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Chapter 1

Stasis in Corcyra Modeling Revolution for Thucydides and Plato

Thucydides inserts into his account of the stasis at Corcyra a series of reflections on the effect of war and revolution on people’s characters and actions. Corcyra fell into stasis when the Corinthians set free the prisoners they had taken at Epidamnus (3.70.1). Then the Corcyraeans provided the first full examples of the effects of revolutionary passion (3.85.1), giving Thucydides the occasion to provide a very characteristic, abstract interpretation of the events.

Thucydides sees the revolutions throughout the Greek world during the war as a kind of movement:, since as he says, “later at least the entire, so to speak, Hellenic world was set in motion” (ἐπεὶ ὕστερόν γε καὶ πᾶν ὡς εἰπεῖν τὸ Ἑλληνικὸν ἐκινήθη, my translation, combined with Crawley, 3.82.1). Thucydides links stasis with the war as a whole, which he also sees as a movement, in fact, the greatest “movement” up to his time (κίνησις transliterated kinesis 1.1.2). In opposition to this movement excited by war and stasis stands the rest and orderly activity of research and writing, which exile gave to Thucydides (5.26.5).¹ This opposition of orderly activity to disorderly movement is one of the central contrasts of Thucydides’ work, along with the relationship between logos and ergon. Because the work is composed around such antitheses, some have questioned whether Thucydides tries to resolve the antitheses or leaves them in place as a rhetorical device to stimulate thought.² As we shall see both in the passage on stasis and in other sections, however, the oppositions are a rhetorical tool of Thucydides to engage his readers, but one which he also uses to lead toward certain philosophical conclusions, although the conclusions to a number of his presentations have more than one meaning and form. They are polyvalent as part of his method.³ This certainly seems true of the many echoes within the various speeches. Echoes indicate decline in political discourse between Pericles and Cleon, but they also hint at some disturbing similarities, while at the same time also making the reader wonder if some of the differences between the two men are more matters of degree. It is also interesting to consider some of the passages that we will encounter in which the language of one or two words or sentences is what Hornblower reflect a quality he calls “polyinterpretability.”⁴

The disturbances of stasis overturn a great number of customs (3.82, especially 3.82.6), including the axiosis of words (3.82.4). This entire dense passage describing the horrible effects of stasis on all political order and achievements stands as a contrast to the Funeral Oration, which is an exaltation of the custom of burial. While in the Funeral Oration Pericles reaches for the timeless expression of beautiful devotion to the city (e.g., 2.41.4, 2.43.3), in the description of stasis Thucydides shows how when the state fails, people degenerate into the pleasures of immediate and emotional action (3.82.6–3.82.8).

A number of the words Thucydides uses to portray stasis emphasize his concern in this passage with the movement and disturbance of stasis. Stasis moved forward savagely (οὕτως ὠμὴ <ἡ> στάσις προυχώρησε) until it engulfed all that was Hellenic (πᾶν . . . τὸ Ἑλληνικὸν, 3.82.1). This neuter phrase, which is Thucydides’ customary way of referring to Greece as a whole (cf. 1.1.1), has implications here beyond the entire physical Greek world. It also implies that stasis overturned all that was Greek, the customs and civilizations of the Greeks, and made the people more barbaric. Plato’s identification of strife between Greek cities as a kind of faction or stasis (Republic V.471a) makes the same point through the many particulars of any Greek conflict with Greeks.

The war made it easy for partisans to bring in outside forces to change or revolutionize a state.⁵ In contrast to this change, Thucydides places the constant of human nature (ἕως ἂν ἡ αὐτὴ φύσις ἀνθρώπων ᾖ, “as long as the nature of humans is the same” [my translation], 3.82.2), which allows him to see the general forms stasis takes as part of a larger stable picture of man.⁶

The clinical nature of the description of stasis recalls the description of the plague, which first challenged the customs at Athens and weakened the people (2.54.1, 2.61.3). Like stasis, the plague has differing particular manifestations (2.51.1, cf. 3.82.2), but also like stasis it has a general form (τοιοῦτον ἦν ἐπὶ πᾶν τὴν ἰδέαν, “Such then, . . . were the general features of the distemper,” 2.51.1; cf., μᾶλλον δὲ καὶ ἡσυχαίτερα καὶ τοῖς εἴδεσι διηλλαγμένα, The sufferings of stasis appeared “in a severer or milder form, and varying in their symptoms” 3.82.2). Like stasis, the plague overturned customs and pushed the people toward immediate actions for their satisfaction (2.51.2–2.51.3). Stasis is a political illness characterized by the examples Thucydides provides, which naturally raises the question of the nature of a healthy polis. We will consider this more thoroughly in connection with Pericles’ speeches and the speech of the Athenian ambassadors in Book 1, but for now it is enough to recognize that the frantic violence of stasis represents the lowest type of political action for Thucydides. The destruction in Corcyra did not end until one party had killed almost all the other (4.48.5). One forward-looking result of the narrative of the plague is to give the reader a sense when reading the discussion of stasis in Corcyra that we have seen this process before. Indeed, Thucydides’ comment at the end of his introduction to the description of the plague creates an ironic sense of foreboding:

λεγέτω μὲν οὖν περὶ αὐτοῦ ὡς ἕκαστος γιγνώσκει καὶ ἰατρὸς καὶ ἰδιώτης, ἀφ᾽ ὅτου εἰκὸς ἦν γενέσθαι αὐτό, καὶ τὰς αἰτίας ἅστινας νομίζει τοσαύτης μεταβολῆς ἱκανὰς εἶναι δύναμιν ἐς τὸ μεταστῆσαι σχεῖν: ἐγὼ δὲ οἷόν τε ἐγίγνετο λέξω, καὶ ἀφ᾽ ὧν ἄν τις σκοπῶν, εἴ ποτε καὶ αὖθις ἐπιπέσοι, μάλιστ᾽ ἂν ἔχοι τι προειδὼς μὴ ἀγνοεῖν, ταῦτα δηλώσω αὐτός τε νοσήσας καὶ αὐτὸς ἰδὼν ἄλλους πάσχοντας. (2.48.3)

All speculation as to its origin and its causes, if causes can be found adequate to produce so great a disturbance, I leave to other writers, whether lay or professional; for myself, I shall simply set down its nature, and explain the symptoms by which perhaps it may be recognized by the student, if it should ever break out again. This I can the better do, as I had the disease myself, and watched its operation in the case of others. (2.48.3)

As students, or literally “someone looking” (τις σκοπῶν) we can see the effects of stasis as a kind of disease, a social and psychological disease perhaps, “if it should ever break out again,” or a moral disease in a deeper sense, that has effects quite similar to the plague. Or if we are in an army or leading an army, we might see incipient suspicion as the beginning of a collapse of order.⁷

One of the singular fatalities of stasis is the customary use of words: καὶ τὴν εἰωθυῖαν ἀξίωσιν τῶν ὀνομάτων ἐς τὰ ἔργα ἀντήλλαξαν τῇ δικαιώσει (3.82.4).⁸ Thucydides’ perception of this change or perversion of language is, as we shall see, central to his entire understanding of the war and its effect on the polis. Before we can consider the larger implications of the statement, however, it is important to look into exactly what it means.

It is often stated that Thucydides here asserts that the partisans in the various staseis changed the meanings of the words they used and by this is understood the denotations of words or their referents.⁹ Thus, taking Thucydides’ first example, acts that once were called “rash boldness” (τόλμα ἀλόγιστος) were in stasis considered “courageous loyalty” (ἀνδρεία φιλέταιρος). In other words, the first phrase was abandoned while the second changed its referent. This interpretation is imprecise. The root of axiosis (ἀξίωσις) suggests that it ought strictly to mean “act of assigning worth or value.” To express this in idiomatic English, axiosis should be translated “valuation,” “estimation,” or “evaluation.”¹⁰ The virtue of these translations in place of the customary ‘meaning’ is that “valuation” and “estimation” carry with them implications of judgment and opinion, while “meaning” is too close to “dictionary definition.”¹¹ For Thucydides, writing before our modern fact/value distinction,¹² it is possible or even likely that there was no fixed difference between what we would call the meaning of a value-laden term and its actual moral significance. Yet this should not in any way obscure Thucydides’ intensely expressed interest in the moral significance of the words and deeds in his Histories.¹³

Different and specialized meanings have also sometimes been given to τῇ δικαιώσει (dikaiosis in the nominative case).¹⁴ Dikaiosis basically means “making or setting right,” and Thucydides’ use of it conforms to this core meaning.¹⁵ τῇ δικαιώσει is a type of instrumental dative, the dative of cause, expressing a motive.¹⁶ Since this dative is frequently used with verbs of emotion, it is appropriate here in the context of the heightened emotions of partisans in stasis.¹⁷ Because people made their own self-serving judgments of what right was, they changed the axiosis of words to suit and support their judgment.

The phrase ἐς τὰ ἔργα (transliterated es ta erga) “for the things or deeds” has also created some difficulty. Classen-Steup take the phrase with τὴν εἰωθυῖαν ἀξίωσιν τῶν ὀνομάτων (the customary evaluation of words) and translate it “für die Dinge.” Gomme, on the other hand, asserts that ἐς τὰ ἔργα (transliterated es ta erga) goes surely with ἀντήλλαξαν (“they exchanged”) “with a view to their actions,” not with τὴν εἰωθυῖαν ἀξίωσιν.¹⁸ But ἐς (es) often means “with respect to” in Thucydides and it can easily mean that here. There is no reason to regard es ta erga as narrowly referring only to the purposes of each party and to say that party members changed the axiosis of words in order to accomplish (“with a view to”) certain ends (ta erga). Rather es ta erga goes with τὴν εἰωθυῖαν ἀξίωσιν and with ἀντήλλαξαν.¹⁹ The partisans changed the sense of words as applied to deeds, but they had their own purposes in mind. Another real point of es ta erga, however, is that valuations of words were changed in respect to the true sense or value of the deeds (in the eyes of a neutral observer).²⁰ Thucydides uses the ambiguity of grammatical reference to make the reader stop and consider how disturbing it can be when speakers change customary valuations of moral and emotional terms both relative to the deeds they describe and at the same time with a view to furthering those deeds.

ἀντήλλαξαν literally means “exchange” rather than “change,” but the latter translation better conveys the import of the sentence, for “exchange” requires that what a thing was exchanged for be specified, which Thucydides does not do. He only implies that the customary senses of words were exchanged for new ones. The sentence may now be translated: “Men changed the customary valuation of words in respect to deeds in judging what right was.”

Thucydides’ full meaning becomes clear in an examination of his examples: τόλμα μὲν γὰρ ἀλόγιστος ἀνδρεία φιλέταιρος ἐνομίσθη, μέλλησις δὲ προμηθὴς δειλία εὐπρεπής (“Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice,” 3.82.4). The traditional interpretation of these clauses originates with Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who understood the introductory sentence to mean: τά τε εἰωθότα ὀνόματα ἐπὶ τοῖς πράγμασι λέγεσθαι μετατιθέντες ἄλλως ἠξίουν αὐτὰ καλεῖν (“Changing the names customarily applied to deeds they deemed it right to call them by new names”). They gave new names to the erga.

Friedrich Solmsen asks the following question about the examples Thucydides offers:

The longer we look at the sentences purporting to acquaint us with the new meanings of words, the more we are bound to wonder whether people really developed the habit of praising a man for ἀνδρεία φιλέταιρος (“the courage of a loyal ally” [translation Crawley]) or blaming him for δειλία εὐπρεπής (“specious cowardice” [Crawley])

Had they ever, when discussing ruthless daring, spoken of τόλμα . . . ἀλόγιστος? (“reckless audacity” [Crawley])²¹

No satisfactory answer to this question can be given unless it is kept in mind that Thucydides does not use the verb “to call” or “to name” but rather νομίζω, which means to “think” or to “consider.” If he had used “was called” or “was named,” this would have supported Dionysius’ interpretation: deeds were called by new words and a change in referent occurred.

But ἐνομίσθη (“was considered [to be]”) invokes not what men said but what they thought,²² and Dionysius’ interpretation is not so much wrong as incomplete. During stasis citizens confounded in thought previously distinguishable concepts. This confusion revealed itself in two different ways. When men saw an action that was objectively τόλμα ἀλόγιστος (“reckless audacity”), either they thought (or pretended to think) that it was ἀνδρεία φιλέταιρος (“the courage of a loyal ally”) and called it that (Dionysius’ interpretation), or they considered reckless audacity to be a good thing and when praising it called it by its right name. Certainly the latter is not an impossible occurrence, and Thucydides knew of examples similar to it. Cleon, for instance, in his speech concerning the Mytileneans, praises stupidity (ἀμαθία) (3.37.3–3.37.4) and urges the Athenians not to show themselves soft.²³ In a similar fashion, during normal times men would consider μέλλησις δὲ προμηθὴς (“prudent hesitation”) a good thing, a sign of intelligence and wisdom, while in stasis they might sometimes have called it μέλλησις δὲ προμηθὴς (“prudent hesitation”), but used the phrase to express disapproval. It is precisely because Dionysius does not take account of this common phenomenon, in which there is no change of denotation or referent, that his interpretation is insufficient.²⁴ Yet of course his interpretation is partly correct. Politicians very often call bad deeds by good names (or vice versa), as Thucydides was well aware: ὥστε εὐσεβείᾳ μὲν οὐδέτεροι ἐνόμιζον, εὐπρεπείᾳ δὲ λόγου οἷς ξυμβαίη ἐπιφθόνως τι διαπράξασθαι, ἄμεινον ἤκουον (“Thus religion was in honor with neither party; but the use of fair phrases to arrive at guilty ends was in high reputation,” 3.82.8).

To reinforce the point that in commenting on the change in the axiosis of words Thucydides has in mind a change in habits of praise and blame, that is, a change in values, it is instructive to consider several of his examples.

τόλμα μὲν γὰρ ἀλόγιστος ἀνδρεία φιλέταιρος ἐνομίσθη, μέλλησις δὲ προμηθὴς δειλία εὐπρεπής, τὸ δὲ σῶφρον τοῦ ἀνάνδρου πρόσχημα, καὶ τὸ πρὸς ἅπαν ξυνετὸν ἐπὶ πᾶν ἀργόν: τὸ δ᾽ ἐμπλήκτως ὀξὺ ἀνδρὸς μοίρᾳ προσετέθη, ἀσφαλείᾳ δὲ τὸ ἐπιβουλεύσασθαι ἀποτροπῆς πρόφασις εὔλογος. [5] καὶ ὁ μὲν χαλεπαίνων πιστὸς αἰεί, ὁ δ᾽ ἀντιλέγων αὐτῷ ὕποπτος. (3.82.4–3.82.5)

[4] Words had to change their ordinary value and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defense. [5] The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. (3.82.4–5, Crawley, except that “meaning” has been replaced with “value”)

In the first example, words that normally have negative connotations acquire a positive cast. In the second, third, and fourth, a good quality is considered bad. Thucydides thus repeats his pattern in which a good phrase or concept acquires a bad connotation, or words of blame develop positive associations. With καὶ ὁ μὲν χαλεπαίνων πιστὸς αἰεί ὁ δ᾽ ἀντιλέγων αὐτῷ ὕποπτος (“The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected”), he turns from abstract noun formations to participial nouns referring to people, but still emphasizes a change in values.

Thucydides observes that as it overturns the values of a peaceful polis, stasis also makes people suspicious of one another (3.82.5). When he introduces suspicion, he moves beyond words to more general comments about how people act and feel in stasis, while at the same time emphasizing his remarks about the revolution of values in Hellas.²⁵ He who anticipated an evil-doer, or who provoked someone who was not intending a crime, was praised (3.82.5).²⁶ Kinship began to have a weaker hold on people than party or faction (3.82.6), while revenge was of more account than not suffering at all (3.82.7). Catching an enemy off guard was sweeter (i.e., ἥδιον or “sweeter,” 3.82.7) revenge than if it had been accomplished in the open. Oaths lost their power (3.82.7, 3.83.2). No longer did men practice piety, but those who used fair-seeming words had a better reputation (3.82.8).²⁷ Finally simplicity (τὸ εὔηθες), in which honor holds the largest share, was ridiculed and disappeared (3.83.1). This clearly prefigures the death of Nicias and Thucydides’ comments on his virtue.

In Book 8 of the Republic, Socrates’ discussion of the democratic man and the stasis in his soul parallels Thucydides’ description of what happens to political discourse in stasis. Both Thucydides and Plato (556e) see that stasis is fostered when parties in the state bring in outside allies, and that in stasis political discourse degenerates. In Plato (Book VIII 560d), the boasting speeches in the soul of the democratic men do battle with the speeches of the older (and by implication aristocratic) men and at last conquer them. As Socrates outlines in the Republic, the boasting speeches, calling shame (αἰδώς, transliterated aidos) simplicity (ἠλιθιότης, elithiotes), they thrust out aidos or “shame” as a fugitive with dishonor (ἀτίμως, “with dishonor”);²⁸ calling “moderation” (σωφροσύνην) a lack of manliness, they spatter mud on it and exile it.²⁹ We can see here that an important part of Plato’s analysis parallels Thucydides’: Moral qualities that in normal times were honored are treated dishonorably during stasis. The partisans also drive out measure and well-ordered expenditure, while castigating them as “rustic and illiberal” (ἀγροικίαν καὶ ἀνελευθερίαν). After Adeimantus agrees with Socrates’ description, Socrates recounts the corresponding new praise of what had been blameworthy: the boasting speeches next in blazing light bring back insolence from exile, along with anarchy, wastefulness, and shamelessness directly praising them and also calling them by fair names. They call insolence a good education, anarchy freedom, wastefulness magnificence, and shamelessness manliness.³⁰ In Plato as in Thucydides, stasis engenders changes in the values of political and moral expressions. Socrates’ analysis of the way human characteristics are honored and blamed with words opens up one of Thucydides’ densest passages. Socrates explains that values such as shame are treated dishonorably (ἀτίμως, “with dishonor”), while partisans cast out moderation. Then partisans bring back into the city a swarm of bad characteristics as if they have religious values or, as James Adam notes, as if they are deities to be worshipped in religious mysteries.³¹ In other words, Socrates makes explicit what in Thucydides hangs on the word axiosis, a great change in values that results in the use of new names and in replacements of old names with new ones.

In Thucydides we may, as the result of modern social science, wonder whether the values ascribed to these political and moral expressions should be seen as facts. Thucydides certainly appears to have real conviction about what good values are and what bad values are as expressed in political speeches generally. The changes he records are facts. But are the values assigned to words before stasis correct? Thucydides quite clearly views these values as grounded in correct evaluations of good and bad conduct. This then makes the reader wonder if some conduct is objectively good and other conduct objectively bad. How are we to understand the basis for the comparisons Thucydides makes in his review of changes in language and values during stasis in Corcyra? The acts committed during stasis are evaluated in such a way that they match an idea like manliness (3.82.4).³²

The word that reveals the process Thucydides has in mind here is ἐνομίσθη (3.82.4), which is the aorist (or past) passive form of the Greek verb νομίζω (“think,” “enact,” “to be customary [in passive forms]”). The process of creating or supporting a custom (νόμος, “custom,” “law,” “practice,” transliterated nomos) begins with thinking.³³ Customs begin in practice with groups conducting themselves in similar ways.³⁴ What enables us to make these distinctions in value is a kind of measurement. The measure is not either nomos or phusis, which are the opposed candidates for the source of meaning in the Cratylus, but a third quality, a mixture of inherent or natural order, customary order, and whatever order there is in a series of events, all of which are anchored in our human, physical beings and what appear to be our eternal or common needs and desires along with our aspirations and our weaknesses, in short the measure of a human being. In clothing, the measure is the female or male child or adult.³⁵ In political life, the situation is more complex but the individual person and the people in a given polis or state are at the very least the basis for the mean, though we must add to that special consideration for our needs, desires, aspirations, and weaknesses. Politically we must also add some kind of founding myth or account for almost every type and instance of a civic unit (Statesman, 273e4–274e3). Such archetypal stories work their way into our customs or nomoi and our language to become part of the measure of our words, our ideas, and our deeds. When we use the resulting concepts, we are using the art of measurement (metretike) as applied to human life (Statesman, 283e).³⁶ This is the art or measurement that the Stranger divides into two parts, the part that concerns arts that measure number, length, breadth, and thickness as compared with their opposites, and the other part that measures in relation to “the moderate, the fitting, the appropriate, the timely or needful and all the other arts that lie in the mean between the extremes” (Statesman, 284e). This second group of qualities against which things are measured presents those qualities to us through language. These are the qualities that generally relate to what are called moral values. The revolution in values engendered by stasis challenges these values in particular, which are the fundamental values of the family, social, and political worlds. The revolution in language makes it difficult and verging on the impossible at times to live in a stable moral universe and to describe normal and deranged or disturbed actions and words. Plato’s Statesman helps to elucidate the complex meaning of Thucydides’ description of the collapse in stasis of descriptions and discourse of actions and words that represent and identify values.

While Plato in the Republic sees stasis as a disease specifically of the democratic polis, Thucydides makes no such limitation. But this is a superficial disagreement that arises out of the differing aims of the two books. Plato in Book 8 is describing the various forms of government and the types of souls analogous to them, while Thucydides is extracting philosophical and permanent truths (1.22.4) from actual events. As we will see later, however, Plato and Thucydides do seem to agree about certain aspects of the highest type of polis. And while Thucydides does not say so, stasis is the political disease most characteristic to democracy, because in democracy there is a well-developed party of the commons.³⁷ There are also frequently parties of disaffected nobles. And finally, as Thucydides does show, there are in democracy unscrupulous politicians of varying political persuasions with access to public fora. These politicians are willing to take advantage of popular animosities and oppositions. Factions can also arise from various business interests, especially a moneyed interest. In the United States, one of the largest examples of faction would be the partisans of slavery and the consequent Civil War, which had as a result one of the first instances of total war including wide destruction in noncombatant areas delivered by General Sherman to the inhabitants of Georgia.³⁸

Many of the characteristics of stasis Thucydides mentions show up in Athens during the war. Pericles told the Athenians to stay at home during the war and to attempt no new conquests, recommending in essence a policy of quietism and rest with respect to anything outside the war (2.65.7). The Athenians did the opposite, allowing a private desire for gain and honor to overwhelm their public spirit (2.65.7). The pleonexia of the Athenians is notorious for its role in their downfall (cf. 4.21.2, 4.41.4). This desire for more motivates many of the participants in stasis (3.82.6, 3.82.8). Disturbed motion again replaces orderly public spiritedness.

Thucydides then stands himself as a principle of orderly activity and the ordering process of political contemplation through writing in contrast to the increasingly frantic violence of Athens in her war against Sparta and the Peloponnesians. But the question of the fundamental position of Thucydides must be addressed from the start. His book has had many champions. Some see in him the beginning of what is called scientific history, others see him as primarily a political realist, while still others see in him either a political idealist who views Pericles as the ideal leader or a complex historian with a little bit of all of these ideas. There are also no doubt many parallels between Thucydides and the Greek tragedians.³⁹ Another view is that Thucydides is a type of Sophist. Friedrich Nietzsche embraces this view:

My recreation, my preference, my cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides. Thucydides, and perhaps the Principe of Machiavelli, are related to me closely by their unconditional will not to deceive themselves and not to see reason in reality—not in “reason,” still less in “morality.” . . . For the deplorable embellishment of the Greeks with the colors of the ideal which the “classically educated” carries away with him into life as the reward of his grammar-school drilling there is no more radical cure than Thucydides. One must turn him over line by line and read his hidden thoughts as clearly as his words: there are few thinkers so rich in hidden thoughts. Sophist culture, by which I mean realist culture, attains in him its perfect expression—this invaluable movement in the midst of the morality—and ideal swindle of the Socratic schools which was then breaking out everywhere. Greek philosophy as the decadence of the Greek instinct; Thucydides as the grand summation, the last manifestation of that stern, hard matter-of-factness instinctive to the older Hellenes. Courage in the face of reality ultimately distinguishes such natures as Thucydides and Plato: Plato is a coward in the face of reality—consequently he flees into the ideal; Thucydides has himself under control—consequently he retains control over things.⁴⁰

Thucydides’ obvious interest in opposed arguments can mislead, however, in the sense that it does not provide a full account of his use of arguments or logoi. The meaning and importance of the speeches arises from comparison of them to one another and to the narrative, which is quite similar to the way in which Greek tragic plays work at least on a formal level. It is also similar to the way in which the action of Plato’s dialogues complements the arguments, though there action in itself is usually not the main focus. No speech by itself presents us with Thucydides’ viewpoint.⁴¹ Similarly, the notion that he is a kind of scientific historian is not a full account of what he does by any means. That is not to say that he is not interested in science and scientific ways. He clearly is, as his discussion of the plague and stasis demonstrates. But his method of thought resembles Socrates’ as explained in the Phaedo. Thucydides uses the hypothetical method to understand both general causes and causes in particular cases, as when after the Peloponnesian invasion of Attica turns back, the sea comes up at Orobiae in Boeotia in a tsunami (3.89.2). Thucydides famously speculates that this must have been the result of an earthquake: “Without an earthquake I do not see how such an accident could happen”(3.89.5). While his object is to understand an event in the world he figures out through thought that at earthquake must have caused the sea to rise up. This is abstract reasoning about a hypothesis applied to physical events, yet the scientific insight serves an interpretive or even symbolic purpose as the Peloponnesian War is a war of the Athenian powers at sea with the Spartan forces of the land.

Socrates and Plato use the hypothetical method to understand the formal causes of things (Phaedo, 100d), the idea of cause itself in other manifestations (e.g., teleological causes), and also “concerning all the other things that are.”⁴² While there is some debate about the meaning of the “second sailing in search of the cause” (τὸν δεύτερον πλοῦν ἐπὶ τὴν τῆς αἰτίας ζήτησιν, 97c–d) that Socrates undertakes and explains in the Phaedo as part of his response to the failure in his eyes of Anaxagoras to live up to his promise of explaining the world in terms of Mind (97b–98b), the hypothetical method is clearly just what Socrates sets it out to be, a method of taking a hypothesis and seeing where it leads.⁴³ The “second sailing” is the inquiry into the formal causes of things, that is, the Forms themselves, but this leads us back to ourselves and to an inquiry into one crucial value, justice, which is the primary object of the Republic. ⁴⁴ Socrates’ first effort or sailing was thus an attempt to explain all the things that are in terms of the Good. For these types of explanations, Socrates is still looking for a teacher at the end of his life (99c), which I take to be first a kind of Socratic irony as Socrates attempts to understand his death as good, and second an example of Platonic irony, a kind of dramatic irony, as Socrates’ search for a teacher contrasts with the many failures of misguided Athenian fathers to find teachers for their sons.⁴⁵

Thucydides’ Histories abound in such ironies that raise important questions about the Periclean enterprise, for instance, in the way the narrative of the Plague follows the Funeral Oration and prefigures the undermining of important civic customs by contrasting the formality and grace of the Funeral Oration with the chaos of death everywhere destroying the rite of burial (2.52.4).⁴⁶ Athens’ greatness and appeal derives from the moral energy of the people, but in unleashing that energy Pericles induces and exhorts the people to gaze upon the power of the city and become her lovers.⁴⁷ The question then is whether this idea leads to what the Greeks called pleonexia, which is a generalizing abstract noun combining what we might call greed, arrogance, and an exaggerated sense of entitlement and political and military aggrandizement, in short, a desire to have more. In his chapter on stasis, Thucydides concludes that the cause of the ruin of revolution comes from pleonexia and ambition or love of honor (φιλοτιμίαν, transliterated philotimia, 3.82.8).⁴⁸

Even an active state like Athens must have, in Pericles’ view, a component of order or it will wear itself out. Stasis is constant political motion within the state, and as such it eventually leads to ruin. If the valuations of words themselves change, we lose our grasp on the moral status of things and events, since we can no longer even describe or discuss them.

Thucydides places his work in opposition to these tendencies in order to fix forever the events he describes. For him, the sense, valuation, and meaning of words must be relatively constant, or else we could not read what he wrote. His picture of the degeneration of political language has two broad lines. First, there is the decline within Athens itself, but there is also a decline in the political discourse of the Greek world as a whole (3.82.1). One purpose of this study is to show how Thucydides’ description of the degeneration of political language in 3.82–3.83 applies specifically to Athens, but the question naturally arises whether the general model of stasis extends to the Greek world as a whole, as Socrates suggests in Book 5 of the Republic (470b–d).⁴⁹ To the extent that the Greek world was united against the Eastern powers, and it certainly was, the model has a proper political framework since the ties that bound the Greeks were not merely ties of political and military expedience but ties based on kinship and a shared cultural heritage specifically including the Greek language.

The crucial separation between Pausanias and the Spartans and the rebounding disgrace of Themistocles among the Athenians shows the leaders of the alliance against the Persians to be broadly ambitious (1.130.1–2 for Pausanias and 1.137–138 for Themistocles) and grasping for more, which also matches political motives in stasis. The two leaders exemplify some of the ways in which stasis arises and seem to prefigure a general separation among the allies. From there it seems clear the erosion of fellow feeling among the allies of Athens and their eventual discontents and rebellions lead to internal warfare in the Delian League that clearly resembles stasis more than it does war between independent and militarily powerful states.

In order to understand how Athens in particular changed during the war, we must first look at the speeches of Pericles, which represent for Thucydides the highest achievement of Greek political speech if we set aside Thucydides’ own logos, which then parallels the logoi (plural of logos) of Socrates and Plato.

Before we do this, however, it will be best to address briefly certain questions about how to interpret the speeches in Thucydides. In general, he invites comparisons of speeches by making them abstract and general, and by using a number of verbal echoes. Many scholars have taken the position that the speeches can and should be compared.⁵⁰ Yet in making such comparisons, one must also consider the different rhetorical demands made on each speaker or group of speakers, because according to Thucydides’ own account, his composition of the speeches is not a simple matter.

Thucydides says that in writing the speeches he made the speakers say what seemed to him to be necessary (τὰ δέοντα, ta deonta) in each case, while keeping as close as possible to the overall intent, purport, or thought (τῆς ξυμπάσης γνώμης) of what was really said (τῶν ἀληθῶς λεχθέντων, 1.22.1). Thucydides distinguishes here three aspects of each speech: (1) what was actually said, (2) the overall intent or general purport of the speech, and (3) what seemed to him to be necessary to say. Thucydides’ program for his speeches has been the subject of thorough scholarly examination. While the first two aspects of the speeches seem clear, the third still occasions some dispute. Here, however, I will take ta deonta as referring to what was rhetorically necessary in order to support the purport of the speech.⁵¹

The rhetorical demands on each speaker have an important influence on the speeches as Thucydides presents them. This means that in comparing the speeches one must be sensitive to the requirements imposed on the speaker by the situation in which Thucydides places him. Even rhetorical considerations must be used with care in interpreting the speeches, however. For instance, Thucydides puts both Diodotus and Cleon in front of the same Athenian audience in the same situation, but they make very different speeches. Their different characters and the goals of their speeches distinguish them. Thucydides presents their speeches because he wants us to see the differences in the characters of the speakers and in the general wisdom and humanity of the courses of action they recommend.⁵² These speeches, and indeed all the speeches, reflect more largely the speaker’s general intent (τῆς ξυμπάσης γνώμης) than they do the rhetorical demands the speaker faces.⁵³ Thucydides uses the general intent of Pericles’ speeches to articulate a political ideal. It is to these speeches that we will turn next.

NOTES

1 Strauss, The City and Man, pp. 140ff.

2 White, When Words Lose their Meaning, pp. 87–89.

3 Morrison, Reading Thucydides, p. 25.

4 See Hornblower, Thucydides and Pindar, pp. 80–81 and 367, as well as his comments in A Commentary on Thucydides: Volume 3 at 6.24.4, 7.86.5, and 8.97.2. See also 2.43.1 where Pericles asks his people to become lovers of the city or, on another interpretation, lovers of the power of the city.

5 Thucydides uses the word νεωτερίζειν (3.82.1), literally, to do something new, to revolutionize a people or a situation. The word is often associated with violence. See LSJ s.v., νεωτερίζω.

6 For a relatively recent and very thorough review of the apparent influence of Greek medical thought on Thucydides, see Simon Swain, “Man and Medicine in Thucydides,” 303–27. On page 317, Swain notes that Thucydides describes the general form that stasis takes. He uses the plural of the word εἶδος (transliterated eidos), which is the same word Plato frequently uses for his forms. Swain says that Thucydides “gazes on the teratology” of the social symptoms of stasis and compares them with the “constancy of human nature.”

7 E. Greenwood, Thucydides and the Shaping of History (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), p. 41. See also Hans-Peter Stahl, Thucydides: Man’s Place in History (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2009), p. 219.

8 I have taken and somewhat adapted what follows in chapter 1 largely from my article “The ἀξίωσις of Words at Thucydides 3.82.4,” John T. Hogan, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 21 (1980): 139–49, though I have deleted some of the more specialized or technical points. I have copied (without quotation marks) or only slightly modified significant portions of the text here from pp. 139, 143–45, and 147–48 of the original article, which the thoughtful copyright policies of Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies and Duke University made possible. Duke kindly makes all issues of Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, among other journals, available online: https://grbs.library.duke.edu/.

9 Cf., e.g., Gomme et al., Historical Commentary, 3.82.4 n.; Finley, Thucydides, p. 229; and Albin Lesky, History of Greek Literature, trans. James Willis and Cornelis de Heer (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1963), p. 463. See also LSJ s. v. ἀξίωσις IV where τὴν εἰωθυῖαν ἀξίωσιν τῶν ὀνομάτων is translated “the established meaning of words.” For a general discussion of the nature of linguistic reference and its relation to value, see Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics, pp. 67f. and 114–15. In addition to Hogan, “The ἀξίωσις of Words at Thucydides 3.82.4,” pp. 139–49, see John Wilson’s “The Customary Meanings of Words Were Changed. Or Were they? A Note on Thucydides 3.82.4,” Classical Quarterly 32 (1982): 18–20, and, e.g., Dino Piovan’s “The Unexpected Consequences of War. Thucydides on the Relationship between War, Civil War and the Degradation of Language,” or “Las inesperadas consecuencias de la guerra. Acerca de la relación entre guerra, guerra civil y degradación del lenguaje en Tucídides,” Araucaria. Revista Iberoamericana de Filosofía, Política y Humanidades 19, no. 37 (2017): 181–97.

“This view is followed now by most scholars, among whom also Nussbaum, 2004, p. 751, n. 24 (this reference is from the 2004 Spanish translation of Martha Nussbaum’s The Fragility of Goodness, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). However Orwin 1994: 177 n. 11 is against their interpretation” (Piovan, p. 187 n.19). See also Lisa Irene Hau’s Moral History from Herodotus to Diodorus Siculus (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), p. 212, where she adopts the translation of “values” as the standard one provided by J. Mynott in his new translation of Thucydides (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Cf. Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides: Volume 1: 3.82.4 n., who now also relies on the translation “valuation.”

More generally, see June Allison’s careful review of the subject of Thucydides’ comments on language here: Word and Concept in Thucydides, pp. 163–80 and esp. p. 169 n. 15.

10 See Piovan, “The Unexpected Consequences of War. Thucydides on the Relationship between War, Civil War and the Degradation of Language,” pp. 181–97.

11 Thomas Hobbes’ The History of the Grecian War in Eight Books, Written by Thucydides (1629) translates as “value.” Cf. again also John Wilson, “Thucydides 3.82.4,” (Classical Review 32, 1982), pp. 18–20, who translates the entire phrase as the “usual verbal evaluations.”

12 Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 39ff.

13 Bagby, “Fathers of International Relations? Thucydides as a Model for the Twenty-First Century,” pp. 39–41.

14 “At their will and pleasure,” LSJ s.v. δικαίωσις III; Cf. Müri, “Politische Metonomasie,” 67f. “nach ihrer Willkür.” J. Classen and J. Steup, Thukydides (Berlin, 1885–1914) ad loc.: “die subjektive Auslegung, wie sei nach dem Umstanden recht d.i. gelegen war.”

15 Δικαίωσις occurs in four other places in Thucydides. At 1.141.1, it means “claim of right.” See LSJ s. v. δικαίωσις II, cf. Classen-Steup (“eine mit dem Anspruch auf ein Recht . . . gestellte Forderung”). The same meaning is present at 5.17.2. At 4.86.6, ἰσχύος δικαιώσει must mean “by the right of the stronger,” that is justification consisting in strength. For 8.66.2, LSJ (s.v. I. l) translate “condemnation, punishment.” The word could easily be understood here as “judgement of right” (which would lead to punishment). In any case, “condemnation” implies a “judgement of right.”

16 Its grammar resembles the second dative in the following expression from Thucydides: οἱ μὲν ἀπορίᾳ ἀκολούθων, οἱ δὲ ἀπιστίᾳ: “some [carried their own food] because they lacked servants, others through distrust of them” (7.75.5).

17 See R. Kühner and B. Gerth, Aüsfurliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache (Hanover and Leipzig, 1898), II.l, pp. 438–40 (section 11). The example and its translation are from H. W. Smyth, Greek Grammar, revised by Gordon Messing (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), para. 1517. The first dative (ἀπορίᾳ) expresses external cause.

18 But cf. Müri, “Politische Metonomasie,” pp. 67–68, who argues successfully against Gomme.

19 I believe that this type of ambiguous or polyvalent construction occurs in a number of places in Thucydides. Hornblower, following I. L. Pfeijffer, Three Aeginetan Odes of Pindar: A Commentary on Nemean V, Nemean III, and Pythian VIII (Leiden, 1999), uses the term polyinterpretability to describe this rhetorical device, in which the author seems to intend that the readers or hearers of the work may interpret some words in more than one way at the same time. See Thucydides and Pindar, pp. 80–81 and p. 367. This view of one of Thucydides’ apparent rhetorical devices would support the reading I have provided for 3.82.4 despite the persuasive points against it by June Allison in Word and Concept in Thucydides, p. 170n.17. See also the Hornblower’s discussion of this same rhetorical device in his review of the political judgment of Thucydides at 8.97.2: “then for the first time, at least in my lifetime, the Athenians seem to me to have had a good constitutional arrangement” (translation Hornblower at 8.97.2).

20 S. Simon Swain, “Thucydides 1.22.1 and 3.82.4,” Mnemosyne, Fourth Series, 46, no. 1 (1993), p. 36 and p. 36n.8.

21 Solmsen, Intellectual Experiments of the Greek Enlightenment, p. 110. Solmsen decides in favor of the traditional interpretation both here and in the article “Thucydides’ Treatment of Words and Concepts,” Hermes 99 (1971): 395. He describes Thucydides’ observation as the discovery of a “new type of synonym.” For Solmsen, the synonymy consists in, for instance, τόλμα ἀλόγιστος (reckless audacity) being called ἀνδρεία φιλέταιρος (the courage of a loyal ally) during stasis and τόλμα ἀλόγιστος (reckless audacity) in normal times. But I think that Thucydides means that these different words were used at the same time and under the same conditions (stasis) to describe the same deed. Jaeger, Paideia, pp. 335–36, seems to have interpreted Thucydides along the lines later suggested by Solmsen’s question, although he does speak of “a change in the meaning of words.”

22 See Allison, Word and Concept in Thucydides, pp. 178–86, esp. p. 180.

23 See Gomme et al., Historical Commentary, 3.82.2n.

24 For Pericles’ view of the lack of intelligence, cf. 1.140.1; of intelligence, 2.40ff. For Thucydides’ own opinions, cf. 1.138.3 and 2.65.13.

25 See Price, Thucydides and Internal War, pp. 10, 42, 268, 309–10, and elsewhere. The last two pages (309–10) are important as there Price cites Thucydides’ general description of stasis in Athens (8.66.2–5) and notes the important themes such as the idea that speaking in opposition to proposals can be dangerous in revolutionary states, pretexts are available for “judicial murder,” people’s ability to think clearly deteriorates, violence shows that a partisan is reliable, revenge is rewarded, trust evaporates, and suspicion becomes one of the most dominant psychological states.

26 Cf. Strauss, The City and Man, p. 147n.8.

27 For a persuasive interpretation of οἱ γὰρ ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι προστάντες μετὰ ὀνόματος ἑκάτεροι εὐπρεποῦς, πλήθους τε ἰσονομίας πολιτικῆς καὶ ἀριστοκρατίας σώφρονος προτιμήσει (“The leaders in the cities on both sides contested for the commonwealth, which they pretended to be serving, by employing specious slogans: the one side, constitutional government with the equal sharing of power by all people; and the other side, government by the best men, which is responsible by reason of preferment” [translation Graham and Forsythe]), see Graham and Forsythe, “A New Slogan for Oligarchy in Thucydides 3.82.8,” pp. 25–45. Graham and Forsythe argue that πλήθους τε ἰσονομίας πολιτικῆς (“on the one side with the cry of political equality of the people”) and ἀριστοκρατίας σώφρονος (“on the other [with the cry] of moderate aristocracy”) are parallel expressions, and that the τε . . . καὶ (“both . . . and”) clause is epexegetical to the first clause in the sentence (p. 31). προτιμήσει thus has a function parallel to πλήθους in terms of sense, and the translation of the passage as a whole is: “The leaders in the cities on both sides contested for the commonwealth, which they pretended to be serving, by employing specious slogans: the one side, constitutional government with the equal sharing of power by all people; and the other side, government by the best men, which is responsible by reason of preferment” (p. 45).

28 See LSJ, s.v., ἄτιμος III. ἀτίμως (the adverbial form), “dishonorably, ignominiously.” Allan Bloom’s translation of the Republic renders it “without honor.”

29 With Plato’s σωφροσύνην δὲ ἀνανδρίαν καλοῦντές (“calling moderation cowardliness,” translation Bloom) (560d) compare Thucydides’ τὸ δὲ σῶφρον τοῦ ἀνάνδρου πρόσχημα (“moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness,” translation Crawley, 3.82.4), noted by James Adam, The Republic of Plato, vol. 2 VIII.560d23 n.

30 Cf. Syme, The Roman Revolution, pp. 139–61, esp. pp. 153–56.

31 Adam, The Republic of Plato, vol. 2, VIII.560d27 n.

32 See, LSJ s. v. μοῖρα V. (“share,” “lot,” “fate”). In this example (τὸ δ᾽ ἐμπλήκτως ὀξὺ ἀνδρὸς μοίρᾳ προσετέθη), “frantic violence became the attribute of manliness” (translation Crawley). See the full analysis by June Allison in Word and Concept in Thucydides, pp. 169–70, in particular. I suspect that the use of μοῖρα here suggests in addition the idea of Μοῖρα as the Goddess of Fate also so that Thucydides implies that frantic violence is added to the Fate of a man or of all the states including Athens that fall into stasis.

33 Allison, Word and Concept in Thucydides, p. 176.

34 Jacqueline de Romilly, The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens, trans. Janet Lloyd (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), translation of original 1988 publication in French, pp. 113–16.

35 Rosen, Plato’s Statesman, p. 125.

36 Rosen, Plato’s Statesman, pp. 119ff.

37 See, e.g., Madison, Federalist #10, “But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.” https://www.congress.gov/resources/display/content/The+Federalist+Papers#TheFederalistPapers-10.

38 See the essay “From Limited War to Total War in America” by James M. McPherson, chapter 14, pp. 295–311, in On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861–1871, ed. Stig Förster and Jorg Nagler, Publications of the German Historical Institute (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002 ), for the argument that Sherman’s march approached the concept of total war. See also his review of The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction, by Mark E. Neely, Jr. (Harvard University Press, 2008) in The New York Review of Books, February 14, 2008.

39 Darien Shanske, Thucydides and the Philosophical Origins of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 74–116. There are of course many others who note these parallels between Thucydides and Greek Tragedy, but Prof. Shanske’s review is recent and enlightening.

40 This is from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols, trans. R. J. Hollingdale in his edition Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ (New York: Penguin Books, 1968), “What I Owe to the Ancients,” Section 2, pp. 106–7. Prof. Shanske also invokes this important discussion, op. cit., p. 130. A somewhat less enthusiastic embrace of Thucydides as a Sophist than Nietzsche’s can be found in de Romilly’s The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens, pp. 45–46, 205–6, and especially on page 74, where she notes the connection between Prodicus and Thucydides.

41 So Hornblower, Thucydides, p. 72. So also Lowell S. Gustafson, “Thucydides and Pluralism,” in Thucydides’ Theory of International Relations, pp. 177–79.

42 Plato’s Phaedo, with Translation, Introduction, and Glossary, Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem (Newburyport, MA: Focus Classical Library, 1998). At 100a, p. 80, they translate καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων ὄντων, “and about all the rest,” but literally this means “and concerning all the other things that are,” which I think is an important expansion since Plato is clearly interested here in expanding hypothesis beyond material explanations, understandings, and causes to explanations that are beyond the material.

43 See, e.g., Allan Silverman, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. “Plato’s Middle Period Metaphysics and Epistemology,” 15. The Method of Hypothesis, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-metaphysics/#15 (accessed June 13, 2018), First published June 9, 2003; substantive revision July 14, 2014, Edward N. Zalta (ed.). See also on this point Lynn E. Rose, “The Deuteros Plous in Plato’s ‘Phaedo,’” The Monist 50, no. 3 (July 1966): 464; and J. T. Bedo-Addu, “The Role of the Hypothetical Model in the Phaedo,” Phronesis 24, no. 2 (1979): 111–32.

44 Seth Benardete, Socrates’ Second Sailing: On Plato’s Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 1–11.

45 Bedo-Addu and Rose, op. cit., agree in their respective studies that the “second sailing” is the inquiry into the formal causes of things, i.e., the Forms themselves. This leaves Socrates’ first effort as an attempt to explain all the things that are in terms of the Good. For these types of explanations, Socrates is still looking for a teacher at the end of his life (99c).

46 One of the core arguments of Martha Taylor in Thucydides, Pericles, and the Idea of Athens in the Peloponnesian War. While I believe most of Prof. Taylor’s examples of implied criticism of Pericles’ idea of the city as separated from the land of Attica are valid criticisms, it is not clear to me that enough attention is drawn to the irony of the examples she adduces.

47 Pericles exhorts the people to “behold the power of the city day by day in action, and become her lovers (erastai)” (2.43.1). τὴν τῆς πόλεως δύναμιν καθ᾽ ἡμέραν ἔργῳ θεωμένους καὶ ἐραστὰς γιγνομένους αὐτῆς. Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides, Volume I, s.v. 2.43.1, argues, following Prof. K. J. Dover, that αὐτῆς, “of her” or “of it” (feminine, like “power” in Greek)” is the objective genitive of “lovers” and refers to the city, as in the translation. But this is quite likely another case of polyinterpretability such that the audience may hear a suggestion that they should become lovers of the power of the city. Pericles could have asked the Athenians to gaze on the beauty of the city, or on the courage of the people or any other important aspect of the city, but he chose to tell his people to gaze on the power of the city.

48 Gregory Crane, Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity: The Limits of Political Realism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), p. 297, http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft767nb497/ (accessed January 20, 2019).

49 See Price, Thucydides and Internal War generally and esp. pp. 69–70. Price’s argument there that though the words are Socrates’ Plato does not endorse them is true of a great deal of what Socrates says in all the dialogues. Price appears to be agreeing with Socrates on this point about stasis engulfing the entire Greek world. One could do worse in terms of authorities on such matters than to quote Socrates and Plato.

50 See, for example, Marc Cogan, The Human Thing: The Speeches and Principles of Thucydides’ History, esp. pp. 237–38, 253–54. Cogan defines τὸ ἀνθρώπινον (1.22.4) as the public process of delivering speeches, and argues that the speeches must be compared in order to understand Thucydides. See also Peter Pouncey, The Necessities of War: A Study of Thucydides’ Pessimism, p. 79, where Pouncey explains Cleon’s echoes of Pericles as intended by Thucydides to force comparison with Pericles.

Colin Macleod, “Rhetoric and History (Thucydides 6.16–18),” in Collected Essays, p. 69, states that there are “revealing relations between speeches which do not belong together in time: a particularly valuable point of reference are those of Pericles, for Thucydides Athens’ best leader.”

Leo Strauss, The City and Man, makes some very useful remarks on the speeches in Thucydides: “The speeches answer questions—and not merely questions of the moment, but the most fundamental and permanent questions concerning human action—which Thucydides does not answer, and they do so in a most persuasive manner. Thus the reader is almost irresistibly tempted to . . . believe that Thucydides . . . must have used the speaker as his mouthpiece. Thucydides helps us indeed in judging of the wisdom of the speeches, not only by his account of the deeds but also by giving us his judgment of the wisdom of . . . the speakers. . . . In fact, precisely the speeches more than anything else convey to us his judgment of the speakers and only of the speakers” (p. 166).

One implication of this is that no speaker can or should be seen as using all the arguments available to him. The arguments chosen and the way they are worded carry great weight in interpreting the character and role of the speaker.

Finley’s Thucydides, p. 232, should also be noted: He contrasts Alcibiades’ last speech with Pericles’ third. Westlake, Individuals in Thucydides, pp. 311, 317, etc., makes a comparison of the speeches one of the central conclusions of his book.

More recently, see Christopher B. Pelling, “Thucydides’ Speeches,” Thucydides, ed. Jeffrey Rusten, pp. 276–90, Oxford Readings in Classical Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

51 George Kennedy (The Art of Persuasion in Greece, p. 48) takes what seems to be the correct view that ta deonta (τὰ δέοντα) refers primarily to “what the speaker ought to have said,” using “ought” in the “rhetorical sense.” This is Gomme’s position too (Historical Commentary on 1.22.1). Hornblower (A Commentary on Thucydides: Volume I: 1.22.1 n.) suggests that ignoring this sense of the words “ignores the rhetorical uses of the phrase, which go back to Gorgias.”

Against the view that the phrase refers to what it was actually necessary to say at the given moment there is a significant argument: If speakers only say what is actually necessary, then certain disagreements, such as that between Cleon and Diodotus, might not arise. Either one of them, or perhaps even some other unexpressed opinion, could correspond to what had to be done, but surely not both or all. The resolution to this disagreement would seem to be that ta deonta refers to what ought to be said in support of what one has made up one’s mind is the right position to take. See also Pouncey, The Necessities of War: A Study of Thucydides’ Pessimism, who in a long footnote summarizes some of the chief contributions to the debate concerning 1.22.1 (pp. 165–67, n.10).

52 Strauss, The City and Man, p. 164, contends that while Thucydides may have refined certain speakers’ arguments, he did not “endow any speaker with qualities of understanding and choosing which he lacked.” This seems substantially correct. It recognizes the importance of rhetorical technique in the fashioning of any speech but allows Thucydides the leeway he needs to present actual speeches that reflect a given speaker’s understanding and rhetorical ability. Since the speeches thus reflect the speaker as well as rhetorical requirements, speeches can be profitably compared.

53 Cogan, The Human Thing: The Speeches and Principles of Thucydides’ History, 223–26, has made some sound remarks about this subject in relation to the speech of the Spartans proposing peace in Book 4 (4.17–4.22). He concludes that the speech was a serious rhetorical failure, and that this failure has important implications for how we should read the Histories. A study of the apparent purpose of each speech in Thucydides relying on standard principles of rhetoric, such as those enunciated by Aristotle in his Rhetoric and those implied and exemplified in earlier Greek speeches and discussions of rhetoric, would be an interesting and useful contribution to an understanding of Thucydides.