As self-important comics fantasise about unseating Donald Trump with their wit, they should remember the great Aristophanes. In 424 BC, he presented a comedy about the controversial politician Cleon. He was (apparently) the son of a tanner (ugh!), and was seen by contemporaries, including the historian Thucydides, as a ‘brutal’, ‘insolent’ but ‘very persuasive’ braggart — and all too successful.
The play opens with two slaves driven out of their house after a beating by their new master Paphlagon (Cleon); he has risen to power by fawning on and flattering the gullible and senile Demos (‘the people’) and telling outrageous lies about his political rivals. So far, so Trump.
In despair, they then receive an oracle: that Paphlagon will be replaced by a tripe-seller, the only man who can outdo Paphlagon in the qualities that make him so revolting.
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