PHRYNICHUS ARRHABIUS, a Greek grammarian, was a native of Bithynia, and flourished about the middle of the second century, in the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and of Commodus. He had devoted much time to the study of
the Greek language, which he pretended to speak and write in the utmost purity. He made a collection of all the words used in the Attic dialect, of which an abridgment has been preserved under the title Eclogæ Nominum et Verborum Atticorum. He rejected every word which could not be found in some work of Plato, Thucydides, or Demosthenes, and was particularly severe on the style of Menander. This little work, published first by Callicergi, Rome, 1517, was reprinted at Venice, 1524; but the best edition is that of C. A. Lobeck, with learned annotations, Leipzig, 1820, 8vo. Phrynichus had also collected examples of every different kind of style, in the form of a dictionary, divided into thirty-five books, which he dedicated to the Emperor Commodus. This compilation, entitled Apparatus Rhetoricus sive Sophisticus, was still extant in the time of Photius. Some fragments remain, which have been published by Montfaucon in the Bibliotheca Coisliniana, p. 465-69.