Indeed, of all the persons who appear in Thucydides' "History", Cleon is treated with the least impartiality. It is therefore possible that Cleon has had injustice done to him in the portraits handed down by these two writers. His influence lay in his forceful and bullying style of oratory, anti-intellectual and anti-aristocratic in tone, and his populism. This might have brought him many enemies. He seems to have aimed at short-term goals, but Athens' poor stood to benefit by his policies, at the expense of heavy taxes levied onto her allies. For the literature on Cleon see Karl Friedrich Hermann, "Lehrbuch der griechischen Antiquitäten", i. pt. 2 (6th ed. by V. Thumser, 1892), p. 709, and Georg Busolt, "Griechische Geschichte", iii. pt. 2 (1904), p. 988, note 3. The following are the chief authorities: