[[118]]
CHAPTER III
THE UNITY OF THUCYDIDES' HISTORY
I
The revival of the old controversy on when Thucydides composed the
various parts of his History, although designed to prove the existence
of many early parts in the work which we have, apparently tended to prove the
opposite. The reason is that each new participant in the controversy, while
advancing his own views, undermined those of his predecessor and hence
diminished, rather than increased, the number of passages still capable of
being regarded as early, with the result that it firially became possible to
attack the whole position that the History contains many such passages.
This evolution was, in brief, as follows. In 1919 Ed. Schwartz (note 1)
seemingly opened a new era in the study of Thucydides when he urged that, of
the four speeches at the council of Sparta reported in the first book, those of
the Corinthians and of Archidamus were composed after the Peace of Nicias,
while those of the Athenians and of the ephor Sthenelaidas were added after
404--an important observation, if true, since it would suggest that Thucydides
once regarded Corinth as the cause of the war and only later saw Sparta's fear
of Athens as the élhyestãth. A corollary was that, when in 404
Thucydides
[1. Das Geschichtswerk des Thukydides, Bonn 1919 1, 1929
2.]
[[119]]
came to this new understanding of Sparta, he saw how right Pericles had
been and accordingly completed his work with the purpose of vindicating the
great statesman, who at that time was thought to have ruined Athens. The
novelty of Schwartz's method, it will be seen, was to have identified early and
late passages with the purpose of proving a development in Thucydides' thought.
In the same year and the following, the method was carried further by Max
Pohlenz, (note 2) who, however, disagreed with Schwartz's conclusions. After
showing that the debate at Sparta in the first book is in fact a unit and thus
late, he based his own view of Thucydides' development rather on his reading of
the famous sentence in I 22.1, which he took as a promise by Thucydides to
report speeches exactly. Since, however, many speeches can hardly be so
described, Pohlenz went on to distinguish early from late speeches by the
criterion of exactitude, discovering a development not so much in Thucydides'
view of the war as in his methods of historiography. And nine years later (note
3) W. Schadewaldt pressed the same conclusion still further. Accepting Pohlenz'
literalistic reading of I 22.1 and finding the same ideal of accuracy embodied
in the Archaeology, he went on to contrast the methods seemingly adopted there
with what he considered the far broader and more penetrating attitude revealed
in books six and seven, both of which he argued were composed after 404. His
deduction was striking: namely, that during the war Thucydides developed from
an historisierender Sophist (note 4) interested only in the most literal
accuracy to an historian in the fullest sense of the word, a man able to
analyze the fundamental processes of state and society.
[2. "Thukydidesstudien," Nachrichten von der kgl. Gesellschaft der
Wissenschaflen zu Göttingen (1919) 95-138. (1920) 56-82. [3. Die
Geschichtschreibung des Thukydides, Berlin 1929.
[4. Ibid, p. 30.]
[[120]]
But it will be observed that in the course of this argument more and
more parts of the History were continually being vindicated as late. The
list now included books six and seven, those parts of books one which concern
the rivalry of Athens and Sparta, and all passages contrasting Pericles
policies with those of his successors, a very broad topic indeed which would
inevitably include all Pericles' speeches (except possibly some of the first),
the estimate of him in II 65, the Mytilenean Debate, the analysis of
stãsiw, and such parts of the fourth book as are concerned with Athens'
expansionist policies. Moreover, such passages as were still called early were
so described on the reading of I 22.1 which made Thucydides seem to say that
exactitude and only exactitude was the foundation of the History. But
precisely this point was challenged in 1936 and 1937 by two young scholars, A.
Grosskinsky (note 5) and II. Patzer, (note 6) whose successive studies showed
beyond much doubt that Thucydides was not asserting mere accuracy as the basis
of his speeches but that on the contrary, by his own words, the speeches were
to contain primarily what he regarded as tå ddeg.onta, that is, the broad
considerations justiing any given stand. Only secondarily were they to be
limited by the jÊmpasa gn~mh of what was actually said--gn~mh meaning, in
Patzer's able analysis, the essential relationship of a mind to a practical
problem and thus signiiying not so much the drift of one speech as the whole
cast of a man's policy as revealed perhaps in several speeches. This
interpretation of the first sentence in I 22 was confirmed, so these scholars
maintained, by the famous last sentence: that is, the general considerations of
a social and political sort
[5. "Das Programm des Thinkydides," Neue deutsche Forschungen,
Abc. klass. Phil., 1936. [6. "Das Problem dcr Geschichtsschreibung des
Thukydides und die Thukydideische Frage," ibid., 1937.]
[[121]]
contained in the speeches tå ddeg.onta) were to be at least a
chief means of expounding the recurrent tendencies of human nature tÚ
ényr~pinon), on which Thueydides squarely rested the later value of his
work. But with this broader and undoubtedly more correct interpretation of I
22, the whole theory by which Pohlenz and Schadewaldt had distinguished between
early and late passages fell to the ground, and when a still later study, that
of F. Bizer, (note 7) concluded that a late date fits the Archaeology far
better than an early one, virtually nothing remained of the whole movement
which had sought to find in the extant History strong traces of its
author's development.That is not to say that early passages may
not exist in the History; it is inconceivable that Thucydides did not
take notes or that he failed to use them when he wrote his final work. It is
merely to say that the work which we have should not be regarded as an
agglomeration of passages written at widely different times and imperfectly
blended together by reason of the author's premature death, but rather as
composed primarily at one time with the help of earlier notes and, if broken at
the end and incomplete perhaps in several places, yet possessing after all the
unity which might be expected to result from a period of more or less sustained
composition. But if that or anything like that is the case, then the work
should reveal a set of consistent ideas, organically developed from one end of
the History to the other. Certainly, when Thucydides in the famous
sentence just referred to speaks of the recurreney of historical events, he
implies that the war followed some pattern and that he, as an historian, has
expounded that pattern; otherwise it is hard to see what he could have imagined
would be recurrent. Thus if one is to maintain that the
[7. Untersuchungen zur Archaeologie des Thukydides, Tübingen diss.
1937.]
[[122]]
History is in a fairly finished state as we have it and was
composed essentially in one period of the author's life, it is not enough
merely to prove how few passages imply an earlier version, valuable as that
negative task is. It is necessary to show that the version which we have is in
fact so complete a unit, that no part stands outside the complex of ideas known
from other parts and that, since much of it is demonstrably late, all of it
must accordingly have been composed or arranged at the same time--in sum, that
it is the kind of work which a brilliant mind, dominated by a certain number of
related ideas, would compose when those ideas were consistently before it. But
it was natural that Grosskinsky and Patzer, faced as they were with the
divisionistic arguments of their predecessors, should not have attempted this
more positive task, and to find anything of the sort, it is necessary to return
to Ed. Meyer's brilliant essay published in 1899. (note 8) To undertake once
more so thorough an analysis as his is impossible here, but in view of the
complicated nature of the controversy since he wrote, it may not be purposeless
to explore again the grounds for believing in the unity of the
History.
II
Perhaps the easiest way to do so will be to examine the leading ideas of
books six and seven and then to trace these same ideas through the preceding
books. For clearly, if Thucydides began composing his History after the
end of the war or towards its close, he wrote even the first books with later
events in mind, and the Sicilian narrative will consequently owe its climactic
character to the fact that it draws together many strands of thought expounded
previously. Now the opening books contain many passages
[8. Forschungen zur alten Geschichte (Halle 1899) II 269-436.]
[[123]]
either certainly or probably written after 404, (note 9) and if one
assumed that Thucydides began with the first sentence and wrote progressively
to the last, then books six and seven would obviously fall towards the end of
his period of authorship. There seems reason to believe that on the whole he
did write consecutively. Thus in talking of Delos in V 1, he refers back to the
purification described in III 104 with the words [[radical]]
prÒterÒn moi dedÆlvtai; (note 10) in VI 94. I he refers
back to VI 4 in the same way; in VI 31.2 he compares the expeditionary army of
415 to the forces commanded successively by Pericles and Hagnon in 430, which
are carefully described in II 56 and 58; (note 11) in introducing the account
of the tyrannicides in VI 54.1, he uses the words [[section]]p< pldeg.on
dihghsãmenow, which may, though they need not absolutely, mean that he
is conscious of having treated the subject more briefly before in I 20; and in
III 90.1 he says that he will note only the main points of the first Sicilian
expedition, as if aware that it was of importance chiefly as foreshadowing the
second. But even if these statements were more conclusive than they are, the
probability would still remain that he would at times turn back to change or
insert some passage. Thus it will not be maintained here that he wrote
absolutely consecutively or that a given passage may not have been written
after one that follows it (we cannot hope to follow such a delicate thing as
composition with anything like complete accuracy), but only, as before said,
that books six and seven are so closely knit with what precedes, that the whole
work betrays a plan consistently worked out and therefore (it is natural
to
[9. These passages are listed by Patzcr, "Problem," pp. 103-7. [10.
Similarly VIII 108.4 refers to the moving of the Delians to Atramyttium
described in V 1.
[11. In the same way VIII 15.1 mentions the restrictions
on the reserve of 1000 talents noted in II 24.1.]
[[124]]
suppose) worked out in a period of more or less sustained
authorship.But if so, the Sicilian narrative should not have
been composed at a time too far removed from the late passages in the opening
books referred to above--in other words, it should not have been composed
directly after the expedition itself but near or after the end of the war--and
there are in fact good grounds for assuming that to be the case. The most
thorough discussion of the subject is Schadewaldt's, (note 12) who emphasized
two passages especially: VII 57.2 where, in describing the forces at Syracuse,
Thucydides lists as Athenian by origin ka< Afigin[[infinity]]tai o,,
tÒte A[[daggerdbl]]ginan e[[perthousand]]xon, presumably to distinguish
them from the true Aeginetans restored to their native island in 405; (note 13)
and VI 15.2-5, where, after noting Alcibiades' extravagance, he goes on ~ter
ka< kaye>len Ïsteron tØn t<<n ÉAyhna[[currency]]vn
pÒlin oÈx [[yen]]kista and then explains that, through fear of
his ambitions, the Athenians chose other generals and thus oÈ diå
[[paragraph]]sfhlan tØn pÒlin. The latter verb, limited by
oÈ diå makroË, Schadewaldt took as a reference to Athens'
losses from the Sicilian expedition, but the former and stronger verb, less
narrowly limited by Ïsteron, he interpreted as an allusion to her ultimate
defeat. (note 14) Neither passage is perhaps entirely clinching (in the first,
Thucydides might possibly be distinguishing the Athenians on Aegina from the
exiles of 431 rather than from the repatriates of 405, and in the second, the
verb kaye>len might imply a period late in the war when Athens' weakness was
apparent but her doom not yet complete). Yet the obvious and probable
interpretation is certainly as made by Schadewaldt, and it is confirmed by
several other passages implying a lapse of
[12. Geschichtschreibung, pp. 8-15. [13. Xenophon, Hell. II 2.9.
[14. For further discussion of the passage, see below, nn. 21 and 28.]
[[125]]
time between the actual expedition and Thucydides'
account.The first of these is the well-known comment on
Andocides' testimony in regard to the mutilators of the Hermae (VI 60.2), in
which, after stating the motives behind the testimony, he concludes, tÚ
dcents safcentsw oÈden per< t<<n drasãntvn tÚ
[[paragraph]]rgon. Without going into the many discrepancies in our accounts of
the affair, it may be said that Andocides himself in 410 admitted and in 399
denied complicity in it (note 15) (a point on which Thucydides himself was
doubtful, as is clear from the next sentence to that just quoted), and that the
remark in any case posits some inquiry on the latter's part, which in view of
his exile would have been neither swift nor easy. Similar in its implications
is the account of Decelea in VII 27 and 28, formally a digression to explain
why Athens could not afford to keep the Thracian mercenaries which had arrived
in the summer of 413 but actually a treatment of the whole effect of Decelea on
the later course of the war. Thus the tone of the passage is forward-looking:
in 27.3, the building of the fort by the assembled Peloponnesians is contrasted
with its later occupation by successive garrisons; in 27.4, it is said that at
times large contingents were there (Steup appositely cites VIII 71.1, where
Agis in 411 is said to have summoned such a contingent) and at times only
enough troops for raiding; in the same section Agis' continued residence there
is emphasized, a passage which looks forward to VIII 5.3 and 70.2; (note 16)
and in 28.1 the new difficulties of trade with Euboea are mentioned, another
passage which looks forward to the later narrative in VIII 4 and 96.2. These
references are not exact, but they undoubtedly
[15. De Red. 7 and 25, De Myst. 61-64. Jebb, Attic
Orators, I pp. 76-79. [16. That Agis stayed largely at Decelea until
the end of the war is clear from Xen. Hell. I 1.33, II 2.7, 3.3.]
[[126]]
assume a knowledge of events for some years after 413 and quite possibly
to the end of the war. The same deduction must be drawn from a number of
superlatives in the sixth and seventh books. These are: first, the statement
that the disaster at Mycalessus was jumforå t[[ordfeminine]] pÒlei
pãs[[dotaccent]] oÈdemiçw >=ssvn mçllon
*tdeg.raw (VII 29.5); then the remark on the nuktomax[[currency]]a on Epipolae,
mÒnh dØ stratopdeg.dvn megãlvn [[paragraph]]n ge t"de t"
poldeg.m[[florin]] [[section]]gdeg.neto (VII 44.1); again, the judgment
preceding the catalogue of peoples engaged in the great final battle,
[[paragraph]]ynh ple>sta dØ [[section]]p< m[[currency]]an pÒlin
taÊthn jun[[infinity]]lye, plÆn ge dØ toË
jÊmpantow lÒgou toË [[section]]n t"de t" pldeg.m[[florin]]
prÚw tØn ÉAyhna[[currency]]vn te pÒlin ka<
Lakedaimon[[currency]]vn (VII 56.4); further, the general assertion on the
Athenian defeat at Syracuse, mdeg.giston dØ tÚ diãforon
toËto [t"] ÑEllhnik" strateÊmati [[section]]gdeg.neto (VII
75.7); and finally, the crowning judgment on the expedition, jundeg.bh te
[[paragraph]]rgon toËto [ÑEllhnikÚn] t<<n katå
tÚn pÒlemon tÒnde mdeg.giston gendeg.syai, doke>n
dÉ [[paragraph]]moige ka< oen éko[[ordfeminine]]
ÑEllhnik<<n [[daggerdbl]]smen (VII 87.5). To say that Thucydides
made these statements in ignorance of what might presently take place is to
liken him to the poets and logographers whose uncritical stories he attacks in
I 21; it is also to neglect several other passages where he carefully guards
against extreme statement when he believes his knowledge inadequate (III 113.6;
V 68.2, 74.3; VII 87.4). But indeed in the second, third, and last of the
passages just quoted, he is evidently referring to the whole war, and there
seems no good reason not to take him at his word.Thus a number
of statements in the Sicilian narrative were in all probability composed after
the end of the war, and that these passages were not inserted into an earlier
draft seems to follow from the generally recognized fact that books six and
seven, more than any other part of the History, comprise a unified and
consistent whole. Schade-
[[127]]
waldt, who has also discussed this aspect of the Sicilian narrative,
(note 17) has shown how difficult it in fact is to detach any of its important
parts from their present context, and there is perhaps no need of restating his
arguments here. The advocates of an early date, on the other hand, have had to
rely chiefly on Thucydides' seeming ignorance of the future in such passages as
VI 62.2 and VII 58.2, where he writes in the present tense of Himera, although
it was destroyed by the Carthaginians in 409 (note 18)--an argument almost
entirely invalidated since Patzer has shown that Thucydides elsewhere uses such
historical presents even of towns the destruction of which he himself notes.
(note 19) It is certainly his habit (itself the result of his intensity of
mind) to confine himself rather strictly to what he is describing at the
moment; he glances at the future for the most part only when ideas that
interest him greatly are involved, as, for instance, in his estimate of
Pericles in II 6 or his remarks quoted above on the magnitude of the Sicilian
expedition. (note 20) It would therefore be unreasonable, even without Patzer's
observations, to expect him always to treat the later history of what he
mentions merely in passing. An argument of another sort is that of A. Rehm,
(note 21) who found proof of incompleteness in what he argues were blanks in
VII 4.1,
[17. Geschichtschreibung, esp. pp. 10-11. For further discussion
see below pp. 132- 33 and Patzer, "Problem," p. 31 n. 67. [18. Xen.
Hell. I 1.37; Diodorus XIII 62. Cf. K. Ziegler, Phil. Woch.
50(1930) 195.
[19. "Problem," p. 14, where he quotes I 56.2,
Poteideãtaw, o,, ofikoËsin [[section]]p< t" fisyum" t[[infinity]]w
PallÆnhw, whence they were driven in 430/29 (II 70). Similar is II 23.3,
[[partialdiff]]n ndeg.montai ÉVr~pioi ÉAyhna[[currency]]vn
ÍpÆkooi, which accordingly need not have been written before
412/11 when the Doeotians took Oropos (VIII 60.1).
[20. See below, pp.
165-69.
[21. Philologus 89 (1934) 133-60. His further attempt to
explain all late references in VI and VII as additions is unconvincing (cf.
Patzer, above, n. 17). For instance, to delete the clause in VI 15.3 on the
ruinous eflects of Alcibiades' extravagance would involve deleting not only the
rest of 15 but the opening of Alcibiades' speech (16), which is intended to
illustrate the previous judgment. These passages, however, serve the vital
purpose of acquainting the reader with the people's fears of Alcibiades which
flared out during the incident of the Hermae (see also below, n. 28).
Similarly, to delete the superlatives in VI and VII would be to destroy the
whole architecture of these books (see below, pp 132-33).]
[[128]]
7.1, and 43.5 left to be filled in later with the name ofa fort
temporarily forgotten by Thucydides. But acute as this observation is, it
proves only what would doubtless be assumed in any case, that his untimely
death robbed every part of the History, even the most finished parts, of
ultimate revision. In sum, considering the number of late passages In these
books, the paucity and inconclusiveness of the supposedly early passages, and
above all the inherent difficulty in imagining that so tightly woven a
narrative could ever have been achieved by a process of insertion, it seems
fair to assume that books six and seven were written at a time not far removed
from the late passages already noted in the preceding books. But if so, we may
return to the larger question set forth at the beginning of this section,
namely, what are the leading ideas of the Sicilian books and how are these
ideas connected with what has gone before? For if this connection could be
shown to be close, then we could say that it represents, in effect, the pattern
which Thucydides detected in the events of his time and on which he rested the
future utility of his work, It would also justify us in believing that the
History is not, so to speak, a notebook of passages composed at widely
different times but rather a unified interpretation of the war and, as such, an
interpretation possible only when his opinions were matured and the facts
before him. Finally, as has been said, such a connection, if shown, would
augment the valuable, if inevitably negative, work of those who have disproved
many of the alleged indications of an earlier version, by suggesting in a
somewhat more positive way the threads of unity in the version which we
have.Perhaps no ideas play a larger part in the Sicilian
narrative than the following four: the magnitude and decisiveness ofthe
struggle at Syracuse; the surprising nature (parãlogow)
[[129]]
of Athens' defeat; the fact that she was defeated by democratic Syracuse
when oligarchic Sparta had proved an easy adversary; and the reasons for the
defeat inherent in the character of her government and leadership. These ideas
will be discussed successively in their relation to the foregoing
narrative.(1) That the Athenian attack on Syracuse produced, to
Thucydides' mind, the greatest struggle in the 27-years war, appears from
several passages already quoted: VII 44.1 on Epipolae as the largest night
engagement; 56.4 on the final battle in the harbor as involving the greatest
number of peoples (excepting the total number engaged in the whole war); 75.7
on the Athenian retreat as signiing the supreme reverse ever sustained by a
Greek army; and 87.5 on the whole struggle as the greatest [[paragraph]]rgon in
the war and probably in Greek history. In addition to these passages are: VI
31.1, where the expeditionary force of 415 is called the most expensive and the
handsomest up to that time; 31.6, where it is observed that the undertaking
constituted the farthest flight of Athenian ambition (mdeg.gistow >=dh
diãplouw épÚ t[[infinity]]w ofike[[currency]]aw ka<
[[section]]p< meg[[currency]]st[[dotaccent]] [[section]]lp[[currency]]di
t<<n mellãntvn mellÒntvn prÚw tå
Ípãrxonta [[section]]pexeirÆyh); and VII 70.4, where the
final battle in the harbor is said to have brought together most ships in the
smallest space. (note 22) But since these statements evidently embody two
distinct ideas--first, that the expedition was on an extraordinarily large
scale and second, that, such being the case, its failure inflicted a supreme
blow on Athens--it may be well to consider the two ideas separately.
[22. To these should be added the contested passage, VII 85.4, on the
slaughter at the Assinarus: ple>stow går dØ fÒnow
o[[apple]]tow ka< oÈdenÚw [[section]]lãssvn t<<n
[[section]]n t" [Sikelik"] poldeg.m[[florin]] toÊt[[florin]]
[[section]]gdeg.neto. The deletion of Sikelik", recommended by the scholiast,
is supported by Marchant ad loc., though opposed by Steup. The apparent
reference to Herodotus VII 170.3, the unusual addition of two modifiers to
pÒlemow, and the climactic tone of the preceding narrative seemingly
argue for deletion.]
[[130]]
As for the first, there is an interesting passage in Alcibiades' first
speech where he is made to say just before the expedition that the military
efforts of all the Greek states had so far proved a good deal smaller than
expected (oÎte ofl êlloi ÜEllhnew diefãnhsan
tosoËtoi ^ntew ~souw ßkastoi sfçw aÈtoÁw
+/-r[[currency]]ymoun, éllå mdeg.giston dØ
aÈtoÁw [[section]]ceusmdeg.nh <= ÑEllåw
pÒliw [[section]]n t"de t" poldeg.m[[florin]] flkan<<w
...pl[[currency]]syh, VI 17.5). Accepted by Hude and Marchant, the sentence was
deleted by Classen on the insufficient grounds chat so young a man could not
have made such a statement, and by Steup because he thought that Alcibiades
would not have spoken of a continuous state of war after the Peace of Nicias
and before the formal revival of hostilities between Athens and Sparta in 413
(VII 18). But, as Patzer has shown in another connection, (note 23) a virtual
state of war is assumed to exist at this time in several places, notably in the
summary of the Egestians' speech (VI 6.2 ad fin.), in Nicias' first
speech (VI 10.1), in Alcibiades' speech at Sparta (VI 91.6), and by Thucydides
himself in VI 73.2, VII 28.3, and VI 105.1. If then the passage be accepted as
genuine, we may assume that the historian and, presumably, Alcibiades as well
regarded the war as only gradually gathering momentum. One reason for that
view, so far at least as Athens is concerned, is several times expressed; it
was, of course, the plague. Thus Nicias in warning against the expedition
speaks of che city as even then only partially recovered (VI 12.1), and Thucy
dides later says the same, though without Nicias' reservations (26.2). Now, as
has been pointed out already, when he comes to discuss the unparalleled scale
of the original expeditionary force (VI 31.2), he compares it to that of 430
which is carefully described in the second book (56 and 58) His point is that
the earlier venture, undertaken when the plague
[23. "Problem," pp. 19-20.]
[[131]]
had just begun, represented Athens' finest combined force of ships and
hoplites before 415. Similarly, in speaking of the invasion of Megara in 431
(which as a land attack could not later have been compared to the Sicilian
expedition), he says, stratÒpedÒn te mdeg.giston dØ
toËto èyrÒon ÉAyhna[[currency]]v
[[section]]gdeg.neto, ékmazoÊshw [[paragraph]]ti t[[infinity]]w
pÒlevw ka< oÎpv nenoshku[[currency]]aw (II 31.2). Again, in
talking of the second epidemic of 426 (III 87.2), he says that nothing weakened
Athens more than the plague. (note 24) Thus these passages give a consistent
answer to the question why the Athenians did not produce their full strength at
once and why therefore the Sicilian expedition was the climax of the war. An
explanation is likewise given for Sparta's slow beginning. In the first place,
as is repeatedly stressed, the Spartans were naturally torpid and conservative
(I 70, 118.2, 132.5; IV 55.2; V 63.2; VI 88.10; VIII 6.); then, with the
exception seemingly of a few individuals like Archidamus (I 80-81), they
expected the time-honored strategy of invasion to win them a quick victory (I
121.4, IV 85.2, V 14.3, VII 28.3, VIII 24.5). Thus they were amazed that Athens
did not desist even when the revolt of Mytilene was added to the ravaging of
Attica (III 16.2), and after the defeat of Pylos they were completely shaken,
feeling unable to cope with so unusual an adversary (IV 55). Hence when
Brasidas, whose quite un-Spartan energy is often noted (cf. esp. IV 81.1),
attacked the Thraceward country, it was felt that they werejust beginning to
fight (tÚ pr<<ton Lakedaimon[[currency]]vn Ùrg~ntvn
[[paragraph]]mellon peirãsesyai, IV 108.6). Both he, however, and his
conquests
[24. It has been argued that this passage could not have been written
after theSicilian expedition (cf. Steup ad loc. but also Patzer,
"Problem," p. 108). It is doubtful, however, whether the remark should be
interpreted so strictly. It merely reinforces what has been said of the plague
in II 54.1 and in Peric!es' last speech (II 64.1-3, where there is a similar
juxtaposition of the idea of Athens' dÊnamiw). Absorbed in the period
which he is describing (see below, pp. 166-69), Thucydides seems to be making a
statement quite true of that time without reference to disasters of another
sort which took place later.]
[[132]]
were neglected by the home government, which after the Peace of Nicias
was accordingly criticized even more fiercely for its sloth and cowardice.
Hence it was that the campaign of Mantinea seemed to Thucydides so significant
a turning point: not only did it clear Sparta of the charge of
malak[[currency]]a, éboul[[currency]]a and bradutÆw (V 75.3; cf. I
122.4) but, what is more important in the present context, it actually called
forth the finest Spartan army up to that time (stratÒpedon dØ
toËto kãlliston ÑEllhnikÚn t<<n mdeg.xri
toËde jun[[infinity]]lyen, V 60.3), with the result that the battle itself
could be described as ple[[currency]]stou dØ xrÒnou
meg[[currency]]sth dØ t<<n ÑEllhnik<<n ka<
ÍpÚ éjiologvtãtvn pÒlevn junelyoËsa (V
74.1). Thus what is said before the sixth book not only of Athens' but of
Sparta's military efforts bears out the statement of Alcibiades quoted above
and, by so doing, prepares the ground for the climactic descriptions of the
whole Sicilian narrative.Here then we have followed one part of
that recurrent and interwoven complex of ideas around which the History
is built, and that Thucydides' analysis of the Spartans (note 25) came up in
this connection (an analysis which in its entire consistency stands as one more
proof that the work was conceived as a unit) suggests how a given idea is
constantly invoking another, in such a way that, as the History
advances, it draws increasingly on all that has gone before. But to confine
ourselves still to the idea of magnitude, it is to be observed that these
statements regarding the size of the war are not mere notes appended to the
descriptions of certain
[25. Spartan traits, other than those noted above, are: their harshness
as governors, I 77.6, 95.1, 103.1, III 93.2, V 52.1, VIII 84 (but contrast
Brasidas, IV 81.2); their fear of the helots, II 32.4, IV 41.3, 55.1, V 14.3,
VII 26.2, VIII 40.2; their religiosity, II 72.2, III 89.1, V 54.2, 55.3, VII
18; their secrecy, I 92.1, II 39.1, V 68.2; their suspiciousness, I 68.2, 90.2,
102.3, III 13, V 109; their justice towards one another, I 132.5, V 105.4;
their covert pursuance of their own junfdeg.ron, I 76.2, 102.3, III 68.4, V
105.4; their discipline, I 84, II 11, IV 40, V 9, 72.3.]
[[133]]
events but constitute, as it were, fixed landmarks in the total
structure. Thus, when in VI 31 Thucydides describes the supreme size,
brilliance, and efficiency of the first Athenian flotilla and then, after
retailing the later reinforcements and noting with various superlatives the
growing fierceness of the struggle, rises at last to the great catalogue of
peoples engaged in the final battle (VII 57-58), he is clearly preparing for
the ultimate catastrophe, a catastrophe which is itself marked by the
assertions that Athens' loss was the worst ever sustained by a Greek city and
that the whole [[paragraph]]rgon was unmatched either in the war or, to his own
mind, in all Greek experience (VII 87). No better proof is to be found that
books six and seven were conceived as a unit than in these progressive,
interrelated statements, but, what is more important, their significance cannot
be limited to the Sicilian books alone. For when it is said in the first and
second sentences of the History that the war about to be described was
the greatest of all Greek wars and, in the sixth and seventh books, that it
reached its climax in the struggle at Syracuse, the relation of these separate
statements can hardly be accidental. One therefore concludes on these grounds
alone (quite apart from the other indications of the Archaeology's late date),
(note 26) that he wrote each part with the other in mind, and consequently that
an orderly and consistent progression exists from the initial claim regarding
the size of the war, through the various explanations why Athens and Sparta got
rather slowly under way, to the full corroboration of the first claim in the
Sicilian books.With so much on the mere magnitude of the war in
Sicily, we may turn to the corollary of the idea noted above, namely, the
decisiveness of the struggle in the total 27-years war. Four passages already
quoted perhaps best express the
[26. See below, pp. 140-42, 160, 167-68.]
[[134]]
seriousness of Athens' loss: (note 27) VI 15.3, where it is said that
Alcibiades' extravagance kaye>len Ïsteron tØn... pÒlin; VII
28, on Athens' impoverishment under the double burden of the Sicilian war and
the Spartan occupation of Decelea; VII 75.2, the famous description ofthe
retreat from Syracuse, beginning deinÚn oÔn [[Sigma]]n... ~ti
tãw te naËw épolvlekÒtew pãsaw
épex~roun ka< ént< megãlhw [[section]]lp[[currency]]dow
ka< aÈto< ka< <= pÒliw kinduneÊontew; and VII 87.5,
where after noting the magnitude of the [[paragraph]]rgon, Thucydides adds that
it was to>w te kratÆsasi lamprÒtaton ka< to>w diafyare>si
dustuxdeg.staton, continuing panvleyr[[currency]]& dØ tÚ
legÒmenon ka< pezÚw ka< n[[infinity]]ew ka< oÈdcentsn ~ti
oÈk ép~leto. It has been shown already that these statements
could hardly have been written before the end of the war and, that being the
case, they reveal quite clearly how important an element in Athens' ultimate
defeat Thucydides considered the expedition. Thus it should be expected that
the rest of the narrative, if conceived as a unit at the end of the war, should
reveal this same idea, and although it is true, as observed above, that
Thucydides does not commonly anticipate the future and therefore would not
often refer to the expedition in the previous books, nevertheless many passages
undoubtedly look to this great later event. The best known and oftenest
referred to is the estimate of Pericles in II 6, where after contrasting the
latter's wise leadership with that of his successors, Thucydides goes on to say
that their greatest error was the Sicilian expedition, and then observes
wonderingly that, even after it, the Athenians, although already in revolution,
were able to hold out for several years against their original enemy, the
latter's Sicilian reinforcements, their own revolting subjects, and Cyrus. Now
it will be observed that this passage, while confirming
[27. See also in Nicias' speeches VII 64, 77.7.]
[[135]]
the central importance of the Sicilian war, regards Athens' actual
losses from it as only one of several factors in her ultimate defeat, the
others being the blind self-interest of her politicians, the ensuing disunity
of the city, and the consequent squandering of the great advantages on the
basis of which Pericles had justly predicted victory. More will be said of
these ideas below (pp. 154-62), but it should be noted here that, precisely by
considering the expedition as the supreme evidence and result of Athens'
internal faults, does Thucydides bind the whole History together as
closely as he does. For so considered, it becomes inseparable from Pericles'
warning against foreign conquests (I 144.1, II 65.7), from the Mytilenean
Debate and the description of stãsiw (which merely carry further what is
said in II 6 of the Athenian politicians), from Cleon's refusal of peace after
Pylos (which reveals the same desire for conquest that was warned against by
Pericles but supremely exemplified at Syracuse), and from the Melian Dialogue.
But further still, when he says in II 6 that the expedition failed for
political reasons rather than because the plan was impossible, and then goes on
to observe that the city, shattered though it was, could still hold out for
several years, he invokes still another vital concept of the History,
namely, that of Athens' extraordinary strength. It is this concept which forms
the burden of the first book, where from the Archaeology on, Thucydides
expounds the greatness of Athens' power--a power based, like that of Minos and
Agamemnon, on control of the sea, therefore positing, like theirs, a great
economic advance, and consequently invulnerable to an outmoded land state like
Sparta (see below, pp. 140-42). We have already seen that the superlatives of
the sixth and seventh books are inseparable from the initial statements on the
magnitude of the war, but it must also be noted that
[[136]]
that magnitude itself depended on the high condition of the belligerent
states, and notably that of Athens since she opposed all the others. But to the
degree that the Sicilian expedition represented the highest pitch of Athens'
strength, was its failure the more serious. When therefore Thucydides, while
recognizing that fact, admiringly notes her ability to resist some years more,
he is tying the catastrophic descriptions of the sixth and seventh books all
the more tightly to the analysis of Athens' strength which had gone before.
Hence II 65 sets the Sicilian expedition not only in the perspective of Athens'
political weakness, of which more will be said presently, but also in that of
her great initial strength which, as the burden of the first book, provides the
basis of Pericles' confident prognosis (I 141.2-144).A word
should finally be added concerning the eighth book, since this concept of the
magnitude and the decisiveness of the Sicilian expedition should be expected to
reveal itself there as well. Now one of the reasons (note 28) advanced
by
[28. H. Strasburger, Philologus 91 (1936) 137-52. He therefore
concludes that the remark on Alcibiades' extravagance, ~per ka< kaye>len
Îsteron tØn... pÒlin oÈx [[yen]]kista (VI 15.3),
applies to the disaster of 413, not as Schadewaldt had argued, to that of 404
(see above, p. 124). His argument is (pp. 148-49) that Alcibiades here appears
as the cause of Athens' ruin, whereas in II 65 the cause is said to have lain
in the nature of Athenian democracy. There can be no doubt that the latter view
represents Thucydides' deeper judgment. On the other hand, it is by no means
neglected in VI and VII (which accordingly were not written from a different
point of view from that expressed in II 65, see below, pp. 154-62), nor is it
incompatible with the above statement in regard to Alcibiades, for two reasons.
First, one of the grounds given in II 6 for Pericles' ascendancy is that he was
xrhmãtvn diafan<<w édvrÒtatow (II 65.8, cf. II 13.1,
where he is said to have relinquished his estates voluntarily, and below, pp.
157-58). Hence, unlike Alcibiades, he gave his opponents no handle against him.
When therefore Thucydides in VI 15 stresses the latter's enormous extravagance,
he is reverting to his train of thought in II 6, though with a difference of
emphasis caused by the impression of Alcibiades' dissolute life. Second, it is
unreasonable to claim that the words ~per kaye>len Îsteron tØn
pÒlin oÈk [[yen]]kista exclude the other and deeper cause of
Athens' defeat noted in II 6, since to do so is to say that Thucydides was
interested only in theoretical problems. He was, however, equally interested in
the effect of specific events, and the superlatives noted above show that even
after 404 he continued to regard the Sicilian venture as a staggering blow to
Athens. Hence when he says that Alcibiades' extravagance was "not the least"
cause of Athens' ruin (oÈx [[yen]]kista, i.e. one of several causes), he
is saying virtually what he says in those superlatives. His mind is on the
losses which might have been avoided if Alcibiades had not been dismissed from
office, and though he can elsewhere regard that dismissal as in turn lodged in
the nature of democracy. still it was in itself a decisive turning point, as he
says in II 65.11. Thus although the statement is less profound and less general
than that of II 65, it is wholly consistent with it. It is moreover the natural
statement at just this point in the narrative when Alcibiades is about to speak
and the whole tragic sequence of events is about to unroll. For the immediate
cause of what followed at Athens, Sparta, Decelea, and Syracuse was in fact
this same self-interested extravagance, and to say that Thucydides could not
have spoken of it in this way after 404 is to say that he did not then consider
the following events important, which we know not to have been the case. Thus
kaye>len does glance, though unobtrusively, at the whole later fate of Athens,
a fuller diagnosis of which is given in II 65.]
[[137]]
those who have argued that books six and seven were written soon after
the event is that the great emphasis there placed on Athens' defeat seemed
incompatible with the offers of peace refused by her after Cyzicus in 410,
(note 29) as again in 407 and 406. This view is of course untenable, if the
foregoing arguments on the unity and lateness of the Sicilian books be
accepted, but (even neglecting those arguments) it is also untenable if, as
seems the case, the eighth book was written in close connection with books six
and seven. It has already been observed (p. 125) that what is said in VII 28 of
the strain on Athens resulting from the occupation of Decelea, of Agis'
residence there, and of Athens' new dependence on sea traffic with Euboea,
certainly looks to continuing passages in the eighth book. But many other parts
of the latter conspicuously repeat ideas or turns of expression already
familiar from what has just preceded: for instance, the remarks on the Athenian
colonists on Aegina (VII 57.2, VIII 6.3); the repeated expressions
Ùl[[currency]]gon oÈddeg.n and ég~nisma (VII 59.3, 87.6;
VIII 15.2; VII 56.2, 59.2, 86.2; VIII 12.2, 17.2); Alcibiades' practice of
justifying himself on the grounds of his fid[[currency]]a jumforã (VII
14.2, VIII 84.2); the conception that soldiers in a democracy are freest in
criticizing their officers (VII 14.2, VIII 84.2); the judgment that, in
preventing the Athenians on Samos from attacking
[29. Diodorus XIII 53-54.]
[[138]]
the home-city, Alcibiades for the first time acted out of genuine
patriotism (VIII 86.4, a contrast to VI 15); the view that democracy at its
best is a mixed government, not a domination by the poorer classes (VI 39, VIII
97.2, to which compare the distinction drawn by Alcibiades at Sparta, VI 89.6,
between a government based on tÚ jÊmpan and one representing the
ponhro[[currency]]). Many more such passages could be adduced, but the above
perhaps sufficiently illustrate the close continuity between the Sicilian
narrative and the eighth book. But the latter was certainly written after
Cyzicus, since VIII 97.2 assumes a knowledge of the decline of the five
thousand. (note 30) Consequently, the Sicilian books as well as the eighth book
must, on any view, have been composed after the offer of peace in 410, and it
cannot therefore be asserted that, in emphasizing the greatness of Athens' loss
in Sicily, Thucydides failed to reckon with her partial later recovery. But the
fact is that he himself explains this seeming contradiction not only
satisfactorily but in a manner quite consistent with his whole narrative. His
explanation falls into three parts: first, that though the Athenians were
fearfully shaken after Syracuse, they once again demonstrated their great
inherent strength (and once again, to their enemy's great surprise), by
mustering the ability to continue (II 65.12; IV 108.4; VIII 2.1-2, 24.5,
106.5); second, that they were enabled gradually to regain confidence because
the Spartans, in spite of Agis' greater vigor, once again showed themselves
unable to press home an advantage and thus remained as before the easiest
possible antagonists for Athens (VIII 96.5); and finally, that, so far at least
as the period covered
[30. For the effect of Cyzicus in restoring democracy at Athens, see F.
E. Adcock in CAH V 343-46, and W. S. Ferguson, ibid., 485. VIII
47.1, where Alcibiades is said to have foreseen ~ti [[paragraph]]stai potcents
aÈt" pe[[currency]]santi katelye>n, may well envisage his actual return
to Athens in 407, rather than the mere rescinding of his banishment noted in
VIII 97.3.]
[[139]]
by the eighth book is concerned, the Athenians were able to transcend
those revolutionary movements which, as was observed in II 65, in the long run
joined with the evil consequences of Syracuse to prove their ruin (VIII 1.3-4,
97.2). Enough has been said on the connection of these first two concepts
(those, namely, of Athens' great inherent strength and of the slowness of
Sparta) with the preceding narrative, but it may perhaps be observed of the
third, that the Sicilian venture had, to Thucydides' mind, a certain
revolutionary character. At least, as will be shown more fully below (pp.
154-62), he makes quite clear that the demos favored the expedition in the hope
of more lucrative employment rn an extended empire, and hence that the
expedition represented the expansionist policies of the extreme democrats as
much as did Cleon's refusal of peace or his abortive Boeotian campaign. Thus
when in the very opening section of the eighth book Thucydides observes the new
reasonability and temperance of the demos and later goes on to praise the
restraining constitution proposed in 411 (VIII 97.2), he is following a line of
thought which extends clear through the History, beginning with
Pericles' plea for a moderate (that is, a nonexpansionis policy and a united
people. Had he lived to describe Cleophon's refusal of peace after Cyzicus, he
would doubtless have seen in it merely one more example of that extremism which
had not only underlain all Athens' great reverses but, as the war advanced, had
produced a condition perhaps even more fatal to empire, namely, the reaction
towards oligarchy (VIII 48.5-7). Thus, to conclude with this whole idea of the
magnitude and seriousness of the Sicilian war, it is clear that Thucydides
concurrently regards Athens' losses from two points of view: first, as
shattering in themselves because of the mere size of the venture, and, second,
as symbolizing
[[140]]
and (by reason of the resultant poverty) to some extent producing that
extremism and disunity which were Athens' supreme weakness. It is also clear
that these ideas, and consequently the Sicilian books themselves, are planted
firmly in the total structure of his work.(2) A second concept
which runs through the entire History and forms a strong band of unity
within it is that conveyed by the word parãlogow. At first sight merely
a term casually, if often, used by Thucydides, the word in fact conveys,
perhaps more neatly than any other, one of his essential theses in regard to
the war and therefore demands some attention. As has been observed already,
Athens was expected to subrnit after a very few years of fighting (I 121.4, IV
85.2, V 14.3, VII 28.3, VIII 24.5); the belief, reiterated as it is throughout
the History, shows with how much greater a military reputation Sparta
entered the war. It has also been observed that Archidamus doubted his
country's ability to win on the grounds that Athens' enormous economic and
naval advance had at last made her invulnerable to the old-fashioned strategy
of invasion. But, as Thucydides notes (I 87.3), he had few adherents, and the
Spartans evidently plunged into war in the expectation that it would soon be
over. It need hardly be said, however, that Archidamus' view fully coincided
with that of Pericles, whose first and third speeches are devoted largely to
showing why Athens had nothing to fear from a power which, though it ravaged
Attica, could in no manner affect the basis of Athens' strength in her
revenues, her access to materials, and her navy. But what most concerns
ourselves is that Thucydides also both shared and deeply reflected on that
view, so much so in fact that in the Archaeology he projects it into the remote
past and finds there the same pattern of change that he believed
exempli-
[[141]]
fied in the world about him. His argument is that Minos and Agamemnon,
by establishing centralized authority and thus transcending the previously
existent state of localism, gave rise to a stage of material civilization
unlike anything that had gone before, and that the means by which they achieved
this advance was naval power (cf. esp. 18.3, 15.1). After their fall, he
continues (I 13), the process might have been repeated by the naval states of
Corinth and Samos had it not been checked, in the one case, by the timorous
policy of the tyrants (I 17) and, in the other, by the advance of the Persians
(I 16). When, therefore, he goes on later in the first book to praise
Themistocles' genius in foreseeing the future significance of Athens' navy and
in taking all practical steps to enlarge it (I 93.3-4, 138.3), he is evidently
harking back to the thesis of the Archaeology, that centralism means both power
and progress and that, in Greek history, the highroad to such power had always
been command of the seas. For land states, as he specifically notes, had never
been great (I 15.2). The conclusion therefore follows that Sparta, to his mind,
had been strong, as it were, for the negative reason that no naval powers had
come into existence in the period between the fall of Mycenae and the rise of
Athens, although, as will be observed later (p. 160), the stability of her
constitution, also noted in the Archaeology (I 18.1), was a factor in her
strength. Accordingly, when Pericles maintained and even extended the naval
policies of Themistocles, (note 31) he was, so to speak, reapplying the ancient
secret of power which Minos and Agamemnon had used before him. Indeed, one
could almost say that, to Thucydides' eyes, he was creating a state as much
stronger and more progressive than such outmoded
[31. Compare the similar judgments on Attic policy attributed to the two
men in I 91.4 and 140.5.]
[[142]]
land states as Sparta as were the realms of Minos and Aga memnon than
the communities before them. But, as has been said, not all persons realized
this fact, and because Sparta had been strong, it was expected that she would
continue so. Here then is the underlying meaning of the word parãlogow:
it signifies the shock and surprise felt by all who (unlike Periclcs and the
historian himself) were unable to estimate the true sources of power and thus
failed to see that the naval empire of Athens, eliciting as it had a great era
of economic and technical advance, had virtually ushered in a new age of Greek
history.By this argument, then, the Archaeology stands closely
woven in the texture of the History not only because it explains the
magnitude of the war but also because it presents historical (one could almost
say formal) analogies to the growth of Attic power, a power which was to visit
many painful shocks upon the enemy and was to be destroyed not so much by them
as by the Athenians themselves. But before we pursue this idea of surprise
throughout the History, it may be well to note very briefly those
qualities of mind which the acquisition of power, especially of naval power,
had bred in the Athenians. In the first place, their skill at sea, entailing as
it did an exact training in many maneuvers, constituted an
[[section]]pistÆmh, (note 32) which in turn derived from an experience
([[section]]mpeir[[currency]]a (note 33) ) continuous since the Persian wars.
(It is to be observed from the references given here and below that these ideas
are brought into play continually throughout the work and thus provide one more
indication ofits unity.) Then, their skill and, in a larger sense, their power
derived from certain inward qualities:
[32. I 121.4, 142.6-9, II 89.8, III 78, VI 18.6, 68.2, 69.1, VII 36.4.
49.2, 62.2. [33. I 18.3, 71.3, 99.3, 142.5, II 85.2, 89.3, IV 10.5, VI
18.6, 72.3, VII 21.3, 49.2, 61, 63.4.]
[[143]]
high spirit (proyum[[currency]]a (note 34) ), courage (tÒlma,
tolmhrÒn (note 35) ), capacity for innovation (nevteropoi[[currency]]a
(note 36) ), and willingness to undergo toils. (note 37) These qualities, noted
in the famous contrast between the Athenians and the Spartans in I 70, as in
several similar contrasts later (II 39, IV 55.2, VIII 96.5), explain the
growing enmity between the two states described in the Pentecontactia (cf. esp.
I 102.3); they also convey what the allies of Athens forfeited on substituting
money for service as their contribution to the Delian League (I 99). But they
are chiefly stressed perhaps in two other contexts: first, as justifying
Athens' original rise to power when Sparta voluntarily retired from the war
against Persia (I 74.1-2, 90.1, 91.5; II 36.4; VI 83.1), and second, as
inspiring the democratic doctrine of polupragmosÊnh, the doctrine that
those who deserve power should have it. No concept is perhaps more central to
the process of change which Thucydidcs is describing, and whether it be
considered by itself in the speeches of Pericles (II 63-64), Alcibiades (VI
18), and Euphemus (VI 87) or in contrast to the conservative doctrine of
<=sux[[currency]]a which Archidamus expounds (I 84) and with adherence to
which Nicias is taxed (VI 18.6), it connotes democracy as opposed to oligarchy,
freedom as opposed to discipline, and change as opposed to maintenance of the
status quo. And finally, since the above-mentioned qualities are thus connected
in Thucydides' mind with the institution of democracy, it becomes of interest
to note exactly how he envisages that connection. The subject will be taken up
further in the next section, but it may be said here that naval power to any
Greek postulated a numerous and a free demos. Hence it is that the
[34. I 74.1-2, II 64.6, VI 18.2, 31.3. 83.1, 98. [35. I 70.3, 90.1,
102.3, II 39.4, 88.2, IV 55.2, VI 31.6, VII 21.3, 28.3.
[36. I 70.2,
102.3.
[37. I 70.6, II 63, 64.3, VI 87.3.
[38. For further discussion,
see above, chap. 1 pp. 26-28.]
[[144]]
Funeral Oration conceives of democracy as permitting free play to
initiative and as thereby reaping the benefits of an enlarged commerce, an
improved standard of living, and a general sense of self-trust on the part of
the citizenry. Indeed, as will appear below (p. 150), Thucydides probably
thought of democracy as a prerequisite of material progress, since he
specifically notes that the Athenians never met their match until they
encountered the Syracusans who were imoiÒtropoi with themselves. It is
of course equally true that democracy, to his mind, ran the risk of political
follies, follies which in fact cost Athens the war, but that he considered it
at the same time one vital key to Athens' greatness must appear from what has
just been said. Here in fact is the great dilemma of the History: how a
state as progressive, and therefore as democratic, as Athens can nevertheless
enjoy sane leadership under the stress of war and the hot demands of the
populace. But for the present the important thing to notice is that the idea of
parãlogow, signifying as it does the revelation of Athens' enormous
vigor and enterprise, cannot be dissociated from the concept of change which,
adumbrated in the Archaeology, is fully expressed in the pervasive contrast
between an outmoded, oligarchic Sparta and her imperialistic, progressive,
democratic rival.Thus, to pursue this concept throughout the
History, it takes its rise, as has been said, from the double thesis
that Sparta, traditionally the great power of Greece, was expected to win but
that in reality Athens (granted sane leadership) was certain of victory.
References to the former idea have been given above (p. 140); the truth
concerning Athens, as Thucydides saw it, is expounded early in the
History in the Archaeology, parts of the Corinthians' and of Archidamus'
speeches at Sparta, all Pericles'
[[145]]
speeches, and the estimate of him in II 65. The first great surprise in
the war (II 61.3), namely the plague, hardly concerns the present discussion
except as it weakened Athens in the way described earlier. But the next time
the word is used, namely, in the description of Phormio's naval victory of 429,
it carries all the connotations sketched above, since the defeat of the far
larger Peloponnesian fleet presented a signal (and to the Spartans a shocking)
example of their enemy's daring, skill, and experlence. (note 39) When again in
the next year the Spartans were assured that Athens was crippled by the plague
(III 13.3) and thus eagerly supported the revolting Mytileneans by a second
invasion in the same season, to their great surprise the Athenians dispatched a
hundred ships to the isthmus without moving the fleet already at Lesbos. They
wished to show, Thucydides says, that the Spartans had quite mistaken their
strength. The latter accordingly, ir<<tew polÁn tÚn
parãlogon, retired (III 16.2). The idea comes up several times in the
fourth book, most notably in connection with the battle of Pylos, and its
identical use here and in the seventh book provides perhaps one of the most
striking proofs of unity in the whole work. There is, first, the paradox noted
in 12.3 and 14.3, that in their opening assault on Demosthenes' position, the
Spartans were attacking the Peloponnesus from the water, while the Athenians
were defending it from the shore--a strange reversal of fortune, says
Thucydides, since [[section]]n t" tÒte the former were reputedly a land-
and the latter a sea- power. The passage was therefore written, as has often
been noted, sometime after the Athenian navy had broken down, presumably very
late in the war or after it, and accordingly
[39. II 85.2, [[section]]dÒkei går aÈto>w
êllvw te ka< pr<<ton naumax[[currency]]aw peirasamdeg.noiw
polÁw i parãlogow e[[perthousand]]nai, ka< oÈ
tosoÊt[[florin]] 'onto sf<<n tÚ nautikÚn
le[[currency]]pesyai, gegen[[infinity]]syai ddeg. tina malak[[currency]]an,
oÈk éntitiydeg.ntew tØn ÉAyhna[[currency]]vn
[[section]]k polloË [[section]]mpeir[[currency]]an t[[infinity]]w
sfetdeg.raw diÉ Ùl[[currency]]gou meldeg.thw.]
[[146]]
when he notes exactly the same paradox at the height of the Sicilian
narrative--namely, that the Athenians retired from Syracuse pezoÊw te
ént< naubat<<n poreuomdeg.nouw ka< iplitik" prosdeg.xontaw
mçllon u nautik" (VII 75.7)--the close connection between the two
passages is inescapable. Similarly, the remark on the Athenians' plight before
the final attack on Sphacteria, that they were mçllon
poliorkoÊmenoi u poliorkoËntew (IV 29.2), is virtually repeated in
Nicias' letter (VII 11.4; cf. 75.7). But the final surrender of the Spartans
provided of course the greatest surprise in this whole surprising series
ofevents. Thucydides accordingly comments, parå gn~hn te dØ
mãlista t<<n katå tÚn pÒlemon toËto to>w
ÜEllhsin [[section]]gdeg.neto (IV 40.1), a passage which harks back to the
repeated previous assertions that, if the Spartans had nothing else, they had
at least éndre[[currency]]a, and which also looks forward to the
vindication of their courage at Mantinea (V 75.3). Finally, in reviewing the
whole effect on Sparta both of this defeat and of that which followed at
Cythera, Thucydides observes that the reverses, [[section]]n
Ùl[[currency]]g[[florin]] jumbãnta parå lÒgon (IV
55.3), caused the Spartans supreme fright and adds that they now became
extremely hesitant, the more so because they were fighting a naval war against
the Athenians, oÂw tÚ mØ [[section]]pixeiroÊmenon
afie< [[section]]llipcentsw [[Sigma]]n t[[infinity]]w dokÆse~w ti
prãjein. Alrziost an exact repetition of the Corinthians' remarks in I
70.7, the words resume the impression of both sides which has hitherto been
built up. But it is to be observed that they also coincide with what is said of
the shock to Athens after the defeat at Syracuse (katãplhjiw
meg[[currency]]sth dÆ, VIII 1.2; [[paragraph]]kplhjin
meg[[currency]]sthn, IV 55.3) and to the judgment in VIII 96.5, that the
Spartans remained to the last a most convenient adversary, a passage also
closely similar to I 70. In sum, the narrative of Pylos is tightly bound both
to what precedes
[[147]]
and to what follows, and its particularly close connection with the
Sicilian narrative (a connection reinforced, as will appear presently, by what
is said in both places of Athens' expansionist policies) shows that Thucydides
regarded the two reverses as in many ways similar. Indeed he himself compares
them in VII 71.7. But what is to be observed especially is that neither account
could have been written without an eye to the other; in fact neither account
could have been written without an eye to much of the History, since the
concept of parãlogow is both itself continuous and depends on a
continuing contrast between Athens and Sparta.But to go on, the
idea comes up three times again in the fourth book: in IV 65.4, where, after
noting the punishment of the generals who had made peace in Sicily, Thucydides
criticizes the ignorance and folly of the Athenians for thinking that so great
an island could have been subdued by a small force and adds that their
unexpected success had made them too optimistic (a statement which looks back
to Cleon's confident refusal of peace in IV 21 and ahead to an identical
judgment on the Athenians' ignorance of Sicily in VI I); in IV 85.2, a passage
already cited, where Brasidas speaks of the Spartans as being deceived in their
hopes of a quick victory; and in IV 108.4 where Thucydides notes that after the
fall of Amphipolis many Thraceward towns deserted Athens and goes on, ka<
går ka< êdeia [[section]]fa[[currency]]neto aÈto>w
[[section]]ceusmdeg.noiw mcentsn t[[infinity]]w ÉAyhna[[currency]]vn
dunãmevw [[section]]p< tosoËton ~sh ^steron diefãnh (a
passage which confirms all that has been said hitherto of Athens' strength and
of the Syracusan expedition as the climax of the war and which is also echoed
in VIII 2 and 24). In the fifth book (14.3) the statement that the ten years'
war had gone parå gn~mhn for Sparta is repeated. But, as has been
suggested, it is in the
[[148]]
Sicilian books that the idea achieves its greatest prominence, and when
at the climax the Athenians are portrayed as themselves experiencing the sense
of shocked surprise which they had formerly inflicted on others, one must
conclude that the entire previous narrative has worked up to this reverse, and
consequently that, in this respect also, the Sicilian books are an integral
part of the whole. All the superlatives hitherto noted in regard to the scale
of the expedition of course bear out the notion that it was a supreme (and to
many a supremely surprising) revelation of Athens' strength. Thus Thucydides
prefaces his description of the first flotilla by noting that the venture
seemed an êpistow diãnoia (VI 31.1), and Athenagoras is made to
say in Syracuse that Athens could not conceivably attempt another war in
addition to the one left unfinished in Greece (36.4). Indeed the historian
himself repeats the idea with utmost emphasis in VII 28, when he says that no
one would have believed that the Athenians, while themselves besieged, could be
besieging others, ka< tÚn parãlogon tosoËton
poi[[infinity]]sai to>w ÜEllhsi t[[infinity]]w dunãmevw ka<
tÒlmhw, when at the beginning they had been expected not to survive two
or three invasions. But even while he is making these statements, he is also
stressing the unexpected character of the resistance at Syracuse (VI 34.8, VII
13.2), until with the great battle in the harbor the complete reverse takes
place. Thus he can say before the battle, ofl mcentsn ÉAyhna>oi
[[section]]n pant< dØ éyum[[currency]]aw [[Sigma]]san ka< i
parãlogow aÈto>w mdeg.gaw [[Sigma]]n (VII 55.1), and go on to
observe that they had made no progress either by revolution or by arms,
pÒlesi taÊtaiw nÒmaiw >=dh imoiotrÒpoiw
[[section]]pely[[currency]]ntew, dhmkratoumdeg.naiw te, Àsper ka<
aÈto[[currency]], ka< naËw ka< .ppouw ka< megdeg.yh
[[section]]xoÊsaiw. The passage will come up again in the next section,
but one must realize here that it is wholly consistent
[[149]]
with what has gone before. For to say that the Athenians met their match
only in democratic Syracuse is to revert to the whole concept of oligarchic
Sparta as outmoded, of Athens as the stronger and more progressive power, and
of Pericles' confident prediction that she would win if she avoided risks. When
then the utter reverse pictured in VII 75 and resumed in the final chapter
takes place, the reason for it is clear--the Athenians had committed errors
which might have passed against Sparta but were fatal against Syracuse--and the
pervading contrast to Pylos forces the mind back to the difference not only in
Athens' fortune but in the nature of her antagonists and thus ultimately to the
difference between democracy and oligarchy. And when in the eighth book he goes
on in several passages already cited (p. 138) to note Athens' amazing
recuperation (a recuperation made possible in part by the slowness of her
enemy), it becomes still more clear that the work as a whole embodies a
consistent and consecutive view both of the strength and of the reasons for the
strength of the several states engaged in the war. Indeed the concept of
parãlogow is only a striking means of showing how truth broke through
opinion and thus of revealing those basic processes of national change which
Thucydides thought would continuaily recur.(3) We have hitherto
been largely concerned with the concept of Athens' strength, a concept which in
turn inspires the claims regarding the scale of the war and particularly of the
Sicilian expedition, the contrast between Athens and Sparta, the explanations
given for her strength in her naval empire and democratic constitution, and the
repeated statements that few persons judged it correctly. Henceforth, on the
other hand, we shall be dealing with the opposite and, as it were, balancing
concept of Athens'
[[150]]
weakness, a weakness traceable also to her democratic constitution and,
so Thucydides thought, accentuated in wartime. As before, the method will be
followed of tracing connections of thought between the Sicilian and preceding
books, with a view to showing the unity of the work as a whole. But before
approaching this crucial topic of Athens' weakness, it will be well to say a
few last words of the actual defeat at Syracuse.As we have seen,
Thucydides several times notes that the Athenians met their match only with the
Syracusans, who were imoiÒtropoi with themselves (VI 20.3, VII 55.2,
VIII 96.5). The likeness which he observed between the two peoples was
apparently a double one, consisting in part of their similar wealth and
progressiveness and in part of certain inward traits, such as zest, vigor, and
capacity for innovation (VII 21.3-4, 37.1, 70.3). And that he considered these
achievements and qualities the result of democracy, is shown by the fact that
he joins the words imoiÒtropoi and dhmokratoÊmenai (VII 55.2). As
has been suggested, a great city teeming with manifold activity was probably
inconceivable to him except as a democracy, and it is significant that, as
Pericles attributes Athens' progress to the energy of her free citizens, so
Athenagoras says that the objectives of an oligarchy are édÊnata
[[section]]n megãl[[dotaccent]] pÒlei katasxe>n (VI 39.2). It is
natural therefore that the long campaign at Syracuse should have witnessed a
gradual change in position whereby the defenders slowly revealed the same
qualities as the attackers, and accordingly that, in the account of this
change, many motifs of the previous narrative should reappear. Thus at the
start, the chief issue is between the [[section]]pistÆmh of the Athenians
and the mere courage of their enemy (VI 68.2, 69.1, 72.4; VII 21.4, 63), the
same contrast that is made by the Corinthians, by Pericles, and by the
[[151]]
Spartan generals after the naval defeat of 429 (I 121.4, 142.6; II
87.4). But the fear inspired by the Athenians, like that felt towards the
Spartans on Sphacteria, wore away as the contestants came to closer grips (IV
34.1; VI 11.4, 49.2, 63.2; VII 42.3), and though the Syracusans were often
beaten, it is said of them, as several times before, that their resolve at
least remained unshaken (VI 72.3, II 87.4, V 72.2, but contrast IV 55.3, where
after Pylos the Spartans are really shaken in gn~mh). Thus the Athenians (VII
55.2) could make no headway either by revolution (as they had attempted to do
at Megara and in Boeotia) or by arms (as they had done against the more
backward and immobile Spartans). Then on the introduction of the new ship model
with heavier sides, the tide turned (VII 34.7); the Athenians, fighting in a
narrow space, could no longer make use of the maneuvers of per[[currency]]plouw
and dideg.kplouw, so terrifing formerly (VII 49.2, II 89.8); and perhaps the
most striking symbol of their utter reverse was when they fought the final
battle as a pezomax[[currency]]a épÚ t<<n ne<<n,
tactics called old-fashioned even at Sybota (VII 62.2, I 49.2). (note
40)Their whole defeat then is conceived in terms of the
foregoing narrative, but even in matters unconnected with the defeat,
Thucydides is constantly invoking ideas expounded earlier. Thus Hermocrates
refers to the fact discussed at length in the first book, that the Athenians'
skill at sea was not something r, ative to them but merely a result of the
Persian wars (VII 21.3, I 90.1, 118.2, 121.4, 12.); like
[40. That Thucydides wrote the narrative of Sybota with the rest of the
History in mind is shown by the fact that I 55.1, the account of the
Corcyrean hostages taken to Corinth, looks to III 70.1, where those same
hostages are said to have precipitated the revolution. But the account of the
latter is clearly of a piece with the rest of the History (see below, pp
154-55, 159-60, 165). Hence it is not surprising that the descriptions of the
battles of Sybota and of Syracuse (I 50, VII 75) have much in common.]
[[152]]
Sthenelaidas and others, he taxes the Athenians with nususing a power
originally got in the name of liberation (VI 76.3-4; I 77.5, 86.1, 99; III 10);
and, like the Corinthians at Sparta, says that after all the Persians were not
defeated by the Greeks so much as by the length and difficulty of the invasion
itself (VI 33.5, I 69.5). Similarly, Euphemus' defense of the empire rests
largely on familiar arguments: that in the Persian wars, Athens had contributed
nautikÚn ple>ston ka< proyum[[currency]]an éprofãsiston
(VI 83.1, almost an exact echo of I 74.1); that, leaving this argument aside
(VI 83.2, I 73.2, V 89), it is énep[[currency]]fyonon to see to one's
own safety (VI 83.2, I 75.5); that the Spartans had always done their best to
keep Athens weak (VI 82, I 91.4 and 7, 140.5); but that it is the latter's
nature to be ever active abroad (VI 87.3, the doctrine of polupragmosÊnh,
elsewhere expressed in I 70, II 63, VI 18.2). Again, Alcibiades at Sparta, like
Archidamus, refers to Athens' revenue as her supreme advantage (VI 91.7, I
81.4, 122), and urges Sparta to a show of energy, the lack of which had been so
costly before (VI 92.1; I 70; IV 80.5; 108.6; VII 1.4). Many speeches moreover
make use of familiar turns of thought: for instance, that a quarrel seemingly
distant may concern one closely (VI 78.1, 91.4; I 68.2, 120.2; III 13.5; IV
95.2; V 69.1); that men's moods change with unexpected circumstances (VI 34.7,
I 140.1); that what formerly had been most striven for is now freely offered
(VI 10.4, I 33.2, III 40.7); that one must feel katafrÒnhsiw towards the
enemy in action but until then act with fÒbow (VI 34.9, II 11.5, 62.3).
Such a list of recurrent motifs could be very greatly enlarged, but more
significant perhaps are the passages where Thucydides himself reverts to his
own previously stated ideas. For example, in I 23.6 and VI 6.1, he makes a
similar attempt to give an élhyestãth prÒfasiw, and though
the former passage expounding Sparta's fear of Athens as the cause of
[[153]]
the war is sometimes taken as later than the Sicilian books, (note 41)
the idea is seemingly quite familiar there. For Nicias can speak of Sparta as a
pÒlin diÉ Ùligarx[[currency]]aw
[[section]]pibouleÊousin (VI 11.7), and as we have just seen, Euphemus
describes the growth of Athens in terms quite similar to those of the
Pentecontaetia, itself merely a fuller exposition of I 23.6. Other such
passages are: VI 2.1, where he glances at the stories of the poets in the same
way that he does in I 21; VI 54.1, the well-known account of the tyrannicides,
which, as mentioned earlier (p. 123), may contain a reference to I 20 but in
any case shows a close similarity of phrase; VII 29.5, on the destruction of
Mycalessus by the Thracians, a disaster of the sort alluded to in I 23.2; and
VII 44.1 and 87.4, where he talks of the difficulty of ascertaining facts in
the same way as in I 22.3, III 113.6, V 68.2 and 74.3. In sum, not only the
analysis of Athens' defeat but the whole texture of the accompanying narrative
invoke so many elements from the preceding books, that the reader is constantly
aware of dealing with the same mind, the same ideas, and the same methods. That
is to say, the unity of the History is revealed not only by its
consistent analysis of events but by a more subtle consistency of style and
treatment. Hardly a page, one could almost say, fails to contain some sentence
which in form or idea suggests another sentence elsewhere. The conclusion
therefore follows that, by the time he wrote his History, Thucydides
had, as it were, simplified his thought into a number of fixed, clear patterns,
the more important of which centered about the great questions of the war,
while others denoted the various things that men would say or do under
different circumstances and still others the historian's own methods, and that
it is largely from the interplay of these patterns, great and small, that the
unity of the work derives.
[41. A. Rehm (above, n. 21) 147.]
[[154]]
(4) We come then, finally, to his explanation of Athens' failure, an
explanation lodged in his whole estimate of Athenian democracy and thus
balancing his opposite appraisal of Athens' great inherent strength. Indeed, it
could be said that these two ideas together comprise the main argument of the
History. The causes of Athens' defeat are set forth in the Sicilian
books seemingly in two distinct ways: first, by direct explanation of the
errors actually committed by the Athenians and, second, by a contrasting
picture of the mistakes avoided by the Syracusans; and since the latter topic
is the simpler, it may profitably be treated first. In reading the Sicilian
books, it is hard to avoid the impression that Athenagoras stands in the same
relation to Hermocrates, as Cleon to Pericles. The parallel of course is
incomplete since, in the History at least, Cleon appears only after the
death of Pericles; nevertheless, in the portrayal of both pairs of men the same
contrast is undoubtedly made between sanity and violence, restraint of the
demos and popular agitation, disinterestedness and self-interest, and correct
and incorrect prÒgnvsiw. Thus Athenagoras, like Cleon, is scornfully
introduced as piyan~tatow to>w pollo>w (VI 35.2, III 36.6, IV 21.3); like him
talks with extreme passion, sometimes using very similar phrases (VI 38.2, III
37.1); and resembles him also in practicing diabolÆ (VI 36.2, 41.2; III
38.2-3, 42-43; V 16.1), though posing as a watchdog of the people (VI 38.4, III
38.2). Now there is no doubt that Thucydides regarded Cleon as a revolutionary
figure, since the Mytilenean Debate is merely a projection of the statement
made in the general description of stãsiw, i mcentsn
xalepa[[currency]]nvn pistÚw afie[[currency]], i dÉ
éntildeg.gvn aÈt" Ïpoptow (III 82.5) (note 42) Similarly,
Cleon exemplifies
[42. Diodotus' elaborate attempts to allay suspicion (III 42.2-43) also
illustrate the latter half of the clause.]
[[155]]
the concluding judgment of III 82.8, repeated in II 65.7 and V 16.1,
that such factional leaders, however much they spoke of the public good, were
in reality acting in their own interests. Accordingly, the same judgment
applies to Athenagoras, who is in fact pictured as fearing military
preparations at Syracuse lest these weaken the populists (VI 38.2). And exactly
here is to be found the crucial trait common to the two demagogues, namely,
their equal willingness to endanger their respective cities for their own gain.
As Cleon, buoyed by the popular desire for expansion, refused peace after Pylos
and went on in the campaign of Delium to risk all Athens' earlier gains--a
complete rejection of Pericles' strategy--so Athenagoras closed his eyes to the
menace of an Athenian attack which, according to Thucydides, had originally
every chance of success because of the lack of preparation at Syracuse (VII
42.3). There were of course still other reasons for Athens' failure;
nevertheless one reason for it was that Athenagoras' views were not accepted
but that the farsighted Hermocrates carried the day. In other words, Thucydides
is illustrating in the policies of both Cleon and Athenagoras the possibility,
ever present under a democratic government, that politicians for their own
partisan ends may jeopardize a people's military effectiveness. Now he himself
says that war automatically increases the people's sufferings and thus sows the
seeds of partisanship (III 82.2), but on the other hand, there is no reason to
suppose that he thought that process of degeneration irresistible. On the
contrary, it was to his mind Athens' essential misfortune that she lacked a
second Pericles to lead the people sanely and to check the demos, whereas by
contrast it was the salvation of Syracuse to have possessed such a man in
Hermocrates. Thucydides stresses his understanding in very much the words
which
[[156]]
Pericles uses of himself (VI 72.2, II 60.5); represents him as, like
Pericles, able to rally the people when they were despondent (VI 72.2); and
above all, shows him as possessed of the supreme Periclean gift of foresight.
Again, he is ready to take swift and bold action based on that foresight, and
as Pericles at the start of the war had dared suggest burning and abandoning
Attica, so he advocates meeting the Athenian fleet before it had even reached
Italy (VI 34, I 143.5). The portrait of Brasidas (cf. esp. IV 81.1) and the
unique little speech of Teutiaplus the Elean (III 30) also show how much
Thucydides admired this capacity for incisive action. In sum, his estimate of
both Athenagoras and Hermocrates bears out what he has previously said of the
problem of leadership under a democracy. The conclusion therefore follows that,
to his mind, one great reason for Athens' failure in Sicily was that, at the
very time when her own actions were embodying the worst possible tendencies of
a democracy, the Syracusans avoided those tendencies, achieving unity behind an
able leader.To turn now to his judgment of Athens' policies, it
is sometimes said on the basis of II 65. II that he did not think the Syracusan
expedition a mistake. But he says rather that it was not so great a mistake as
the Athenians' subsequent failure to support it by the right decisions. Thus he
saw in the expedition two cardinal errors, of which the latter was the more
costly: first, ever to have undertaken a venture so contrary to Pericles' sound
plan of war, and second, once it had been decided on, to have exiled the one
man who might have carried it offsuccessfully. To take up these points in
order, that he considered the expedition a mistake is shown by his repeated
remarks on the Athenians' ignorance of Sicily (IV 65.4, VI 1.1) and by
Alcibiades' quite incorrect estimate of the resistance that would be met there
(VI 17).
[[157]]
As future events proved, it was Nicias who more correclly forecast the
difficulty of the task ahead (VI 20-23). Now Alcibiades carried his proposal by
appealing to what he called Athens' very nature as an expanding, dominating
state--that is, by the democratic doctrine of polupragmosÊnh (VI 18)--and
when Thucydides himself sums up the motives behind the expedition, he says that
the ordinary people expected so to extend the empire that they would henceforth
enjoy an é[[currency]]diow misyorã (VI 24.3). Accordingly, he
describes them as possessed of an êgan t<<n pleÒnvn
[[section]]piyum[[currency]]a (VI 24.4), and says that the entire venture was
conceived [[section]]p< meg[[currency]]st[[dotaccent]]
[[section]]lp[[currency]]st[[dotaccent]] t<<n mellÒvtvn
prÚw tå Ípãrxonta (VI 31.6; cf. VII 75.7). There can
be no doubt that he is signalizing in these statements the supreme rejection of
Pericles' advice, first given in I 144.1 and repeated in II 65.7, that Athens
should attempt no foreign conquests in the course of the war. But it is equally
important to observe that he uses almost the same words in describing the
popular desire for expansion in several other places, namely, of Cleon's
refusal of peace after Pylos (note 43) (IV 17.4, 21.2, 41.4), of the campaign
of Delium (IV 92.2), and of the attack on Melos (V 97). It follows that these
earlier and less disastrous attempts at expansion foreshadowed to his mind the
great attempt in Sicily, and that as the Sicilian books hold their true place
in the narrative as relating the greatest and most intense action of the war,
so do they in describing the most dangerous leap of Athenian
ambition.That ambition in turn derived from two sources--the
desire of the Athenian leaders for power and the desire of the people for the
profits of empire--and both of these
[43. The people regretted this error when it was too late (V 14.2), just
as they later regretted the Sicilian expedition (VIII 1).]
[[158]]
tendencies are likewise continuously observed throughout the
History. The danger to democracy which Thucydides recognized in the
self-interested struggles of politicians has already been discussed in
connection with the contrast which he draws between Pericles and Hermocrates on
the one hand and Cleon and Athenagoras on the other. It scarcely needs be said
that he conceived of Alcibiades also as very largely moved by personal ambition
and the need of money. Indeed he hardly ever mentions his policies without
noting the mixed motives behind them (V 43.2, VI 15.2, VIII 47.1), and it is
significant of his consistency of judgment when he says of him in 411 that he
then for the first time genuinely acted in the city's interest (VIII 86.4). Now
Pericles in his last speech names four qualities which a democratic leader must
possess: (note 44) he must be able gn<<ma[[currency]] te tå
ddeg.onta ka< *rmhneËsai taËta, and must be
filÒpol[[currency]]w te ka< xrhmãtvn kre[[currency]]ssvn (II
60.5), which qualities are subsumed in the historian's judgment of Pericles in
II 65.8, kate>xe tÚ pl[[infinity]]yow [[section]]leuydeg.rvw. From the
description of the later leaders both in II 65 and throughout the
History, it is clear that he kept these qualities in mind, considering
it, as has been said, Athens' supreme misfortune never to have had another
statesman who combined them all. Cleon (as is evident from the Mytilenean
Debate) did not understand the true needs of the empire; he also enflamed,
rather than checked, the people's dangerous desires. Alcibiades, though gifted
with political insight, a strong speaker, and able to lead the people,
forfeited his influence because he was neither filÒpol[[currency]]w nor
xrhmãtvn kre[[currency]]ssvn; (note 45) and Nicias, though possessed of
these two latter qualities (it is for this reason that his éretÆ
is signalized
[44. Cf. G. F. Bender, Der Begriff des Staatsmannes bei Thukydides,
Würzburg I 1938. [45. He tries to prove at Sparta that he is
filÒpol[[currency]]w (VI 91.2), but the irony of the statement is
enhanced by the contrast to Pericles (see above, n. 28).]
[[159]]
in the end, VII 86.5) lacked the power either of rapid action or of
compelling leadership. Only Hermocrates possessed all four essential traits.
One therefore sees in this remark of Pericles another strand of unity running
forward through the whole work; indeed it runs back to the beginning, since in
I 22 Thucydides describes his own speeches as intended to convey tå
ddeg.onta (that is, judgments of policy of the sort which Pericles was
supremely able to make) and Themistocles too is said to have revealed the same
insight (I 138.3) in inaugurating the naval policy, the remoter background of
which, as we have seen, is expounded in the Archaeology.It
remains therefore only to say a word of the self-interest and folly of the
people themselves, which to Thucydides was the latent cause of all Athens'
extremism and, quite specifically, of the great disaster at Syracuse. It has
already been suggested that the ruinous policies of Pericles' successors
described in II 65 were to his mind merely symptoms of the more fundamental
social disturbance set forth in the description of stãsiw in III 82-83.
War, he says, is a b[[currency]]aiow didãskalow (III 82.2) which
inflames the people and thus makes them the prey of unscrupulous leaders.
Pericles himself had warned the Athenians against their own veering moods (I
140.1, II 61.2), and during the plague, which is described as somewhat similar
to war m its effects, (note 46) they were sufficiently demoralized to reject
both him and his policies. On the other hand, in the course of his last speech
he reassures the people by revealing the full extent of Athens' power,
although, as he goes on, he had purposely never done so before for fear lest
they misuse it (II 62.1). Thus the historian's estimate of Pericles is that of
a stabilizing
[46. The énom[[currency]]a which began with the plague (II 53) is
attributed to the same destruction of ordinary habits that is noted in III 82.2
as the cause of revolution.]
[[160]]
influence against either dejection or overconfidence on the part of the
people (II 65.8). Cleon, on the contrary, in the fear inspired by the revolt of
Mytilene, fostered their inevitable mood of violence, and likewise after Pylos
he played on their contrasting optimism, when (so Thucydides keeps repeating)
pleÒnvn >>rdeg.gonto. (note 47) The attack on Melos constituted
still another departure from Periclean policy, which, as we have seen, was
based on the restraint, even the concealment, of Athens' full power, not on its
naked revelation. Hence, when Thucydides explains the expedition to Syracuse by
saying that the people expected to gain an é[[currency]]diow
misyoforã (VI 24.3) and that they were moved by an êgan t<<n
pleÒnvn [[section]]piyum[[currency]]a (24.4), the words come as a climax
to all that has been said before of their dangerous instability and of the
equally dangerous leadership to which it gave rise. Here in fact, to
Thucydides' mind, is the supreme weakness of Athens, a weakness which from the
Archaeology on is often contrasted with Sparta's one great strength, a way of
life which, though rigid and unprogressive, was at least stable. (note 48) But,
it must be repeated, this political weakness of Athens is merely, so to speak,
the obverse of her material strength, since both were equally the product of
her democratic government. Thus Athens was to Thucydides the strongest of all
Greek states in his own time or in the past, because as a naval democracy she
had at her command the willing, progressive energies of a multitude of free
citizens. But by the same token, she was liable to the most costly errors when,
under the stress of popular demands (themselves partly the result of the stress
of war), self-seeking leaders held forth dangerous hopes. And when, as in
Alcibiades' case, lesser politicians from
[47. See above, p. 157. [48. I 18.1, 71.3, 84, IV 18.4, 55.1, VIII
24.4]
[[161]]
equally interested motives (VI 28.2) attacked the one man who, whatever
his weaknesses, possessed the gift of leader- ship, the suicidal forces at work
in Athens were plain. Alcibiades in Sparta could therefore contrast a democracy
based on the whole people, tÚ jÊmpan, which he said the
Alcmaeonids had always striven for, with one dominated by the
ponhro[[currency]] (VI 89.5-6)--the same point which Thucydides himself makes
in II 65.5 and which he has constantly in mind in comparing the temperate
Athens of Pericles to the destructive city of his successors. It made no
difference then if, chastened by the disaster at Syracuse, prÚw
tÚ paraxr[[infinity]]ma peridedeg.w, ^per file> d[[infinity]]mow poie>n,
*to>moi [[Sigma]]san eÈtakte>n (VIII 1.4). The seeds of division were
planted, and it is certain from II 65 that, had Thucydides fmished his
History, he would have followed to the end that process of
disunification which he had already traced in the effects of the plague, in the
policies of Cleon, in the brutalizing influence of war itself, in the conquest
of Melos, and in the Sicilian expedition.Thus if one surveys the
History as a whole, keeping in mind the author's two theses in regard to
Athenian democracy--that, on the one hand, it made Athens vastly stronger than
her rival in all material ways and in the spirit of her citizens but, on the
other, was forever liable to the dangers of political disunion and intemperate
leadership--the unity of the work becomes clear. One could say that up to the
death of Pericles the first thesis is dominant. It inspires the earlier history
of naval power in the Archaeology, the view of the causes of the war in I 23
and in the Pentecontaetia, the great contrast between the two rivals in the
speeches at Sparta, the opposing forecasts of victory by the Corinthians and by
Pericles, and above all, the Funeral Oration. And as we have seen, the same
view of Athens' great strength
[[162]]
keeps recurring thereafter in the concept of parãlogow, to be
asserted still more strongly in the description of her huge effort at Syracuse
and even in the account of her later ability to continue, But with the analysis
of the effects of the plague, the self-defense of Pericles in his third speech,
and the comparison of him to his successors in II 65, the concept of Athens'
poltical weakness has already come into play. Underlying the portrait of Cleon,
it is brilliantly analyzed in relation to the more general effects of war in
the description of stãsiw. Again after Pylos (itself.a display
ofAthenian spirit and, as such, a conscious contrast to the reverse at
Syracuse), the popular desire for expansion leads to the loss of Athens' chief
gains, and the same desire, as cause of the Sicilian expedition and symptom of
the political folly by which Alcibiades was relieved of his command, proved
ruinous at Syracuse. Thus the Sicilian narrative, as an account both of Athens'
supreme strength and of her supreme folly, draws together the vital strands of
the whole preceding work.
III
As was said at the start, it is not the purpose of this paper to discuss
in detail the many passages sometimes regarded as of early date, a task largely
performed by the scholars mentioned at the end of the first section. On the
other hand, it is difficult to leave this question of the unity of the
History without trying to explain why Thucydides waits until after the
Peace of Nicias to expound his view that the Archidamian, Epidaurian,
Mantinean, Sicilian, and Decelean wars comprised in fact a single struggle. For
his failure to say so at the beginning has been without doubt the principle
cause of the whole controversy on when he wrote his work and, from the time of
Ullrich on, has afforded the chief
[[163]]
argument to those who doubted its unity. To omit minor variations, their
view has been that he began his work and had much of the first four and a
quarter books completed before he realized that the Peace of Nicias was not the
end of the war; that he continued it after 404, going back at that time to
alter what he had done in the light of later events; but that he died before
completing this process of revision; and that consequently the first books are
a medley of early and late passages. As we have seen, it has also been thought
by some that he wrote the Sicilian books after 413 revising them at the end of
the war, and on that view one should reckon not with two but with three periods
of composition, namely, the years just after 421, afi:er 413, and after 404. It
need hardly be said that both of these theories are untenable, if the
History gives anything like as clear and unified an interpretation of
the war as has been suggested above. For it is difficult to imagine any man so
farsighted that he could anticipate by ten or fifteen years what coming events
would teach him. To take a modern example, although we can now see in the
battle of Marengo the prophecy of Napoleon's career and in the occupation of
the Rhineland the future course of the Third Reich, it is unlikely that a
contemporary observer, however keen, would have seen in these events exactly
what he saw after Austerlitz or after the invasion of Poland. Accordingly, if
throughout the History Thucydides draws similar conclusions from widely
spaced events, portrays the antagonists as acting consistently, and attributes
like ideas and phrases to men speaking at very different times, it is natural
to see in these continuing lines of thought only the simplification of
retrospect. As was suggested above, by the time that he wrote his
History, he had apparently reduced his thought to a large, though not
unlimited, number of recurrent
[[164]]
patterns. If so, however, these patterns inevitably betray one period of
composition when the war lay clear before his eyes and he contemplated both
early and late events in each other's light. To claim such a limited period of
composition for the History is not, as has been said, to claim that it
was written without earlier notes or wholly consecutively. There can be no
doubt that Thucydides wrestled with his material seeking to impose order and
shape upon it, and in the struggle of writing he may at times have relied
heavily on earlier notes or have inserted new passages somewhat abruptly into a
previously written narrative. We cannot conceivably follow this complicated
process of authorship. But what we can, indeed must, believe, if the previous
argument holds, is that no note was utilized and no passage composed before the
whole war and, by consequence, the whole plan of the work were already in his
mind. For only that assumption will explain the close interplay and firm
consistency of his thought throughout the whole
History.It therefore merely remains to suggest why he may
not have desired to mention the 27-years war at the start, although he was
writing with it in mind. Perhaps three chief reasons could be advanced for the
omission: first, that such a statement was unnecessary; then, that it would
have violated his practice of confuung himself to the period which he is
describing; and third, that if he had made such a statement, he would normally
have done so in a digression, which, however, was not called for until peace
had seemingly been made in 421.
To take these points in order, the view, formerly advanced by Ed. Meyer, (note
49) that an initial statement regarding the length of the war was unnecessary,
has great weight, if
[49. See above, n. 8.]
[[165]]
only one assume that the History was actually written after 404.
When the Greek world had just lived through a long conflict, there could be no
doubt what conflict the historian was referring to. The only escape from such a
conclusion is to assume that his contemporaries did not connect the five minor
wars of the period--an assumption, improbable in itself, which is not confirmed
by such references to the separate wars as have been collected from later
writers. (note 50) For Thucydides himself can in the same breath use the word
pÒlemow of the long war and of its separate phases (V 26, VII 28.3).
Accordingly, to speak as he does of an ÉAttikÚw or of a
MantinikÚw pÒlemow (V 26.2, 28.2) did not mean that he could not
also speak of a pÒlemow t<<n Peloponnhs[[currency]]vn ka<
ÉAyhna[[currency]]vn (namely, the 27-years war). Like the later Greeks,
he used the word ambiguously, and there is no reason to suppose that his
contemporaries did not do the same. Thus, for instance, it is unnecessary to
conclude with Steup that the statement in IV 48.5 to the effect that the
revolution at Corcyra stopped ~sa ge katå tÚn pÒlemon means
that Thucydides had not yet achieved the concept of a single war. (note 51) All
one need conclude, as before said, is that Thucydides to the end used the word
pÒlemow both of the long war and of any of its phases. Hence,
considering the reasons advanced above (pp. 132-33, 140-42) for the late date
of the Archaeology--namely, that it broaches the idea of magnitude most fully
expounded in
[50. F. W. Ullrich, Beitrage zur Erklärung des Thukydides
(Hamburg 1846) 9-16; cf. Patzer, "Problem," p. 18. [51. Since revolution
broke out again at Corcyra in 420 (Diodorus XIII 48), the passage was written
after that date, and apparently some time after, since the interval between the
two revolurions is probably to be contrasted with that at Megara, which is said
to have been exceptionally long (IV 74.4). But even neglecting the latter
passage, to say that Thucydides in 410 had not yet grasped the unity of the war
is not only to attribute very little insight to him; it is also to say that he
falsified history when he represented such a view as already existing shortly
after the Peace of Nicias (see above, pp. 129-32).]
[[166]]
the Sicilian books and that it also reveals the historical significance
of Athens' naval power--there seems not the slightest impediment to taking the
first sentence in the History as referring to the whole war, which he in
fact describes, as we have seen, in terms of the two ideas just mentioned. In
404 the sentence could hardly have connoted anything else.The
second reason for the omission is lodged in the whole nature of his thought.
Few historians have doubtless ever relived so intensely the situations and
scenes successively under consideration as he. Whether the explanation is to be
found in his temperament, in his early identification with politics, in the
quickening of memory which exile must have bred in him, or in a combination of
all these and other factors, may remain uncertain; but the fact is attested on
virtually every page of his work. It seems indeed a principal, if not the only,
reason for his whole dramatic procedure of bringing the past vividly before the
reader in speeches and descriptions. That being the case, he was undoubtedly
absorbed when he began his History with the problems and choices
confronting Periclean Athens, and was not at that time concerned with the end
of the war. It is true that he digresses at times to explain why he thinks as
he does about certain crucial questions; nevertheless, as will appear
presently, even these digressions are not primarily intended to explain the
past or future, but to illustrate some vital force at work in what is to him,
at that moment, the present. Here again the point may perhaps be clarified by
an example. One of the passages most often adduced as of early date is that in
the Archaeology (10.2) where, after observing that the power of a vanished
state cannot be judged from the mere extent of its ruins, he goes on to say
that Sparta might someday be much underrated on such evidence, whereas
[[167]]
under the same circumstances the power of Athens would be thought
diplas[[currency]]an... u [[paragraph]]stin. The difficulty is with
[[paragraph]]stin, since, so it is argued, Thucydides would have written
[[Sigma]]n if he had composed the Archaeology after the end of the war. But (to
say nothing of the fact that we do not know when he died and thus how much of
the revival of Attic power he may have witnessed), it is unthinkable that he
would have evoked the picture of Athens' defeat at the very moment when he is
expounding the magnitude of the ws and the high condition of the contestants.
One would naturally therefore take [[paragraph]]stin as an historical present
denoting the era then under consideration, particularly since, as Patzer has
shown, (note 52) he uses such presents even of towns the destruction of which
he himself notes. In sum, this passage merely brings into sharper relief the
whole problem of his failure to mention the 27-years war at the start, and part
of the answer to both questions must be found in the nature of his art and of
his thought. A man of sych absorption in the past and struggling as hard as he
to analyze its dominant forces might no--ally be expected to confine himself
(doubtless to some degree unconsciously) to the matter in hand, reserving
future events for such a time as they would normally come
up.This observation leads to one fmal reason why he may have
failed to mention the length of the war at the start, to wit, the character of
his introduction. The Archaeology is not, properly speaking, an introduction
but a digression confirming his statement on the magnitude of the war. When
therefore Dionysius of Halicarnassus says that he should have begun his work by
tracing events down from the distant past (note 53)--that is, by joining the
Archaeology and
[52. See above, n. 19. [53. Epist. ad Pomp. 769-70 R.]
[[168]]
the Pentecontaetia--he is misunderstanding Thucydides' method. The
latter did not bring in the past to make an imposing faqade, nor does he
digress on the future merely to relieve the narrative, but when he departs from
his theme, it is in order to confirm some important statement which he has just
made. Thus although Dionysius rightly sees that the Pentecontaetia is a
continuation of the Archaeology, he fails to grasp the true nature of each as
corroborative notes, in the one case, on Sparta's fear of Athens' growing power
and, in the other, on the magnitude of the war. Now there can be little doubt
that Thucydides feels most free to glance at both the future and the past in
such confirmatory digressions: at the future, for example, in his estimate of
Pericles' successors (which supports the statement in regard to his foresight,
II 65.6), his judgment of Archelaus (II 100.2), or his remarks on Decelea (VII
27); at the past in the digressions on Cylon (I 126.3-12), Pausanias and
Themistocles (I 128.3-138), the history of Attica (II 15-16), or the
tyrannicides (VI 54-59). Hence if he had discussed the length of the war at the
beginning, he would presumably have done so in a digression intended to confirm
some statement to the effect that this was the longest war in Greek history. As
it was, he was concerned rather with the idea of magnitude and mentions the
idea of length only in passing: toÊtou dcents toË poldeg.mou
m[[infinity]]kÒw te mdeg.ga proÊbh (I 23.1). With his interest in
chronology, he would clearly have had to go into the question of length
somewhat deeply, and therefore being, as before said, absorbed in the actual
beginnings of the war and being delayed, as it was, in explaining the nature
and methods of his History, he deferred that question until the time
when it naturally came up, that is, until the time when peace had seemingly
been made. What therefore is usually called the second introduction in
[[169]]
V 26 is only partly such; it is essentially a statement that he is
continuing his narrative beyond the seeming peace, together with a digression
to explain why the several smaller wars comprise one long war and how long that
war lasted. As was said earlier, there is no reason to suppose that this was a
unique or peculiar opinion; but, considering the ambiguity of his own and
doubtless of his contemporaries' use of the word pÒlemow, it called for
some discussion, as it did also from the point of view of chronology.
Accordingly it is Thucydides' method, not any previous ignorance on his part,
which dictates the place and nature of his remarks on the length of the war.
After all, since on any theory much of the first book was written after 404,
one might suppose that he would have changed the opening sentences first of
all, if he knew that these did not express his full experience of the conflict.
As it is, however, the omission is far more readily explained not only by the
general character of his thought but, quite specifically, by his normal
practice in digressions. Indeed to expect anything else is probably to imitate
Dionysius in imputing methods to him which were never his own. But if that is
the case, then it is possible to return with greater confidence to the facts
set forth earlier and to find in the continuity and uniformity of Thucydides'
thought the essential proof of the unity of his work.