooting involving the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Thursday, May 27.” The police shot someone, whose life is now hanging by a thread, dramatic stuff, but the only verbs are “is” and “involving”!

– Abagond, 2021.

See also:

• Greek
  • Attic Greek
    • Attic Greek idiom
    • Attic units
    • Reading Thucydides
    • Reading Plutarch
    • Plato
      • Bloom on translating Plato
    • Demosthenes
      • WWDD
• classic prose style – has Atticist roots
• Could Shakespeare read our English?
• How to write like: Isaac Asimov, Hemingway, Orwell, Reader’s Digest
• Writing advice: Orwell, C.S. Lewis.
• Museum of bad writing:
  • nominalization
  • copspeak
  • journalese
  • academic prose
  • Rewriting The Economist
  • Rewriting H.G. Wells
  • Elaine Pagels: The Gnostic Gospels: a post rewrite
• WWSD – What Would Sade Do? – less is more
• Toynbee

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