Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/503

 CHARACTER OF KLEON. 481 iXnnparison, we shall find ground for remarking that Thuc/didea is reserved and even indulgent towards the errors and vices of other statesmen, harsh only towards those of his accuser. As to the internal policy of Kleon, and his conduct as a poli- tician in Athenian constitutional life, we have but little trust- worthy evidence. There exists, indeed, a portrait of him, drawn in colors broad and glaring, most impressive to the imagination, and hardly eflfaceable from the memory; the portrait in the " Knights" of Aristophanes. It is through this representation that Kleon has been transmitted to posterity, crucified by a poet whc admits himself to have had a personal grudge against him, just as he has been commemorated in the prose of an historian whose banishment he had proposed. Of all the productions of Aristophanes, so replete with comic genius throughout, the distinct in its character, symmetry, and purpose. Looked at with a view to the object of its author, both in reference to th Audience and to Kleon, it deserves the greatest possible admira- tion, and we are not surprised to learn that it obtained the first prize. It displays the maximum of that which wit combined with malice can achieve, in covering an enemy with ridicule, contempt, and odium. Dean Swift would have desired nothing worse, even for Ditton and Whiston. The old man, Demos of Pnyx, introduced on the stage as personifying the Athenian people, Kleon, brought on as his newly-bought Paphlagonian slave, who by coaxing, lying, impudent and false denunciation of others, has gained his master's ear, and heaps ill-usage upon every one else, while he enriches himself, the Knights, or chief members of what we may call the Athenian aristocracy, forming the Chorus of the piece as Kleon's pronounced enemies, the sausage-seller from the market-place, who, instigated by Nikias and Demosthenes along with these Knights, overdoes Kleon in all his own low arts, and supplants him in the favor of Demos ; all this, exhibited with inimitable vivacity of expression, forms the masterpiece and glory of libellous comedy. The effect produced upon the Athenian audience when this piece was represented at the Lenaean festival, January B. c. 424, about six months after the capture of Sphakteria, with Kleon himself and most of the real VOL. vi. 21 Sloe.
 * Knights" is the most consummate and irresistible ; the most