This man belongs to a class of politicians who had begun
to exercise great influence on the affairs of Athens after the death
of Pericles. That great statesman had really led the people, checking
their excesses, setting bounds to their ambition, and guiding all the
moods of the stormy democracy. But the demagogues were lowborn
upstarts, who, while seeming to lead the people, really followed it,
and kept their position by pandering to the worst passions of the
multitude. It must, however, be mentioned that the two contemporary
writers from whom we draw our materials for the portrait of Cleon, the
historian Thucydides and the comic poet Aristophanes, were both
violently prejudiced against him. Aristophanes hated him as the
representative of the new democracy, which was an object of abhorrence
to the great comic genius; and Thucydides, a born aristocrat, of
strong oligarchical sympathies, looked with cold scorn and aversion on
the coarse mechanic, [Footnote: Cleon was a tanner by trade.] who
presumed to usurp the place, and ape the style, of a true leader like
Pericles.
In the previous debate Cleon had been the chief promoter of the
murderous sentence passed against Mytilene; and when the question was
brought forward again, he made a vehement harangue, the substance of
which has been preserved by Thucydides.
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