Cléon. Le guerrier d'Athéna

Cleon held the political scene of Athens after Pericles’ death, during the first years of the Peloponnesian War. Ruling a city endangered by invasion, victorious of the best spartan soldiers at Pylos in 425 BC, killed in action a few years later, Cleon didn’t know the posterity of his renowned predecessor though. On the contrary, a real ‘black legend’ was established around him which went through the ages: contemporary authorities like Thucydides or Aristophanes and also later writers –Ancients like Moderns– introduced him as a corrupt, venal and coarse character, as a demagogue who skilfully flattered the people and who was in favour of an immoderate imperialism and excessive war. 

This book intends to re-evaluate Cleon’s political work, especially compared with Pericles’, whose ambitions hardly differed: preservation of the empire –and not extension of it–, reinforcement of democratic rights set up during the former period –and not political ‘radicalization’–, continuation of the war according to Pericles’s strategy and aims – and not exaggerated warmongering. In this work, ideological or moral bias, often conveyed by ancient sources, has been left aside and the specific context of Athens (which was involved in a terrible war to protect its imperial and democratic integrity at the end of the fifth century BC) has been reconstructed, which allows us to consider Cleon as a less dark historic character than what tradition passed on.