Aristophanes' satirical play The Knights (Greek: Hippeîs) is an unbridled criticism of Cleon, one of the most powerful men in ancient Athens. Cleon had once brought Aristophanes up on charges of "embarrassing the city in front of foreigners" in response to one of his comedies (his lost play Babylonians) being performed at the Dionysia festival at which foreigners were present. Aristophanes never forgave him, and wrote The Knights as a response to him.
The basic premise of the play is that there is a man named Demos (Greek for "The citizen-body" or "The People") who is not very bright. His slaves, Nicias and Demosthenes (two of the most prominent Athenian generals in the Peloponnesian War), are displeased with the way Demos' steward, the Paphlogonian (aka Cleon - with the aim to emphasise Cleon was foreign, and because the word is similar to the Greek word 'To Blunder') has been treating both Demos and the other slaves. They discover that the way to remove the Paphlogonian from...
