ZUG-THESIS-2017.Pdf (814.0Kb)
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Copyright by Charles Ulrich Zug 2017 The Thesis Committee for Charles Ulrich Zug Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Xenophon’s Failed Imperialists: The Question of Empire in the Hellenica APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: Thomas L. Pangle Devin Stauffer Xenophon’s Failed Imperialists: The Question of Empire in the Hellenica by Charles Ulrich Zug Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin August 2017 Dedication To Grant and Cynthia Witherspoon. Acknowledgements I would like to thank my teachers, Thomas Pangle and Devin Stauffer. v Abstract Xenophon’s Failed Imperialists: The Question of Empire in the Hellenica Charles Ulrich Zug, M.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2017 Supervisor: Thomas L. Pangle In Xenophon’s Hellenica, or “Greek Affairs” from 404-362 BCE, both empire and its absence entail characteristic advantages and disadvantages. An international arrangement without empire is necessarily one of empire-seekers; and the quest for empire is, while impressive, also a risky and destabilizing enterprise. Xenophon illuminates these aspects of empire in the Hellenica by drawing our attention to the rise and fall of three empire- seekers, thereby revealing the considerable advantages that such human beings bring with them to political life. These advantages consist, above all, in dependable order, foresight regarding future contingencies, and the capacity on the part of rulers to anticipate such contingencies. By the same token, Xenophon reveals what political life lacks when empire is absent in the international sphere: A crucial cause of Greece’s confusion and disorder is the absence of any single man or city capable of imposing stable rule through empire. More specifically, however, Xenophon depicts surpassingly capable potential rulers—most notably, Alcibiades, Thrasybulus, and Jason of Pherai—coming to premature ruin. One of the core questions of the Hellenica, then, concerns why all of Greece’s empire-seekers fail in their ambitions, as well as how they achieve their successes initially. Is it by the “science of empire,” evinced most clearly by Cyrus the Great, the main character of Xenophon’s historical novel, The Education of Cyrus? Or do chance, or providential deities, play a greater role in the initial successes, as well as in the ultimate failures, of Xenophon’s failed imperialists than we might at first realize? vi Table of Contents I. Introduction ........................................................................................................1 II. Alcibiades .........................................................................................................14 1. INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................14 2. THE HELLENICA’S CHAOTIC OPENING ....................................................15 3. ALCIBIADES’ ENTRANCE: SHREWDNESS, ENERGY, AND FORESIGHT .....18 4. ALCIBIADES AND THE RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF ATHENIAN EMPIRE .......21 5. ALCIBIADES’ RETURN TO ATHENS AND THE QUESTION OF THE GODS ..24 6. ALCIBIADES’ ACCUSERS AND DEFENDERS ..............................................26 7. NOTIUM AND ALCIBIADES’ DISMISSAL ....................................................28 8. XENOPHON’S JUDGMENT OF ALCIBIADES ...............................................31 III. Thrasybulus ...................................................................................................34 1. INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................34 2. THRASYBULUS AND ALCIBIADES ..............................................................36 3. LEADER AT PHULE: THRASYBULUS’ DEMOCRATIC REVOLT AGAINST THE THIRTY ................................................................................................40 4. JUSTICE AND THE GODS: THRASYBULUS’ SPEECH AT PIRAEUS .............45 5. THE FALL OF THE THIRTY AND THE RESTORATION OF THE DEMOCRACY51 6. ATHENS’ ENTRANCE INTO THE CORINTHIAN WAR .................................54 7. THE CAMPAIGN IN HELLESPONT .............................................................58 8. THE DEATH OF THRASYBULUS AND THE FRAGILITY OF EMPIRE ...........64 IV. Jason of Pherai ...............................................................................................68 1. INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................68 2. TYRANTS AND GENTLEMEN: XENOPHON’S DRAMATIC INTRODUCTION OF JASON ...................................................................................................69 3. JASON THE IMPERIAL TYRANT ................................................................75 4. JASON’S SUDDEN DOWNFALL ..................................................................79 vii V. Conclusion........................................................................................................84 VI. Bibliography ...................................................................................................86 viii I. Introduction “When we reflect on the fame of Thebes and Argos, of Sparta and Athens, we can scarcely persuade ourselves that so many immortal republics of ancient Greece were lost in a single province of the Roman Empire.” -Edward Gibbon After several decades of global hegemony, the United States of America has begun seriously to reconsider its geopolitical role and purpose. Should America strive to retain its position as superpower, as some would advocate?1 Or, in the words of a former Obama Administration advisor, should it craft a new position for itself, relinquishing its former quasi-imperial status and seeking rather to “lead from behind”?2 Notwithstanding the urgency of this question for Americans of the twenty-first century, the more fundamental question of empire—what are its advantages and disadvantages, both for the ruler and for the ruled?—is by no means a new one for the United States. Beginning with Alexander Hamilton and his Anti-Federalist opponents, American statesmen have kindled a robust debate over the merits of imperialism—a debate which continues today, as anti- colonialists, neoconservatives, liberal internationalists, and (most recently) conservative internationalists question whether the United States and the nations of the world benefit from a superpower capable of projecting unmatched force, for good or for ill, in the international arena. 1 See, e.g., Charles Krauthammer, “Decline is a Choice,” The Weekly Standard, October 19, 2009. 2 Ryan Lizza, “The Consequentialist,” The New Yorker, May 2, 2011. For a critical account of Obama’s view, see Herbert London, Leading from Behind (New York: Liberty Island Media, 2017), and Charles Krauthammer, “The Obama Doctrine: Leading from Behind,” The Washington Post, April 28, 2011. 1 Yet while there is, and has been, no shortage of defenders and partisans in this regard, can we point to a political thinker—classical or contemporary—whose work brings to light the best and the worst of what empire and those who seek it have to offer? It is the contention of the present study that Xenophon’s Hellenica contains just such an argument. For Xenophon, both empire and its absence entail characteristic advantages and disadvantages. An international arrangement without empire is necessarily one of empire- seekers. And the quest for empire is, while impressive, also a risky and destabilizing enterprise. To this end, Xenophon examines in the Hellenica the rise and fall of three empire-seekers, so as to illuminate the considerable advantages that such human beings bring with them to political life. These advantages consist, perhaps above all, in dependable order, foresight regarding future contingencies, and the capacity on the part of rulers to anticipate such contingencies. By the same token, Xenophon reveals what political life lacks when empire is absent from the international sphere. He thereby invites us to think through, on the basis of the struggle between freedom and empire that takes place in the Hellenica, whether or not the success of Greece's three great failed empire-seekers— Alcibiades, Thrasybulus, and Jason of Pherai—would have been good for “Greek Affairs,” generally. Now commentators have long agreed that Xenophon intended the Hellenica to continue Thucydides’ War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, a work long regarded as the basis of modern international relations theory, and consequently, respected by political scientists and policymakers, alike. Anyone who turns to the Hellenica expecting Thucydides will be sorely disappointed, however. Thucydides’ work comes to light as a 2 tour de force of poetic unity; its themes—justice, necessity, and the conflict between Athens and Sparta as the fundamental alternatives—are vivid and pronounced, and emerge effortlessly from the subject on which Thucydides concentrates all of his attention: the Peloponnesian War, the greatest war, whose examination discloses the permanent truth and therefore remains a “possession for all times.”3 By vivid contrast, the Hellenica’s sole unifying theme would seem to be that it has no unifying theme—which Xenophon suggests by means of his work’s nebulous title: literally, “Greek Affairs” or “Greek Things.”4 As a result, oceans of ink have been spilt by scholars trying to clear up the Hellenica’s manifest “strangeness,”5 the vast6 majority of commentators contending