When I read some parts of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, I was surprised to see how topical this book still is, 2400 years after it has been written. The facts in the book are a history of the time that the historian Thucydides (c. 460 – c. 400 BC) lived. Nevertheless, if one abstracts from the concrete facts, and take the parties in the war as abstract agents, then it is as if not much has changed. The Peloponnesian War was a war between the Greek city states of Athens and Sparta. Although this war lasted from 431-404 BC, in fact both towns were for a big part of the 5th century BC each other’s competitors if not enemies. Politically and economically both states were very different. Athens was a democracy and a sea power, while Sparta was an authoritarian state and a land power. Both had built their empires by making alliances with other Greek states or by outright subjecting them by force and forcing them to return to their alliances if they wanted to quit. Already this is, I think, enough to make pop up in your mind the conflict between the USA and the Western countries on the one hand and the Soviet Union and now Russia and their allies on the other hand. Once I saw this, it was not difficult for me to apply what happened in Greece 2400-2500 years ago to the present Ukrainian War, in which Ukraine fights a proxy war for the western countries against Russia, after having been invaded by this country without having given any reason for that. This conflict of a democracy state v. an authoritarian state and a sea power v. a land power is especially apparent in the so-called “Funeral Oration” of the Athenian general Pericles (c. 495-429 BC) on occasion of the funeral of a number of fallen Athenian soldiers. Actually, you should read the whole speech.
Usually in my blogs, I comment on texts and I explain their relevance to the present situation, but in this case, I think it is better to quote a long passage of Pericles’ speech, which contains, to my mind, the essence of what he wants to say, and which would lose persuasion, when I would summarize it. It’s up to you to apply the text to the Ukrainian war or any other war since 1945, or maybe also before that date.
Before you are going to read this fragment, a few warnings. The text (which I have copied from the Gutenberg project website) does not give the words originally spoken by Pericles but the words as Thucydides thinks (with good reason) that Pericles has spoken them. Moreover, there is much ideology in the words of Pericles; just as there is much ideology in the way western leaders defend western democracy (and as there is much ideology in the words of their adversaries). The speech is meant to motivate the Athenians to participate in the war against Sparta and to praise the deeds of the soldiers fallen. In democratic Athens, women had no say in politics; only men had. Moreover, Athens was a slave society, as all Greek states in those days. Democracy in Athens existed only for the free male Athenians. Moreover, the speech represents only the Athenian point of view. It would be worthwhile to have the Spartan point of view as well (I have no idea whether Spartan writings that explain that view still exist). It’s the same as presenting the western point of view and ignoring how people in Russia think about the situation at the same time. Here then is the fragment I have chosen:
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Excerpt from Pericles’ “Funeral Oration”Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighbouring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favours the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book, or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace.
Further, we provide plenty of means for the mind to refresh itself from business. We celebrate games and sacrifices all the year round, and the elegance of our private establishments forms a daily source of pleasure and helps to banish the spleen; while the magnitude of our city draws the produce of the world into our harbour, so that to the Athenian the fruits of other countries are as familiar a luxury as those of his own.
If we turn to our military policy, there also we differ from our antagonists. We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality; trusting less in system and policy than to the native spirit of our citizens; while in education, where our rivals from their very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness, at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger. … Our united force was never yet encountered by any enemy, because we have at once to attend to our marine and to dispatch our citizens by land upon a hundred different services; so that, wherever they engage with some such fraction of our strength, a success against a detachment is magnified into a victory over the nation, and a defeat into a reverse suffered at the hands of our entire people. And yet if with habits not of labour but of ease, and courage not of art but of nature, we are still willing to encounter danger, we have the double advantage of escaping the experience of hardships in anticipation and of facing them in the hour of need as fearlessly as those who are never free from them.
Nor are these the only points in which our city is worthy of admiration. We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and, instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all. Again, in our enterprises we present the singular spectacle of daring and deliberation, each carried to its highest point, and both united in the same persons; although usually decision is the fruit of ignorance, hesitation of reflection. But the palm of courage will surely be adjudged most justly to those, who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger. In generosity we are equally singular, acquiring our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favours. Yet, of course, the doer of the favour is the firmer friend of the two, in order by continued kindness to keep the recipient in his debt; while the debtor feels less keenly from the very consciousness that the return he makes will be a payment, not a free gift. And it is only the Athenians, who, fearless of consequences, confer their benefits not from calculations of expediency, but in the confidence of liberality.
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SourceThucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7142/pg7142-images.html
Recommended
Johanna Anink (ed., translation), How to think about war. Thucydides. An ancient guide to foreign policy. Speeches from The History of the Peloponnesian War. Princeton/Oxford: Prince University Press, 2019.
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