cleon

The animosity towards Cleon is definitely related to the stark contrast with Pericles, and there's no doubt Thucydides mourned Pericles' death.

I was not a fan of Foundation, however the Cleon story line was awesome, everything was really bad.

This is the basis of power for every demagogue from the Cleon in Athens to Joe McCarthy and the American Red Scare.

Some were ludicrous, like Gaal being forcefully put in hibernation for 30+ years, but the Cleon clones idea was well done in my opinion.

What's wildly inconsistent is that Cleon has a personal force field that's supposed to be invented a hundred years later, on Terminus, isolated from the Empire.

Foundation so far looks like two different shows: a very cool Empire story with three cloned Cleon guys, and a pathetic cliched YA action series about Terminus.

I counter you with a Cleon engine[0] with 42 years.

I believe he viewed Cleon as sub-par and undeserving.

In fact Thucydides went out of his way to paint certain Athenians, such as Cleon in a very negative light, and was very positive on certain Spartan generals such as Brasidas.

It has some brilliant adaptations, like the Cleon clones, and some abysmal ones like the psychic supergenius self-taught mathematician from a backwards anti-intellectual hyper-religious civilization, that is destined to lead the Foundation.

You can play this game with many other aspects of Thucydides’ History, from his attitude towards Athenian democracy (which voted for his exile) to his unflattering portrayal of Cleon (who replaced him).

I’ve been slowly watching it, and while the actual Foundation aspects are lackluster (the alien Vault feels gratuitous), it surprised me by how compelling the Cleon genetic dynasty was.

A happy accident, since Asimov was the originator of the "Cleon" name but there were no clones in the Foundation books.

Now that I think of it, Emperor "Cleon" is a nice wordplay on "cliodynamics".

I'd bet Asimov had something similar in mind (he named them "Cleon" in the books too, surely a clue in that anagram.) Even the time-jump with the cryo pod helps to ameliorate one of the issues I had with the books, which was the brief time we got to hang out with some interesting characters before a few centuries passed.

In his time satire targeted top politicians, like Cleon, and religion, at the time headed by Zeus.

Cleon Skousen or William Luther Pierce if it was a different account.

This is precisely Emperor Cleon's storyline in the TV series Foundation...