Cleon : (d.422 BC), uneducated son of a tanner, became the leader of Athenian democracy in 429 BC after the death of his political enemy Pericles.
... 429 BC — Pericles is reinstated, but soon dies from the plague. The political structure of Athens is in ruin. The plague seems also to have had a devastating effect on morals. Cleon becomes leader of the Democratic Party. 427 BC — Birth of Plato. 423 BC — Aristophanes's play Clouds, satirizing Socrates, is performed for the first time ...
... its exclusiveness is blunted and cannot deepen and intensify itself into the nature of a fixed hierarchy. The natural social type of the small community is such as we see in Athens, where not only Cleon, the tanner, exercised as strong a political influence as the highborn and wealthy Nicias and the highest offices and civic functions were open to men of all classes, but in social functions and connections ...
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