“And They Were Urged To This Chiefly By Cleon” (Th. 4.21.3): Demagogia In The Pylos’ Episode
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4151/07197969-Vol.12-Iss.3-Art.607Abstract
Thucydides’ Histories are one of the first testimonies of demagogia’s lexical field and, actually, the specialists have vigorously debated what its meaning is and how it should be translated. Do these words have a pejorative connotation or are they simple referring to the leadership of the people? There are two passages where the historian uses these lexemes in his work: the Athenians’ rejection of the Spartan truce (Th. 4.21.3) and Androcles’ assassination by the oligarchs in 411 B.C.E. (Th. 8.65.2).
This article aims to analyse thoroughly the verbal surrounding, or cotext, of the first passage, which describes Cleon’s intervention. Given that different linguistic perspectives consider that the sense of each word depends on the cotext and enunciation context, the hypothesis is that it is possible to recognise a derogatory connotation in the word demagogos since it establishes a link with other lexemes in the passage in order to describe Cleon’s attitude. Thus, the term seems to be intimately connected to who is persuaded -the plethos/demos- and a persistent and immoderate attitude in defence of democratic values.
Keywords: demagogos, Cleon, Sense, Subjectivity, demos
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