Silent roles The Knights (Ancient Greek: Ἱππεῖς Hippeîs; Attic: Ἱππῆς) was the fourth play written by Aristophanes, who is considered the master of Old Comedy.

Short summary: A sausage seller, Agoracritus, vies with Cleon for the confidence and approval of Demos[3] ("The People" in Greek), an elderly man who symbolizes the Athenian citizenry.

Detailed summary: Nicias and Demosthenes run from a house in Athens, complaining of a beating that they have just received from their master Demos, and cursing their fellow slave Cleon as the cause of their troubles.

They inform the audience that Cleon has wheedled his way into Demos's confidence, and they accuse him of misusing his privileged position for the purpose of extortion and corruption.

Having no idea how to solve their problems, they pilfer some wine from the house, the taste of which inspires them to an even bolder theft – a set of oracles that Cleon has always refused to let anyone else see.

On reading these stolen oracles, they learn that Cleon is one of several peddlers destined to rule the polis and that it is his fate to be replaced by a sausage-seller.

There follows a shouting match between Cleon and the sausage-seller with vulgar boasts and vainglorious threats on both sides as each man strives to demonstrate that he is a more shameless and unscrupulous orator than the other.

The sausage-seller sets off in pursuit, and the action pauses for a parabasis, during which the Chorus steps forward to address the audience on behalf of the author.

Cleon makes one last effort to retain his privileged position in the household: he possesses an oracle that describes his successor, and he questions the sausage-seller to see if he matches the description in all its vulgar details.

Next they recount an imaginary conversation between some respectable ships that have refused to carry the war to Carthage because the voyage was proposed by Hyperbolus, a man they despise.

Then Agoracritus returns to the stage, calling for respectful silence and announcing a new development – he has rejuvenated Demos with a good boiling (just as if he were a piece of meat).

Agoracritus presents his transformed master with a "well-hung" boy[6] and with the Peacetreaties – two girls that Cleon had been keeping locked up in order to prolong the war.

Demos invites Agoracritus to a banquet at the town hall and the entire cast exits in good cheer – all except Cleon, who is required to sell sausages at the city gate as punishment for his crimes.

Some significant events leading up to the play: Cleon's political career was founded on his opposition to the cautious war strategy of Pericles, and its highpoint came with the Athenian victory at Sphacteria, for which he was feted and honored by the majority of his fellow citizens.

Included in the civic honors were free meals at the town hall or prytaneion and front row seats at festivals such as the Lenaia and City Dionysia.

[9] He had prosecuted Aristophanes for an earlier play, The Babylonians, but an attempt at political censorship during a time of war was not necessarily motivated by personal malice or ambition on Cleon's part.

[12] As an educated class, knights occupied many of the state offices that were subject to annual audits, and Cleon specialized in the prosecution of such officials, often using his rapport with jurors to obtain the verdicts he wanted.

[13] This abuse of the auditing system is one of the complaints made by the Chorus when it enters the stage and it accuses Cleon of selecting officials for prosecution like figs according to their wealth and psychological vulnerability (lines 257–65).

The play also accuses Cleon of manipulating census lists to impose crippling financial burdens on his choice of victims (lines 911–25).

Old Comedy is a highly topical form of comic drama and its meanings are often obscured by multiple references to contemporary news, gossip and literature.

The character Cleon is used to show what Athenians would experience in relation to corrupt political tactics such as bribery, demagoguery, abuse of power, and unjust treatment of the people.

This theme was most likely implemented due to the Athenian people experiencing social and economic inequality where the rich exploited and marginalized the poor and middle class.

Within the satirical context, he is a sausage seller who must overcome self-doubts to challenge Cleon as a populist orator, yet he is a godlike, redemptive figure in the allegory.

Moreover, he says he made a Spartan cake in Pylos that was later pilfered by Paphlagonian (lines 54–7) and this seems to be a reference to Cleon's success in taking the lion's share of the credit for the victory at Sphacteria.

Paphlagonian is a monstrous giant (74–9), a snoring sorcerer (103), a mountain torrent (137), a hook-footed eagle (197), garlic pickle (199), a mud-stirrer (306), a fisherman watching for shoals of fish (313), a butchered pig (375–81), a bee browsing blooms of corruption (403), a dog-headed ape (416), a storm by sea and land (430–40), a giant hurling crags (626–29), a storm surge at sea (691–93), a thieving nurse (716–18), a fishermen hunting eels (864–67), a boiling pot (919–22), a lion fighting gnats (1037–8), a dogfox (1067), a beggar (182–3) and finally a sausage seller in the city gates (1397).