Muni's Play(Φιλοπονηρία)
Viciousness is love of what is bad. The vicious man is one who associates with men convicted in public suits, and who assumes that, if he makes friends of these fellows, he will gain in knowledge of the world, and so will be more feared.
Of upright men, he declares that no one is by nature upright, but that all men are alike, and he even reproaches the man who is honorable. The bad man, he asserts, is free from prejudice, if one will but make the trial, and, while in some respects he admits that men speak truly of such a man, in others he refuses to allow it. “For,” says he, “the fellow is clever, companionable, and a gentleman;” in fact, he maintains that he never met so talented a person. He supports him, therefore, when he speaks in the assembly or is defendant in court, and to those sitting in judgment he’s apt to say that one must judge not the man, but the facts; and he declares that his friend is the very watch-dog of the people, “for he watches out for evil-doers”; and he adds: “We shall no longer have men to burden themselves with a care for the common weal, if we abandon men like him.”
It’s the vicious man’s way to constitute himself the patron of all worthless scamps and to support them before the court in desperate cases; and, when he passes judgment, he puts the worst construction on the arguments of the opposing counsel.