On Thucydides and the Peloponnese War History - A Rampage of Appreciation

Although I have reservations about the practice, I'd like to include some web links about Thucydides and his work on the History of the Peloponnesian War.

Here's two introductions to the topic for newcomers:

Squidoo lens on the Peloponnesian War.
Wikipedia on the Peloponnesian War.

Many folk try to convert Thucydides' work into a modern and specific political agenda. Or they try to divorce Thucydides from the Athenian context in some way. This kind of intellectual busywork abounds online because, firstly, if you have an agenda and can read, you can shoehorn Thucydides into it, and secondly, Thucydides is writing universal history, history for the ages, and the interpretations generally fall short of the book itself. But they are illuminating attempts, and sometimes shines a great light on the modern political realm by comparison with the smaller Thucydidean realm.

Iraq war opinion piece. - 'Thucydides: Ur-Historian of the Ur-War' (Great title!)

A really sensationally interpreted piece on the famous Melian Dialog - 'The rape of Melos: Thucydides as great thinker'.

A rather brilliant and austere analysis of the failure of Athenian democracy - 'Contemporary Analysis of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War'.

Much of the commentary for and against Donald Kagan's wonderful history of the Peloponnesian War is politically loaded and divisive, but nevertheless it shows up the precise corruption of language and manners which Thucydides analyzed in the fourth century before Christ. Here's the best:

'Thucydides = Spinmeister' by Neko Bijin. - superb and direct analysis. Especially read the comments.

Anthony Grafton in Slate's 'Did Thucydides Tell the Truth?' critiques Kagan rather than Thucydides.

Alan Gilbert at Democratic Individuality brilliant delineates the moderate position on public corruption using Thucydides in 'How public corruption happens - or Thucydides and the day by day removal of the word torture from New York Times' Reporting'.

Here's what seems to be a marvellously cogent take on Thucydides would-be perspective on the war on terror: 'Thucydides, Aquinas and the GWOT' which, alas, is cut short.

Here's a simply awesome re-vision of the passage in Book Three where Thucydides describes the breakdown in human nature after the Corcyran revolution: 'The Attribute of Manliness', by Eric Lippert.

Here's an earnest 'Lessons Learned from Thucydides' by a blog/person named Newrisks, connecting it with modern strategic war theory. He links to a superb pdf essay on the topic here.

Another contemporary crit of Thucydides vis-a-vis modern global politics: Herodotus vs Thucydides. argues against a narrow interpretation of Thucydides.

Now, against these temporal interpretations of interpretations of Thucydides, I want to contrast the scholarly lights of one Mike Anderson, whose fine web log on the ancients casts light in every direction without dispersing views into opinions.

'- The Greeks and their foolish attack of Syracuse'

- Pericles and the defense of democracy.

- The Peloponnesean War and its Causes.

- The Athenian Polis - Golden Age Decay.

I rate this weblog highly for its insight into the Thucydidean worldview. Because Mike doesn't form views unwarranted by the facts, nor does he tend to introduce modern political controversy, his views remain pristine and clear. He doesn't depart from the source of politics in ethics, it seems to me, and thus remains modest and humane in his views.

Finally, outside politics or perhaps meta-political, see the fine essay at Malaspina about the roots of our political thinking in Thucydides' mathematic worldview: Thucydides as Geometry. You need to scroll down to see it, but it's worth it for the insight into the way we think now.

For fun here's a few juicy quotes from Thucydides himself.

In conclusion, I suggest reading the primary author above these secondary and tertiary views. The work is illuminating in itself; the function of commentary is just to illuminate the primary text. If you read Thucydides now then I have here done my job well.

Fear and Loathing in the Ancient Peloponnese: Reading Book One of Thucydides.

Last night I read the first book of the History of the Peloponnesian War.

Thucydides starts in high drama and vivid circumstance with the Cocyrians asking the Athenians for help. Let's combine our navies, the Cocyrians beg, and we will hold strong against the Corinthians.

Because of a peace treaty they made ten years before the Athenians cannot attack the Corinthians, but they can defend, so after much discussion Athens agrees to defend but not fight. A fine line there is crossed.

Next a long messy battle goes down over the Corinthian city of Potidaea. It creates bad blood. Cocyrians and Athenians descend on Sparta to beg Sparta to fight, to save Potidaea. The Athenians speak up and freak out the Spartans with their arrogance. So the rest of Greece decides they hate the Athenians and want war. Problem is, Athens has overwhelming strength in Greece, so they can't do anything yet. Less than a year later they fight anyway because Athens is so hated.

That's the plot of book one. It's a train wreck of a story, full of drama and outraged speeches.

But there's a load of really cool extras in book one. The dialog between the Athenians and the Cocyrians, the Introduction which gives the ethnology of how Greece was settled (written in a style very like Herodotus), the marvellous debate at Sparta which unsparingly shows the vitality and arrogance of the Athenians, and the awesome digression named the 'Pentacontaetia'.

The theme of the first book of Thucydides is that fear breeds fear. Just before war starts, Pericles speaks. He tells the Athenians to not give into Spartan demands because that will make them look scared. But the Spartans made the demands in the first place because they were afraid of the overwhelming power of Athens! The fear seeded in Cocyra and grown in Potidaea bears fruit in the Spartan diplomatic demands.

What are we to make of Pericles' argument that they have to treat Sparta with consistent defiance? No doubt Pericles is correct when he says "there is often no more logic in the course of events than there is in the plans of men, and that is why we usually blame our luck when things happen in ways we didn't expect." This obscure statement is is Rex Warner's translation, Book 1:40.

Let's look at two other versions:

Crawley: "For sometimes the course of things is as arbitrary as the plans of man; indeed this is why we usually blame chance for whatever does not happen as we expected."

Jowett:"The movement of events is often as wayward and incomprehensible as the course of human thought; and this is why we ascribe to chance whatever belies our calculation."

Translation gossip aside, Pericles seems to be saying that since the plans of others and roll of the dice of luck cannot be relied upon, at least we, the Athenians, can pursue a consistent policy of zero tolerance towards the Spartans. How confident his words must have fallen on his countrymen's ears, and how misplaced his pride in the power of Athens! He would better have been able to practice some small humility and conceed:- but even as I write that I see it's foolish: nothing Pericles or the Athenians could have done would have avoided war by that time. Things already had gone too far.

And that is why, when the famous 'Pentecontaetia', a marvel of concision, tells how Athens came to be so very powerful and arrogant over the previous 50 years, it is so bittersweet to read: we read it foreknowing the end of Athens. This 'Pentcontaetia' sharpens the urgency of the present moment; we feel the fear of the Spartans and the thirst of Athen's enemies for power, and we sense the largeness and centrality of the Greek consciousness becoming both narrow and fanatical as expressed through the Athenians.

Perhaps, I thought as I read this, perhaps the Greeks have not changed at all throughout history? Perhaps the one great Greek virtue and vice is their shining individualism, and, as Pericles suggests, throughout time they keep a single consistent policy of bright selfishness?

Perhaps the chaos of history and chance has not changed Greece one bit from ancient times to today, and the fanatical and ferocious and intellectual and political powers displayed in Thucydides are actually the attendant spirits of the main genius of the age, its vibrant and unrivalled sense of the power and potential of the individual human being?