Note 525 — Chapter LXVII · THE DRAMA. — RHETORIC AND DIALECTICS. — THE SOPHISTS.

Aristophanês boasts that he was the first comic composer who selected great and powerful men for his objects of attack: his predecessors, he affirms, had meddled only with small vermin and rags: ἐς τὰ ῥάκια σκώπτοντας ἀεὶ, καὶ τοῖς φθειρσὶν πολεμοῦντας (Pac. 724-736; Vesp. 1030).

But this cannot be true in point of fact, since we know that no man was more bitterly assailed by the comic authors of his day than Periklês. It ought to be added, that though Aristophanês doubtless attacked the powerful men, he did not leave the smaller persons unmolested.