CLEON
Ridiculed as tanner;
= Paphlagon in Aristophanes' Knights;
General in 425 and 422;
In 425 won important battle at Pylos;
Killed on expedition to Thrace outside Amphipolis in
421;
Appears alot in Thucydides;
The first of the new politicians;
Increased juror's pay from two to three obols; original
payment had been introduced by Pericles.
Aristotle, Rhetoric: "just as, when the public criers
ask, 'Whom does the freedman [= metic] choose for
his patron?' [even] the children shout 'Cleon.'"
Meaning? Probably that Cleon was regarded as litigious, and
so undertook sponsorship of freed slaves so that he could
bring cases for them.
Subtext? Cleon was pro-democratic and thus a willing sponsor
of metics and freedpersons. Oligarchs, by contrast, wanted
citizenship restricted to upper-class types.
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