Lattimore Steven - The Peloponnesian war

AHB: Ancient History Bulletin

AJP: American Journal of Philology

BICS: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London

CA: Classical Antiquity

CJ: Classical Journal

CP: Classical Philology

CQ: Classical Quarterly

GRBS: Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies

HCT: Historical Commentary on Thucydides

JHS: Journal of Hellenic Studies

LCM: Liverpool Classical Monthly

PP: La Parola del Passato

TAPA: Transactions of the American Philological Association

In a long and characteristically intricate sentence, Thucydides begins by introducing himself and his subject. For the latter, he claims a unique magnitude, justifying this in part by putting forward what he regards as the first reasonably accurate survey of early Greek history, the Archaeology; sea power, a great leitmotif in book 1, is given special prominence. The methods he uses here illustrate the ones he intends to follow throughout his work: objectivity, careful examination of all evidence, avoidance of mythology and story-telling; the speeches, however, must not be taken as transcripts of all that was said. The first two of these (Thucydidean speeches are frequently paired) are in the context of the events leading to the outbreak of war. Thucydides expresses his hope to have made clear for all time the causes, both immediate and long-term, of the Peloponnesian War. The most important of these, the growth of Athenian power and Spartan fear of it, lead him to survey the period of ca. 479433 B.C.E., the Pentakontaetia. Returning to the immediately prewar period, he describes the assembly at Sparta in which the Peloponnesian alliance reached the decision to declare war. Final negotiations with Athens are the occasion for the prewar stories of Kylon, Pausanias, and Themistokles, told in an uncharacteristically straightforward and entertaining style (this does not necessarily reflect Herodotean influence and would not necessarily be early writing on that account). At the conclusion of the book is the first of three speeches Thucydides gives Perikles, notable for its optimistic assessment of Athenian strength and concomitant intransigence.

Book 1 is the most ambitious and original portion of Thucydides work; it is also the most controversial of the eight books. Book 1 confronts the reader squarely with the so-called Thucydidean question: Which passages were composed at which date? Equally central is the newer, post modernist question: What sort of historian was Thucydides, and how accurate? Every major feature of book 1 has been called seriously flawed. The justification of his subject has been seen as rhetorical exaggeration; the Archaeology, as full of naive anachronisms and overcredulous (despite Thucydides several disclaimers) in its use of Homer. Thucydides policy on recording speeches has been found confused, even contradictory; his practice, deficient in whatever accuracy he meant to claim. Rather than proving definitive, his analysis of the causes of the war has been controversial enough to generate exhaustive modern debate, and some have seen here something less pardonable in a historian than confusion or obscurity: an attempt, after the event, at an apologia for Periklean Athens, even a programmatic falsification of genuine Spartan attempts to avoid the conflict. The stories about Kylon, Pausanias, and Themistokles are conceded more charm than authenticity.

For all its problems and controversies, the survival of book 1 alone would have assured us that Thucydides was a writer of exceptional intellectual and artistic power.

The Peloponnesian War begins with a Theban attack on Plataia; in the first of a series of excitingly written narratives involving the Plataians, the Thebans fail and are harshly dealt with. Both sides now consider the Thirty-Year Peace (dating from 445) at an end and mobilize. Led by the Spartan king Archidamos, the Peloponnesians invade and ravage Attica, whose evacuation causes the Athenians great physical and emotional suffering; while offering only token resistance, they begin their own annual invasions of the neighboring territory of Megara and also send a large Athenian and Corcyrean fleet to plunder the Peloponnesian coast. Thucydides describes the elaborate public funeral for the Athenian casualties of the first war year and records the eulogy by Perikles, which commemorates the achievements and ideals of Athens as well as the courage of the men themselves.

Early in the second year, Athens is devastated by a plague, whose terrible symptoms Thucydides describes as one who was stricken and was fortunate enough to survive. He does not mention the plague as the cause of Perikles death in the following year but uses the plagues aftermath as a setting for an obituary before the event. The disease not only kills a great number of Athenians but also leaves the surviving population in a mood of cynicism and lawlessness, which provides the sharpest possible contrast with the Athens both described and addressed in Perikles funeral oration. The Athenians of this depressed city first send ambassadors to Sparta to discuss peace, unsuccessfully, and then angrily turn on Perikles; he responds with an uncompromising speech defending his war policy, his qualities of leadership, and the necessity of making every personal sacrifice to preserve an empire whose glory will outlast the hatred it now admittedly inspires. In response, the Athenians deposed and fined him. His speech is his final appearance in Thucydides, who complements the speech with a long chapter commending Perikles for his control over the people and the prudence of his advice to them; the war was lost by his successors, self-serving demagogues responsible for series of mistakes, notably the Sicilian expedition. This is the most explicitly postwar passage in Thucydides and among the most vexed, because the indictment of Athenian politicians is notoriously difficult to reconcile with his overall account.

Taken together, the sequence of Periklean speeches, especially the final one, juxtaposes Perikles function of alternately encouraging and restraining the Athenians and the problem of imposing a relatively passive strategy, which demanded considerable patience and self-sacrifice on a dynamic and adventurous people. While Thucydides did not design book 2 as a unit, its subsequent events indicate a troubled period for Athens with Perikles first out of power and then, shortly after his re-election, dead. The Athenians successfully conclude the siege of Potidaia they had begun shortly before the war, but at the cost of some dissension among themselves and without ending revolts in the area. The Peloponnesians begin a siege of Plataia, a close ally to whom the Athenians can send only minimal help; even though this is in accordance with Perikles strategy, the Athenians also demand resistance, brave and resourceful but ultimately doomed, on the part of the Plataians. Phormio wins a pair of important naval victories in the gulf of Corinth, but the second of these involves a last-minute reversal of impending and disastrous defeat in a situation created by Athenian mismanagement. Furthermore, a direct response on the part of the Peloponnesians is a surprise raid against Salamis; even though its failure is further indication of the inferiority of Peloponnesian seamanship, Thucydides insists both on its near-success and on the extreme panic it caused in Athens. The book ends on a note of anticlimax suggestive of missed Athenian opportunities. Sitalkes, a Thracian ally, who was not there to help when the Athenians suffered a sharp defeat by rebellious Greeks in the Chalkidike, campaigns against these same Greeks with almost grotesquely large forces (whose mustering from many local tribes Thucydides describes in detail) and at first strikes terror; but partly because of the difficulty of provisioning his huge army with winter approaching, partly because expected Athenian land and naval forces never materialize (because they in turn did not believe he would come), he withdraws before doing appreciable damage.