SOURCE: in Thucydides and His History, Cambridge at the University Press, 1963, pp. 27-57.

[In the following excerpt, Adcock first analyses Thucydides' manner of presentation: he contends that the speeches present a dialectical movement through argument and persuasion, proceeding indirectly towards the final purpose. Adcock posits that purpose second: the history makes an ethical argument about the primacy of civic life over private life.]

THE SPEECHES

Thucydides has told his readers what they are to think about the content of the speeches either in the first part or the whole of his work. When he wrote the sentence is not known for certain, whether it was before he began to write the narrative which follows, or after he had written his account of the antecedents of the war that broke out in 431 or at some later date after he had had a quorum of experience in writing the History or, perhaps more probably, when he had written his account of the Ten Years War or, even conceivably, at the end of the twenty-seven years that began in 431 B.C. and went on until the fall of Athens. It is wise to suppose that he meant what he said and was at pains to say what he meant.

If this is so, then his readers have been warned that the speeches are not, and could not be for reasons stated, the ipsissima verba of the speakers.

This does not imply that, if he had before him a complete record of what was actually said, he would have decided to reproduce it, even after a sort of translation of the words into his own style and dialect, and so give the actual text of what was said. We are told, indeed, that, in composing his speeches, the historian kept as closely as possible to 'the overall purport or purpose of what was actually said', written in such a way as to coincide with his opinion of what the several speakers would most likely have presented to their hearers as being 'what the situation required'. The reference to his own opinion presents a limiting factor one way, as his reference to the 'overall purport or purpose of what was actually said' is a limiting factor in another way. Thus, when the procedure has been applied, the reader will know something at least of what the historian regarded as what the situation required and an approximation at least to what was actually said. Thucydides limits his knowledge in terms of the difficulty (or even impossibility) of remembering precisely what was said.

The speeches to which this caveat applies are speeches which he heard himself or of which he received reports from others who were present when and where speeches were made. Frailty of memory would only concern him where he inserts a speech in his history, and it is natural to assume that he does not in fact insert speeches of which he cannot have had at any rate some information. So far as this procedure is applied, it seems to preclude the insertion of speeches when he does not know something at least of what was actually said. This means that, where this procedure applies, all the speeches we have are based upon some knowledge. Under this procedure no speech would appear where no speech was made, for no one can have any knowledge of a speech which never existed.

To insert speeches with no knowledge at all of their actual content would be so notable a departure from this procedure that it is very difficult to believe that he would not have warned his readers that such a departure has been made. A very heavy burden of proof rests upon those who assert that this happened, and a study of the relevant circumstances strongly suggests that Thucydides did not insert in his history speeches which are wholly fictitious in the sense that they have no basis whatever of ascertained fact. And it is very difficult to escape from the conclusion that at whatever time he announced this procedure he intended it to apply to the whole work in which it occurs.

It may be possible to suppose that, at times, he took more freedom in the interpretation of what material he had, but hardly possible to suppose that this freedom extended to the insertion of speeches which are wholly imaginary and without any basis of ascertained fact. There may be differences between the closeness to reality of different speeches varying with Thucydides' sources of information.

For example, as regards the speech of Sthenelaidas at Sparta, if Thucydides was informed of the exceptional voting procedure applied by the ephor, he would presumably also be informed of 'the overall purport and purpose of what was actually said' by him. Here and there, it is just possible that Thucydides assumed that a general encouraged his troops before battle, as Nicias is said to do before the first engagement against the Syracusan levies, and that he felt himself on firm ground when he attributed to Nicias the encouragement of saying that his army was more experienced than the Syracusan levies, as became almost apparent by the course of the battle. It was so much what the situation required that he might conceivably have taken it for granted. But this ought not to apply to deliberative speeches on policy.

It is often asserted that such a deliberative speech could not have taken its present form because no Assembly could have followed the arguments as they listened to the orator declaiming them. But the speeches we possess are not so unintelligible as that, even if they require the reader to give close attention to what he read. What Thucydides wrote is for his readers to peruse at their leisure with the text before them, and with the custom of reading aloud, so that they could study their meaning with knowledge of where their study was difficult. The writer may diverge from the ipsissima verba of the speeches, but does his best 'to come as nearly as possible' to what matters most, 'the overall purport or purpose of what was actually said'. It is not enough to say that he restricted himself to what the speakers were convinced was true, for now and again he makes a speaker say something which he knows the speaker cannot have believed to be true or something which he himself cannot have believed to be true in fact. He is well aware that speakers making a case for some policy or action may say things which neither the historian nor the speaker believe to be true. The simplest and most certain example of this is the false statement attributed to Brasidas about the identity of his army before Acanthus with his army before Megara some months before. Brasidas must have known that it was false, and Thucydides in a later passage says that it was, and this could not be due to information not yet at his disposal when he wrote the speech he attributes to Brasidas. Brasidas, too, knew at the time that it was false, although his Acanthian hearers did not. Where there was a difference between what appears in a speech and what has appeared in the narrative we must suppose that the truth as Thucydides sees it is to be found in the narrative, which is directed to the statement of what happened in a way the words of an orator may not be. It is a fault in method to treat these statements otherwise, and not to admit that a speech may contain a statement at variance with the facts, but 'an approximation to the purport or purpose of what was in fact said', and that is all.

These considerations do not greatly diminish the value to a historian of what appears in a speech: what is needed is a critical and careful evaluation of what the reader reads, after the warning which he has received. A speaker may therefore fail to give the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but what is given deserves close attention within the limits which Thucydides has set himself after giving the reader warning of what he is doing.

As a rule, the circumstances of speeches, when carefully studied, reveal a possibility of this required quota of knowledge. This possibility applies to speeches which scholars have declared to possess no such basis of knowledge as gives to them an element at least of authenticity. It may be illustrated by three instances of speeches in which any element of authenticity has often been denied.

Take first the speech of Athenian envoys at the first Conference at Sparta. That Athenian envoys were present and were allowed to intervene is stated as a fact of equal authority with other events which are being described. It is a priori probable that Pericles would wish to know what was being said at Sparta. It was not alien from Greek procedure to admit their presence and to allow them to speak. If they were not present and so did not speak, the statement that they were would be known to be false by the time at which he may have expected to publish his account of the war to which they were a preamble: whatever we may think of the suitability of the speech, it is very rash to deny that a speech was made by Athenian envoys.

Secondly, we may consider the Plataean and Theban speeches after the surrender of the city. That speeches were made is beyond serious doubt. But how could Thucydides have any direct knowledge about their content and general purport or purpose? As for the Plataean speech, Thucydides, in a way that is an exception to his usual practice, names the speakers. One of them was Lacon, proxenos of Sparta, who could very properly have been in favour of capitulation on terms which included a fair judgment by the Spartans. If that was so, he could affirm that he had done Sparta a service, for the capitulation was in Sparta's interests. And if he did, his life would be spared and so the historians could discover at first or second hand the gist of his plea. As for what the Thebans said in reply, this could be known to him at least as soon as the armistice of 423-422 enabled the historian to make inquiries about it, at Thebes or elsewhere. It need not be just a fictitious refutation of what the Plataeans said.

Finally, we reach the Melian Dialogue (V, 85-113). The occasion is not just a fiction. That there were negotiations is beyond doubt. It was the duty of the Athenian generals to secure, if possible, the surrender of the city without recourse to a siege. And the Dialogue is highly realistic and to the point for that purpose. The general trend of the arguments on either side was known to the Athenian negotiators, who would report to Athens, not, of course, in a procès-verbal of the discussions but their general character, if only to show they had done their best for their purpose.

The same would be true of the report which the Melian representatives must have made to their fellow citizens, some of whom, if only those who betrayed the city, were spared. We must also suppose that the first thing the Melians did before the Athenian lines were drawn round their city was to send to Sparta to ask for help, reporting at least the trend of the negotiations. If so, this could reach Thucydides, who, if he was not at Sparta at the time could find out what was known there from whatever source. If this is so, and the possibility seems to be beyond doubt, Thucydides could procure the knowledge that he needed in order to recount, in the form of a dialogue, the general course of the discussion.

These are important instances of speeches, or of a dialogue as a substitute for set speeches, which scholars have too hastily regarded as going wholly beyond the historian's knowledge. He could know enough for his purpose, which was to assist his readers to study 'the plain reality of what happened'.

Granted that in all, or practically all, the speeches there is an authentic element, there is to be found also a stylistic character which is uniform throughout them all. This is immediately apparent, and does not require justification. It is assumed that his readers are familiar with the old-fashioned Attic which is used for the narrative. There is no attempt at the vraisemblance that might be suggested by a variation between the vocabulary and syntactical usage of Pericles or any other Athenian of the day and the laconic Doric in which we assume the kings or ephors would address the Spartan Apella. The army which Archidamus addressed at the Isthmus before the invasion of Attica contained officers who spoke in the dialects of their cities; the troops of Brasidas were in part helots, in part men from Peloponnesian states, but it would not occur to a Greek reader that they might not all equally well understand what their commander was saying. What mattered was the reader. This diction was not an absolute rule, or a literary convention from which Thucydides could not free himself, as he does when it comes to the citation of a treaty written in Doric in v, 77 and 79. It was convenient, the more as the argumentation used by the historian was conceived of in his own speech as well as thought.

This argumentation proceeds throughout in much the same manner with the use of gnomic generalizations to assist the deployment of the dialectic which is uniform throughout as is the addiction to antitheses, above all between 'word' and 'act'. The vulgarian Cleon can echo what Pericles had been made to say with the same forcible dignity. Now and again, in some terse and bold, almost contemptuous, aphorism, we may seem to hear Alcibiades, or Nicias in the words of his conventional piety. If the style may be the man, the man may use the style, but with economical delicacy of touch. To the dialectical force of a Pericles Cleon may add his natural violence, the partner of his persuasiveness. The moral is that Thucydides is the master of his own style and not the slave of any literary convention.

One hint of his masterful way is a liking for paradox, which, as it were, calls to attention the hearers of the speeches by a sharp emphasis which challenges normality. The historian had taken with him into exile a formed and consistent style which, indurated by constant use, stayed with him to the end of his work.

There is one apparent change in the historian's practice which it is not easy to explain. In Book v between Brasidas' speech before the battle of Amphipolis and the Melian Dialogue, and throughout the whole of Book VIII, no set speeches occur. It has been thought that Book VIII was unfinished and would have contained speeches had it received its final form. But when its diction is examined, it does not appear to be less finished than some other of the books. Some scholars have stressed a pronouncement attributed to Cratippus that the historian decided to abandon the use of set speeches because they hampered the pace of the narrative and presented difficulties to the readers [Dionysius of Halicarnassus]. There is no agreement whether Cratippus was a younger contemporary of Thucydides and so might have been in his counsels, or whether he was a later writer who was just giving his own deduction from the absence of set speeches, a deduction which is no more than his own. The most probable explanation is that Book VIII contains no debate of the first importance and that if Thucydides had thought of introducing such a debate at the time of the oligarchical revolution of 411 B.C. he might have preferred to wait until he could obtain more information on his hoped-for return to Athens. For whatever reason he did not carry out this intention: there is no sign that he introduced into his work matter to be discovered later at Athens, such as is cited in Aristotle's Constitution of Athens (29 ff.).

The oligarchic revolution was shortlived and transient in its effects, and Thucydides may have been content with what is found in Book VIII as we have it. In that book we find more of Thucydides' judgment of the personalities and of their policies than elsewhere in the works, and this, taken in conjunction with some reports of speeches in Oratio Obliqua, may have seemed to give what was required. And if no more seemed needed, Thucydides may have spared himself the labour of composing set speeches.

It may be that this explanation may apply to a part of Book v after the Peace of Nicias if Thucydides wrote those chapters before he came to believe that they were an integral part of his whole work, so that he wrote with less élan and intensity of purpose than in earlier books. There are twelve set speeches in Books VI and VII, but these were written as belonging to a theme notable in its own right and then as part of a crescendo of emphasis as the expedition proceeded.

There is one speech, the Epitaphios of Pericles, which on one theory was written after the fall of Athens in protest against a movement that belittled Pericles and Periclean Athens with him. This theory gives to the speech a dramatic effect, partly as a contrast between the bright hopes of 431 B.C. and the dark shadow of the Plague in the next year, and partly as a contrast between the high hopes with which the war began and the disaster which overtook Athens at the end of the whole period of twenty-seven years. There may be discovered an elegiac note in the passage in which it is hinted that sacrifices it commemorates may be in vain. Years ago I accepted this thesis [Cambridge Ancient History,] but it now seems to me that I was mistaken in following what, at that time, was the dominant view, supported as it was by great names such as Eduard Meyer. It now appears to me that it was written in 431 B.C., while the voice of Pericles still sounded in the historian's ears—the authentic echo of what was demanded of the citizens in that hour. It is then, as other speeches are, closely linked to the situation of the moment, when the first year of the war had appeared to justify Periclean strategy. The fact that few Athenians had fallen in the cavalry skirmishes of that summer does not make it less worthy of record. Athens still stood splendid and united in love for the city, and this, together with the character of Athenian soci-ety, is celebrated at that very moment as it deserved. The moral declension that was to be described in the third book was still in the future.

There is one more point that deserves mention in this context. The almost amateurish courage of the Athenians is proclaimed as a match for the long-studied discipline of Sparta and her army. It is not easy to believe that this claim would have been made after the indiscipline and folly of Aegospotami had thrown away Athens' last hope of survival. Would not a speech so confident and so proud have seemed bitter irony to the historian if it was then that he wrote the speech? Thus, difficult as it is to be sure, it now seems to me that the picture of the high summer of Athenian power and warlike confidence was written at the moment when it was true. That bravery and self-devotion cannot command success is part of the historian's philosophy of war, and praise is due to those who meet the dangers of the moment, whatever the ultimate outcome may prove to be among the paradoxes and vicissitudes from which no war is exempt.

Whatever our conclusion may be about the date at which the Funeral Speech was written, it does not resolve a question which is perhaps beyond solution. This is how far the speech is dictated by Thucydides' own view of Athens and how far by his admiration for Pericles which led him to allow Pericles to think for him, so that we may only find in the speech praise of a community of which Pericles had been the spiritual and intellectual begetter. What may come nearest to the truth may be the conclusion that what Thucydides admired and what Pericles accepted with pride was 'in name a democracy, in deed rule exercised by the first citizen'. More will be said about this in a later chapter.

We may now turn to a group of speeches which may be considered by themselves. A battle, and a hoplite battle in particular, often began with generals' speeches on both sides. In a hoplite battle the speech is, as it were, part of the battle-cry which started the charge. Thucydides at Mantinea in 418 B.C. notes that the Spartans do not need this tonic and it is their business to keep their heads so as to be able to swing inwards and not merely rush at the enemy. The object of the speech before such a battle is to give the troops confidence in themselves, their cause and, incidentally, their general. It may go back to the Homeric practice of a man launching a phrase before he launches his spear or his close-quarters attack. But it has a more practical effect. In a naval battle, where signalling is difficult, it is desirable for the captains on ships to know the general's plan for the battle. It is also encouragement to discipline and obedience to orders or to dispel some cause of discouragement. But in smaller encounters Thucydides does not provide a general's speech, and hardly ever a pair of speeches, one to each side. In the two speeches of the Peloponnesian admirals and of Phormio in the Corinthian Gulf, the Peloponnesians are told to trust to their courage to make up for lack of trained skill, the Athenians to trust to discipline and trained skill to make up for their inferior numbers. The speech of Demosthenes at Pylos is answered not by a formal speech before the Spartan attack but by the vehement call of Brasidas to force a landing at all costs. Before Delium the speech of Pagondas is about why they should fight, of Hippocrates why they should hope to win. Before Trafalgar Nelson's signal in effect reminds the crews of their long acquired obedience to orders and of their reputation. It in a way combines the effect of both sets of speeches in the Corinthian Gulf.

Sometimes there is only one speech, that of the general who is about to win a victory or achieve a military success. The account of the battle is made more intelligible by the knowledge of what the general wanted to do. Sometimes there may be no speech because the general has not grasped the situation or because it changes after the operations have begun. For example, Demosthenes in Aetolia is not given a speech because he did not make one or anticipate the course of the fighting. At Sphacteria there are no speeches. Demosthenes does not explain beforehand how he proposes to achieve his purpose for no such speech is needed or could do good. Before Amphipolis Brasidas makes a speech, but Cleon, who was not expecting to fight, did not for he hardly directs the course of the battle. The two battle speeches, in Illyria and before Amphipolis, of Brasidas help to indicate his psychological appreciation of the enemy and of his own troops, and the speech of Phormio underlines the reason for Athenian naval supremacy and does not explain the course of the engagement that followed because this is not yet known. The speech of the Peloponnesian admirals before the battle underlines the theme of natural courage, rather than of the tactics which were going to be used. The speech of Demosthenes underlines the value of hope, when it is the only thing that helps. 'Hope is not a good guide, but is a good companion on the way.' It sets a determined Athenian against a determined Spartan. The speech of Nicias before the first engagement with the Syracusans states the fact that the experienced Athenian army can expect to be superior to a levy en masse of Syracusans. There is no Syracusan speech (perhaps because Thucydides did not know what they said, perhaps because there was no time for it to be made). Pagondas before Delium underlines his will to fight, and suggests that the Athenians had perhaps underrated the Boeotians' determination, so that the attack, of itself, would produce a psychological effect on the Athenians.

Sometimes the purpose of the speech is to underline the importance of the battle and the tactical chances of either side, as in the speeches before the battle in the Great Harbour. One might have expected a speech by Demosthenes before the night attack on Epipolae, but that was not a battle that really went according to plan and it is of course possible that Demosthenes in order to make sure of the advantage of surprise did not make a speech but concerted his plan secretly with the separate commanders. The speech of Nicias before the retreat (VII, 77) is part of the characterization of Nicias and stresses the gravity and indeed tragedy of the retreat.

Where battle is not actually joined there are no general's speeches. The letter of Nicias to the Athenians is not so much a speech as the Thucydidean account of the situation as Nicias saw it. The two speeches of Pericles which discuss the strategical balance of the sides in a future war are concerned with policy and overall strategy and not with battle tactics. It looks as if Thucydides felt he needed to know something of what was said to put his speech in the frame of an immediate operation. In general, Greek battles depended more on morale than on tactics, and the morale of troops is one branch of that psychological observation of human nature and behaviour that was Thucydides' constant study. In particular he makes the generals' speeches fit the psychology of the general and that of his troops. He underlines the awareness that Athenian troops have a quality of élan which may be brittle if anything happened to upset them. He has a valuation of the military quality of troops of different cities. The tactical conduct of the battle is not anticipated but is left to be revealed by the course of the engagement which follows, and this is true of the speeches of Brasidas to his troops before the battle in Illyria and the battle before Amphipolis.

THUCIDIDEAN DIALECTIC

Thucydides had grown up in a period in which men were prone to think by way of argument, by the shock of one thesis colliding with another. The notion that there are two sides to every question was an assumption preached by Protagoras, and illustrated in the Clouds of Aristophanes. It is obvious that statesmen in a community where decisions are reached by persuading a concourse of citizens to vote one way or another must prevail by argument which appeals to them. A general must make his troops so think and feel that their action will match the purpose of their commander. In most battles a vehement self-confidence, however induced, gives the best chance of victory. The Orders of the Day of the Emperor Napoleon or Field-Marshal Montgomery aim at achieving this. An army that lost heart had lost the battle. In the deliberations led by statemen something based more on intellectual calculation was required and dialectic was here the art of magnifying the advantages and minimizing the disadvantages of any particular policy or course of action. To achieve this result any argument that could persuade was the right argument, and veracity, the servant and not the master of argument, is a weapon among others, a means and not an end.

At the time when Thucydides was learning his trade, a most potent argument was the argument from probability, which, as Aristotle was to say in his Rhetoric, relies upon the confusion of a general with a particular probability. More and more, the Greeks had become vulnerable to the lures of this argument which was now practised in the courts. Hence we may expect to find, as we do, that speeches often begin with a generalizing maxim, of which the present thesis is asserted to be an instance. Prone to believe that what is often true is always true, a Greek Assembly might be attuned to an orator's purpose. A skilful use of this dialectical argument may flatter, while it deceives, the hearer's intelligence. The converse of this, an apparent paradox, appeals to the quick-witted, for it suggests that the hearer is cleverer than his neighbours. It is thus asserted that a man who allows something to happen is as responsible as a man who takes positive action to bring it about. This is not always so in real life, but it is tempting to believe it with an uncritical readiness. It is what Bacon might have called an idolum fori. A sharp distinction between what is said and what is actual fact is an argument in itself, and this distinction had to Thucydides an especial appeal, for the opposition is highly intelligible. So is the distinction drawn between what is expedient and what is just; each of the two is persuasive and each is governed by its own rationale, and where they can be allied, their strength is great. Where their force is unequal, either may be stressed and prove decisive.

There is one oratorical device which is not often found in speeches because of the economy of the work. The speeches are concerned with particular situations which have been described in the narrative of the events that led up to them. As a rule, the veracity of the narrative is to be assumed and what it contains can be taken as read so as to predispose the hearer to accept the speaker's arguments. There may be exceptions to this general rule if the ignorance of the audience can be practised upon. Brasidas, in his speech at Acanthus (IV, 86-7), is represented as making a false statement about the size of his army because, as Grote observed, [in his History of Greece,] its falsity cannot be discovered before the decision is taken. To judge from the speech attributed to Brasidas before the battle of Amphipolis, this mendacity would appear to him to be a legitimate ruse de guerre, such as befits the skill of a shrewd general.

It has been argued that the historian sets himself to make his speakers say what they in their heart of hearts believe. But to do that might be to injure their case, and this injury is something they must avoid at all costs.

It has also been argued that the historian's dialectic is used to indicate what he himself believed, so as to correct his narrative. If this be so, it belies what he says has been his practice. When he refers to his own opinion it is not his opinion of what was true but what the situation would have required a speaker to say, and these need not be identical. Themistocles is said to have had a singular capacity for improvising what the situation required of him, but that might often be a lie, from which he, of all men, would least shrink.

The dialectical methods of Thucydides are at the disposal of either side in a debate, and so are used impartially to reinforce either. All is fair in war, and, proverbially, 'war is impartial', favouring neither one side nor the other. A speech is like a missile which has one single purpose, to hit its target. The man who throws the spear should be able to see his mark, and Thucydides gives him eyes to see it. The dialectical skill put at the disposal of a speaker will raise his actual arguments to a higher power. Thus the reader will best judge the case for either side, and so appreciate the validity of either thesis. Hence the validity or wisdom of whatever case prevailed. Thucydides is aware that the right thing may be done for the wrong reason, but his readers will be the wiser if they are given the arguments in their most cogent and persuasive form.

But set speeches are not the only way to illuminate the rationale of actions. It is apparent that in the narrative of events it is rare for Thucydides to commend or to condemn. The plain and intelligible record of events leaves the reader to use his own judgment, but, now and again, narrative is so phrased as to indicate a judgment, when an action succeeds or fails according to the actors' view of what was required. Demosthenes' adventure in Aetolia appears to fail because he would not wait to secure the help of troops who would be best fitted to bring it to success. The dialectic of action or inaction illuminates the situation.

The fortune of war, in its paradoxical way, may make good plans fail and bed plans succeed, but it belongs to the clear story of what happened to indicate at times whether the plans were good or bad. The Spartans on Sphacteria are killed or captured within twenty days, but the promise to achieve this is condemned as 'lunatic'. Herein, it is argued that success is not the one criterion of military skill and insight. This judgment of Cleon's promise may be inspired by malice, but that may not make it any less cogent or less instructive to the future general, who will learn his trade by studying what happened in the past and how it happened. In the account of the night attack on Epipolae, the plain tale of what happened will teach, what the history of war has so often taught, that few operations are so hazardous and unpromising as night attacks, even if in war 'bad may be the best'. All this is the application of the historian's own study of what happened.

This illumination may be provided by the historian's choice of what to emphasize and what to leave unrecorded. In the first year of the War the Athenians invaded the Megarid, and this is fully described, for it is part of the counter-offensive which will raise Athenian morale. Thucydides came to know that something of this kind happened in each of the next six years and he says so, but in no one of these years does he mention it, for the effect was progressively smaller. You cannot cut down the same olive tree twice. What matters is what matters. The light falls where there is something worth seeing, something worth notice, and of that the historian is the judge.

Here and there, evidence from other sources shows that Thucydides has failed to mention events of which he may be presumed to have some knowledge. The reasons for this are matters of legitimate conjecture, and where a probable reason can be found it deserves consideration in judging how Thucydides argued to himself what he would present to his readers for their future study. He was a highly autonomous man, who made his own rules for himself and must not be too readily assumed to be dominated by the literary conventions of his successors in the field of history.

Those who assert that Thucydides was precluded from citing the text of a treaty by a stylistic rule must have regard to the fact that he sometimes does so. He might, in a final revision, have preferred to put things otherwise, but that would be his second thoughts or even his third. We can only surmise that what we have was not always his last word. The assumption that his readers would be wholly baffled by the sight of the original text of a treaty in the Doric dialect is refuted by what appears in the Acharnians and the Lysistrata of Aristophanes.

The upshot of all this is that Thucydides' practice was, as it would naturally be, to describe things as he saw them and thought it best to say them, subject to a strong intention not to allow himself to be deceived by the frailties of others. An interesting contrast is to be found in the description of the attack on Sphacteria, which shows no sign of being described so as to attribute its success either to chance, or to Demosthenes as distinct from Cleon. In the dictum that follows his condemnation of Cleon's promise, namely that men of judgment welcomed the alternatives of securing the prisoners or of being rid of Cleon, Thucydides indulges his disapproval of Cleon at a point where he was not inhibited by his duty to his narrative of operations.

In the narrative, then, he seeks to be precise, to avoid in himself the faults he observes in others. His facts are caught up and preserved in a fine web of thought. For he is writing, not to satisfy what seems to him irrelevant curiosity, but to assist by his own judgment and presentation 'the study of those who will give their minds to understand how it actually happened', which may be 'why it happened at all'. And he sees events as one great dialectical argument in which human intelligence is the final arbiter in the seat of judgment. Securus iudicat.

THUCYDIDEAN ETHICS AND POLITICS

Thucydides was a rich man of good birth and aristocratic connections, an Athenian citizen. His normal ethical standards may be assumed to be those of his class, and there is nothing in his work to prove they were not. In politics—How should a city's governors be chosen? Pericles in the Funeral Speech approves of equality of opportunity in state affairs. But only 'of opportunity'. Men of talent are not excluded from office by poverty, but they are chosen to have authority only if they seem worthy of it. It is possible this is what Pericles said without its being what Thucydides himself thought. But it seems Thucydidean: to him the city comes first, the individual citizen second, and, as the city needs talent wherever it can find it among the citizens, he would not wish to see its area of choice limited. Without 'disparity of esteem' the right men might not be chosen. It was true that, for various purposes, citizens were treated as equal, whether they were or not, especially in membership of the Council or the jury courts. But with these Thucydides is hardly concerned. What matters in a war is the quality of generals, in the field and at home, and those are not chosen by lot. For special missions also men are chosen by direct choice.

The Assembly is, at least in theory, sovereign and it has the last word. The Demos meeting in Assembly has its faults: it is mutable, excitable and, as a body, it may be gullible. 'It is easier to mislead many men than one' [Herodotus, V, 97, 2]. But it was persuadable by skilful argument, of which it was a good judge, and might be obedient to authority based on personal ascendancy and the courageous use of it. Without such guidance it may go astray. Remove its guide and what is left may be false lights, and this cannot be denied. So democracy might be foolish, unthinking, and, as is said in Alcibiades' speech at Sparta, there is nothing new to say about it. Its salvation is to be persuaded into right decisions by the wise, by men who think of the city first and their own material advantage second, if at all. Of Pericles, whom Thucydides admired, it is said that his patriotism and his incorruptibility reinforced his eloquence, his foresight and his courage.

To possess these qualities is the mark of a true statesman, the kind of man for whom Thucydides' history was written; without these qualities, the cleverest of men may be suspect and so not be followed, however wise their policies may be. What was wrong with Alcibiades is that he was not like Pericles, though, when at a crisis he put the city first, he is praised for what, in that moment, he was.

The city comes first: the interests of the city come first, and whatever does not serve these interests is a bad thing and not a good. The practice of private virtue, inhibited by private scruples, if it limits the city's power or disregards its interests, is dismissed with an ironical, contemptuous phrase. When private virtues— courage, self-abnegation, honesty, a simple-mindedness that has a large ingredient of nobility, serve the community, they are highly praised: but only then. In great affairs of state, civic virtue—courage and devotion— is the one virtue that claims pre-eminence. When the war has begun, this is what Athens can claim to inspire in all her citizens, above all a passionate devotion which goes over all.

To turn from the citizen to the city: the city embodies power, and power grows from power and from nothing else. No other interests may prevail against it; no other criterion is in place. The ancient mythical past of Athens was full of stories of generosity, the protection of the weak, but in the present the exhibition of these qualities is limited by the immediate interests of the state. If moderation is politic, a means to create a more lasting power, it is a virtue, but only then.

To be admired is a legitimate ambition, but as the spring of courage, the spur of action, in the public interest. The virtue of a citizen is aristocratic virtue, democratically used if your state is democratic. That was true of Athens in its bright day, and much of it survived in its dark day. When men are attuned to it, it produces greatness in a city and it becomes human nature on the highest plane. This is not an ethical ideal, to be inculcated for its own sake, but as an ingredient in Athens' greatness. The sharing of it unites a state: what divides a state, above all civil strife, is its enemy. Thus civic virtue is easiest preserved in peace; it is endangered by the compulsions of war. But if the security and interests of the city lead to war, this danger must be endured.

Thucydides observes a progressive decline in ethical standards as war and civil strife continue. This appears to be inevitable, so that it becomes a reasonable expectation that men will behave worse and worse both in public and private—private ambition, partisan passion, disloyalty to the state become common, and new standards of behaviour, even new words of praise or blame, reflect this decline.

Intellectual force on this lower plane may still exist, effective for its own purposes. Courage retains its value and extorts admiration from the historian, and so does the subordination of personal ambition and party feeling to the interests of the city in war. A compromise government that helps Athenian resistance for a time is highly praised. But this spirit of compromise is rare and short-lived and throughout the history it becomes rare and rarer. Having observed the degeneration of civic ethics set out in phase after phase, he has shown the true meaning of what has happened and so the historian has done his task. We are told of the symptoms and effect of this great malaise as we are told the same of the great plague, where, too, there is praise for self-denying patriotic courage of those who rose above the demoralization that the plague induced.

The historian has an intellectual distaste for professions belied by acts and he explains Spartan bad faith to the Plataeans by regarding it as an unworthy surrender to the Thebans, who are made as hateful as the Plataeans are made, at least, pitiable. But it is to be observed he does not hesitate to make a Spartan say what is untrue if that is what his case requires. His diligent desire to reach and speak the truth about events did not make him subordinate the needs of war, in which all is fair, to the cause of veracity.

There is a sense in which Thucydides may justly be described as a student of ethics of communities, but this does not deny his firm belief that great states will pursue greatness with the profoundest egotism: for that is the nature of cities, comparable with the nature of men.

It is not plain to see that Thucydides, throughout all his history, has any declared preference for this or that form of constitution. He observes, almost without comment, the hostility of the many to the few and of the few to the many, assumed by the author of the pseudo-Xenophontic Constitution of Athens and, later, elevated to a dogma by Aristotle.

In general, Thucydides judges men by their purposes, rather than by the means, however unscrupulous, they use to attain them, and as the process of ethical decline continues he becomes apt to take for granted a personal egotism which matches community or party egotism. In place of men subordinating their interests to the city he expects that they will subordinate the city to their interests, or to their hostility to men they distrust or dislike. The failure to use the abilities of Alcibiades as a director of warlike resources is made responsible for Athenian defeats and in the end to the final overthrow of Athens. Democracy without Pericles, once it is filled with jealous rivalries, does not deserve to survive, but oligarchy is not the cure; it is another form of the disease. Thucydides may have agreed with Pope:

For forms of government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administered, is best.

The one criterion that has validity in war is the effective management of the war. The one consolation for defeat is past greatness and courage in adversity. Greatness, the domination and exploitation of others, cannot be forgone. It is better to have ruled and lost, than never to have ruled at all.

Some scholars have hoped to find in Thucydides a Panhellenic patriotism, a search for national unity and sympathy of Greek for Greek. But of this it is hard to find a clear trace. There is pride in the Athenian share of the defence of Greece against the Persians, but that is above all a pride in warlike resolution and resource, the act, not the cause. And the great possession of Athens that could not be taken away was the memory that she had ruled over more Greeks than any other city and had fought more wars to bring it about and preserve it. Old traditions of benevolence and generosity on the part of Athens are silent. What remains and lasts for ever is the memory of courage, resilience in adversity, and resolution and 'what is else not to be overcome'.

To all seeming, Thucydides never supposed that the gods intervened in human affairs or, if they ever did, their action, as that of Chance, was unpredictable. He valued conformity with the state religion as a social bond, a kind of preservative of traditional ethics, which, moulded by the community, had value for the state. When Nicias perished, his end was the more lamentable, not because he was not to blame for it, but because his faith in Heaven had been misplaced. The historian's strong conviction that human events are guided by human wits and will preserved him from substituting a predestined Nemesis for the study of what happened and why. Men should not blind themselves; and he did not blind himself either. Things are what they are, and men have made them so.

This realism does not mean that his heart did not ever stir within him. When the Athenians decreed the massacre of the Mityleneans, he described the decree as 'savage and monstrous', not arguing that it was so, but simply describing it as any sensible or civilized man would have described it. To him needless cruelty was odious, the more because anger darkens the mind. Though, when it comes to that, Cleon's decree is refuted by cool dispassionate raison d' État, in which the plea of pity is disclaimed. Thucydides is not silent about the Athenian repentance, for he knew that without its presence and effect the Athenians might well have committed what he believed to be at once a crime and a blunder. His native way of thinking was to avoid emotional excess, and an excess of passion is the enemy of reason, which is the path of wisdom. When he spoke of one other odious act it was the massacre at Mycalessus, and the destruction of the barbarous Thracians was the penalty executed not by Heaven but by men. He has human sympathy for Nicias, hoping against hope for help from Heaven, as he has for the tumult of hopes and fears of the Athenians watching their ships sinking in the Great Harbour at Syracause.

We may surmise that in the days of the plague he would not have been frightened to help his fellow citizens, for it was a part of aristocratic ethics not to be afraid in a good cause.

The first of crimes was passionate folly. Those who ruled over others incurred hatred, but that was its price and the price was worth paying. He seems to respect the Spartans' usual adherence to a code of conduct, but when at Hysiae the Spartans massacred the inhabitants, he has no word of blame for it, any more than for what happened at Scione and Melos. For war is 'a violent preceptor', and its pupils cannot evade its teaching.