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CHAPTER XIV
THE CAUSE OF THE WAR
The play, we said, is done;--that is the feeling which every reader has,
when he closes the seventh Book; and we fancy it was the writer's feeling too.
lIe had traced the `causes' of the Sicilian expedition from Fortune at Pylos to
Nemesis at the quarries of Syracuse. From this point onwards he has little
interest in his task; the eighth Book is a mere continuation on the old
chronological plan, unfinished, dull, and spiritless. The historian patiently
continued his record; but he seems to grope his way like a man without a clue.
The last seven years of the war he left altogether unrecorded, preferring to
spend his time th retouching, amplifying, and shaping the earlier narrative,
where he could see clearly. His chain of `causes' runs through Books IV to VII.
At the earlier end it pointed back to foreshadowing events as far as the
beginning of Book III (the Mytilenean debate), but no fuither. To link the
Sicilian enterprise to the origin of the war, he would have had to get
completely out of himself, become `a modern of the moderns', and study the
economic situation--an entity he never dreamed of. Looking back to this point,
where his clue seemed to fail him, he must have puzzled and cast about for some
light. The historically insoluble riddle of Pericles' attack upon Megara--how
he must have turned this over, as again and again he took up his first Book, to
revise it once more.
Now, to almost all his contemporaries that riddle presented no difficulty
whatever; for there can have been very few who did not belong to one or other
of two classes. There was the thoughtless mass of ordinary folk who were quite
content with the notion that Pericles had some personal
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rancour against the Megarians. These had not known Pericles; their minds
were not on a scale to measure his. Their footish opinions are not so much as
stated, for a tacit disproof was enough for them. But there was also a large
body of reflective, serious people, who were satisfied with a very different
explanation. About their opinion these facts are certain: namely, that
Thucydides, at some time in his life, thought it worth mentioning, if only
indirectly and by implication; that he mentioned it with no expression of
belief or disbelief on his own part; and that he described at some length what
he thought to be the facts on which it was based. This explanation was that
there was a curse--a taint of guilt and of madness--in the house to which
Pericles on his mother's side, belonged.We hasten to say that
Thucydides' detailed narration of the incidents of the Kylonian conspiracy, to
which this taint was traced back, is sufficiently accounted for by a
desire to correct the version given by Herodotus. (note 1) Herodotus says the
Alcmaeonids were `considered responsible'; the `accusation was laid upon them
`, (note 2) and tells the story very briefly. Thucydides tells it with much
precision and detail, and especially insists that the nine archons (not, as
Herodotus says, the `presidents of the Naucraries') were absolutely
responsible. (note 3) The effect is to fix the guilt of the sacrilege on the
Alcmaeonid archon. Megacles; and doubtless Thucydides believed that so it was.
Both historians have in view
[1. It has been observed that Herodotus, here as in other places where
the Alcmaeonids are concerned, gives the version current in that family.
Thucydides (who, by the way, was connected with the rival house of the
Philaidae--the family of Miltiades and Kimon), here as elsewhere, gives a
version which is, at least, without any bias in favour of the Alcmaeonids.
Another instance is the expulsion of the tyrants: Thucydides (vi. 54 ff.)
barely mentions the Alcmaeonids; Herodutus gives them as much credit as
possilile. See Herod. vi. 123. [2. Herod. v. 70 e[[perthousand]]xon
afit[[currency]]hn toË fÒnou... 71 foneËsai dcents
aÈtoÁw afit[[currency]]h [[paragraph]]xei
ÉAlkmevn[[currency]]daw.
[3. Herod. v. 71 toÊtouw
énistçsi mcentsn ofl prutãniew t<<n
naukrãrvn, o. per [[paragraph]]nemon tÒte tåw
ÉAyÆnaw. Thuc. i. 126 ofl ÉAyhna>oi...
ép[[infinity]]lyon... [[section]]pitrdeg.cantew to>w [[section]]nndeg.a
êrxousi tÆn te fulakØn ka< tÚ pçn
aÈtokrãtorsi diaye>nai [[radical]] ín êrista
diagign~skvsin: tÒte dcents tå pollå t<<n
politik<<n ofl [[section]]nndeg.a êrxontew
[[paragraph]]prasson.]
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a current controversy on the subject roused by the Lacedaemonians'
demand that the Athenians should expel `the Accursed'--a `pretext' for the war
which provides Thucydides with an occasion for telling the story and correcting
Herodotus. The occasion is sufficient; the desire to correct accounts for the
precision and detail.The story is told with great reserve. (note 1) `The followers of Kylon were besieged and were in distress for lack of food
:ind water. So, although Kylon and his brother escaped, the rest, since they
were in straits and some were dying of hunger, took sanctuary as suppliants at
the altar which is on the Acropolis. And those Athenians who were charged to
keep watch, when they saw them dying in the holy place, caused them to rise,
promising they would do them no harm, and they led them away and slew them. And
some who, as they passed by, took sanctuary actually at the altars of the
Venerable Goddess, (note 2) they dispatched. And from this they were called
accursed and banned of the goddess, they and the race that came from them. Now
the Athenians drove out these accursed, and Cleomenes, also, the Lacedaemonian,
drove them out later when the Athenians were in civil strife; and when they
drove out the living they also took up the bones of the dead and cast them out.
They were, however, restored later, and their race is to this day in the
city.
`This then was the Curse which the Lacedacmonians bade them drive out;
pretending that they were first of all avenging the gods, but knowing that
Pericles, the son of Xanthippos, was connected with it on his mother's side,
(note 3)
[1. Die Erzahlung des Thukydides macht den Eindruck einer im ganzen
objektiven, wenngleich mit Bezug auf die Beteiligung der Alkmeoniden, deren
Name gar nicht genannt wird, äusserst zurückhaltenden Darstellung.
Busolt, Gr. Gesch. ii. 204. [2. i. 126. 11 kayezomdeg.nouw ddeg.
tinaw ka< [[section]]p< t<<n Semn<<n Ye<<n to>w bvmo>w
[[section]]n t[[ordfeminine]] parÒd[[florin]] épexrÆsanto.
The ka[[currency]] is ambiguous: it may mean `also' or `even', `actually.'
[2. Observe that the curse follows the female line. Aeschylus had not
eradicated that belief. Alcibiades also was an Alcmaeonid, certainly through
his mother, probably also through his father.]
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and thinking that if he were exiled their affairs at Athens would go
more smoothly. However, they did not so much expect that this would happen to
him as that they would bring him into ill-odour with the city, and make them
think that the war would be partly because of his misfortune (jumforãn).
For being most powerful in his day and leading the state, he was in all things
opposing the Lacedaemonians and not suffering the Athenians to give way, but
was urging them into the war.' (note 1)
This narrative is very serious and solemn. Thucydides, moreover, has
neither directly nor by implication given any opinion about the beliefs
connected with it. He implies, indeed, that to avenge the gods was not, as the
Lacedaemonians pretended, the `first', the primary motive of their
demand. The phrase which describes their primary object--diabolØn
o[[daggerdbl]]sein aÈt"--is ambiguous; for a diabolÆ is any charge
brought with malicious intention to discredit a man--whether the charge be true
or false. The most pious believer in the curse of the Alcmaeonidae could have
used the expression; on any view the revival of the curse to gain an end in
diplomacy was `malicious'. That the Lacedaemonians believed in the curse,
Thucydides implies when he says that the religious motive was not, as they
pretended, the primary one. In the next chapter he records that the
Spartans did believe in their own curse--the êgow of the Brazen
House--and thought it caused the earthquake which preceded the Helot revolt.
Thucydides' reserve is impenetrable; we can only fall back on our general
impression of the tone and manner of his narrative. We are stating what is a
mere matter of personal opinion when we say that this story does not strike us
as the work of a man who was clearly convinced that the curse or `taint' of the
Alcmaeonidae could not conceivably have had any causal connexion with Pericles'
action in `urging the Athenians into the war', because there was no such thing
as
[1. [[section]]w tÚn pÒlemon Àrma toÁw
ÉAyhna[[currency]]ouw, the one explicit statement made by Thucydides on
his own account about Pericles' action in forcing on the war. We have seen how
elsewhere he minimizes it.]
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an hereditary taint of guilt, obscurely working in the blood, a seed of
madness which might be a wise and innocent man's `misfortune'. We feel that a
writer who had altogether rejected that conception would have given some
indication that he thought the whole controversy about the curse a piece of
silly superstition; and that he would not have told the story of Kylon in so
solemn a tone, or have added a still longer and equally serious history of the
curse of Taenarus. That Thucydides believed in the religious and dogmatic
theory of hereditary guilt, we do not for one moment suppose. He did not, we
may be quite sure, think of an êgow as Aeschylus thought of it,--as a
spirit, an evil genius (da[[currency]]mvn), which could be incarnate in a
series of descendants. But there was nothing irrational or superstitious in
believing that when a man commits what is to him an awful religious crime,
remorse and terror may madden his brain; and that this taint of madness may be
transmitted to his posterity. The first of these propositions no one would
deny; the second is, we believe, not yet finally disproved.It
seems, then, just possible that Thucydides thought there might be some touch of
madness in Pericles which explained his violence against Megara--the otherwise
inexplicable problem. But why against Megara? and why connect the madness with
the curse of the Alcmaeonidae? Is it altogether fanciful to point out that the
Kylonian conspiracy was an incident in the feud between Megara and
Athens? `Kylon was an Athenian in olden time who won a victory at Olympia and
was well-born and powerful; and he had married a daughter of Theagenes, a
Megarian, who in those days was tyrant of Megara.' (note 1) Theagenes, we are
further told, (note 2) supplied him with forces for his attempt on the
Acropolis of Athens. So most, at any rate, of the suppliants who were
sacrilegiously slain by the Alcmaeonid archon, were Megarians. And now
Megacles' descendant is `urging' the Athenians into a war sooner than revoke a
violent decree against the descendants of his victims. A strange coincidence,
if it is nothing more!
[1. i. 126. [2. Ibid.]
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However this may be, the point is, perhaps, clear, that Thucydides'
attention was occupied with topics like these, and so diveited from those
factors in the economic situation which might have enabled him to read the
origin of the war in the light of the Sicilian expedition. All contemporary
thought was similarly directed to mythical causes. The Lacedaemonians, for
instance, explained the war on the same lines. Their first open quarrel with
Athens, says Thucydides, (note 1) dated from the Helot revolt at Ithome, when
they had dismissed Kimon's contingent slightingly. The Helot revolt was
occasioned by an earthquake. (note 2) The earthquake was, as the Lacedaemonians
thought, caused by Poseidon, whose sanctuary they had violated by killing
suppliants. (note 3) Their chain of `causes' led them back to an
êgow--the curse of Taenarus-- of just the same kind as the êgow of
the Alcmaeonidae. Such were the `causes' men looked for in Thucydides' day. Can
we wonder that the origin of the Peloponnesian war is somewhat obscure?
Thucydides was one of those prophets and kings of thought who have
desired to see the day of all-conquering Knowledge, and have not seen it. The
deepest instinct of the human mind is to shape the chaotic world and the
illimitable stream of events into some intelligible form which it can hold
before itself and take in at one survey. From this instinct all mythology takes
its rise, and all the religious and philosophical systems which grow out of
mythology without a break. The man whose reason has thrown over myth and
abjured religion, and who yet is born too soon to find any resting-place for
his thought provided by science and philosophy, may set himself to live on
isolated facts without a theory; but the time will come when his resistance
will break down. All the artistic and imaginative elements in his nature will
pull against his reason, and, if once he begins to produce, theii triumph is
assured. In spite of all his good resolutions, the work will grow under his
hands into some satisfying shape, informed by reflection and governed by
art.
[1. i. 102. [2. i. 101.
[3. i. 128.]
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When Thucydides records his own military failure and the exile by which
the Athenians punished it, he neither extenuates the blunder nor complains of
the penalty. Perhaps he knew that during those twenty years of banishment in
his remote Thracian home, he had gathered the maturer fruits of solitude and
silence. It must have been bitter at first to quit the scene of a drama so
intense and passionate, to step down from the stage and find a place among the
spectators; but as the long agony wore on, as crime led to crime and madness to
ruin, it was only from a distance that the artist who was no longer an actor
could discern the large outlines shaping all that misery and suffering into the
thing of beauty and awe which we call Tragedy.