This stylistic character was adduced, together with other indications, including the claim that an Ionian was unlikely to have acquired such a good command of Attic Greek, by Enno Friedrich Wichard Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff in a paper entitled Die Mysterie den ‘Mysterien’ (early 1930), in which—with arguments of customarily pithy learning—he contended that the Mysteries were a forgery. This paper was circulated privately. The real mystery, for Wilamowitz, was when they were forged, by whom and for what purpose.
His suggestion was that a Hellenistic pamphleteer had attempted two centuries later to establish his professional standing by producing texts to support some of his claims about the real classical figures figuring in the Mysteries, and about fifth-century commerce around the Mediterranean. This hypothesis does not ring true, to my mind. Indeed, Crito was an Athenian citizen, like his father, so that his command of Attic Greek is not surprising. He liked to be known as Crito ‘of Samos’ because he was brought up there.
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