Cleon

Cleon (klē`ən), d. 422 B.C., Athenian political leader. The son of a tanner, he had little education; nevertheless, he was a gifted speaker. He began his political career with a series of relentless attacks on Pericles. He was antagonistic to Sparta and successfully opposed (425 B.C.) Sparta's peace proposals. In the same year he was given command of the Athenian force blockading Sphacteria (an island at the mouth of the Bay of Pylos) and was brilliantly successful against the Spartans. Three years later he was given another command against the Spartans at Amphipolis, but he failed and was killed in action. His reputation as a vulgar and unprincipled demagogue is chiefly due to accounts by his enemies Thucydides and Aristophanes.

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Cleon

(died 422 BC, Amphipolis, Macedonia) Athenian politician. The first prominent representative of the merchant class in Athenian politics, he became leader of Athens in 429 BC after the death of his enemy Pericles. Advocating an offensive strategy in the Peloponnesian War, he proposed that all citizens of the rebellious Mytilene be put to death and its women and children enslaved; the measure passed but was reversed the next day. He reached the summit of his fame when he captured the Spartan island of Sphacteria, but he was killed by the Spartans while trying to retake Thrace.

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Cleon

died 422 bc, Athenian demagogue and military leader

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Cleon 

Died 422 B.C. Greek political figure of antiquity, leader of the most radical wing of the Athenian slaveholding democrats. He came from the trade and craftsman strata of the demos (he owned a leather enterprise).

As a politician Cleon came to the fore in 430 B.C., heading the opposition to Pericles. After Pericles’ death in 429, he opposed Nicias, the leader of the moderate democratic group. He attained political predominance with policies that were popular among the radical democrats, including increasing the pay for jurors to three obols; introducing the eisphora (an extraordinary war tax levied on wealthy citizens); doubling the tax tribute levied on the allies; establishing cleruchy (colonies) on the lands of the allies (for example, on Lesbos); strengthening Athens’ role in the Delian League; and cruelly suppressing discontent among the allies (the reprisals againt Mytilene, which had revolted against Athens in 428). Cleon was the champion of military operations against Sparta and its allies, and he himself participated in the Peloponnesian War of 431–404 as a strategos. In 425, with Demosthenes, he seized the island of Sphacteria. In 422 he directed military operations against the Spartan general Brasidas in Thrace but was defeated and killed in battle before Amphipolis.

The classical authors who provide information on Cleon come from the camp of his political opponents.

S. S. SOLOV’EVA