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Thucydides' View of Athenian Imperialism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Christopher Bruell
Christopher Bruell*
Affiliation:
Boston College
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Abstract

The paper attempts, through an examination of Thucydides' treatment of a significant problem, to illustrate the character of an older approach to the understanding of politics and to argue, implicitly, for the validity of that approach. The approach in question is shaped by the thoughts that the barriers standing in the way of a “scientific” approach to politics are much greater than today is sometimes assumed and that there is no more direct path to the removal of those barriers than the painstaking elaboration and subsequent refinement of the assumptions which shape and frame our view of the issues of politics. Thucydides' “history” is seen as intended to facilitate such an elaboration and refinement; his treatment of Athenian imperialism is accordingly presented in various stages, which first appeal to the prejudices with which the reader is likely to approach the work and then lead him gradually, through an examination of these, to Thucydides' own understanding, which is much more heterodox than is ordinarily supposed.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , March 1974 , pp. 11 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1974

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Footnotes

*

I am indebted in many points, both general and particular, to the discussion of Thucydides in Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964).

References

1 These references, which will hereafter be indicated by number alone, are standard for any Greek edition of Thucydides and are referred to in most translations.

2 Cf. the introductions to the Penguin ( Thucydides, : History of the Peloponnesian War, translated with an introduction by Warner, Rex [Baltimore: Penguin Books], p. 5 Google ScholarPubMed) and Loeb, (Thucydides, translated by Smith, Charles Foster [London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1919], p. xvii)Google Scholar translations.

3 Gomme, Arnold Wycombe. A Historical Commentary on Thucydides (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1945) on III. 41 Google Scholar.

4 The Athenians at Sparta perhaps themselves move in the indicated direction in I. 76: …ἀεὶ χαϑεστῶτος τὸν ἥσσω ὑπὸ τοῦ δυνατωιέϱον χατείϱγεσθαι … (my underlining). Cf. the discussion of their speech in Part One above.

5 Given my argument—see the preface—for the necessity of a naive—as opposed, for example, to a scholarly—starting point in the study of Thucydides, it may perhaps be helpful to point out that the differences between my conclusions and those of de Romilly, Jâcqueline in Thucydide et l'impérialisme athénien (Paris: Budé, 1951, 2nd ed.)Google Scholar on the meaning of the opposition of right and force or compulsion—cf., for example, with Part Three above, de Romilly pp. 256–59, esp. 257, as well as 280–82 and 243–44—are not unrelated to the greater seriousness with which I take, and argue that Thucydides takes, the issue of justice, the issue of the justice of Athenian imperialism, in the first place (cf. de Romily, pp. 89–91).

6 A. W. Gomme, on III. 41.

7 An ancient commentator reports the saying of “some” who were surprised that the sober Thucydides went into such detail to explain a curse: “Here the lion laughed.” (See the scholia collected by C. Hude, at about I. 126.)

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