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Updated: April 30, 2025
If we may trust the picture drawn by the comic poet Aristophanes, Cleon was a perfect model of a low-born demagogue; a noisy brawler, insolent in his gestures, corrupt and venal in his principles. Much allowance must no doubt be made for comic licence and exaggeration in this portrait, but even a caricature must have some grounds of truth for its basis.
Hereupon Cleon violently assailed them, saying that he knew from the first that they had no right intentions, and that it was clear enough now by their refusing to speak before the people, and wanting to confer in secret with a committee of two or three. No, if they meant anything honest let them say it out before all.
The only opponents of Cleon were the rich proprietors, who constituted the class of horsemen or knights: these Aristophanes in the strongest manner made of his party, by forming the chorus of them. He had the prudence never to name Cleon, though he portrayed him in such a way that it was impossible to mistake him.
War will continue as long as there are markets to capture and rivals to exclude from them. In the next year, 424, Aristophanes produced the Knights, the most violent political lampoon in literature. The victim was Cleon who had succeeded Pericles as popular leader.
He looks for the Athenian pestle, Cleon, but cannot find him the Spartan pestle Brasidas has also been mislaid; both were lost in Thrace. Before he can find another pestle Trygaeus summons all men to pull Peace out of her prison. Hermes at first objects, but is won over by offers of presents. At length the goddess is discovered with her two handmaids, Harvest and Mayfair.
In the territory of Agrigentum one Cleon a Cilician suddenly arose as a leader of his fellows. He was sprung from the regions about Mount Taurus and had been habituated from his youth to a life of brigandage. In Sicily he was supposed to be a herdsman of horses. He was also a highwayman who commanded the roads and was believed to have committed murders of varied types.
Paches, the Athenian general, sent home one thousand Mitylenæan prisoners, while it was decreed to slaughter the whole remaining population—about six thousand—able to carry arms, and makes slaves of the women and children. This severe measure was prompted by Cleon.
Only thus will we slowly and patiently seize this modern spirit of unrest; our object should be not to suppress it it is too sturdy, but to direct its energies to a better and a more noble end. Finding that the Clouds had been too wholesome to be popular, Aristophanes in 422 returned to attack Cleon in the Wasps.
When Cleon saw prince Pericles, and heard of the great loss which had befallen him, he said: 'O your sweet queen, that it had pleased Heaven you could have brought her hither to have blessed my eyes with the sight of her! Pericles replied: 'We must obey the powers above us. Should I rage and roar as the sea does in which my Thaisa lies, yet the end must be as it is.
Cleon, also, already was among his assailants, making use of the feeling against him as a step to the leadership of the people, as appears in the anapaestic verses of Hermippus. Satyr-king, instead of swords, Will you always handle words? Very brave indeed we find them, But a Teles lurks behind them.
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