Abstract
It is well known that the sykophantai did various kinds of evil in ancient Athens. In Aristophanic plays, too, they are called evil men without exception. The greatest reason why they are evil lies, as J. O. Lofberg, V. Ehrenberg, Bonner and Smith say, in their extortion of money by levying blackmail upon ordinary citizens for their personal profits. Under the system of free lawsuit they relentlessly brought charges against even those persons suspected of a slight violation of law, and represented themselves as men serviceable to the state and citizens. Their livelihood came from such a "patriotic" action. The law courts were where they could make a living. At the same time by threats of accusation and blackmail they extorted much more financial interest from ordinary citizens, who wanted no accusation, than they could earn from the popular court. Their excessive activity in the courts made ordinary citizens frightened. As long as they legitimately utilized the courts, it was difficult to draw a sharp line between them and the plaintiffs of ordinary citizens. If this can be distinguished, it was only by the difference of their motives(Lofberg) ; sycophants brought γραφαι for their private interest and the others for public profits. For Aristophanes, however, I am of the opinion that the target of his attack against sycophants is not their motives, but their excessive thought and behavior. He does not think that sycophantic evils are peculiar to sycophants alone; the elements of their evil are, in practice, found in the state, citizens and even impersonal "war"; on the stage the characteristics of evil of the state are represented by the threat of political leaders and those of the citizens by their flattery. They are the characters and things in which the idea of evil Aristophanes had was embodied. In sycophants the idea of the evil of excessiveness or arrogance was characterized. The evil Aristophanes represents on the stage is not always proper to someone in actuality. Cleon in reality, for instance, is a politician who, for Aristophanes, is to be blamed, but Cleon in his drama is not real. He is represented as Paphlagon or a servant, and Philocleon, a citizen fond of lawsuits, may also be regarded as a part of Cleon. Furthermore the evil of the sycophant is overlapping in these characters. Sycophantic evil is usually common to other evil persons in his plays. The cause of their evil may have lain in the democratic system of freelitigation and in "defects in the general political conditions" (Ehrenberg) , but on the same ground as that, Aristophanes never censures them. He seems to realize that their evil does not come out of the defects in the social system, but out of insolence deeply rooted in the mind. Accordingly he tries to have them awake to their own humanity rather than to reform the social system of Athens. This is testified by the good evidence that he attacks the sycophants in a furious tone, but at the some time he always urges them to reform their behavior in humane language.
