Through great proofs, and by exhibiting power in no way unwitnessed, we will be admired by this and future generations, thus requiring no Homer …
since we have compelled every sea and land to become open to our daring and populated every region with lasting monuments of our harm and good.
(Th. 2.41)
The claim of self‐sufficiency for the individual puts Pericles’ view in direct contradiction to Solon’s dictum that no man is self‐sufficient, suggesting either a justified exception or a possibly hybristic boast, despite the self-conscious denial by the speaker (see Hdt. 1.32; Scanlon 1994: 145–56).
Athenian power is not described as some abstract potential, but as a visible display of Athens’ total resources and actions to this point. It is also striking that among the “admired” manifestations of power are included Athenians’
access to places via compulsion and their leaving monuments of good and harm both – helping when possible and harming when necessary. Again, is the claim meant to be ominous, or simply to display a bold new realism?
A classic formulation of the rule of power appears earlier, in the words of the Athenians speaking at Sparta in defense of their building an empire: On the same reasoning we have done nothing remarkable, nor contrary to
ordinary human behavior, if we not only accepted an empire when it was
offered but also did not let it go, submitting to the great forces of prestige, fear, and self‐interest – not as the originators of such conduct, moreover, since the rule always existed that the weaker is held down by the stronger –
and, besides, considering ourselves deserving and so regarded by you as well, until now when you calculate your own interests and use the argument about justice. (Th. 1.76.2)
Either as a literary allusion or as a reflection of a cultural theme of the age, the passage recalls the statement of Xerxes when the king at the start of his expedition justifies his undertaking by saying: “it is no new law [ nomos] that I initiate among you; it has come to me from tradition” (Hdt. 7.8a.1;
80
ThucydidEs on ThE Ends of PowEr
Scanlon 1994: 171–3). The parallel in any case suggests a criticism of the Athenian imperial drive as Persian‐like that has been noticed in this work (Connor 1984: passim, esp. 156, 176). Yet instead of saying “the god leads us on,” as Xerxes does, the Athenians trace the motivation to the fundamentally human values of honor, fear, and self‐interest. The desire to grow combines instincts of self‐preservation with those of self‐aggrandizement.
The Athenian “natural” law of power is then importantly qualified:
“And all are entitled to praise whenever they follow human nature
[ antho ̄ peia phusis] by ruling others and end up behaving more justly than their actual power [ dunamis] dictated” (Th. 1.76.3). Ethical considerations such as justice are therefore not essential to the “law of nature,”
but are desirable and in fact have been followed, according to the Athenian claim of treating allies equitably when possible (Th. 1.77). In any case, the formulation shows some social “conscience” about a mighty state
wielding power.
The prewar enunciation of the law has a close counterpart in the later
Melian dialogue, in which nameless Athenian speakers again assert the
law of power:
For nothing in what we assert or in what we are going to do is a departure from men’s concept of god and attitude toward themselves. According to
our understanding, divinity, it would seem, and mankind, as has always
been obvious, are under an innate compulsion to rule wherever empow-
ered. Without being either the ones who made this law [ nomos] or the first to apply it after it had been laid down, we applied it as one in existence when we took it up and one that we leave behind to endure for all time, since we know that you and anyone else who attained power [ dunamis] like ours would act accordingly. (Th. 5.105)
Again the core of the “law,” a common human impulse to rule where
one can, is virtually the same as the one spoken by the Athenians at
Sparta (Th. 1.76), despite the very different situations. Here the
neutral Melians refuse to surrender and side with Athens, and Athens
is justifying the present compulsion of force, and not, as earlier, explaining past expansionism. Most notably, the dialogue is prefaced by
Athens’ explicit rejection of appeals to right and wrong, and gives the instruction
to deal with the possibilities defined by what both parties really
believe, understanding as well as we do that in human considerations justice is what is decided when equal forces are opposed, while possibilities are what superiors impose and the weak acquiesce to (Th. 5.89).
ThucydidEs on ThE Ends of PowEr
81
A crucial question for understanding Thucydides, and one on which scholars disagree, is whether the law of the rule of the stronger is one to which the historian subscribes as a political and military reality or an assumed motivation for which he censures Athens. Put another way (to avoid the impossible task of positing authorial intentions), does the text encourage readers to admit the reality of the rule of the stronger to the exclusion of considerations of justice? Does the dropping of all pretense of justice in the Melian dialogue indicate an increasing degree of Athenian brutality? Does labeling the rule of the stronger as a “law” ( nomos) here reflect a more rigid attitude than that of the Athenians in 432 bc, where it is named simply “established practice” ( kathesto ̄ tou, Th. 1.76.2)? We cannot here give pat answers to these questions; very possibly Thucydides himself did not have any. The juxtaposition of the dialogue with the beginning of the Sicilian expedition in Book 6 has led many to see an ironic commentary on a kind of hybristic
“pride before the fall” in the Sicilian defeat (Cornford 1907 is the earliest formulation of this thesis; see also Grene 1965; Macleod 1974: 385–400; Bosworth 1993; Morrison 2006b). And yet Athens is “down” but not
“out” after the Sicilian books, in fact fighting on for seven more years. Is there a deliberate, tragic arc in the narrative from Periclean idealism to tyrannical imperialism, or does this view impose too much fictional fancy? If intelligent modern, and presumably also ancient, readers see ambiguous
perspectives in the text, then is it not reasonable to surmise that the historian sought to portray not who is ethically right or wrong in the Melian episode, but how complex, yet common, human motivation led to rigidity in both
positions (Tordoff 2005)? Thucydides’ nuanced presentation, if we are
correct, is much more open than that of the later narrative of Plato’s
Republic, Book 1, set about 422 bc but written sometime in the first half of the fourth century, in which the sophist Thrasymachus baldly equates might ( dunamis) with “right” ( to dikaion) (Guthrie 1971: 294–8). This may be an extension or exaggerated version of Thucydides’ Athenians (for whom
might does not make right but can reasonably exclude it), but it is a plausible position for some members of the Athenian elite in Thucydides’ time.
If, as we have suggested, power exists in a reciprocal balance (see
Chapter 2 here, “Theme 2: Power”), then there is another important position expressed in the speech of the Syracusan Hermocrates to a conference of Sicilians in 424 bc. Hermocrates presents essentially the counterpoint to the Athenian argument of a natural rule of the powerful, namely that it is natural for those oppressed by others to resist when possible:
For the Athenians to reach for more and lay plans in this way, one can make every allowance, and I do not blame those who wish to rule those who are
82
ThucydidEs on ThE Ends of PowEr
willing to be subjects; for it is ever part of human nature to rule those who yield, just as it is to resist those who encroach. (Th. 4.61.5)
A rule of resistance is part of the law of power (Conno
r 1984: 57; cf.
Ostwald 1988: 57). It also appeals to human nature as a basis for self‐
defense, perhaps invoking fear instead of hope as the operative emotion.
Hermocrates may not be saying that striving for unity is natural, but he does say that resistance to subordination by a transgressor is natural. And, interestingly, he seems not to blame a powerful state for ruling where it can.
In sum, we see significant yet disparate views of human nature and
power, namely Pericles’ praise of Athenian power, the rule formulated by the Athenians in Books 1 and 5, and Hermocrates’ correlative rule of
resisting repression, a list to which more could be added. What can we
conclude from them? The examples so far are not directly in the histori-an’s voice, but are assigned to speeches of historical characters. Clearly the historian attaches great importance to the ways in which agents of
history focus on underlying patterns of human nature related to the
operation of power politics, whether it is a desire for acquisition of
resources, security, military forces, and rule more widely over others, or the fear attendant on the acquisition of such power, or the hope and fear of subjects who resist the imposition of external rule. At the base of these dynamics are human emotions and reason expressed as the struggle of
one group against another.
Human Nature, Norms and Exceptions
On Human Nature is the title of a work in the Hippocratic corpus, attributed to Hippocrates’ son‐in‐law, Polybus, who lived around 400 bc, and
discussing physical aspects of humans. But Thucydides is the first Greek author, to our knowledge, to present the concept of “human nature”
( anthro ̄ peia phusis) as a somewhat predictable system related to the working of the mind and of judgment. It is difficult, and arguably misdirected, to posit any rigidly quasi‐scientific concept of “psychology” in Thucydides. His narrative seems to derive laws by deduction from specific situations, or he relates the law observed by agents in the narrative. In any case, his focus on thought and behavior allows us to sketch his general views on human nature and to observe how he associates it with the
power of the state. One source of Thucydides’ system may have been
Antiphon, the fifth‐century sophist, who may or may not be the same as
the orator Antiphon praised by Thucydides at 8.68 (“a man second to no
ThucydidEs on ThE Ends of PowEr
83
Athenian of his time in ability and a master both at developing plans and at stating his conclusions”). Arguing in the midst of the nature–culture debate of the sophists, Antiphon said that the rules of justice only frustrate the stronger laws of human nature, and he viewed human nature as
the same for Greeks and non‐Greeks (“The requirements of the laws are
supplemental but the requirements of nature are necessary,” Antiphon Fr.
90 A DK, col. 1, with Gagarin and Woodruff 1995: 245; on the unity of
nature, see Antiphon Fr. B 44 DK, col. 2, with Woodruff 2010).
Prominently in the programmatic introduction to his work, the historian hopes that his work too will be useful to “any who wish to look at the plain truth about past events and those that at some future time, in accordance with human nature, will recur in similar or comparable ways” (Th. 1.22.4).
“Human nature” in Greek here is literally “the human thing” or “the
human situation” ( to antho ̄ pinon), possibly encompassing a wider nexus of social, cultural, and psychological realities. In this passage its importance is that the recurrence or pattern in human history is directly linked to human nature in the broadest sense, as a calculable constant in an equation.
Thucydides presents a text struggling to define “the human” within an
anthropology based on fundamentally material notions of nature. It asks what is essential to humans and what is epiphenomenal or culturally
elective. His concern is not only with this question of essence, but also with a deep interest in agents’ thought processes. Attentive readers,
ancient and modern, are expected to see the History’s consistent patterns of thought incorporated in “human nature,” a term under which
Thucydides discusses thought, emotions, and the human process of
arriving at decisions, mostly without specific connection to his views on power. Human nature in the text can be characterized broadly in terms of emotion or impulse and evaluation or judgment ( orge ̄ and gnome ̄), these being the two essential aspects of human motivation (Huart 1968;
Luginbill 1999). The two more often work in concert, not necessarily in conflict. When a person is driven by an emotive urge, he also evaluates the
“downside” to the impulse. Gnome ̄ then is not so much “reason” as it is a faculty of judgment often swayed by emotion‐driven inclinations, and it is at the core of much of the historian’s view of “human nature” (Luginbill 1999: 26; see Edmunds 1975a). Antiphon may have again shaped his
thinking here, as the sophist posited a single, active, rational principle at work in both humans and nature, namely the “mind” ( gno ̄ me ̄), as in his work Concord (fr. 2): “For all men mind controls their body in matters of health and disease and everything else”; “Deprived of material she [mind, gno ̄ me ̄] would order many good things badly” (Fr. B 14 DK, Guthrie 1971: 288).
84
ThucydidEs on ThE Ends of PowEr
The pairing of impulse and evaluation is thus not a polarity so much as the expression of a dual source of human decision making. The historian moreover uses a host of terms for intellection and analysis to specify clear and effective “logical” reasoning (e.g., dianoia: thought, intention, at Th. 1.84, 2.43, 2.61, 3.82, 5.111, etc.; boule ̄: counsel, advice; boule ̄ sis: determination, will; xunesis: intelligence; see Huart 1968). A key function of the History is to model productive and unproductive reasoning. Note, for example, the high regard of Themistocles, a leader of optimum insight: By native intelligence [ xunesis], without preparing or supplementing it by study, he was with the briefest deliberation [ boule ̄] the most effective in decisions [ gnome ̄] about immediate situations and the best at conjecturing what would happen farthest into the future … To sum up, this man, by the power [ dunamis] of his nature [ phusis], with rapid deliberation, was certainly supreme in his immediate grasp of what was necessary. (Th. 1.138, adapted; cf. the praise of Pericles’ intellect, Th. 2.65)
Contrast the shifting mood of the emotional Athenian public in its view of Pericles at the start of the war:
They [sc. Athenians] did not actually cease their anger against him altogether until they had punished him with a fine. And then, not much later, as a multitude is apt to behave, they elected him general and entrusted all their affairs to him. (Th. 1.65)
Thus the historian observes the qualities of individuals or groups and
notes them at crucial points. Later, when the Spartan Brasidas takes the city of Amphipolis in 424/3 bc, other cities revolt and Thucydides offers a similar analysis of the emotional logic of the group:
It was obvious that they could do so with impunity, a mistake about
Athenian power as great as the obviousness of that power later on but their decisions were based more on vague wishes than on secure foresight, following the human habit of entrusting desires to heedless hopes, while using arbitrary reason to dismiss what is unacceptable. (Th. 4.108.4)
The censure of the cities’ inability to see Athenian power and their turn to empty hope serves as a foreshadowing of the Melians’ poor reasoning
in Book 5, yet here it is in Thucydides’ own words.
Emotions often misdirect successful reasoning. “Hatred” ( misos) becomes a leitmotif of bad decision making: the Greeks’ hatred of the
Spartan Pausanias is given as the major factor for Athens getting to lead
ThucydidEs on ThE Ends of PowEr
&
nbsp; 85
the Delian League (Th. 1.96). By the period of the 450s bc, Corinth has an excessive hatred of Athens, generated by the Athenians’ fortifying of the port of Megara (Th. 1.103). Being hated is a normal status for Athens, says Pericles (Th. 1.64). Hope, fear, and other emotions might be correspondingly traced as profound motivations throughout the narrative. Fear, for instance, includes a more rational dread ( deos; Th. 1.75), while less rational fear ( phobos) marks other reactions (Th. 1.23 and 1.88, of Sparta), and fear terms are often used by Athenians to manipulate others (Tompkins 2009). Spartan fear ( phobos) of Athens is part of the “truest cause” of the war (Th. 1.23; 1.88), and fear ( phobos) of Athens motivates many Greeks to become Spartan allies (Th. 2.8). Athenian success dispels Athenians’
fear ( phobos) of Sparta and leads to imperial ambitions in Sicily (Th. 6.11).
A more rational fear ( deos) prompts Athenians to obey the laws, can generally compel interstate obedience (Th. 3.45), and can unite allies in an opposition to Athens (Th. 6.33). A prudent fear explained by a good
leader can instill unity in a chosen cause (Desmond 2006). Hope ( elpis) is consistently seen as a force designed to mislead and hold unrealistic ambitions, denounced by Pericles (Th. 2.62), infamously clung onto by the
Melians (Th. 5.102–3), sought by the Mytileneans (Th. 3.39–40 and 45),
and harbored in defeat by Nicias (Th. 7.77) (Gervasi 1984; Cook 2001).
Speakers, by way of persuading the audience to act, frequently note the use of reason or emotion to encourage correct analysis or to criticize
incorrect reasoning, for example the censure of the fickle Athenian judgment voiced by the Athenian Cleon in the Mytilenean debate (Th. 3.38),
as noted earlier. Cleon continues with a truism on human nature, while
Greek Historiography Page 14
