For one thing, the writers who employ it are cultivated men. They have received a polite education. They write not only for the purpose of giving information to the public regarding certain important or interesting subjects, but also with the sense of the worth of literature as itself educative. Certainly they aim, above all things, at clearness of statement and plainness of speech, but they never exhibit that entire artlessness of language which marks the Hellenistic writers. The latter are, one may say, conscious of their vocabulary. Lucidity is their one aim.

The writers of the κοινὴ have not lost entirely the sense for effect. So they choose their words, and even seem to lay down definite principles for themselves as to their mode of selection. They have studied, and know the great masterpieces of earlier times. The influence of these cannot be disregarded.

They are aware that literary prose has reached a definite level in the past. Accordingly, the standard once attained will have, in any case, an unconscious effect on their work. But to counterbalance their culture and education, and even their innate feeling for literature (for it may be presumed that in this they surpass their contemporaries), stands a long array of unfavourable conditions. They cannot escape their environment. They are surrounded by mixed populations, whose dialects comprise words and phrases and forms borrowed from every variety of Greek.

The separate provinces in which they were born and brought up have each its peculiar type of language. Local colouring prevails all round. And common to all of them is the original corrupted Attic which forms the basis of the new cosmopolitan Greek. Besides, vigorous national life, that life which kept the earlier Attic pure and forcible, and which afforded so keen a stimulus to thought that only a refined and subtle tongue could express the conceptions of the great thinkers, that life bas given place to a spurious, relaxed existence which calls forth a corresponding artificial language. And so the striking fact comes to light that these writers, although they are acquainted with the wide and expressive and pure vocabulary of the Golden Age, are really unfit to use it.