Aristophanes' comedy Knights (Greek: Hippeîs) took the prize at the Lenaia festival in 424 BCE. The play is above all else an unbridled attack on Cleon, who was one of the most important political figures in Athens in the late 420s BCE and may well have been a personal enemy of the poet.
The play is set in the house of an old man named Demos (Greek for "The citizen-body" or "The People"). Demos is a fool, and the action begins with two anonymous slaves (perhaps to be identified somehow with Nicias and Demosthenes, two prominent Athenian generals, who complain about how Demos' new slave, the Paphlogonian, is running the household. The Paphlagonian -- who patently stands in for Cleon -- has been terrorizing the other slaves, while fawning over (and systematically bilking) Demos. The slaves are desperate to discover a way to be rid of him, and when they raid his secret collection of oracles, discover that he is fated to be replaced by a Sausage-Seller. By chance, a Sausage-Seller comes...
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