Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/816

Rh 79B CLEON. matter treated as serious, began to be disconcerted and back out But it was intolerable to spoil the joke by letting him oif, and the people insisted that he should abide by his word. And he at last re- covered 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 Thu- cydides, wild as the proceeding appeared, soberer minds were ready to pay the price of a considera- ble failure abroad for the ruin of the demagogue at home. Fortxme, 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. [Dkmosthknbs.] He appears, however, not to have been without shrewdness either in the selec- tion 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 Spar- tans of the highest blood. (Thuc. iv. 27—39.) At this, the crowning point of his fortunes, Aristo- phanes dealt hun 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 wine- lees. The play is simply one satire on his venality, rapacity, ignorance, violence, and cowardice ; aad 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, si- milarly 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 Biickh, PM. Econ. o/Atlums, bk. ii. 15), and in general he professed to be the unhired advocate of tlie 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 con- summate 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 unprotect- ed right side to the attack. The issue of the corakit 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 democrac}', 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 be- come conscious of its own sovereignty. In later times the evil found itself certain allevLations ; 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 hoAv 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, tear- ing 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 {Ua(paydl)V^ from ira<pd^w), 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 oi? the meeting till the morrow, " for," said he, " to- day 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 good- humoured 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; lianae, 569—577. [A. H C] CLEON (KeW), literarj'. 1. Of Curium, the author of a poem on the expedition of the Argo- nauts {'Apyoi'atmKoi)^ from which Apollonius Rho- dius 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 tlie 4th century B. c (Plut. Lys. 25.) 3. A Magnesian, appears to have been a phi- losopher, from the quotation which Pausanias makes from him. (x. 4. <5 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 Anax- archus the same proposal and a similar speech to that which Curtius ascribes to Cleon. 5. Of Syracuse, a geographical writer, men- tioned by Marcianus {Periphcs, p. 63). His Avork, n^pl rdv ifjL€vwv, is cited by Stephanus Byzan- tinus (s. V. 'Aa-Tris). [P. S.] CLEON (KAe'coi'), an oculist who must have lived some time before the beginning of the Chris- tian era, as he is mentioned by Celsus. (De Me- dic, vi. 6. ^$5, 8, 11, pp. 119— 121.) Some of his prescriptions are also quoted by Galen (De Compos. Medicam. 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. (Z)c/2eil/erf. vii. 16, p. 672.) [W.A.G.] CLEON. 1. 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 OljTiipia 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. j 3, 9. $ 1, 10, fin.)