Thucydides Then and Now; Part Three

Role Models from Ancient History

There is much to be learned from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. One thing that makes it valuable is that, like Winston Churchill and a few other historians, Thucydides was a participant in the events he chronicled. Another is that he understood both sides of the war that was his subject because he lived among adherents of both the warring sides, the Athenian empire, and the Peloponnesian alliance led by Sparta.

Although Sparta managed a alliance and Athens ruled an empire, both Sparta and Athens were themselves what historians call city-states. We don’t really have those anymore, except places like Monte Carlo and Taiwan, nations so small that they are basically greater metropolitan areas or small islands. As H.W. Brands explained in his post on nationalism that I re-posted yesterday, there is an inherent tension between being a cohesive nation and running an empire that includes other nationalities. In this context it is useful to remember that while Hellenes (the Greek word for Greeks) considered themselves to be an ethnicity bound by language, religious custom, and some shared history and values, their primary political allegiance, their nationality, was to their city-state. It was a bit like the way that English-speaking Americans, Canadians, and British feel about each other. We might be related, but we don’t live together; we aren’t really family.

Thucydides began the Peloponnesian War as an Athenian citizen (ultimately a general). Less than halfway through the war, the Athenians exiled him because his forces arrived late to a distant battle. A stateless, wealthy, and educated aristocrat, he then traveled to various theaters of the war gathering evidence for his History, evidently without being molested by either side. This is not to say that he was neutral or completely objective. Rather, he seems to have been trying to vindicate his personal reputation, criticize the politicians he disliked, and laud those Athenians he admired. Chief among his heroes was Pericles, the Athenian war leader. Among those he disparaged were the Athenian generals Cleon, Nikias, and Alcibiades.

Pericles was the immensely popular architect of Athens’ empire and its golden age. Thucydides portrays him as sober, wise, and charismatic. It was Pericles who convinced the Athenian assembly to build the Parthenon and to transform the Delian League from a religious cooperative of nearby islands bound to Athens by ties of family and friendship into an Athenian maritime empire. He was a champion of democracy and a realist, and Thucydides reports that when his fellow citizens balked at the notion of defending this empire, Pericles responded that while one might question whether Athens should have built an empire to begin with, once they had it, it would be suicide not to defend it.

Athens at this time was the world’s first “democracy,” a Greek word meaning rule by the people (demos). Yet, slavery existed in Athens and throughout the ancient world, and women were also not citizens. So, Athens was a democracy only for unenslaved men whose parents were citizens or who had been granted citizenship by vote of those who already were. But for those free men, the reality was radical democracy. There were few government offices, and their occupants were either rotated or chosen by lot and had very short terms. There was no legislature or independent judiciary. All matters of foreign and domestic policy and all trials of serious crimes, including the exile of Thucydides himself (and the conviction and execution of Socrates a generation before), were decided by majority vote of an assembly of all available citizens or of a jury of hundreds selected by lot. This is as close as political scientists can come to pointing to “pure” democracy.

Pericles was almost unique in his ability as a statesman to win the votes he needed to enact his policies. He convinced the assembly of the people (the demos) to fund the Parthenon by threatening to pay the architect and sculptor himself, in which case the glory would have been his, not Athens’. He also persuaded the assembly to fortify Athens, hunker down, and blockade and eventually outlast the Spartans, rather than trying for one risky attack or knockout punch against an obviously superior Spartan army. One of the unanticipated consequences of Pericles’s policy of defense and attrition was that the Athenians, safe but in unhealthily close quarters behind their strong walls, began falling ill. Plague struck, killing thousands, among them the brilliant Pericles.

NEXT TIME: Thucydides Part Four: The War after Pericles