The exceptional character of these examples is still further emphasized by the fact that there are nearly 600 instances in the tragic poets, Herodotus, and Thucydides in which derivatives in -κός from proper names are not applied to persons.
In contrast to these 12 cases of the personal use in the whole literature before Aristophanes stand 19 examples in his eleven extant plays alone. This is because the characterizing force of the suffix was well-suited to the liveliness of the language of daily life, and consequently the sermo familiaris made a large use of such words just as it did of character names.[1] Character names in -αξ, gen. -ακος, e. g. Ῥόδαξ (= Ῥόδιος, Bekk. Anecd. 856, 33), πλούταξ, θαλάμαξ, κ. τ. λ., and short names in -ιχος[2] approach them closely in the form of the ending. Though -κός is not found as a diminutive suffix in Greek, it does have this force frequently in Sanskrit, Persian, and some other Indo-European languages.[3] Greek proper names with this suffix signified men who had the characteristics of a people or a community, and when substituted in familiar speech for the usual name of a people were not far removed from character names, being used chiefly for the purpose of ridicule. The scholiast on Ar. Pac. 215 says that the effect of using Λακωνικοί for Λάκωνες is ὑποκορισμός, and in a previous note on Ἀττικωνικοί he implies that the contempt (cf. ἐνυβρίζοντες) arises from cheapening (εὐτελίζοντες) them by applying to them this modified form of their name. The change was made, of course, for fun (cf. παίζει), and Ἀττικωνικοί was then comically formed to resemble Λακωνικοί. The half-starved Spartans captured on Sphacteria are likewise called Λακωνικοί in Nub. 186, and so also the Spartans mentioned in Lys. 628 who can be trusted no more than a gaping wolf. There is a spirit of pleasantry in the use of the word in Lys. 1226 and Eccl. 356. In a tone of superiority, mingled with a little of the natural antipathy of Athenian for Spartan, the triumphant Lysistrata orders the "Laconics" (1115) to be brought forward, and if she hesitates to use this form in direct address (cf. 1122, 1137), such deference and respect is not manifested toward the Acharnians (324) and the Megarian (830) by the similarly triumphant Dicaeopolis who has successfully negotiated a private treaty of peace. In pleading with the Acharnians for a hearing he
