120 TRVDERS AND CRAFTSMEN y

other profiteers and advocates of war 1 To the same class
belonged Kleon, the leather-seller, who is said to have sold
bad shoe-leather,2 or Hyperboles, the lamp-maker, who made
a fortune *by evil doing', that is to say by cheating; the
scholiast explains that he used lead instead of bronze.3 Diei-
trephes also, who became phylarchos and htpparchos and a
powerful man, had grown rich by selling wicker flasks, and
by following crooked paths 4 How differently the comic poets
judged emporoi and kapeloi is obvious. We shall see later how
far this difference was justified. Clearly one reason why in
comedy more attention is paid to the kapehi was that their
methods of trading touched the people much more directly.

Modern historians usually think of the leading politicians
after Perikles, of Kleon, Hyperbolos and their like, as big
manufacturers or at least as owners of an artisan's business on
a large scale, that is to say only as producers In comedy they
are placed on the same level as retailers and hucksters Even
the cattle-dealer Lysikles, Perikles' friend who after his death
married Aspasia, was called a 'cattle-retailer', a vocation which
certainly did not exist.5 All this is, no doubt, comic distortion
and exaggeration It is, however, a historical fact that the
leading politicians belonged to the middle-class of business men,
They gradually displaced the aristocratic leaders, the men
'from the great houses'.6 Their appearance in political life
was quite new when the earlier plays of Aristophanes were
written, so it seemed worth while to attack the upstarts. Ap-
parently, it made no great difference to him whether they were
industrial townspeople or of agrarian origin. Eukrates returned
from politics fto his bran', a phrase, however, which may imply
trade as well as agriculture.7 Men who in earlier times would
have been refused appointment as wine inspectors (certainly a
public office) were now generals. 8 All this caricature, as always,
must have contained a certain amount of truth, above all it

1P44.iff 2P27o, 648,adesp.6i;cf K 852 —
3 C io6jf The scholiast's explanation is doubtful, perhaps Aristophanes
simply alluded to political corruption Cf the evidence below, p. 125
4 B 798ff, cf Thuc VII, 29, i, VIII, 64, 2
5 TrpofkxTOKcVrrrjAog, adesp 62.
* Eupolis 1 17, 4f 7 K.254, cf frg 696 8 Eupolis 205