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Enlightened Self-Interest in the Peloponnesian War: Thucydidean Speakers on the Right of the Stronger and Inter-State Peace*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Patrick Coby
Patrick Coby
Affiliation:
Smith College
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Abstract

The speakers in Thucydides who give voice to the sophistic thesis that might is right do not generally think that what they are releasing upon the world is a war of all against all. On the contrary, they are hopeful, like the modern utilitarians they anticipate, that their realistic assessment of human motives can serve as the foundation of an inter-state order based not on justice but on clear and certain power relations. The most perceptive of these speakers is Diodotus, who addresses his theory of imperial management to the difficult problem of the rise and fall of states. But the psychology upon which this theory rests points toward confederation in place of empire and toward constitutional government in place of democracy, run by demagogues. It also implies a reasoner, perhaps Diodotus himself, who is master of his own desires. In the end Diodotus seems somewhat at odds with the sophistic rationalism he so ably espouses.

Résumé

Les rhéteurs de Thucydide qui soutiennent la thèse sophistique qui veut que la force passe droit ne pensent pas en général que l'application de leurs idées équivaudrait à la guerre de tous contre tous. Au contraire, tout comme les utilitaristes modernes qui les suivront, ils croient que leur évaluation réaliste des motivations de l'humanité peut fonder un ordre inter-étatique reposant non sur la justice mais sur des rapports de puissance lucides et sûrs. Le plus perspicace de ces rhéteurs est Diodote, dont la théorie de ja gestion impériale s'attaque au difficile problème de la grandeur et de la décadence des États. Or, les bases psychologiques sur lesquelles cette théorie se fonde sont orientées vers la confédération plutôt que l'empire, le gouvernement constitutionnel au lieu de la démocratie des démagogues. Elle suppose un maître à pensée, peut-être Diodote lui-m≖me, qui contrôle ses propres impulsions. Au bout du compte, Diodote s'accorde assez mal avec le rationalisme sophistique dont il se reclame habilement.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 67 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1991

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References

1 Translations from the Greek are my own. Citations are from Thucydides, , Historiae, ed. by Jones, Henry Stuart, rev. by John Enoch Powell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942)Google Scholar, and are given by book, paragraph and sentence.

2 See Finley, John H. Jr., Thucydides (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1942), 44–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jaeger, Werner, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, Vol. 1, trans, by Highet, Gilbert (2nd ed.; New York: Oxford University Press, 1945), 402Google Scholar; Grundy, G. B., Thucydides and the History of His Age, Vol. 2 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1948), 7–8, 16–17, 22Google Scholar; and de Romilly, Jacqueline, Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism, trans, by Thody, Philip (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963), 298–305Google Scholar. De Romilly attributes Thucydides' education more to the events of the war than to the sophists of the fifth century; compare Finley, Thucydides, 73.

3 Freeman, Kathleen, ed., Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 144–153Google Scholar.

4 For fuller discussions of the Antiphon fragment, see Kerferd, G. B., “The Moral and Political Doctrines of Antiphon the Sophist: A Reconsideration,”Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (1959), 26–32Google Scholar; Morrison, J. S., “The Truth of Antiphon,” Phronesis 8(1963), 35–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Guthrie, W. K. C., A History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 285–294Google Scholar; Moulton, Carroll, “Antiphon the Sophist, On Truth,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Society 103 (1973), 329–367CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Saunders, Trevor J., “Antiphon the Sophist on Natural Laws,”Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1978), 216–235Google Scholar; and Furley, David J., “Antiphon's Case Against Justice,” in Kerferd, G. B., ed., The Sophists and Their Legacy (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1981), 81–91Google Scholar.

5 Parts 1 and 2 of this essay can be read as a reply to James Boyd White's study of the “culture of argument” in Thucydides, (When Words Lose Their Meaning [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984], 59–92)Google Scholar. The end of Part 3, however, suggests areas of agreement.

6 Hobbes's first published work was a translation of Thucydides. On the indebtedness of Leviathan to Thucydides, see Grene, David, “Hobbes's Translation of Thucydides,” in Grene, David, ed., Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959), xixGoogle Scholar; Richard Schlatter, Introduction, in Schlatter, Richard, ed., Hobbes's Thucydides (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1975), xix–xxviiiGoogle Scholar; Pouncey, Peter R., The Necessities of War: A Study of Thucydides' Pessimism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 43, 151–57Google Scholar; and Brown, Clifford W. Jr., “Thucydides, Hobbes, and the Derivation of Anarchy,” History of Political Thought 8 (1987), 31–62Google Scholar, and “Thucydides, Hobbes, and the Linear Causal Perspective,” History of Political Thought 10 (1989), 215–256Google Scholar.

7 These same three desires appear in Hobbes, and along with the condition of equality they account for the war of all against all in the state of nature. Hobbes's prescription for peace is the subordination of honour, called glory, to fear and interest, called diffidence and gain. Leviathan, says Hobbes, is “King of the Proud” (Leviathan, ed. by Oakeshott, Michael [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, n.d.], chap. 13, 80–82; chap. 28, 209)Google Scholar. See Bluhm, William T., “Causal Theory in Thucydides' Peloponnesian War” Political Studies 10 (1962), 19CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a similar statement on the right ordering of these desires; also Schlatter, Hobbes's Thucydides, xxi.

8 See Cogan, Marc, The Human Thing: The Speeches and Principles of Thucydides' History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 25–27Google Scholar. Cogan also argues that the Athenians attempt to pacify tempers by conveying the limited character of their ambitions. His focus, however, is on the record of Athenian action during the Thirty Year truce and on the claim by the ambassadors that Athens treats its allies more generously than is required.

9 I might add that Archidamus' estimation of Athenian strength is in full agreement with Pericles' and anticipates the latter's speech (compare 1.80–81 and 1.141–42) and that like Pericles Archidamus seems more interested in establishing and maintaining equality than in striving for supremacy (compare 1.82 and 1.144.2). Cogan (The Human Thing, 31–33) does not quite accept that Archidamus is working to keep the peace or that he is persuaded that continued peace with Athens is possible. War will come, but its initiation, Archidamus believes, lies with the Spartans, and it will be a war like all other wars. Even if Cogan is correct on the point of future war, his overall assessment of Archidamus suggests that he is a man with whom the Athenians can deal.

10 The Thebans offer a similar justification of their feelings toward the Plataeans (3.67.2). See Raubitschek, A. E., “The Speech of the Athenians at Sparta,” in Stadter, Philip A., ed., The Speeches in Thucydides (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973), 35Google Scholar.

11 De Romilly remarks: “Moreover, how could one pretend that Athens is asking for too much? She is asking only for what she has actually been given; and she certainly seemed worthy of the hegemony, since the others immediately entrusted her with it. The historical account of the beginnings of her empire… evokes a consensus, whose existence Thucydides himself admits in the Pentecontaetia (1.96.1: hekontōn tōn xummachōn)” (Athenian Imperialism, 249).

12 Brown, “Derivation of Anarchy,” 50–52.

13 See Plato, Republic, 358e-359b. David Hume contends that justice exists where it is useful, that equality is the condition which makes it so, and that justice is missing from the poetical fictions of a golden age or the philosophical fictions of a state of nature because too little necessity in the one and too much necessity in the other render it a useless thing (An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals [Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957], 19–23Google Scholar).

14 Thucydides states that the intentions of the Athenian envoys were not to respond to specific charges but to dissuade the Peloponnesian league from deciding hastily for war and to impress upon it the might of Athens (1.72.1). The Athenians themselves speak directly of the first of these intentions (1.73.1) but obliquely of the second, associating it with their account of Athens' rise to imperial hegemony (1.73.3). In other words, they choose to communicate the power of Athens by inference alone (see Strauss, Leo, The City and Man [Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964], 170–172Google Scholar, and Orwin, Clifford, “Justifying Empire: The Speech of the Athenians at Sparta and the Problem of Justice in Thucydides,” Journal of Politics 48 [1986], 80CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

The Athenians seem to commit two mistakes, both of which were avoided by Themistocles at the time of the construction of the Long Walls of Athens. Either the Athenians must convince their adversaries that they have no desire to disrupt prevailing power relations (Themistocles' procrastination and subsequent denials that the walls were being built [1.90–91]), which they might do by answering the charges against Athens, or they must present their adversaries with evidence of overwhelming force (Themistocles' revelation of a fait accompli [1.91.4]), perhaps by enumerating Athenian assets. But the envoys do neither, and with their disquieting talk about the right of the stronger, they manage only to excite enough fear to alarm but not enough fear to cow, causing the Spartans to conclude that an enterprising equal—though not yet a superior—has designs upon their empire.

15 Blaming the weak for their subservience is no more appropriate than blaming the strong for their imperiousness. Hermocrates' mistake is an indication that even to these “new men” freedom is intrinsically noble.

16 Connor, W. Robert, Thucydides (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 123–126, 152Google Scholar.

17 Leviathan, chap. 13, 84; chap. 14, 84–86; see note 7 above.

18 See Plato's Protagoras on the subject of sophistic candour (316c-317c); also Coby, Patrick, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment: A Commentary on Plato's Protagoras (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1987), 37–44Google Scholar.

19 See Xenophon, Hellenica, 2.2.11–23; and speculations by Rawlings, Hunter R. III (The Structure of Thucydides' History [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981], 243–249)Google Scholar; and Brown (“Linear Causal Perspective,” 254–55).

20 For a quite different analysis of the Euphemus speech, see Forde, Steven, The Ambition to Rule: Alcibiades and the Politics of Imperialism in Thucydides (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 61–65Google Scholar.

21 Bruell, Christopher, “Thucydides' View of Athenian Imperialism,” American Political Science Review 68 (1974), 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Briefly: Cleon is inconsistent in describing his proposal as just and useful; hope conquers fear, and freedom is irrepressible; good orators lie in order to be trusted.

23 Orwin, Clifford, “The Just and the Advantageous in Thucydides: The Case of the Mytilenaian Debate,” American Political Science Review 78 (1984), 489CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 James Madison, Federalist 51, in Hamilton, Alexander, Jay, John and Madison, James, The Federalist Papers, ed. by Rossiter, Clinton (New York: New American Library, 1961), 322CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Democracy in America, Vol. 2 (New York: Vintage Books, 1945), 129–132Google Scholar.

26 Republic, 340c.

27 It is certain that at least two situations are intended, that of an imaginary city, which Clifford Orwin calls Utopian (“Democracy and Distrust: A Lesson from Thucydides,” American Scholar 53 [1983–1984], 320Google Scholar), and that of contemporary Athens. But I suggest that there are two Athens indicated as well, one that survives if Diodotus is successful and one that emerges if Cleon prevails. In the former it is still possible for a citizen to have influence, and the city is a republic; in the latter only one demagogue is trusted, and the city is a tyranny.

28 The relative moral health of the community is attested to by the fact that “the most terrible measures” (ta deinotata; 3.43.2) cannot be presented openly.

29 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On the Social Contract, ed. by Masters, Roger D. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978), 67–68Google Scholar; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1123a34-1125al6. For a different interpretation see Bolotin, David, “Thucydides,” in Strauss, Leo and Cropsey, Joseph, eds., History of Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 30–31Google Scholar. Bolotin ascribes selfish motives to Diodotus but also an “educated humanity” which he does not explain.

30 Strauss, The City and Man, 234; Orwin, “The Just and the Advantageous,” 488, 490–92; and Bolotin, “Thucydides,” 29–31.

31 Thucydides' judgment is that the empire was hated by all allied peoples (2.8.4–5). But see de Ste. Croix, G. E. M., “The Character of the Athenian Empire,” Historia 3 (1954), 1–41Google Scholar, and Andrewes, A., “The Mytilene Debate: Thucydides 3.36–49,” Phoenix 16 (1962), 78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also pseudo-Xenophon, Constitution of the Athenians, for a discussion of Athenian policy toward allied democrats (1.14–15; 3.10–11).

32 Orwin, “The Just and the Advantageous,” 493.

33 The speech of the Athenian ambassadors at Sparta provides an indication of how far Athens must go in order to learn this lesson (1.77.1–5).

34 For Hobbes, equality is so dangerous a condition that it makes little difference to him how people effect their escape, whether by “institution” (election) or “acquisition” (conquest)(Leviathan, chap. 17, 112–13). See Brown, “Derivation of Anarchy,” 49–57.

35 For interpretations attesting to Thucydides' credentials as an ancient, see Strauss, The City and Man, 236–41; Sears, Richard D., “Thucydides and the Scientific Approach to Politics,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 23 (1977), 28–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bruell, Christopher, “Thucydides and Perikles,” St. John's Review 32 (1981), 29Google Scholar; and Bolotin, “Thucydides,” 31–32. Among those describing Thucydides as proto-modern and scientific, see Cochrane, Charles Norris, Thucydides and the Science of History (London: Oxford University Press, 1929), 8–9, 26, 31–32, 146Google Scholar; Bluhm, “Causal Theory,” 17, 32–35; Brown, “Derivation of Anarchy,” 31–62, and “Linear Causal Theory,” 215–56; see also notes 2 and 6 above.

36 So eager is Hobbes to portray Thucydides as a monarchist that he misrepresents Thucydides' estimation of mixed government, saying that he ranked it below the quasi-monarchy of Pericles (“The Life and History of Thucydides,” in Grene, , ed., Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War, xviiGoogle Scholar). See Schlatter, Hobbes' Thucydides, xxv.