the Athenian demagogue, was the son of Cleonetus, and by trade a tanner. Towards the close of the administration of Pericles, he became distinguished for the virulence of his invectives against the rich; and during the Peloponnesian war his influence over the people determined in a great measure the fate of Attica. (See Attica.) He fell in a battle when misconducting an expedition into Thrace, B.C. 422. His political career is satirized in several of the comedies of Aristophanes.

CLEON is also the name of a poet of Clusium, who wrote on the Argonautic expedition; of a rhetorician of Halicarnassus, who composed an oration for Lysander; of a Syracusan geographer; of a Magnesian philosopher, who wrote commentaries treating of portentous events; and of a sculptor of Sicily, whose statues are mentioned by Pausanias.