HOW DID CLEON DRESS FOR THE ASSEMBLY? ARISTOPHANES, <i>PEACE</i> 685–7 AND <i>ATHÊNAIÔN POLITEIA</i> 28.3

Abstract This article argues that a joke about the demagogue Hyperbolus in Aristophanes’ Peace (685–7) can be illuminated by a reconsideration of the meaning of the little-attested word περιζωσάμενος in the Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians ( Athênaiôn Politeia 28.3), where it describes how Cleon dressed in an unconventional manner when appearing before the assembly. In recent translation of and commentary on the Aristotelian text there appears to have been no investigation of the meaning of περιζωσάμενος in Greek comedy: readers are informed that Cleon either hitched up his (unspecified) clothing or somehow fastened his cloak to allow him to make gestures with both hands. However, the philological and material-cultural evidence presented here points to something more specific and more dramatic. Elsewhere in classical and later Greek the word περιζώννυσθαι means belting or knotting something around the waist and is most frequently found in contexts of manual labour. Here, it is argued that the import of Athênaiôn Politeia 28.3 is that Cleon spoke to the assembly dressed for work in his family’s tannery—a powerful symbol of his allegiance to the manual-labouring demos and his antagonism towards the aristocratic elite. It is to his unconventional self-fashioning that Aristophanes alludes in Peace when he jokes that after Cleon’s death the naked demos has wrapped itself ( περιεζώσατο ) in Hyperbolus, the new leader of the people.