SOURCE: "Thucydides and the Philosophy of History," in Thucydides and the History of His Age, Vol. II, Basil Blackwell, 1948, pp. 28-80.

[In the following excerpt, Grundy suggests that Thucydides imbued the History with his own philosophical perspective—an "essentially practical" or cynical view-point—despite his claims to objectivity.]

THE PHILOSOPHIC ELEMENT IN THUCYDIDES

Any student or any reader who is interested in Thucydides will require as full a pro of as possible of his aim as an author. In the case of his philosophy the difficulty of acquiring a comprehensive knowledge of it is due to the fact that Thucydides associated, not merely each section, but each item of it with that event in his narrative which suggested it.

The result is not an ordered treatise, but a mass of material scattered, it might almost be said at random, through his work. Thus the collection of it is a somewhat laborious business, a labour which may be taken once and for all by one man and need not be repeated again and again by those who are interested in the study of the subject.

This section is therefore devoted to the collection of such passages in his work under rather comprehensive headings, with notes attached to those passages which seem to require some explanation.

That does not apply to all his views. Some of them require no explanation, as they are founded on elements in human nature which are innate in man and quite independent of the circumstances under which he lives. Still there are many elements in human life which result from the circumstances in which those lives are lived, and sometimes the actions and ideas of an age have to be interpreted in the light of what is known of the spirit of that age.

General Philosophy of Life

Thucydides' philosophy is essentially practical, not speculative, for, though it deals with the future, it is only with that part of the future which, as he believes, can be deduced from the facts of the past. His belief in that future has been very largely justified by the facts of history.

(I. 22.) The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of things must resemble, if it does not reflect it, I shall be content.

Many of his philosophical dicta bear on ordinary social life, and, though it is necessary to quote them as part of his philosophy, they do not call for comment at the present day, as they deal with matters which come within the ordinary experience of men of the present world, and are an expression of truths which have been stated again in the voluminous literature of later times. But at the time at which Thucydides wrote there was no voluminous literature, and the only literature from which he could borrow anything he did borrow, were the philosophical writings of the sophists, and perhaps here and there a brief passage from the dramatists. It is not of course possible to say in every case where Thucydides is stating his own conclusions from the facts of life, but it is probable that he does so in the vast majority of instances, while some passages may be novel renderings of ideas which may have been previously existent in some vague form in the minds of his readers. But the passages must be quoted here as they appear in various parts of his work. They show his views on the philosophy of life, which must always be a large part of the philosophy of history.

(I. 42.) To abstain from wronging others who are your equals affords a surer basis for power than a dangerous pursuit of gain incited by an apparent temporary advantage.

This is a truth which Germany would have done well to realise before the first World War and, to a certain extent, before the last war.

(I. 76.) The truth is that those who use force do not need law.

This is almost certainly suggested by the dictum of the sophists in its crude form 'might is right', that dictum which Plato attacked so violently in the Republic without taking into account the fact that those same sophists also stated the solution of the unpleasant fact— concession made by the stronger to the weaker which mitigates in the only way possible the working of this brutal truth. The words, which Thucydides puts into the mouths of the Athenians, are, so far as he is concerned, an unpleasant fact; and it is with facts alone that his philosophy deals. This is shown in another sentence later in the same chapter: 'but it seems that men are less angered by injustice than by constraint'.

He does not moralise on such facts. As is his way he leaves the moral conclusions from them to his readers. Some commentators on his work have remarked on the absence from it of moral conclusions. As far as expression goes that is true; but as far as moral implication goes it is very misleading. His work is full of them.

(I. 71.) You fail to see that peace stays longest with those who are more careful to use their power justly than to show their determination not to submit to injustice.

This is the position of the Spartans as described by the Corinthians.

It is admittedly difficult to see how these words apply to the situation at the moment at which they are said to have been uttered, the time when Corinth was urg-ing Sparta to take the lead of the Peloponnesian League in war with Athens. It is not a very satisfactory suggestion, that it is better to attack a power which shows the intention to be aggressive than to wait till the aggression actually takes place.

(I. 71.) Improvements ever prevail.

An obvious truth; but one truth which had to be impressed on an age in which many of the Greek race were staunch upholders of ancient customs and ideas.

(II. 35., Funeral Oration.) For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted. When this point is passed envy comes in and with it incredulity.

A cynical remark, but very true.

(II. 40., Funeral Oration.) Usually daring results from ignorance, caution from reflection.

Emphasises the necessity of thought before action.

(II. 43., Funeral Oration.) Heroes have the whole world for their tomb.

This is a very fine translation of one of the finest epigrams in history. There lie behind it certain ideas which editors and translators of Thucydides seem to have overlooked.

Whatever doubt there may be as to whether the Funeral Oration is of Thucydides' own composition or a report of the actual speech made by Pericles, there cannot be much doubt that this is a quotation from what Pericles actually said, and he said it with a very practical purpose—to dispel from the minds of his hearers a feeling which would cause them the greatest unhappiness. That feeling would be caused by certain beliefs associated, not with the Greek state religion, but with that family religion which seems to have had more influence on the Greek mind, that ancestor worship which was equally strong in both the Greek and the early Roman world. It is based on the idea that the living were guarded in life by the spirits of their deceased ancestors, and that those spirits watched over them and had some power to alleviate the ills and misfortunes of life. Associated with this was the further idea that the body of the deceased ancestor must be buried amid the scenes which had been familiar to him in life—that otherwise his spirit could not be happy, and that consequently his descendants must see that his body was laid near his old home. Hence the living sought by every means in their power to carry out this religious duty, and it became a recognised principle in Greek international law that victors in a battle should surrender the bodies of those of the defeated who had fallen in the fight. It was a rule any infraction of which shocked the Greek mind intensely, as Thucydides shows in his reference to the refusal of the Boeotians to surrender the bodies of the Athenian slain at Delium, and the still more striking example of the trial and punishment of the victorious generals after Arginusae for not picking up after the battle the bodies of the drowned and such as survived on the wrecks.

Marathon, where the Athenian dead were buried in the mound, was acknowledged to be an exception justified, as it was thought, by the exceptional glory won by those who took part in the victory, and the consequent idea that the spirits of the dead might be happy on the scene of their great triumph.

(II. 44.) For honour never grows old; and honour it is, not gain, as some would have it, that rejoices the heart of age and helplessness.

(II. 52., Psychology of the period of the plague.) Bodies lay on one another in the agonies of thirst, and half-dead creatures reeled about the streets and round all the fountains in their longing for water. The sacred places also in which they had quartered themselves were full of the corpses of persons who had died there just as they were, for the disaster passed all bounds, and men, not knowing what might become of them, became utterly careless of everything whether sacred or profane. All the burial rites before in use were entirely upset, and they buried the bodies as best they could. Many from want of the proper appliances, through so many of their friends having died already, had recourse to the most shameless sepultures. Sometimes getting the start of those who had raised a pile, they threw their own dead body on the stranger's pyre and ignited it. Sometimes they tossed the corpse which they were carrying on the top of another that was burning and went off. Nor was this the only form of lawless extravagance which owed its origin to the plague. Men coolly ventured on what they had formerly done in a corner and not just as they pleased, seeing the rapid transitions produced by persons in prosperity suddenly dying and those who before had nothing succeeding to their property. So they resolved to spend quickly and enjoy themselves, regarding their lives and riches alike as things of a day. Perseverance in what men called honour was popular with none, it was so uncertain whether they would be spared to attain an object; but present enjoyment, and all that contributed to it, was laid down as both honourable and useful. Fear of gods or law of man, there was none to restrain them. As for the first, they judged it to be the same whether they worshipped them or not, as they saw all alike perishing; and, for the last, no one expected to live to be brought to trial for his offences, but felt that a far severer sentence had been passed on them and hung ever over their heads, and before this fell it was only reasonable to enjoy life a little.

The psychology here described was repeated again in the middle ages when plague fell on large towns.

The strict and scrupulous formality of Greek funeral ceremonial is very clearly implied here.

It has been stated in modern histories that the Greeks employed both inhumation and cremation in burial of the dead.

It seems possible that this is too wide a statement. The belief in the spirit of the dead residing with the body in the grave, would tend to promote inhumation as the method of disposal of the bodies of the deceased, just as the belief in the literal resurrection of the body led the early Christians to resort to inhumation in place of the practice of cremation which prevailed in the pagan world. They may have been forced to adopt cremation in the case of those who died at some great distance from their homes, and may also have done so in the case of those who died of plague lest the bodies might infect the living.

(II. 61.) For the judgment of mankind is relentless to the weakness that falls short of a recognised renown, as it is jealous of the arrogance that aspires higher than its due.

(II. 64.) Besides the hand of heaven must be borne with resignation, that of the enemy with fortitude.

(II. 64.) Decay is a law of nature.…

This may have been a commonplace of Thucydides' day, but one of which idealists have to be reminded. Applied to human institutions its truth is due to the fact that governments and free peoples, especially democracies, have, owing maybe to a desire to promote the interests of some particular class in the population, or to follow through ignorance the lead of an ambitious demagogue, failed to recognise those factors in their political institutions which have in the past promoted the attainable happiness of the community as a whole, and have substituted for them innovations which are eventually destructive of welfare and happiness. If a state were realisable which, like that of the Romans under the early Roman Empire, had a constitution which worked well in the interests of its whole population, and had also rulers who were capable of seeing clearly what modifications were necessary to meet changes due to changing external circumstances, then human nature would have to be treated as an exception to this 'law of nature', for it might attain to the highest practical ideal in a world where the good cannot be maintained without active resistance to the evil. Ideals to be durable must be backed by force.

(III. 64.) He who faces odium for great ends is right in his determination.

(III. 64.) They whose minds are least depressed by calamity and are most capable of meeting it are the greatest men and the greatest communities.

Illustrated by the British people in the first disastrous years of the late war.

Thucydides uses every opportunity for the insertion of some item of political philosophy, even of the philosophy of the violent and ruthless imperialist, a type with which he had no real sympathy.

(III. 39., Cleon's Speech.)

The philosophy laid down in the passages cannot for the most part be taken to represent the views of Thucydides. It is really of a negative character, a warning of the type of argument which may be expected from a violent extremist. But there are passages in the speech which are no doubt really expressive of the historian's own political philosophy.

(III. 39.) The truth is that nothing so tends to make a people insolent as sudden and unlooked-for good fortune. In most cases it is safer for mankind to have success in reason than out of reason, and it is easier for them, one may say, to stave off adversity than to preserve prosperity.

Probably a consideration added to the speech by Thucydides. No race has reason to know the truth of it better than the British in view of their experience after the war of 1914-18.

(III. 39.) Men are by nature generally inclined to treat the subservient with contempt, and the unyielding with respect.

(III. 40.) It is they who wrong their neighbour without a cause who pursue their victim to the death on account of the danger which they foresee in letting the enemy survive.

The wholesale murders by the Germans during the recent war illustrate this dictum. But communist tendency before the war also illustrated it.

(III. 45., Speech of Diodotus.) Individuals, when acting in masses, irrationally magnify the objects for which they strive.

(IV. 62., Speech of Hermocrates at Gela.) The incalculable element of the future exercises the widest influence and is the most treacherous, and yet in fact the most useful of all things, as it frightens us all equally, and makes us consider before attacking each other.

This is not a dictum which could have claimed much originality at the time at which it was written, for the Greeks seem to have always had a profound fear of the chances of life. What is emphasised is the part it plays as a deterrent of action, backed by a powerful element in human psychology.

Much the same sentiment is expressed in IV. 65.

(IV. 61. Speech of Hermocrates at Gela.) I do not blame those who wish to rule, but those who are ready to serve; for it is ever natural to man to rule those who yield to him, as it is to resist those who molest him. One is not less invariable than the other. Meanwhile those who see dangers and refuse to provide for them properly, or have come here without having made up their minds that our first duty is to unite to get rid of the common peril, are mistaken.

Probably Thucydides knew that some such view had been expressed in the original speech. It is a curious and rather unexpected deduction for the doctrine 'might is right'.

(IV. 62. Hermocrates' Speech at Gela.) Vengeance is not necessarily successful because it is just, that is to say because a wrong has been done, nor strength sure because it is confident. The incalculability of the future is the prevalent factor, and while it is the most uncertain, would nevertheless seem to be the most useful because, as all alike fear it, we think twice before attacking one another.

Here is the familiar emphasis on the incalculability of the future, a fact the Athenians were most inclined to forget, and of which those who advised them were equally inclined to remind them.

(IV. 86. Speech of Brasidas.) I am not come here to help this party or that; and the freedom which I pretend to offer is not of so dubious a kind that I should think of disregarding your constitution and of enslaving the many to the few or the few to the many. That would be heavier than a foreign yoke.

These may be words spoken by Brasidas, or at any rate a reproduction of the general sense of what he said. The words are applicable to the present time (Jan. 1945) when England has interfered in Greece to prevent a well-armed communist element from dominating the government of the country.

(IV. 92. Speech of Pagondas before Delium.) As between neighbours generally freedom means simply a determination to hold one's own; and with neighbours like these, who are trying to enslave near and far alike, there is nothing for it but to fight it out to the last.

(IV. 108. Narrative Text.) It being the habit of mankind to give to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy.

A reflection of Thucydides' own.

(V. 86-111. Extracts from the Melian Dialogue.)

(V. 89.) You know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only a question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.

(V. 103.) Hope, danger's comforter, may be indulged in by those who have enough and to spare, if not without loss, at all events without ruin. But its nature is to be extravagant, and those who go so far as to put their all upon the venture see it in its true colours when they are ruined.

(V. 103.) Nor be like the generality of mankind who, when salvation is, humanly speaking, theirs, when what seemed obvious hopes fail them, when things go wrong, have recourse to blind hope founded on prophecies and oracles and suchlike things as lead men to their destruction.

In so far as philosophy is concerned the whole dialogue is by implication an attack on the doctrine that might is right, that doctrine which Thucydides, as is shown by other passages in his history, abominated, and against that trust in hope for the future which he attacks again and again as an example of human folly. In a sense the whole dialogue might be quoted; but further quotation would be little more than a repetition of the philosophical doctrines which the passages quoted exemplify.

It is rather curious that, though Thucydides attacks, not the truth of the doctrine of the sophists, but its inapplicability to good social life, he never mentions the remedy for it which the sophists suggested as the only remedy, if social life was to be peaceful and happy, the concession of the stronger to the weaker. He accepted doctrine as a natural but not a moral law. He felt that for the happiness of human societies the strong must make concessions to the weak, and he probably felt that neither could be happy in social life unless such concessions were made.

He himself puts the natural law so crudely in the dialogue that there cannot be much doubt that he set out to write the dialogue in order to condemn by implication the doctrine itself and the appeal made to it by the Athenian ultra-democrats. It is one of the passages in his history that makes the assumption that he himself was an ultra-democrat irrational and impossible.

It is also a unique example of the dialogue form in his history.

(VI. 11. Nicias' Speech on the proposed Sicilian Expedition.) We all know that that which is farthest off and the reputation of which can least be tested is most admired.

Seems like an anticipation of Tacitus' 'Omne ignotum pro magnifico'.

(VI. 89. Speech of Alcibiades at Sparta.) As for democracy, we men of sense know what it is—and no one better than I who have every reason for cursing it. But there is nothing new to be said about a patent absurdity.

This can hardly represent Thucydides' view of every species of democracy; but it is a true statement of the view taken of it by the oligarchs of his time.

The Greek idea of patriotism was not that which the word implies in literature of the present day. In Greece in the historic period there was more sympathy between the oligarchs of different states and the democrats of different states than between the oligarchs and democrats of the same state.

The position normal at the time in Greek politics did not prevail in Athens because the existence of the Empire made it possible to find economic support for the proletariat from the tribute and, during this time of war, by employment in the fleet; and the oligarchs were too few in number to dare to move a finger without the prospect of immediate and enduring support from Sparta, that which the national party then in power at Sparta was not disposed to give.

But no Greek expected an oligarch to be loyal to his state when it was under a democracy, nor a Greek democrat, when his state was ruled by an oligarchy. How far a dissatisfied party might go is illustrated by the connivance of the Athenian democrats with Persia at the time of Marathon.

Alcibiades goes on to say 'So much for the prejudice with which I am regarded', which shows that the Spartans suspected his bona fides until they saw that he had good reason to be hostile to the Athenian democracy. They regarded his antipathy to democracy as being, under the circumstances, quite natural, and were therefore prepared to take and follow his advice in certain important respects. Also the language put into the mouth of Alcibiades by Thucydides assumes that under the circumstances he may be trusted to act in their interest.

This sympathy between extremist parties in different countries, and their tendency to let it override national patriotism, has become very noticeable in the states of Europe since the beginning of this century. The feeling was also strong at the time of the great French revolution, and remained more or less so till 1848. But in the later half of the Nineteenth Century it seems to have died away. The communist rising in Paris in 1870-71 attracted very little open sympathy in other countries.

(VII. 14. Nicias ' Dispatch from Syracuse.) Besides I know that you have a characteristic love of being told the best side of things, and then to blame the speaker if the expectations which he raised in your minds are not justified by the result; and therefore I thought it safest to declare to you the truth.

This is a difficulty which statesmen dependent for their position on popular support have often had to face.

(VII. 67. Speech of Gylippus.) Where there is the greatest hope there is also the greatest ardour for action.

(VII. 68. Speech of Gylippus.) The rarest dangers are those in which failure brings little loss and success the greatest advantage.

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

In the previous section the quotations aim at giving Thucydides' philosophy of general life. In what follows they deal with political life. The boundary between the two is somewhat vague and largely dependent on the individual who happens to be drawing it; so the reader may think that some of the quotations which appear in each of these sections ought to appear in the other.

It has been necessary to speak of Thucydides' personal views in reference to certain passages which have been already discussed. He never discloses their nature in any express words, a policy in accordance with that suppression of his own personality which is so noticeable in his history. His comments on facts, for example, in the passage in which he speaks so strongly of the effects of revolution on the psychology of the Greeks of his day, do not take the form of explicit expressions of his own opinions. But that they are so implicitly is quite clear.

It has been stated that Thucydides was a moderate democrat. Of tyranny he says nothing which could give any clue as to his feelings with regard to it, except that he says of the tyranny of the Peisistratids that it became unpopular towards its end, which may imply that he had nothing to say against it as it was during the lifetime of Peisistratus. He mentions of course more than once the suspicion entertained by the Athenians that Alcibiades was aiming at tyranny; but he does not blame Alcibiades for so doing. It is possible that he thought that a tyranny under him would have been better than the political position in Athens in the last phase of the war, for he expresses the opinion that, had Athens entrusted the management of the war to him, she might have been spared the disaster which over-took her. He speaks frequently of oligarchs and oligarchies; but of oligarchy as an institution he has practically nothing to say.

Thucydides was however an imperialist, but of the moderate type represented by the moderate democrats. They felt obliged to maintain the empire for reasons put by Thucydides in the mouths of the Athenians at the conference preceding the outbreak of the war. He did not approve of harsh and violent treatment of any ally who showed a determination to retire from mem-bership of the League. The speech which he attributes to Diodotus in the Mytilenian debate expresses probably his own views. Judging by his remarks on the subjugation of Naxos in 466 or 467 he seems to have regarded it as an injustice and a mistake that punishment for revolt should take the form of deprivation of local freedom. How Thucydides proposed to reconcile the political independence of the members of the League with the absolute necessity of maintaining it as an individual force against Persia, he neither says nor implies.

PHILOSOPHY OF POLITICS

(I. 34. Speech of the Corcyraeans.) Every colony that is well treated honours its parent state, but becomes estranged from it by injustice. For colonists are not sent forth on the understanding that they are to be the slaves of those who remain behind, but that they are to be their equals.

It is of course well known that Greek colonisation differed from that of modern times in that the colony, from the time of its founding, had political independence. In modern times colonies have progressed gradually towards such independence, and that has led to the degree of independence attained becoming at times a matter of dispute between them and the mother coun-try. Cf. the case of England's American colonies at the time of the War of Independence.

Still the remark attributed to the Corcyraeans by Thucydides is just as true in the present as in his day.

(I. 42. Corinthian Speech at Athens.) Abstention from all injustice to other first-rate powers is a greater tower of strength than anything which can be gained by the sacrifice of permanent tranquillity for an apparent temporary advantage.

(I. 75. Speech of the Athenians at Lacedaemon.) And at last when almost all hated us, when some had already revolted and had been subdued, when you had ceased to be the friends you once were, and had become objects of suspicion and dislike, it seemed no longer safe to give up our empire, as all who left it would fall to you.

It has been seen throughout history, that in nearly every alliance or coalition between different states constraint has had to be exercised either by the mass of the confederacy or by a dominant state under one of two sets of circumstances—when some of the members fail to make their contribution to the forces, military, naval, or financial of the alliance, and secondly, when some members wish to leave the coalition before the end for which it was formed is attained.

If the constraining power be a single state then, when the alliance is dissolved, it is heir to a very hostile feeling on the part of the powers on whom this constraint has had to be exercised.

In the case of the anti-Persian League, of which Athens was the leader, the period in its existence, after the Eurymedon, when the work of the League seemed to be done, and Athens nevertheless refused to dissolve it, fell within the time when the moderate democrats dominated in Athenian politics.

(I. 76. Athenian Speech at Sparta.) It has always been the law that the weaker should be controlled by the stronger.

An assertion of the natural law that might is right. It is somewhat strange that Thucydides, who had no sympathy with this law, inserts this passage in a speech made by an Athenian delegate at a time when Athens was under the control of Pericles. Various explanations of it are possible, but no one of them is convincing.

(I. 76. Athenian Speech at Sparta.) Calculations of interest have made you take up the cry of justice, a consideration which no one ever yet brought forward to hinder his own ambition when he had a chance of gaining anything by might.

The cynical character of this and the previous quotation from this speech make it possible that Thucydides wishes to indicate that the speaker is an ultrademocrat. His reports of the language of the members of the party in other parts of his work seem designed to express the cynicism of the views of political extremists.

(I. 77. Athenian Speech at Sparta.) When force can be used, law does not come in.

The same cynicism as in the previous quotations from the speech.

(I. 123. Corinthian Speech at the Second Congress at Sparta.) Treaties are broken not by resistance, but by aggression.

(I. 141. Pericles ' Speech). For in a single battle the Peloponnesians and their allies can face the rest of Greece, but they cannot carry on war against a power with equipment so different from their own because, not having one governing body, they cannot do anything with quick promptitude; since all of those states have equal votes and are of different races each seeks to forward its own interest. Hence, as is usual under such circumstances, what is done is only half done, for some wish to wreak some private revenge while others are by no means anxious to waste their own resources, and, being slow in coming together, they give but little time to the affairs of the alliance as a whole, but a much longer time to the management of their own individual interests.

This tendency in alliances and leagues has often been illustrated in history. A noticeable instance of it is the difficulties with the continental allies of England in the period preceding the battle of Blenheim. It was also strikingly illustrated when the recent League of Nations attempted to make Italy refrain from an attack on Abyssinia.

(II. 63. Speech of Pericles.) Prosperity is never safe unless combined with readiness to act.

(III. 12. Mytilenian Speech at Olympia.) What then was this friendship, or what substantial freedom could there be when we accepted each other against our inclination; where fear made them court us in war, and us them in peace; where sympathy, the ordinary basis of confidence, had its place supplied by terror, fear having more part than friendship in keeping us in the alliance: and where the first of us who was encouraged by impunity was certain to break faith with the other? (III. 37. Speech of Cleon.) Bad laws which are never changed are better for a state than good laws which have no authority.

Whether this is a dictum with which Thucydides would agree is doubtful. But it must be remembered that there is a philosophy of the bad and the worse as well as of the good and the bad.

ALLIANCE

(I. 32. Corcyraean Speech at Athens.) (A state) which never in the past formed a voluntary alliance with anyone has now to ask alliance of others, and owing to this policy we have isolated ourselves for the present war with Corinth, and what aforetime seemed prudence to us, the avoidance of risk involved in any foreign alliance due to the danger involved in the policy of a neighbour, this isolation now seems folly and weakness.

As to the cases in history in which some states have followed a policy of isolation, its wisdom or unwisdom has depended on the circumstances of the time. But generally speaking, there is danger in such a policy when it involves the refusal to help other states which are assailed by an aggressor, since their subjugation may lead to a new geographical situation in which the aggressive state is brought nearer to the isolated state, and that state has to appeal for help to those states to which it has in the past refused it.

(I. 39. Corinthian Speech.) They should have shared their power with you before they asked you to share their fortunes.

The results of isolation are indicated in the preceding comment on the passage from the Corcyraean speech.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF WAR

Thucydides' philosophy of war includes much which has become commonplace in the centuries that have passed since he wrote. But his remarks have a truth which is wonderful, considering that they were not drawn from centuries of past military experience em-bracing a large mass of literature, but are the conclusions which a very able man drew from a very meagre supply of facts, and drew correctly, owing to his capacity for seeing which were the permanent and which were the incidental elements in the making of events. It is a distinction which only the highest intellect can make successfully.

The attitude to war shown by mankind at all ages of the world is remarkable for much backsight, if a word may be used in a new application, and very little foresight. Soldiers, especially those of armies with a great past history, are intensely conservative of those military principles which have led them to victory in the past, regardless of developments, however significant, which have rendered those principles out of date. The Spartans at the beginning of the Ten Years' War were, in spite of the warnings of Archidamus, quite convinced that the hoplite phalanx would be just as effective in that war as it had been in the wars of the past.

It was the same with the Romans in the days of Rutilius Rufus. For a hundred years they had been blind to the lessons which the Second Punic War ought to have taught them. The English in the Boer War were still using close order in attack, though its ineffectiveness against the modern rifle had been conclusively shown at Plevna twenty-three years before.

It will not be necessary to comment on the passages in Thucydides which state principles in the art of war. They will merely be quoted. Many other examples in medieval and modern warfare might be quoted in reference to the principle which has just been discussed.

As Thucydides was writing the history of a war, his references to the major and minor principles of war are naturally numerous.

(I. 34. Speech of Corcyraeans at Athens.) It is our policy to be beforehand with her … We ought to form plans against her instead of waiting to defeat her designs.

(I. 34. Speech of Corcyraeans at Athens.) Since he who has least cause to repent the fact that he has given way to opponents will be the safest in the end.

This would be applicable to Munich, had not the criminal laxity of previous years made any other course impossible.

(I. 36. Speech of the Corcyraeans.) You must remember on the one hand that your strength will be formidable to your antagonists; and on the other, that whatever the confidence you derive from refusing to receive us, your weakness will have no terrors for a strong enemy.

Largely applicable to the situation just before the outbreak of the war of 1914-18, when Britain seemed to hesitate about entering the war in case of the invasion of Belgium.

(III. 30. Speech of Teutiaplus the Elean on the Revolt of Mytilene.) Let us not shrink from the risk, but let us remember that this is just one of the surprises of war that we have all heard of; and that to be able to guard against these in one's own case, and to have the eye to see them when they can be used against an enemy is what makes a successful general.

(I. 69. Corinthian Speech at Sparta.) For it is not he who reduces a people to subjection, but he who could prevent that being done, but ignores it, who is more truly the doer of the deed.

(I. 78. Speech of the Athenians at Sparta.) As to war, do not wait till you are engaged in it to be convinced of the great incalculability of its nature. It is wont, if prolonged, to become an affair of chance from which neither of us will be exempt, and its issue is an unseen risk. Men on entering into a war resort first to action which is that which they ought to postpone; but, when disaster overtakes them, resort to deliberation.

(I. 42. Pericles' Speech.) For the times and tides of war wait for no man.

Cf. Runstedt's recent attack (December 1944) on the allies in the Ardennes.

(I. 82. Speech of Archidamus.) War undertaken by a coalition for sectional interests, whose progress there is no means of foreseeing, does not easily admit of creditable settlement.

(I. 81. Speech of Archidamus.) For let us not be elated by the fatal hope of the war being ended by the devastation of their lands.

(I. 83. Speech of Archidamus.) War is a matter not so much of arms as of money, which makes arms of use.

(I. 84. Speech of Archidamus.) We are warlike owing to our being well-disciplined—warlike, because the main element in it is a sense of one's own measure, as in courage the main element is a feeling which makes us shun disgrace.

(I. 85. Speech of Archidamus.) We always in practice base our preparations against an enemy on the assumption that his plans are good.

There have been many subsequent occasions in history on which successful generals have attributed much of their success to this assumption.

(I. 120. Corinthian Speech at the Second Congress at Sparta.) If wise men remain quiet while they are not injured, brave men abandon peace for war when they are injured, returning to an understanding on a favourable opportunity: in fact they are neither intoxicated by their success in war, nor disposed to take an injury for the sake of the delightful tranquillity of peace. Indeed to falter for the sake of such delights is, if he fail to act, the quickest way of losing the sweets of repose which make you shun war, while to conceive extravagant pretensions from success in war is to forget how hollow is the confidence by which you are elated. For if many ill-conceived plans have succeeded through the still greater fatuity of an opponent, many more, apparently well-laid, have on the contrary ended in disgrace. For there is never an exact correspondence between the promise of deliberation and the performance of execution; but speculation may be carried on in safety, while fear causes failure in action.

Strongly applicable to the states of Western Europe in the years preceding the second world war.

(I. 122. Speech of Corinthians.) For war of all things proceeds least on definite rules, but draws principally on itself for contrivances to meet an emergency.

It is difficult to see clearly in what application this statement is made. Taking the history of war as a whole, there have been occasions which have illustrated its truth; but success, even under these circumstances, depends on adherence to general rules of war established by long experience.

(I. 140. Speech of Pericles.) I know that the spirit with which men are persuaded to go to war is not that with which they actually engage in it, and that their opinions vary with the variations of events.

(I. 140. Speech of Pericles.) If you give way, you will instantly have to meet some greater demand, as having been frightened into concession; while a firm refusal will make them clearly understand that they must treat you more as equals.

In some ways correspondent to the position at the time of Munich.

(I. 140. Speech of Pericles.) For sometimes the course of things is as arbitrary as the plans of Man; indeed this is why we usually blame chance for whatever does not happen as we expected.

(I. 141. Speech of Pericles.) Farmers are a class that are always more ready to serve in person than in purse.

(I. 143. Speech of Pericles.) Seamanship, like everything else, is a matter of art, and will not permit of being taken as a by-play, and picked up at odd times. On the contrary, it is so exacting as almost to exclude by-play altogether.

(II. 63. Speech of Pericles.) You cannot decline the burden of empire and still expect to share its honours … For what you hold is, to speak somewhat plainly, tyranny. To take it perhaps was wrong; but to let it go is unsafe.

Thucydides' moral attitude towards these statements cannot be judged. They may merely give a general idea of what Pericles actually said. He leaves the moral situation on one side; but he does believe that these things are true, though they are the outcome of a morally doubtful situation. It may be seen that these truths are to a certain extent applicable to the present relations between Britain and India. (1945).

(II. 64. Speech of Pericles.) Unambition is never secure without vigour at its side.

It is possible that Pericles was referring to that movement towards a negotiated peace, which existed in Athens in these early years of the war. Its existence is known from certain passages in Aristophanes.

(IV. 17. Speech of Lacedaemonian envoys at Athens after the disaster on Sphacteria.) You can avoid the mistake of those who meet with an extraordinary piece of good fortune, and are led on by hope to grasp continually at something further, through having already succeeded without expecting it. Those who have known most vicissitudes of good and bad have justly lost faith in their prosperity. And your state and ours have had the experience which might teach them this lesson.

(VI. 91. Speech of Alcibiades at Sparta.) The surest method of harming an enemy is to find out what he most fears, and to choose this means of attacking him, since everyone naturally knows best his own weak points.

Illustrated in the recent war by the attacks which the allies have made from the air on German manufacturing centres, especially in the Ruhr.

DEMOCRACY

(III. 37. Speech of Cleon.) Often before now and on other occasions have I been convinced that democracy is incapable of empire, and never more than by your present change of mind with regard to the Mytilenians.

This is in nowise an expression of Thucydides' own view, but one of the various passages which illustrates the psychology of the ultra-democrats.

RHETORIC

(III. 38. Speech of Cleon.) In such contests the state gives the rewards to others and takes the danger for herself. The persons to blame are you who are so foolish as to institute these contests; who go to see an oration as you would go to see a sight, take your facts on hearsay, judge of the practicability of a project by the wit of its advocates, and, as far as the past is concerned, you do not accept what you have actually seen as more trustworthy than what you have heard in specious verbal criticisms. The easy victims of new-fangled arguments, unwilling to follow the conclusions of experience, slaves to every new paradox, contemptuous of everyday experience; the first wish of every man being that he could speak himself, the next to rival those who can speak by seeming to be quite au fait with their ideas, by applauding every hit almost before it is made, and by being as quick in catching an argument as you are slow in foreseeing its consequences; asking, so to speak, for something different from the conditions under which we live, and yet comprehending inadequately those very conditions; very slaves to the pleasure of the ear, and more like the audience of a rhetorician than the council of a state.

As a picture of real life in a democracy this is one of the most remarkable passages in Thucydides. The same thing might be said with truth of political audiences at the present day and in modern times.

It is rather remarkable that Thucydides puts the words into the mouth of Cleon. But Cleon was condemning, not his own ultra-democrats, but those of the moderate party who had doubtless flocked into the city with the express intention of getting the decision of the day before, condemning the whole male population of Mytilene to death, revoked.

The Athenian Assembly suffered from the same weakness as the assemblies of other city states, namely that it was inconvenient and difficult for the rural population to attend its meetings at the city centre of the state, so that at Athens the town population was assured of a majority, unless any important or exciting proposal was to come before the meeting.

In Attica the rural population, chiefly small farmers, was mainly of the middle or moderate conservative party, whereas the town population of Athens and Piraeus was mainly ultra-democratic. Thucydides says that at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War the rural outnumbered the urban population.

REVOLUTION

(III. 82-4.) Later the whole Greek world so to speak was convulsed in forms varying in various places, the democratic leaders seeking to introduce the Athenians, and the oligarchs the Lacedaemonians.

In peace they would not have had an excuse for calling them in, nor would they have been willing to do so, but in war it was different, and each having an alliance with which they could both harm their opponents and benefit themselves, helpers from outside were easily introduced by would-be revolutionaries. And many grievous things befell the states by way of revolution, such as do occur and always will occur so long as human nature remains the same, but in a more or less violent measure, and differing in form with the variety of circumstances which accompany them. For in peace and prosperity states and individuals display better dispositions, owing to their not falling under imperious necessities.

But war, which takes away the supply of daily bread, is a hard schoolmaster, and assimilates the temper of the masses to the circumstances of the time. Revolution therefore ran its course from city to city, and those at which it arrived latest, having heard what had previously happened elsewhere, carried matters much further in respect to innovation of design, elaboration in attack, and the brutality of their acts of revenge. And they changed the ordinary meanings of terms as applied to acts, owing to the way in which they thought right to regard them. For senseless audacity was called manly esprit de corps, and caution was called specious cowardice, and moderation a coward's excuse, and a wise caution in everything useless inaction. And an impulsive rashness was ascribed to a manly nature, and considerations of safety a plausible excuse for changing sides. The harsh and violent man was always to be trusted, and anyone who opposed him was untrustworthy. A successful plotter was a shrewd fellow, and he who saw through it shrewder still. But one who took measures to render neither of these things necessary was one who broke up his party and was afraid of his adversaries. Speaking plainly, he who forestalled one likely to injure the party was praised, so also one who brought in one who had had no intention of joining it. So, too, relationship was regarded as less binding than partisanship, owing to the latter making a man more ready to take blind risks; such associations not having in view the blessings derivable from the law as established, but the promotion of their own interests in contravention of the established laws; while the confidence of their members in each other rests less on any divine sanction than on complicity in crime. The fair speeches of adversaries were received with active precautions by the stronger of the two, and not with a generous confidence. Revenge was held of more account than self-preservation. Oaths of reconciliation, if proffered on either side to meet a momentary difficulty, held good so long as those who swore them had no other resource; but when opportunity offered, he who first ventured to seize it and to take his enemy off his guard thought that vengeance sweeter which was due to the trustfulness of the other side than if taken openly, and he took into account the safety of it, and further, having won a victory by deceit, he had won the prize of intelligence. Indeed criminals are more often called clever than simpletons are called honest, and men are ashamed of being the one, but proud of being the other. The cause of all these evils was the lust for power due to greed and ambition. Out of this came the zeal of contending parties. For the leaders in the states, each side under a specious name, the political equality of the proletariat, and the prestige of a wise aristocracy, whilst nominally managing the public interests, made them prizes, and trying in every way to get the better of one another, ventured on the most terrible deeds, and proceeded to reprisals still more terrible, not inflicting punishment in accordance with justice and the interests of the state, but limiting it only at their own pleasure. They were ready to glut the animosity of the moment either by condemnation on an unjust verdict or by forcible seizure of power. Thus neither party paid attention to religion; but the use of fair names to arrive at guilty ends was in high reputation. The moderates were destroyed by both sides, either because they did not join either, or because they were grudged their chance of survival.

Thus every form of wickedness arose in the Hellenic world by way of revolution, and the old simplicity in which nobility had so large a place was ridiculed and disappeared. Being arrayed against one another in ideas, antagonistic parties prevailed with resulting widespread distrust, for there was no regard for a promise or oath such as might have brought about a reconciliation, but all when they held the upper hand, not reckoning on any hope of security, could provide against danger rather than cherish confidence. And intellectual inferiors were usually the survivors. For from fear of their own inferiority and the cleverness of their opponents, they feared to be worsted in debate and caught off their guard by the versatility in design of opponents who plotted against them. And so they took bold action. So their opponents with a contemptuous confidence that they would see through them and that there was no need to take action where strategy would be effective, were caught unawares and perished.

In Corcyra men ventured on most of these acts, and did all that might be perpetrated by men who had been governed with tyranny rather than tolerance by those who now offered them an opportunity for revenge, some wishing to get rid of their wonted poverty and above all, owing to what they had suffered, to get hold of their neighbours' property, gave false verdicts in the courts, and some, not with a view to gain the better of rivals but of men on an equality with themselves, carried away by ungovernable passion, made cruel and pitiless attacks on them. For the time being all order in civic life ceased, and human nature always rebelling against the law and now its master, readily showed itself to be of an unbridled temper superior to justice and hostile to all superiority, for otherwise it would not have put gain before moral right, had not envy had an evil influence. Men claim, when revenging themselves on others, to set aside the accepted laws on matters on which depends the hope of salvation for those in trouble, and not to leave those laws in existence against the day when the man in trouble needs their help.

Before dealing with the matter of this passage there are certain things which must be said with regard to its form. Grammatically involved passages are found scattered through the speeches in Thucydides; but there is no passage in his history in which the confused nature of Thucydides' Greek is so difficult to unravel by grammatical analysis. Thucydides was aiming at exploiting the new style to the full, but, owing to his exile, he had to work alone.

There are two features of this passage in Thucydides which render it unique from a linguistic point of view. In the first place, it is the only passage in the actual narrative of his history in which he adopts the style he has used in the speeches. Secondly, so far as grammatical peculiarities are concerned, they are far more frequent, and in some cases present greater difficulties, than the language of the speeches. When he wrote the speeches he had made some advance at any rate in his writing of Greek on the new lines.

So much for the form of the passage. Of the matter it may be said that it is perhaps the most remarkable of his contributions to mass psychology. There is hardly an item in it which cannot be paralleled in the history of modern revolutions, and especially in the revolutions of the last thirty years. Yet these forecasts were made on premises very restricted in number and in respect to the period which provided them. Thucydides seems to have been as it were a psychological anatomist, who dissected the human mind with results just as scientific as the results of the dissection of the human body.

It would be superfluous to cite from the histories of modern revolutions parallels to the various characteristics of revolution which Thucydides cites. They are easily recognisable to anyone who has even a moderate knowledge of modern history.

Those who after reading the passages quoted in this chapter remain unconvinced of Thucydides' aim to be not merely a historian but also a historical philosopher, will not be convinced by anything that an editor of his work may say. But they may be reminded that it would have been strange if a man of his ability had claimed that his work was to be a 'possession for ever' on the basis merely of his narrative of the events of the war.

This philosophical element in his work cannot be paralleled in the work of any other ancient historian, and does not play any noticeable part in any work of a modern writer.

One of the greatest losses the literary world has experienced is the fact that he did not live to continue it by insertions of speeches in the narrative of the fifth and eighth books, and in a history of the last years of the war which he never lived to write. It seems strange that he left his work incomplete, since it contains evidence that he lived at least till 398 or 399. One surmise is possible. The writing of history on a large scale leaves the writer a sadder if not a wiser man. He had to write the history of his own country, beginning at the time of the Periclean democracy and ending with the disaster of Aegospotami and its aftermath. The contrast between those last tragic years and the position at the time of the opening of the war may have broken his heart and led him to carry on reluctantly and slowly the task of telling the story of the bitter end, so slowly that death overtook him before he finished it.