Aristophanes and Thucydides On Cleon
The character of Cleon is represented by Aristophanes and Thucydides in a very unfavourable light, justifiable considering he instilled a feeling of mistrust within Athens through a kind of Athenian "McCarthyism" caused by the excessive number of informants he employed to keep a watchful eye on the city. But both have been suspected of being prejudiced witnesses: The poet had a grudge against Cleon, who may have accused him before the Council of having ridiculed (in his lost play Babylonians) the policy and institutions of his city in the presence of foreigners and at the time of a great national danger. Thucydides, a man of strong oligarchical inclinations, had also been prosecuted for military incapacity and exiled by a decree proposed by Cleon. It is therefore possible that Cleon has had injustice done to him in the portraits handed down by these two writers.
His influence lay in his forceful and bullying style of oratory, anti-intellectual and anti-aristocratic in tone, and his populism. This might have brought him many enemies. He seems to have aimed at short-term goals, but Athens' poor stood to benefit by his policies, at the expense of heavy taxes levied onto her allies.
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