A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

798 CLEON.
matter treated as serious, began to be disconcerted
and back out. But it was intolerable to spoil the
joke by letting him off, and the people insisted that
he should abide by his word. And he at last recovered his self-possession and coolly replied, that if
they wished it then, he would go, and would take
merely the Lemnians and Imbrians then in the
city, and bring them back the Spartans dead or
alive within twenty days. And indeed, says Thucydides, wild as the proceeding appeared, soberer
minds were ready to pay the price of a considerable failure abroad for the ruin of the demagogue at
home.
Fortune, however, brought Cleon to Pylos at
the moment when he could appropriate for his
needs the merit of an enterprise already devised,
and no doubt entirely executed, by Demosthenes.
[DEMOSTHENES.] He appears, however, not to
have been without shrewdness either in the selection of his troops or his coadjutor, and it is at
least some small credit that he did not mar his
good luck. In any case he brought back his"
prisoners within his time, among them 120 Spartans of the highest blood. (Thuc. iv. 27-39.) At
this, the crowning point of his fortunes, Aristophanes dealt him his severest blow. In the next
winter's Lenaea, B. c. 424, appeared " The
Knights," in which Cleon figures as an actual
dramatis persona, and, in default of an artificer
bold enough to make the mask, was represented by
the poet himself with his face smeared with winelees. The play is simply one satire on his venality,
rapacity, ignorance, violence, and cowardice; and
was at least successful so far as to receive the first
prize. It treats of him, however, chiefly as the
leader in the Ecclesia; the Wasps, in B. c. 422, similarly displays him as the grand patron of the
abuses of the courts of justice. He is said to have
originated the increase of the dicast's stipend from
one to three obols (See Bdckh, Publ. Econ. of Athens,
bk. ii. 15), and in general he professed to be the
unhired advocate of the poor, and their protector
and enricher by his judicial attacks on the rich.
The same year (422) saw, however, the close of
his career. Late in the summer, he went out,
after the expiration of the year's truce, to act
against Brasidas in Chalcidice. He seems to have
persuaded both himself and the people of his consummate ability as a general, and he took with
him a magnificent army of the best troops. He
effected with ease the capture of Torone, and then
moved towards Amphipolis, which Brasidas also
hastened to protect. Utterly ignorant of the art
of war, he advanced with no fixed purpose, but
rather to look about him, up to the walls of the
city; and on finding the enemy preparing to sally,
directed so unskilfully a precipitate retreat, that
the soldiers of one wing presented their unprotected right side to the attack. The issue of the
combat is related under BRASIDAS. Cleon himself
fell, in an early flight, by the hand of a Myrcinian
targeteer. (Thuc. v. 2, 3, 6-10.)
Cleon may be regarded as the representative of
the worst faults of the Athenian democracy, such
as it came from the hands of Pericles. While
Pericles lived, his intellectual and moral power was
a sufficient check, nor had the assembly as yet become conscious of its own sovereignty. In later
times the evil found itself certain alleviations; the
coarse and illiterate demagogues were succeeded by
the line of orators, and the throne of Pericles was at

CLEON.
last worthily filled by Demosthenes. How far we
must call Cleon the creature and how far the cause of
the vices and evils of his time of course is hard to
say; no doubt he was partly both. He is said (Plut.
Nicias, 8) to have first broken through the gravity
and seemliness of the Athenian assembly by a
loud and violent tone and coarse gesticulation, tearing open his dress, slapping his thigh, and running
about while speaking. It is to this probably, and
not to any want of pure Athenian blood, that the
title Paphlagonian la(flAa-ycdv, from raepAdaw),
given him in the Knights, refers. His power and
familiarity with the assembly are shewn in a story
(Plut. Nicias, 7), that on one occasion the people
waited for him, perhaps to propose some motion,
for a long time, and that he at last appeared with
a garland on, and begged that they would put off
the meeting till the morrow, " for," said he, " today I have no time: I am entertaining some
guests, and have just sacrificed,"-a request which
the assembly took as a good joke, and were goodhumoured enough to accede to.
Compare ARISTOPHANES. The passages in the
other plays, besides the Knights and Wasps, and
those quoted from the Acharnians, are, Nubes, 549,
580; Ranae, 569-577. [A. IH C.]
CLEON (KAXwv), literary. 1. Of CURIUM, the
author of a poem on the expedition of the Argonauts ('Apyovav'rTmd), from which Apollonius Rhodius took many parts of his poem. (Schol. in
Apoll. Rhod. i. 77, 587, 624.)
2. Of HALICARNASSUs, a rhetorician, lived at
the end of the 5th and the beginning of the 4th
century B. c. (Plut. Lys. 25.)
3. A MAGNESIAN, appears to have been a philosopher, from the quotation which Pausanias
makes from him. (x. 4. ~ 4.)
4. A SICILIAN, one of the literary Greeks in
the train of Alexander the Great, who, according
to Curtius, corrupted.the profession of good arts
by their evil manners. At the banquet, at which
the proposal was made to adore Alexander (B. c.
327), Cleon introduced the subject. (Curt. viii. 5.
~ 8.) Neither Arrian nor Plutarch mentions him;
and Arrian (iv. 10) puts into the mouth of Anaxarchus the same proposal and a similar speech to
that which Curtius ascribes to Cleon.
5. Of SYRACUSE, a geographical writer, mentioned by Marcianus (Periplus, p. 63). His work,
IepI rWov Aqliowv, is cited by Stephanus Byzantinus (s. v. 'Aoaris). [P. S.]
CLEON (KAEwv), an oculist who must have
lived some time before the beginning of the Christian era, as he is mentioned by Celsus. (De Medic. vi. 6. ~~ 5, 8, 11, pp. 119-121.) Some of
his prescriptions are also quoted by Galen (De
Compos. IMedicam. sec. Locos, iii. 1, vol. xii. p.
636), Aetius (Lib. Medic. ii. 2. 93, ii. 3. 15,
18, 27, 107, pp. 294, 306, 309, 353), and Paulus
Aegineta. (DeRelMed. vii. 16, p. 672.) [W.A.G.]
CLEON. i. A sculptor of Sicyon, a pupil of
Antiphanes, who had been taught by Periclytus, a
follower of the great Polycletus of Argos. (Paus.
v. 17. ~ 1.) Cleon's age is determined by two
bronze statues of Zeus at Olympia executed after
01. 98, and another of Deinolochus, after 01. 102.
(Paus. vi. 1. ~ 2.) He excelled in portrait-statues
(Philosophos, Plin. H-. N. xxxiv. 19, is to be taken
as a general term), of which several athletic ones
are mentioned by Pausanias. (vi. 3. ~ 4, 8. ~ 3,
9. ~ 1, 10, fin.)