Sycophancy

In modern English, sycophant denotes an insincere flatterer and refers to someone practising sycophancy (i.e., insincere flattery to gain an advantage).

The word has its origin in the legal system of Classical Athens, where it had a different meaning. Most legal cases of the time were brought by private litigants, as there was no police force and a limited number of appointed public prosecutors. By the fifth century BC, this practice had given rise to abuse by sycophants: litigants who brought unjustified prosecutions. The word retains the same meaning ('slanderer') in Modern Greek, French (where sycophant [fr] means 'false accuser', or professional 'informer'), and Italian. In modern English, the meaning of the word has shifted to mean flattery.

The origin of the Ancient Greek word συκοφάντης (sykophántēs) is a matter of debate, but it was meant to disparage unjustified accusers who in some way perverted the legal system.

The original etymology of the word (sykos/συκος 'fig', and phanēs/φανης 'to show'; 'revealer of figs') has been the subject of extensive scholarly speculation and conjecture. Plutarch appears to be the first to have suggested that the source of the term was in laws forbidding the exportation of figs, and that those who leveled the accusation against another of illegally exporting figs were therefore called sycophants. Athenaeus provided a similar explanation. Blackstone's Commentaries repeats this story, but adds an additional take—that there were laws making it a capital offense to break into a garden and steal figs, and that the law was so odious that informers were given the name sycophants.

A different explanation of the origin of the term by Shadwell was that the sycophant refers to the manner in which figs are harvested, by shaking the tree and revealing the fruit hidden among the leaves. The sycophant, by making false accusations, makes the accused yield up their fruit. The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition listed these and other explanations, including that the making of false accusations was an insult to the accused in the nature of showing the fig, an "obscene gesture of phallic significance" or, alternatively that the false charges were often so insubstantial as to not amount to the worth of a fig.

Generally, scholars have dismissed these explanations as inventions, long after the original meaning had been lost. Danielle Allen suggests that the term was "slightly obscene", connoting a kind of perversion, and may have had a web of meanings derived from the symbolism of figs in ancient Greek culture, ranging from the improper display of one's "figs" by being overly aggressive in pursuing a prosecution, the unseemly revealing of the private matters of those accused of wrongdoing, to the inappropriate timing of harvesting figs when they are unripe.

The traditional view is that the opprobrium against sycophants was attached to the bringing of an unjustified complaint, hoping either to obtain the payment for a successful case, or to blackmail the defendant into paying a bribe to drop it. Other scholars have suggested that the sycophant, rather than being disparaged for being motivated by profit, was instead viewed as a vexatious litigant who was over-eager to prosecute, and who had no personal stake in the underlying dispute, but brought up old charges unrelated to himself long after the event. Sycophants included those who profited from using their position as citizens for profit. For instance, a sycophant could be hired to bring a charge against one's enemies, or to take a wide variety of actions of an official nature with the authorities, including introducing decrees, acting as an advocate or a witness, bribing ecclesiastical or civil authorities and juries, or other things that one did not want to be personally associated with. Sycophants were viewed as uncontrolled and parasitic, lacking proper regard for truth or justice in a matter, using their education and skill to destroy opponents for profit in matters where they had no stake, lacking even the convictions of politicians, and having no sense of serving the public good.

The charge of sycophancy against a litigant was a serious matter. The authors of two surviving oratories, "Against the Grain Dealers" by Lysias and "Against Leocrates" by Lycurgus, defend themselves against charges that they are sycophants because they are prosecuting cases as private citizens in circumstances where they have no personal stake in the underlying dispute. In each instance, the lack of personal involvement appears to have been the crux of the accusation of sycophancy against them, the merits of the cases being separate matters from whether they had a right to bring them.