THUCYDIDES, I
THUCYDIDES
c. 460-c. 400 B. C.
Thucydides is the author of a single book, The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians. He presents his "quest for truth" (I 20:3) as an account of a single political event, the twenty-seven-year war through which the Spartans and their allies brought down the Athenian empire. He claims that his study of it will be useful for those who seek clarity, not only about the war, but more generally about the past, and even about the future, which in his view will again resemble the past that he has brought to light.
The book is littered with speeches by those who took part in the war, which speak to our own own moral and political concerns and add to the vivid presencing of it. They call upon us to take sides for and against them. It is by fostering these concerns that Thucydides makes us receptive to his claim of the war's universal significance. Thucydides himself, however, is very reticent about making explicit judgements. Just like in real life, because it is difficult to teach practical wisdom by precept alone, but instead experience is necessary, Thucydides asks us to make our own judgements, and only subsequently, in stages, are they subjected to the test the war provides, as we learn the aftermath of the actions that were in fact taken. Hobbes said 'the narration itself doth secretly instruct the reader, and more effectually than can possibly be done by precept'. We see that that the arguments by which the various speakers support their universal claims contain inconsistencies, which to the attentive reader reveal difficulties in the speaker's own positions. Moreover, these errors on the level of universal assertions lead to erroneous particular judgements.
Thucydides reveals that the truest cause, even though it was the least manifest in speech, was that the Athenians, by becoming great aroused fear and compelled the Spartans to go to war. He nevertheless records the actual, quite different accusations against them in a lot more detail. By dwelling on these appearances, he gives us access to the war as it actually developed and allow us to appreciate the central theme of the study, namely Justice, or justice in its relation to compulsion.
The Corinthians charged, firstly, that Athens, by helping the Corinthian colony Corcyra in a sea battle against them, had violated the truce that bound the Spartan and Athenian alliances. The Athenians believed that a war was coming anyway and didn't want to lose Corcyra's allegiance, due to its strategic naval importance, so when the Corinthians attacked it Athens gave it assistance. There followed a subsequent war and rival accusations over the disputed city of Potidea.
At an assembly before the Spartans, the Corinthians charged that these actions were merely the most recent instances of a long-continued policy to enslave all of Greece. They urged that the Spartans declare war against Athens. At this time, the beginning of the war, the general view of Greece, including even the oracle at Delphi, was that this would be a war of liberation, punishing Athenian injustice.
The Spartans, Thucydides tells us, were prompted less by the specific accusations against Athens or by a desire to defend Greece from injustice, than by fear of their own, as well as losing allies.
The case against the Athenians is further weakened by the fact that their defence of Corcyra and even their harshness towards Potidea was not strictly in violation of the truce. In addition, the Athenians offered to submit all controversies to binding arbitration. Later, when the war was going badly for them, the Spartans themselves came to believe that they had themselves had broken the truce by this refusal of arbitration.
According to Thcydides, however, the Spartans were themselves 'compelled' to go to war by their growing fear of Athenian imperialism, and therefore cannot be blamed.
Athenian guilt is brought into sharper focus but the manner in which the Athenians responded to the accusations against them. They argued that that they didn't deserve to be so hated for their empire, because they were themselves compelled to seek it, firstly by fear, then also by honour, and later also by benefit-- compulsions they spoke of as "the greatest things". But if actions done for the sake of honour and benefit, as well as those done from fear, can be regarded as compulsory, and excused on that account, is there anything that is forbidden? In its way, then, the Athenian defence of their empire is indeed no defence, since it attacks the very presupposition of all accusation, that there is voluntary wrong-doing. The Athenians add that they are not the first to yield to the temptation to empire, but that it has always been established for the weaker to be kept down by the stronger, and that no one with a chance to acquire something by force has ever yet been dissuaded by the argument from justice. These Athenians seem to have believed that the shocking bluntness of their arguments would intimidate the Spartans, since only a powerful city would dare to say such things, and that they would thereby deter the Spartans from war. They do, however, go on to claim that they rule more justly that their power requires, or than others in their place would do; and they warn the Spartans not to violate the truce between them but to resolve their differences through arbitration. Now, as these concessions of sorts to justice may perhaps suggest, the Athenians were not so powerful as to force Sparta to tolerate their empire, and all that they were doing to increase it, through fear of that power alone; and yet they admitted openly that justice would never restrain them from seeking such power in the future. It is hardly surprising, then, that this speech failed to avert the war, for it reveals clearly what it was about Athens that so angered and frightened the Spartan alliance. (I 71-78).
Pericles said to his Athenian public that their empire was "like a tyranny, which is believed to be unjust to take, but which is dangerous to let go" (II 63.2-3). He urges them to defend it, despite the hatred it arouses, for the sake of the honour it brings them, and especially for the sake of ever-remembered glory in the future. (II 62.1-3, 64.3-6). Later at Melos, while tried to persuade its people to submit, the Athenians claim justice has no place in human reckoning unless there is an equal power to compel on both sides (V89). The Melians keep holding out in the hope of divine intervention "since they stand free from sin against men who are not just". The Athenians counter that the Melians would do the same in their position, since there is a greater or equally divine law 'natural' law according to which the stronger will rule over the weaker.
By following Pericles Funeral Oration, in which he even boasts of the bad things as well as the good things Athens has done, together with the slaughter of the Melians, with the devastating plague that hit Athens and the equally disastrous Sicilian expedition, Thucydides invites us to think of the latter as destined punishments for Athenian insolence and injustice.
However, Thucydides himself seems not to have shared this judgement of divine or cosmic punishment. He tells us that the plague was widespread in Asia and Africa, and all but ridicules the idea that it was prophesied. As for the Sicilian expedition, he says that it could have succeeded with better leadership and more support from home, despite its intrinsic immoderation.
Moreover, the general tone of the work is not one of justice being done, but one of sadness and the notion that justice was itself one of the chief casualties of the war. The Spartans behaved just as oppressively as the Athenians had done, if not more so, confirming the Athenians statements. Furthermore, Thucydides says that none of the cities took sides from justice, but only from advantage or compulsion.
More disturbingly, men committed great crimes even when it didn't serve their interests, but merely satisfied an immediate passion. Revenge was in greater esteem than not to have suffered. Men, women and children were slaughtered en masse. Even neutral parties were murdered from mere envy that they might yet survive. (III 82). Even less depraved nation's moderation was rooted only in fear of a slave revolt at home.
This seems to be the perennial fate of justice in the face of selfishness and violence, says Thucydides: a lesson for statesman and others alike.
This again seem to re-inforce the truth of the original Athenian defence. On the one hand, even if those with power had always attempted to rule, that doesn't mean they were compelled to. On the other, if we examine the Athenian assertions at Melos again we see that their argument didn't rely on this claim. Their claim that justice is irrelevant comes down to the claim that there are other factors that compel human action, of which it is not one. For aren't we all compelled, if we are sensible, to pursue our own good? Doesn't the argument of justice itself acknowledge that this good is a compulsory power, by claiming htat it is in our own interest, at least in the long run or in the truest sense, to be always just? The claim that justice is always i none's own best interest is contained in the very notion of justice, since we think of justice as the common good, and the common good would include one's own. However, the Athenians recognize that such a common good cannot always be found in very situation among men. When we understand this, we are compelled to pursue our own good as distinct from others; for it is costly to us not to, and even the counterargument on behalf of justice must ultimately admit that no true justice could oppose the power of our natural wish for our good. Furthermore, if we are compelled, for the reasons indicated, to pursue our own good, we are also compelled to pursue whatever we believe to be our own good, though t is indeed costly to us to misjudge what it truly is. Now the Athenians thought that it was good for them to acquire and expand their empire, even at the risk of war with Sparta, and it is ultimately for this reason alone that they acknowledged no guilt for doing so.
Despite appearances to the contrary, their imperialistic thesis is in large measure the result of their concern with justice and with nobility, for it is these concerns that required them to give to themselves a defense of their empire, and a defense without the usual hypocrisies. Furthermore, it appeared to the Athenians that to accept their defense of empire, and of selfishness, was not necessarily to repudiate what is truly highest or most noble.
It behoves us to examine to what extent the Athenian claims of superiority were justified. They claimed that their superior intelligence and zeal gave them a right to rule. Pericles claimed they were lovers of beauty and wisdom, as well as being brave in battle, and having an active engagement in political life, without neglected rival concerns, completing a graceful development of the many sided individual's highest powers. Their free choice to use their gifts on behalf of their city, even to die for it, is a crucial aspect of themselves as noble. Athens is so beautiful that it inspires its citizens to erotic love, for instance during the Sicilian campaign. Even in foreign affairs, it shows a superiority to selfish calculation; this is more in terms of its great ambition for ever-lasting honor and willingness to suffer for it than for its justice, although it does include some restraint in relation to its subjects as well, even when such restraint was disadvantageous to it (I 76.3 - 77.5). Even its enemies acknowledged such an aspect of Athenian public-spiritness. (I 70.6). Their mercy towards Mytilene also shows this side of their character. (III 36, 49).
The Scilian campaign remains a tragic failure and testimony to immoderation, which Thucydides attributes private ambitions for honor and gain that were no longer restrained after Pericles' death. Fear of a conspiracy against the people fuelled an uncharacteristic passion to avenge the desecration of the statue of Hermes. They recalled their most capable general, Alcibiades, from the front on such a charge. True, he did have some tyrannical prclivities, but his dismisal in conjunction to the wise counsel he then gave to Sparta led directly to the failure of the Athenian campaign in Sicily. Furthermore. the mob who were responsible for that was so in favour of the campaign that those who were against it were afraid to raise their hands. In contrast, the previous Athenian tyrants, according to Alcibiades had practiced "virtue and intelligence" (VI 54.4-6; cf VI 24.4). The many let their private annoyance at Alcibiades often eccentric and impious practices conquer the public interest. (VI 15.3 -4; cf II 65.8 -10).
Thucydides says of the replacement general, Nicias, "he deserved least among the Greeks, during my time, to come to this degree of misfortune because of his full devotion to virtue as established by custom." (VII 86.5). However, this very piety led to disaster. Firstly, he refused to sail home when defeat was clear because he feared dishonor under the charge of bribery from the Athenian public. Secondly, and far worse, even when he received orders to do so he refused to set sail until "thrice nine days" prescribed by the soothsayers had elapsed because the ill-omen of an eclipse of the moon. This led the Athenians to lose their last chance of escape. Nicias was fully devoted to conventional virtue; at all events, he never willingly did any harm to his fatherland. Yet conventional virtue is an unreliable thing, for it is dependent upon, and in part guided by, hopes that have no other support than belief in conventional virtue itself.
Athen's prospects for success, or even for the army's safe return, were dependent on its power to reconcile the private and public interest, and yet the expedition stretched the city too far beyond the limits of this power. On closer inspection though, Athenian empire seems to have been based upon a contradiction. On the one hand, the argued they were compelled to be selfish; on the other, they thought of their empire as being noble, and accepted certain risks and hardships in connection with their rule that would seem at odds with their own self-interest. In other words, they had not squarely faced their own argument in defense of empire, for this argument leaves no room for superiority to self-interest, or for anything more important than one's own good. If they had truly accepted this argument, they would not have been so moved by the prospects of glory. One might therefore be tempted to draw the disturbing conclusion that the wisest of all Athenians in Thucydides' account were the ambassadors at Melos, whose vindication of the rule of the stronger was least coloured by any continuing or explicit concern for nobility. Yet this conclusion would be false, and not merely because the ambassadors' brutal attempt to destroy the innocence of the Melians made them if anything more determined not to submit to Athenian rule. For there is one Athenian speaker who shows a considerable deeper understanding of the Athenian argument. This Athenian is Diodotus, a remarkable man of whom we know nothing from other sources, and who appears only once in Thucydides’ narrative. Although he seems not to have been a political man, his intervention in Athen's political life was highly skilful. He succeeded in helping Athens to maintain its empire, and to maintain it by means of relatively humane treatment of a subject ally. Moreover, his speech is characterized by a gentleness, and even serenity, that are unparalleled within Thucydides' work and that seem to mirror these qualities in Thucydides himself.
*The foregoing essay is a heavily abbreviated version of the essay by David Bolotin published in 'The History Of Political Philosophy', edited and compiled by Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey. I make no claims to originality over the content, but I hope this condensed version may perhaps prove useful to people who don't have time to read the original.
c. 460-c. 400 B. C.
Thucydides is the author of a single book, The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians. He presents his "quest for truth" (I 20:3) as an account of a single political event, the twenty-seven-year war through which the Spartans and their allies brought down the Athenian empire. He claims that his study of it will be useful for those who seek clarity, not only about the war, but more generally about the past, and even about the future, which in his view will again resemble the past that he has brought to light.
The book is littered with speeches by those who took part in the war, which speak to our own own moral and political concerns and add to the vivid presencing of it. They call upon us to take sides for and against them. It is by fostering these concerns that Thucydides makes us receptive to his claim of the war's universal significance. Thucydides himself, however, is very reticent about making explicit judgements. Just like in real life, because it is difficult to teach practical wisdom by precept alone, but instead experience is necessary, Thucydides asks us to make our own judgements, and only subsequently, in stages, are they subjected to the test the war provides, as we learn the aftermath of the actions that were in fact taken. Hobbes said 'the narration itself doth secretly instruct the reader, and more effectually than can possibly be done by precept'. We see that that the arguments by which the various speakers support their universal claims contain inconsistencies, which to the attentive reader reveal difficulties in the speaker's own positions. Moreover, these errors on the level of universal assertions lead to erroneous particular judgements.
Thucydides reveals that the truest cause, even though it was the least manifest in speech, was that the Athenians, by becoming great aroused fear and compelled the Spartans to go to war. He nevertheless records the actual, quite different accusations against them in a lot more detail. By dwelling on these appearances, he gives us access to the war as it actually developed and allow us to appreciate the central theme of the study, namely Justice, or justice in its relation to compulsion.
The Corinthians charged, firstly, that Athens, by helping the Corinthian colony Corcyra in a sea battle against them, had violated the truce that bound the Spartan and Athenian alliances. The Athenians believed that a war was coming anyway and didn't want to lose Corcyra's allegiance, due to its strategic naval importance, so when the Corinthians attacked it Athens gave it assistance. There followed a subsequent war and rival accusations over the disputed city of Potidea.
At an assembly before the Spartans, the Corinthians charged that these actions were merely the most recent instances of a long-continued policy to enslave all of Greece. They urged that the Spartans declare war against Athens. At this time, the beginning of the war, the general view of Greece, including even the oracle at Delphi, was that this would be a war of liberation, punishing Athenian injustice.
The Spartans, Thucydides tells us, were prompted less by the specific accusations against Athens or by a desire to defend Greece from injustice, than by fear of their own, as well as losing allies.
The case against the Athenians is further weakened by the fact that their defence of Corcyra and even their harshness towards Potidea was not strictly in violation of the truce. In addition, the Athenians offered to submit all controversies to binding arbitration. Later, when the war was going badly for them, the Spartans themselves came to believe that they had themselves had broken the truce by this refusal of arbitration.
According to Thcydides, however, the Spartans were themselves 'compelled' to go to war by their growing fear of Athenian imperialism, and therefore cannot be blamed.
Athenian guilt is brought into sharper focus but the manner in which the Athenians responded to the accusations against them. They argued that that they didn't deserve to be so hated for their empire, because they were themselves compelled to seek it, firstly by fear, then also by honour, and later also by benefit-- compulsions they spoke of as "the greatest things". But if actions done for the sake of honour and benefit, as well as those done from fear, can be regarded as compulsory, and excused on that account, is there anything that is forbidden? In its way, then, the Athenian defence of their empire is indeed no defence, since it attacks the very presupposition of all accusation, that there is voluntary wrong-doing. The Athenians add that they are not the first to yield to the temptation to empire, but that it has always been established for the weaker to be kept down by the stronger, and that no one with a chance to acquire something by force has ever yet been dissuaded by the argument from justice. These Athenians seem to have believed that the shocking bluntness of their arguments would intimidate the Spartans, since only a powerful city would dare to say such things, and that they would thereby deter the Spartans from war. They do, however, go on to claim that they rule more justly that their power requires, or than others in their place would do; and they warn the Spartans not to violate the truce between them but to resolve their differences through arbitration. Now, as these concessions of sorts to justice may perhaps suggest, the Athenians were not so powerful as to force Sparta to tolerate their empire, and all that they were doing to increase it, through fear of that power alone; and yet they admitted openly that justice would never restrain them from seeking such power in the future. It is hardly surprising, then, that this speech failed to avert the war, for it reveals clearly what it was about Athens that so angered and frightened the Spartan alliance. (I 71-78).
Pericles said to his Athenian public that their empire was "like a tyranny, which is believed to be unjust to take, but which is dangerous to let go" (II 63.2-3). He urges them to defend it, despite the hatred it arouses, for the sake of the honour it brings them, and especially for the sake of ever-remembered glory in the future. (II 62.1-3, 64.3-6). Later at Melos, while tried to persuade its people to submit, the Athenians claim justice has no place in human reckoning unless there is an equal power to compel on both sides (V89). The Melians keep holding out in the hope of divine intervention "since they stand free from sin against men who are not just". The Athenians counter that the Melians would do the same in their position, since there is a greater or equally divine law 'natural' law according to which the stronger will rule over the weaker.
By following Pericles Funeral Oration, in which he even boasts of the bad things as well as the good things Athens has done, together with the slaughter of the Melians, with the devastating plague that hit Athens and the equally disastrous Sicilian expedition, Thucydides invites us to think of the latter as destined punishments for Athenian insolence and injustice.
However, Thucydides himself seems not to have shared this judgement of divine or cosmic punishment. He tells us that the plague was widespread in Asia and Africa, and all but ridicules the idea that it was prophesied. As for the Sicilian expedition, he says that it could have succeeded with better leadership and more support from home, despite its intrinsic immoderation.
Moreover, the general tone of the work is not one of justice being done, but one of sadness and the notion that justice was itself one of the chief casualties of the war. The Spartans behaved just as oppressively as the Athenians had done, if not more so, confirming the Athenians statements. Furthermore, Thucydides says that none of the cities took sides from justice, but only from advantage or compulsion.
More disturbingly, men committed great crimes even when it didn't serve their interests, but merely satisfied an immediate passion. Revenge was in greater esteem than not to have suffered. Men, women and children were slaughtered en masse. Even neutral parties were murdered from mere envy that they might yet survive. (III 82). Even less depraved nation's moderation was rooted only in fear of a slave revolt at home.
This seems to be the perennial fate of justice in the face of selfishness and violence, says Thucydides: a lesson for statesman and others alike.
This again seem to re-inforce the truth of the original Athenian defence. On the one hand, even if those with power had always attempted to rule, that doesn't mean they were compelled to. On the other, if we examine the Athenian assertions at Melos again we see that their argument didn't rely on this claim. Their claim that justice is irrelevant comes down to the claim that there are other factors that compel human action, of which it is not one. For aren't we all compelled, if we are sensible, to pursue our own good? Doesn't the argument of justice itself acknowledge that this good is a compulsory power, by claiming htat it is in our own interest, at least in the long run or in the truest sense, to be always just? The claim that justice is always i none's own best interest is contained in the very notion of justice, since we think of justice as the common good, and the common good would include one's own. However, the Athenians recognize that such a common good cannot always be found in very situation among men. When we understand this, we are compelled to pursue our own good as distinct from others; for it is costly to us not to, and even the counterargument on behalf of justice must ultimately admit that no true justice could oppose the power of our natural wish for our good. Furthermore, if we are compelled, for the reasons indicated, to pursue our own good, we are also compelled to pursue whatever we believe to be our own good, though t is indeed costly to us to misjudge what it truly is. Now the Athenians thought that it was good for them to acquire and expand their empire, even at the risk of war with Sparta, and it is ultimately for this reason alone that they acknowledged no guilt for doing so.
Despite appearances to the contrary, their imperialistic thesis is in large measure the result of their concern with justice and with nobility, for it is these concerns that required them to give to themselves a defense of their empire, and a defense without the usual hypocrisies. Furthermore, it appeared to the Athenians that to accept their defense of empire, and of selfishness, was not necessarily to repudiate what is truly highest or most noble.
It behoves us to examine to what extent the Athenian claims of superiority were justified. They claimed that their superior intelligence and zeal gave them a right to rule. Pericles claimed they were lovers of beauty and wisdom, as well as being brave in battle, and having an active engagement in political life, without neglected rival concerns, completing a graceful development of the many sided individual's highest powers. Their free choice to use their gifts on behalf of their city, even to die for it, is a crucial aspect of themselves as noble. Athens is so beautiful that it inspires its citizens to erotic love, for instance during the Sicilian campaign. Even in foreign affairs, it shows a superiority to selfish calculation; this is more in terms of its great ambition for ever-lasting honor and willingness to suffer for it than for its justice, although it does include some restraint in relation to its subjects as well, even when such restraint was disadvantageous to it (I 76.3 - 77.5). Even its enemies acknowledged such an aspect of Athenian public-spiritness. (I 70.6). Their mercy towards Mytilene also shows this side of their character. (III 36, 49).
The Scilian campaign remains a tragic failure and testimony to immoderation, which Thucydides attributes private ambitions for honor and gain that were no longer restrained after Pericles' death. Fear of a conspiracy against the people fuelled an uncharacteristic passion to avenge the desecration of the statue of Hermes. They recalled their most capable general, Alcibiades, from the front on such a charge. True, he did have some tyrannical prclivities, but his dismisal in conjunction to the wise counsel he then gave to Sparta led directly to the failure of the Athenian campaign in Sicily. Furthermore. the mob who were responsible for that was so in favour of the campaign that those who were against it were afraid to raise their hands. In contrast, the previous Athenian tyrants, according to Alcibiades had practiced "virtue and intelligence" (VI 54.4-6; cf VI 24.4). The many let their private annoyance at Alcibiades often eccentric and impious practices conquer the public interest. (VI 15.3 -4; cf II 65.8 -10).
Thucydides says of the replacement general, Nicias, "he deserved least among the Greeks, during my time, to come to this degree of misfortune because of his full devotion to virtue as established by custom." (VII 86.5). However, this very piety led to disaster. Firstly, he refused to sail home when defeat was clear because he feared dishonor under the charge of bribery from the Athenian public. Secondly, and far worse, even when he received orders to do so he refused to set sail until "thrice nine days" prescribed by the soothsayers had elapsed because the ill-omen of an eclipse of the moon. This led the Athenians to lose their last chance of escape. Nicias was fully devoted to conventional virtue; at all events, he never willingly did any harm to his fatherland. Yet conventional virtue is an unreliable thing, for it is dependent upon, and in part guided by, hopes that have no other support than belief in conventional virtue itself.
Athen's prospects for success, or even for the army's safe return, were dependent on its power to reconcile the private and public interest, and yet the expedition stretched the city too far beyond the limits of this power. On closer inspection though, Athenian empire seems to have been based upon a contradiction. On the one hand, the argued they were compelled to be selfish; on the other, they thought of their empire as being noble, and accepted certain risks and hardships in connection with their rule that would seem at odds with their own self-interest. In other words, they had not squarely faced their own argument in defense of empire, for this argument leaves no room for superiority to self-interest, or for anything more important than one's own good. If they had truly accepted this argument, they would not have been so moved by the prospects of glory. One might therefore be tempted to draw the disturbing conclusion that the wisest of all Athenians in Thucydides' account were the ambassadors at Melos, whose vindication of the rule of the stronger was least coloured by any continuing or explicit concern for nobility. Yet this conclusion would be false, and not merely because the ambassadors' brutal attempt to destroy the innocence of the Melians made them if anything more determined not to submit to Athenian rule. For there is one Athenian speaker who shows a considerable deeper understanding of the Athenian argument. This Athenian is Diodotus, a remarkable man of whom we know nothing from other sources, and who appears only once in Thucydides’ narrative. Although he seems not to have been a political man, his intervention in Athen's political life was highly skilful. He succeeded in helping Athens to maintain its empire, and to maintain it by means of relatively humane treatment of a subject ally. Moreover, his speech is characterized by a gentleness, and even serenity, that are unparalleled within Thucydides' work and that seem to mirror these qualities in Thucydides himself.
*The foregoing essay is a heavily abbreviated version of the essay by David Bolotin published in 'The History Of Political Philosophy', edited and compiled by Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey. I make no claims to originality over the content, but I hope this condensed version may perhaps prove useful to people who don't have time to read the original.
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