Thucydides

Word Notes

When your text says "Lacedaemon" or "Lacedaemonian," that means, respectively, "Sparta" or "Spartan." "Hellas" = "Greece." "Hellenic" = "Greek." "Hellenes" = "Greeks." "Barbarian" = "non-Greek."

SWA: "Spin" in Thucydides

Thucydides claims to be reproducing key speeches, if not verbatim, then at least adhering "as closely as possible to the general sense of what was actually said." Many scholars, though, would argue that these speeches, whatever else they are, are a laboratory in persuasion: how to address different kinds of persuasive challenges. Some (guilty as charged!) have gone so far as to approach the speeches as experiments in spin.

WHAT IS SPIN? From the OED s.v. "spin" [2.] g.: "A bias or slant on information, intended to create a favourable impression when it is presented to the public; an interpretation or viewpoint. Freq. in phr. to put a positive (negative, etc.) spin on. colloq. (chiefly U.S. Pol.)."

Think of it as a way of finessing the reception of information, controlling value associations it will produce in addressees, audiences, etc. — controlling gut reactions to things. Ancient rhetoricians actually had a name for that: khrōma (Greek) or color (Latin), "color," i.e., how you "color" (i.e., spin) a fact, argument, and so on.

Do we find spin in speeches recorded or remembered by Thucydides? If so, where? (Pericles' speeches? Nicias'? Alcibiades'?) Why is it used? How does it work? Does Thucydides anywhere comment on spin? How would you comment on spin? Do you view it as a valid or invalid means of persuading? Why?

Assigned Readings, with Links

Smith, Charles Forster. Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1928. [online book]

  • Note: Citations indicate passages to be read; links supply only starting points for those passages. It may be necessary, in other words, to advance through multiple screens of text — read to the end of the assigned section or sections for a given passage. You'll see arrows alongside text for that purpose. If you want to see the Greek along with the English, there are buttons at the bottom of the screen for that. On the target website, section numbers are (unfortunately) in the form of Roman numerals. Below, I give all Arabic numerals.

Book 1

Book 2

Book 6

Introductory Comments

For us, these readings are interesting chiefly not as a narrative of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE), but as an exploration of national temper and popular mood in relation to the challenges faced by public speakers — for instance, by the Corinthians at the war debate in Sparta, and by Pericles, the great Athenian statesman.

Author and Work

  • Thucydides son of Oloros (not to be confused with the statesman and rival of Pericles, Thucydides son of Melesias!), ca. 460-ca. 400 BCE
    • Athenian aristocrat, general, historian
    • Victim of the plague, from which he recovered
    • As one of the elected generals in 424, Thucydides was found guilty of mishandling his command, and was condemned to exile, which gave him access to a variety of sources invaluable in researching his history
  • Work: History of the Peloponnesian War
    • Thucydides spent his years in exile researching and writing his history of the war between Athens and Sparta, 431-404 BCE
    • He advertises himself as a more "scientific" historian than his contemporaries or predecessors
    • He is particularly interested in psychology and the art of persuasion
    • Hence of special interest to us are his speeches, reconstructions that may (or may not??) actually record the "general sense" of speeches actually delivered (see book 1 sect. 22)

Larger Themes, Issues

  • What is the picture of Athenian democracy that emerges in these readings?
  • What is the picture of Pericles' leadership?
  • What is the picture of peithō? Is it . . .
    • Rational discussion leading to prudent decision making?
    • Opportunistic manipulation?
    • A mix of the two, or something else altogether?

Historical Background: The Peloponnesian War

Athens plus its allies and subjects: the latter being mostly the Aegean islands and Greek cities along the northern and eastern coasts of the Aegean sea
versus
Sparta and its allies: most of of the Peloponnese Peninsula (where Sparta is), but not Achaea or Argos. Also allied with Sparta are Megara, Thebes, etc.
  • Map showing allied and neutral territories prior to war. (From Microsoft Encarta)

After Athens had taken over from Sparta the leading role in the ongoing struggle against Persia, the Athens-led, anti-Persian "Delian League" gradually became an empire (arkhē) over which Athens "tyrannized" (Pericles' term, ". . . for by this time the empire you hold is a tyranny," 2.63).

The growing power of Athens alarmed, among others, Corinth and Megara, both of which belonged to the Spartan-led "Peloponnesian League." Sparta itself, always very conservative in its foreign policy, was reluctant to act, but in 432 was finally prevailed upon to lead a war against the Athenians.

The first phase of the war, from 431-421, is conventionally referred to as the "Archidamian War," after Archidamus, the Spartan king who led the Peloponnesian forces. During this initial phase, the Peloponnesians concentrated on land-based assaults on Athenian interests along the northern Aegean coast (the "Thraceward Region") and on Attica itself. The Athenians, possessing inferior land forces, concentrated on naval assaults, mostly against Peloponnesian interests along the west coast of Greece. The result was more or less a stalemate leading to the Peace of Nicias in 421 BCE.

Who's Who?

  • Pericles (ca. 495-429 BCE): Athenian aristocrat, leader of the democratic faction of Athens (prostatēs tou dēmou, "defending of the people"), and, with few interruptions, all-around leader of the city from 461 until his death. Proponent of empire; opponent of oligarchs like Cimon (ostracized 461) and Thucydides son of Melesias (ostracized 442, not the historian). Subject of a Life by Plutarch
  • Alcibiades (ca. 450-404): Wealthy aristocrat, flamboyant bon vivant, sportsman, statesman, general, orator. Co-commander of the Sicilian expedition until indicted for impiety (profanation of the mysteries; see timeline below). Subject of yet another of Plutarch's Lives
  • Nicias (ca. 470-413): Athenian politician and general (and one of the slaves in Aristophanes' Knights). Moderate; opponent of the extreme imperialists like Cleon and Alcibiades. Commander of the Sicilian expedition. Also a subject of a life by Plutarch (we aren't reading it)

Timeline

Prelude to War (all dates BCE)

  • 463-1 Democratic Ephialtes influential at Athens; curtails political powers of Areopagus (an aristocratic council)
  • 461 Ephialtes murdered. Cimon (oligarchically inclined, but generous benefactor of the poor) ostracized. Alliance between Argos and Athens
  • 461-404 Radical democracy at Athens. (The character of the post 404 democracy continues to be debated)
  • 461-429 Pericles' ascendancy at Athens
  • 458 Aeschylus' Oresteia produced
  • 454 Treasury of the Athens-led Delian League (mostly maritime alliance to protect Greece from Persian re-invasion) transferred to Athens. With that transfer, the alliance becomes an empire (arkhē)
  • 451/50 Pericles' citizenship decree declaring that to be an Athenian citizen one must have both an Athenian father and an Athenian mother
  • 451 Five-year truce between Athens and Sparta worked out by Cimon
  • 450/49 Cimon leads naval operations around Cyprus; death of Cimon
  • 449/8 Peace with Persia concluded; Athens invites Greeks to restore temples destroyed during the Persian wars
  • 447 Parthenon begun; Athens loses the neighboring territory of Boeotia in the battle of Coronea
  • 447/6 Athens quells revolt in the neighboring island of Euboea; Athens loses control of neighboring Megara
  • 446/5 Thirty Years' Peace concluded with the Peloponnesians
  • 443 Thucydides son of Melesias ostracized (not the historian!)
  • 440/39 Revolt of Samos and Byzantium against Athenian hegemony in the Delian League. Pericles' funeral oration commemorating the fallen in that war
  • 438 Phidias' chyselephantine (gold and ivory) statue of Athena set up in Parthenon
  • 433 Athens interferes with the Corinthian colony of Corcyra, off the western coast of Greece. That angers the Corinthians
  • 432 Potidaea, a Corinthian colony on the northern shore of the Aegean sea, but subject to Athens, revolts from the Athenian empire
  • 432 The Megarian Decree passed by Athens: Megara forbidden to trade with Athens or any of Athens' allies (this proves highly damaging for Megara, a member of the Sparta-led Peloponnesian League)
  • 432 War with Athens debated and declared by the Spartan assembly and by the Peloponnesian League. Start of the Peloponnesian War

Archidamian War (Peloponnesian War part 1)

  • 431 Various actions, including the Peloponnesian invasion of Athens. (From this point on, the invasion of Attica by Sparta and its allies will be an almost annual event)
  • 431/30 The Periclean Funeral Oration delivered
  • 430 Pericles deposed from stratēgia ("generalship"), then restored
  • 430-426 plague (on and off) decimates the population of Attica
  • 429 Death of Pericles (plague)
  • 420s Cleon prostatēs tou dēmou (leader of the democracy)
  • 428-427 revolt of Mytilene. Mytilenian debates (over whether to impose extreme punishment on Mytilene)
  • 427-425 stasis at Corcyra
  • 425 Cleon captures Spartans at Pylos (Cleon's "mission accomplished" moment)
  • 424 Aristophanes' Knights
  • 422 death of Cleon and Spartan Brasidas at Amphipolis

Interlude (Peloponnesian War part 2)

  • 421-418 Peace of Nicias. (Some peace!)
  • 418 Battle of Mantinea, War between Sparta and Athens renewed; Peace of Nicias is dead-letter
  • 416 conquest of Melos (Melian debate). Sicilian debate at Athens (over Sicilian expedition). Debate at Syracuse (how to meet the Athenian threat)
  • 415-413 Sicilian expedition
  • 415 mutilation of herms, profanation of the mysteries. Indictment and recall of Alcibiades. Alcibiades defects to Sparta; Alcibiades' speech to the Spartans
  • 413 Defeat of Athenians at Syracuse. Board of 10 probouloi (singular proboulos) formed, tasked mostly with overseeing assembly agenda. probouloi considered to be oligarchical body by Aristotle

Decelean War (Peloponnesian War part 3) and Aftermath

  • 413 Sparta, on the advice of Alcibiades, captures and fortifies Decelea, in Attica, making it a forward position from which to attack Athens
  • 411 Oligarchs at Athens, with the support of Alcibiades, probouloi, and Persia, take over; establish a Council of 400. The democratic fleet at Samos resists; oligarchy collapses. Then, the polity of the 5,000. Then restoration of full democracy
  • 405 Battle of Aigostamoi = destruction of the Athenian fleet
  • 404 Athens surrenders to Sparta
  • 404-403 The Oligarchy of the 30 (later dubbed the "30 Tyrants")
  • 403 Restoration of democracy at Athens. Amnesty for surviving oligarchs and their collaborators
  • 403-321 Legislation split between two groups:
    • nomoi ("statutes," "laws" — sing. nomos) proposed and passed by dual colleges of nomothetai ("law-passers") had long-term application
    • psēphismata ("decrees," "measures," "acts" — sing. psēphisma) proposed by the council of 500 and passed by the ekklēsia, had temporary or ad-hoc application

Guide to Readings plus Questions

  • The following includes notes on passages that, though important, are not assigned for you to read.

Introductory Material (1.1, 16-22)

  • The importance of the topic
  • The use that Thucydides makes of speeches

Speeches play an important role in Thucydides' History, but remember: it is the historian who has set down these speeches in writing; he had no written originals from which to work. How close they are to the presumed originals (what Pericles and the others actually said), or even if they are close at all, remains a thorny issue, and one beyond the scope of this class. Let's just approach the speeches as Thucydides' way of exploring issues and illustrating points.

Debate at Sparta (1.66-78)

Sparta and its allies debate as to whether they should go to war over infractions of the treaty between the Athenian alliance and the Spartan alliance; Athens answers the charges.

Corinthian speech (1.68-71)

  • What impression are you left with of the national character of the Spartans?
  • Of the Athenians
  • What does the contrast revolve around?
  • What is it that motivates the Athenians?

Athenian speech (1.73-78)

Compare/contrast Athenian self-representation with what has just been said about them by the Corinthians

  • How do Athenians claim to treat subject states in their empire?
  • How do they rationalize/justify this treatment?
  • Do they claim to rule the empire by peithō or bia or both?

Pericles' First Speech (in Thucydides, that is: 1.139-146)

Pericles' reasons for going to war, and his recommendations for how to fight the war. (For Pericles' war strategy, see just below, "The first incursion into Attica.")

For our purposes, the key passage is §141. In that passage, . . .

  • Just how are the Peloponnesians (Spartans mainly, but also Spartan allies) weaker than the Athenians (according to Pericles)?
  • What facts condition decision-making among the Peloponnesians?
  • What is the implied contrast of Athenians with Peloponnesians?

The First Incursion into Attica (2.18-22)

The key thing to remember is Pericles' policy of avoiding land battles with the Peloponnesians. This means that the enemy will be allowed to invade Attica almost unopposed, while Athenians hide behind the impregnable walls of their city (and send ships out to harry the Peloponnesians).

  • How do Athenians react to the implementation of that policy?
  • What does Pericles choose to do (or not to do) in response, and why? Where is peithō in all this?

Pericles' Funeral Oration (2.34-46)

Funeral Orations (epitaphioi): An epitaphios logos was the oration spoken by a leading Athenian citizen in connection with the public funeral given for the war dead of that particular year (see p. 143, §34). They were conventionally occasions for celebrating Athens' glorious past, and for praising the self-sacrifice of citizen-soldiers who had died in battle.

Main issues

  • What is this Funeral Oration all about?
  • Does it seek to persuade Athenians of anything?
  • If so, what is that, and how does it go about it? (And does it do a good job?)
  • What is the picture of Athenian democracy that emerges in this speech? Is there a contrast, implicit or otherwise, with Sparta?

Specific Quotations-Questions

What does Pericles mean when he says . . .

  • "Our love of what is beautiful does not lead to extravagance; our love of the things of the mind does not make us soft" etc. (p. 147, §40)
  • "Taking everything together then, I declare that our city is an education to Greece . . ." (p. 147, end of §40)
  • "What I would prefer is that you should fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens, and become lovers [erastai, from erōs, "love/lust"] of her" (p. 149, §43)
    • Why fall in love with her — or to give you some of the Greek, "become her erastēs (lover)," a very concrete image?
    • How does eros figure as a civic virtue?

Pericles' Last Speech (2.60-64); Thucydides Assessment of Pericles as Statesman and Orator (2.65)

  • Compare and contrast the final speech with the Funeral Oration in terms of tone, persuasive goals, and persuasive approach
  • What does the historian mean when he says, "So, in what was nominally a democracy, power was really in the hands of the first citizen" (p. 164)? Was the Periclean democracy truly a democracy?
    • Can we validly call it "democracy" if Pericles' leadership, whether based on peithō, bia, dolos — whatever -, amounted to something like one-man rule, i.e., monarchy, perhaps even tyranny of a sort?
    • BUT CAN WE CALL IT TYRANNY SIMPLY BECAUSE ONE MAN EXERCISED SO MUCH INFLUENCE? Be VERY careful, there is a HUGE risk of unnuanced, circular argument here, AND THAT IS VERY BAD!
    • Can we call it democracy if women and so many others were excluded from the franchise (= political rights)
    • Please approach in a fair and balanced way — let's not jump to conclusions!!

Great Plague at Athens (2.47-54)

Not too long after the Pericles delivered the Funeral Oration of 430 BCE (after the first year of the war), a terrible plague (perhaps a disease similar to smallpox) decimated Athens.

The episode of the plague, and Thucydides' narrative of it, are of interest to us because of social and political resonances. On the one hand, the plague allows the historian to reflect on the "fragility of goodness" (as Martha Nussbaum calls it) when external pressures impose themselves on a political order. On the other hand, the narrative juxtaposed, as it is, right next to Pericles' praise of Athens in the Funeral Oration, seems to play a macabre counterpoint to the orator's idealistic speech, and to force us to contemplate the plague as a kind of metaphor for political dysfunction and stasis.

  • What commentary, then, if any does the plague narrative supply concerning Athenian society, politics, the war effort, etc.?

Mytilenean Debate (3.36-49)

In this debate the Athenians are re-considering whether a punishment they've decided to inflict on a rebellious ally (on the city of Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos) — death to the men, enslavement of the women and children — is too harsh or not.

Cleon (yes, our Cleon, i.e., Paphlagon from Aristophanes' Knights), radical democrat and hawkish imperialist, is determined to make an example of the island rebels; Diodotus suggests, "Not so fast. . . ." So,

  • What are their arguments?
  • What issues come up that may have less to do with the matter at hand than with persuasion-based democracy or human nature?
  • Note the following, very interesting line, spoken by Diodotus: ". . . the most difficult opponents are those who also accuse one of putting on a rhetorical show for a bribe." Now, the Greek translated here by "a rhetorical show" is epideixis. What are we to understand as elements of such a "show"? What sort of bribe? How do we parse all this as anti-rhetorical rhetoric?

Stasis at Corcyra (3.69-84)

Corcyra (an island-city off the coast of modern North West Greece) was originally a colony of Corinth, one of Athens' bitterest foes during the Peloponnesian War.

Allied to Athens, Corcyra found itself (a) at odds with its founding city, (b) embroiled in political turmoil (stasis) as pro-Athenian democrats battled anti-Athenian oligarchs.

The most famous part of the narrative is that having to do with stasis as a kind of Panhellenic (i.e., Greece-wide) plague, plus the destructive symptoms of this disease. So,

  • How does this possibly resemble the description of the Iron Age in Hesiod's Works and Days (Early Politics reading), and if it does (but it kind of does!), what to make of that?
  • Is comparing the Athenian plague narrative with the stasis description a reasonable thing to do? How are they like/unlike?
  • Is the kind of spin-rhetoric (maybe the "rhetoric of stasis) described in the passage something worth fighting against? Can we fight that kind of "fire" with fire, i.e., with words? Can we/can we not deploy against same an authentic and sincere anti-rhetoric? And related to that. . .
  • What does Thucydides mean by what is conventionally termed the "noble simplicity" ("simplicity, which is the chief cause of a generous spirit," p. 92)? (Yes, there's a footnote with citation, but what do you think it means?) Is this a simplicity that the historian would seem to want to fight for? That you would want to fight for?

Melian Dialogue (5.85-113)

In 416 BCE, the Athenians, deeming it expedient to conquer the island of Melos (though they had no quarrel with Melos!), in this very interestingly staged dialogue (with speakers' parts etc.!), attempt to persuade the Melians that a novel kind of moral criterion, that of raw power and ambition, "justifies" the Athenian conquest of the island.

How is that similar to anything we've read in the sophists? In Plato's Gorgias? What would you say differently to the Athenians to help them see the Melians' point?

Sicilian Debate (6.8-26)

In 421 BCE, after the death of Cleon, it finally looked as if peace with Sparta could be achieved, and it was: the Peace of Nicias (yes, our Nicias in Aristophanes' Knights). But it didn't last for long; soon, the combatants were at it again in 418.

In 416, an up-and-coming political personality, Alcibiades, ward and kin of Pericles (Alcibiades' mother was Pericles' cousin; Pericles brought up Alcibiades after the latter's father had died), was agitating for a truly extraordinary conquest: that of the Sicilian city of Syracuse. It was thought by some that Alcibiades was aiming to establish a Pan-Mediterranean empire.

  • The immediate justification for the invasion of Sicily was to help the non-Greek Sicilian city of Egesta against its enemy, Selinus, this last also being a Sicilian city. But Athenian interest in Sicily extended back to 427 BCE, when the Sicilian (and Greek) city of Leontinoi sent the sophist Gorgias to Athens to seek aid against Syracuse, also a Greek-Sicilian city; Athens sent aid, but with little effect. Then, in 424, another expedition was sent off, but returned home before achieving anything. Syracuse, a democracy like Athens, remained the leading power on the island. In 416, after Egesta succeeded in persuading Athens to come to Sicily a third time (now with the promise of great wealth), it quickly became clear that Athens was there mostly to pursue its own, imperial aspirations. To achieve its goals, Athens would have to face off against the leading Sicilian power and thus the principal impediment to conquest of the island: Syracuse.

Read the debate, Alcibiades versus Nicias, and think about the rhetoric of it, plus its dialogical aspects. Thucydides says that as a result of the debate, an "erōs to sail (i.e., to Sicily to conquer Syracuse) fell on all alike." But what does he mean? How does this erōs compare or contrast with that praised by Pericles in the famous Funeral Oration?

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© Andrew Scholtz | Last modified 13 October, 2025