History of Ancient Greece Institute for the Study of Western Civilization Week 20 Thucydides

Home , 406 BC, 415 BC, 421 BC, 425 BC, 429 BC, 432 BC

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 THUCYDIDES, THE HISTORY OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

"Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, beginning at the moment that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it. This belief was not without its grounds. The preparations of both the combatants were in every department in the last state of perfection; and he could see the rest of the Hellenic race taking sides in the quarrel; those who delayed doing so at once having it in contemplation. Indeed this was the greatest movement yet known in history, not only of the Hellenes, but of a large part of the barbarian world- I had almost said of mankind. For though the events of remote antiquity, and even those that more immediately preceded the war, could not from lapse of time be clearly ascertained, yet the evidences which an inquiry carried as far back as was practicable leads me to trust, all point to the conclusion that there was nothing on such a great scale, either in war or in other matters. "

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 HOMER AND THE ILIAD Troy

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Blaise Pascal:

"Homer wrote a romance, for nobody supposes that Troy and Agamemnon existed any more than the apples of the Hesperides. He had no intention to write history, but only to amuse us." During the 19th century the stories of Troy were devalued as fables by George Grote and others.

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 HOMER AND THE ILIAD Troy

Was the Iliad history?

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Thucydides was an Athenian historian and general. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the ﬁfth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "modern history" by those who accept his claims to have applied strict standards of impartiality and evidence- gathering (documents) and analysis of cause and effect, without reference to intervention by the GODS, as outlined in his introduction to his work. Thucydides, 472-c. 410-400?

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 This is the plaster cast bust currently in exposition of Zurab Tsereteli's gallery in Moscow (part of Russian Academy of Arts), formerly from the collection of castings of Pushkin museum made in early 1900-1910s. Original bust is a Roman copy (c. 100 AD) of an early 4th Century BC Greek original, and is located in Holkham Hall in Norfolk, UK.

Thucydides, 472-c. 410-400?

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Thucydides and his book, The History of the Peloponnesian War (410 BC)

10th Century manuscript in Greek preserved in Greece

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 GREECE THE FIFTH CENTURY BC 525 BIRTH OF AESCHYLUS Thucydides 490 First Persian invasion of Greece; Battle of Marathon Marathon. 480 Second Persian invasion of Greece; battles of Thermopylae and Salamis 460 democratic reform of the Athenian Areopagus , 458 Aeschylus’s tragic trilogy the Oresteia ﬁrst performed, at Athens 451 Pericles proposes a law restricting access to Athenian citizenship 450 Constitutional Reform: Democracy, random juries, all citizens serve 432 Completion of the new Parthenon 431 Outbreak of Peloponnesian War; 431 ﬁrst performance of Euripides’ tragedy Medea 430 Pericles’ funeral oration 429 Plague begins at Athens 425 Athenians score success against the Spartans at the battle of Sphacteria 413 Athenian campaign in Sicily ends in disaster 411 Oligarchic coup at Athens TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 PELOPONNESIAN WAR

446 Sparta invades Attica,lays waste to farms etc 446 Athenian war in Boeotia a failure (Alcibiades' father killed) 435 Civil War in Epidammus 432 Sparta declares war on Athens 431 Peloponessian allies invade Athens 430 PLAGUE IN ATHENS 429 PLAGUE KILLS PERICLES 421 Peace of Nicias (Alcibiades) 415 Athenian invasion of Sicily total disaster (Alcibiades) 405 Battle of Aesgospotami 404 Assassination of Alcibiades in Asia Minor (by Persians)

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 1. Aristocrat. Thucydides identiﬁes himself as an Athenian, his father's name was Olorus and that he was from the Athenian deme of Halimous. favors aristocrats (Pericles) 2. close friend of Pericles.(supports Pericles in the History) 3. in Athens for plague. survived. 4. rich. owned gold mines in Thrace. 5. present at Battle of Amphipolus 423 BC-General 6. loses command. lived through the whole of it, being of an age to comprehend events, and giving my attention to them in order to know the exact truth about them. It was also my fate to be an exile from my country for twenty years after my command at Amphipolis; and being present with both parties, and more especially with the Peloponnesians by reason of my exile, I had leisure to observe affairs somewhat particularly.

7. exile in Thrace. writes his book. 410?

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 1. Aristocrat. Thucydides identiﬁes himself as an Athenian, his father's name was Olorus and that he was from the Athenian deme of Halimous. favors aristocrats (Pericles) 2. close friend of Pericles.(supports Pericles in the History) 3. in Athens for plague. survived. 4. rich. owned gold mines in Thrace. 5. present at Battle of Amphipolus 423 BC-General 6. loses command. lived through the whole of it, being of an age to comprehend events, and giving my attention to them in order to know the exact truth about them. It was also my fate to be an exile from my country for twenty years after my command at Amphipolis; and being present with both parties, and more especially with the Peloponnesians by reason of my exile, I had leisure to observe affairs somewhat particularly.

7. exile in Thrace. writes his book. 410?

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 THE OVERALL THEM OF THE BOOK; tell the story of how the great Athenian democracy declined in to war and chaos and fell victim to its enemies.

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 THE GOLDEN AGE, 480-399 BC

“The period which intervened between the birth of Pericles and the death of Aristotle,” wrote Shelley, “is undoubtedly, whether considered in itself or with reference to the effect which it has produced upon the subsequent destinies of civilized man, the most memorable in the history of the world.”

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 THE AGE OF PERICLES, 480-429 BC

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 History of Ancient Greece Institute for the Study of Western Civilization Week 14: January 28, 2019, PERICLES

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Pericles (495-429)

Aristocrat who leads the democratic party (Peoples Party) like Thomas Jefferson, FDR father Xanthippus fought at Marathon mother Agariste, niece of Cleisthenes

He absorbed the rapidly growing culture of his epoch, and united in his mind and policy all the threads of Athenian civilization— economic, military, literary, artistic, and philosophical.

Even the comic poets, who disliked him, spoke of him as “the Olympian,” who wielded the thunder and lightning of such eloquence as Athens had never heard before;

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 THE GOLDEN AGE, 480-429 BC

Thucydides said that the Athenians were the ﬁrst Greeks to walk in the streets unarmed. A "civilian" society."

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Pericles (495-429 BC) Thucydides (472-400 BC) Thucydides younger can see the outcome

Pericles (495-429 BC) and Thucydides (472-400 BC)

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Pericles (495-429 BC) Thucydides (472-400 BC)

Thucydides writes about the greatness of Pericles

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 "If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences...if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom 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 neighbor for doing what he likes..." These lines form the roots of the famous phrase "equal justice under law." The liberality of which Pericles spoke also extended to Athens' foreign policy: "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..." Yet Athens' values of equality and openness do not, according to Pericles, hinder Athens' greatness, indeed, they enhance it, "...advancement in public life falls to reputations for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit...our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters...at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger." Speech by Pericles as reported by Thucydides

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Pericles (495-429 BC) Thucydides (472-400 BC) and Alcibiades (450-406 BC)

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Thucydides and his book, The History of the Peloponnesian War (410 BC)

10th Century manuscript in Greek preserved in Greece

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Thucydides, Hist, IV 36-41 1st century, papyrus Oxyrhynchus 16

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Thucydides and his book, The History of the Peloponnesian War (410 BC)

10th Century manuscript in Greek preserved in Greece

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Thucydides and his book, The History of the Peloponnesian War (410 BC)

10th Century manuscript in Greek preserved in Greece

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Theme of the book, The Peloponnesian War, politics Greek Democracy: Pericles to Alcibiades

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 THUCYDIDES THEMES

1. Pericles, Aristocratic leader right. Strategy right. 2. Pericles not responsible for war. 3. Pericles plan for handling war, right. 4. Democrats after Pericles, are wrong. Botch the strategy. They are responsible for the disaster. They are esp culpable (Alcibiades) for Sicilian disaster.

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 2nd Theme of the book, The Peloponnesian War, Man, the state, and the gods: the gods never directly inﬂuence events. New view of divinity parallels the philosophers.

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Aeschylus, Sophocles, Thucydides

What is the intellectual reality of 5thC Athens

450BC Time of rigorous rational critique of traditional religion

Speciﬁc attack: on prophecy and its implication that gods know future.

This attack is in pursuit of the human freedom that was at center of !!!!5thC Athens Credo. (Pericles)

Athens moving away from the old piety of Aeschylus toward scepticism of Thucydides and Euripedes

Protagoras: "the individual man is the measure of all things, of the existence of what exists and the nonexistence of what does not..."

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Sophocles and Thucydides

Age of Sophocles 496 - 406 Sophocles born 6 years before Marathon.

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Athens, Sophocles, Antigone, 445 BC Sophoclean Tragedy

"The central idea of a Sophoclean tragedy is that through suffering a man learns to be modest before the gods . . .When [the characters] are ﬁnally forced to see the truth, we know that the gods have prevailed andText that men must accept their insigniﬁcance [their limited powers]." C. M. Bowra

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 What is the nature of Sophoclean tragedy? that man so great, man so powerful, man so brilliant still fails. thus tragedy is his tragic contending against his own imperfect self. Not against gods and gods powers. thus Sophocles' TRAGEDY reﬂects perfectly the high ideals of Periclean Athens at mid-century

Man contending with self and own limitations.

Tragedy of life for Sophocles is that man is imperfect not that he is evil. (compare to Genesis)

Is the Peloponnesian War man out of balance?

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Aeschylus

Euripedes

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 What is so great about Thucydides?

1.first writer to state openly goal of writing 100% accurate account of affairs: "History" 2. limits his enquiry (Peloponnesian War) 3. explains his ability to study both sides of war due to his exile. (vs Herodotus, wandering travel story plus Persian War) 4. writes intro about methods, consult docs., witnesses. ("scientific") 5. says his study can be a useful tool for the future. (ie correct) 6. examines Homer suggests Homer wrong. critiques details.(small war) 7. writes his history with the gods left out. (vs Herodotus) thus in synch with the philosophers such as Protagoras ("man the measure") 8. sees his history based on events the way the doctors base in bio facts. close to Hippocratic school of medicine and descibed Plague with brilliant medical detail. ("scientific")

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Thucydides and his book, The History of the Peloponnesian War (410 BC)

Thucydides and 21st C Historian: "Revisionism" D. Kagan

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 On the one hand, some scholars view the work as an objective and scientific piece of history. The judgment of J. B. Bury reflects his traditional interpretation of the work: "[The History is] severe in its detachment, written from a purely intellectual point of view, unencumbered with platitudes and moral judgments, cold and critical."

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 On the other hand, in keeping with more recent interpretations, the History can be read as a piece of literature rather than an objective record of the historical events. This view is embodied in the words of W. R. Connor, who describes Thucydides as "an artist who responds to, selects and skillfully arranges his material, and develops its symbolic and emotional potential." ie not really "history" but a kind of novel or something.

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Thucydides and his book, The History of the Peloponnesian War (410 BC)

Was Thucydides' history accurate?

Thucydides and 21st C Historian: "Revisionism" D. Kagan

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Thucydides and his book, The History of the Peloponnesian War (410 BC)

Was Thucydides' a great historian? Yes!

Thucydides and 21st C Historian: "Revisionism" D. Kagan

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 PELOPONNESIAN WAR

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Causes of the Peloponnesian War, 432 BC

THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE THAT HAD BEEN DEVELOPED AFTER THE PERSIAN WARS

Other OPTIONS FOR ATHENS C. 450 BC A federation of allied free states with free trade.

What did they choose: a tyrannical Aegean Empire enforced with power.

It is probable that Pericles, dreamed of completing Athens’ control of Greek trade by dominating not only Megara but Corinth, which was to Greece what Istanbul is to the eastern Mediterranean today— a door and a key to half a continent’s trade.

But the basic cause of the war was the growth of the Athenian Empire, and the development of Athenian control over the commercial and political life of the Aegean.

Even after the war begins in 432 BC there are many opportunities for Athens to be merciful and generous to other Aegean states. Instead, Athens always chooses naked power.

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Athens Excuse Athens allowed free trade in time of peace, but only by imperial sufferance; No vessel might sail that sea without her consent. Athenian agents decided the destination of every vessel that left the grain ports of the north; Methone, starving with drought, had to ask Athens’ leave to import a little corn.

Athens defended this domination as a vital necessity; she was dependent upon imported food, and was determined to guard the routes by which that food came.

This was ridiculous and lacking any imagination.

The best guarantee was good relations with all the food producing states, and good prices. That was all they needed: a good deal for sellers. But Athens didn't want that and didn't offer it. They used force instead. RESULT: other states came to hate Athens. TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Thucydides: the democratic leaders at Athens recognized that, while making liberty the idol of their policy among Athenians, the Confederacy of free cities had become an empire of force.

“You should remember,” says Thucydides’ Cleon to the Assembly, “that your empire is a despotism exercised over unwilling subjects who are always conspiring against you; they do not obey in return for any kindness which you do them to your own injury, but only in so far as you are their master; they have no love for you, but they are held down by force.”

The inherent contradiction between the worship of liberty and the despotism of empire co-operated with the individualism of the Greek states to end the Golden Age.

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Anti Athens Resistance

The resistance to Athenian policy came from nearly every state in Greece.

Boeotia fought off at Coronea (447) the attempt of Athens to include it in the Empire.

Some subject cities, and others that feared to become subject, appealed to Sparta to check the Athenian power.

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 War Begins

The coming of war awaited some provocative incident.

In 435 Corcyra (Corfu), a Corinthian colony, declared itself independent of Corinth; and presently she joined the Athenian Confederacy for protection.

Corinth sent a ﬂeet to reduce the island; Athens, appealed to by the victorious democrats of Corcyra, sent a ﬂeet to help them.

An indecisive battle took place, in which the navies of Corcyra and Athens fought against those of Megara and Corinth.

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Pericle's Strategy Withdraw behind the walls Refuse battle wear out the enemy

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Pericle's Strategy Withdraw behind the walls Refuse battle wear out the enemy Was he right? Thucydides refuses to criticize 21st C. critic can now see was mistake 1. ran out of resources 2. crowding=plague

Historian is unable to report situation accurately because he is too pro Pericles and too anti "mob" democracy

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 430 Disaster for Athens, PLAGUE 430-427

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 The crowding of Athens led to a plague — probably malaria11— which raged for nearly three years, killing a fourth of the soldiers and a great number of the civilian population.

It killed Pericles (429) his sister both his sons

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Democracy turns on its own leader

Cleon and others indicted him on the charge of misusing public funds; since he had apparently employed state money to bribe the Spartan kings to peace, he was unable to give a satisfactory accounting; he was convicted, deposed from office, and fined the enormous sum of fifty talents ($ 300,000). About the same time (429) his sister and his two legitimate sons died of the plague. The Athenians, finding no leader to replace him, recalled him to power (429); and, to show their esteem for him, and their sympathy in his bereavement, they overrode a law that he himself had passed, and bestowed citizenship upon the son that Aspasia had borne to him TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Death of Pericles 429 BC

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 With Pericles gone, leadership passes to lesser men

Thucydides suggests: Athens might have come through to victory if it had pursued to the end the Fabian policy laid down by Pericles. (hunker down inside the walls ﬁght on the sea)

But his successors: too impatient to carry out a program that required self-control.

The new masters of the democratic party were merchants like Cleon the dealer in leather, Eucrates the rope seller, Hyperbolus the lampmaker; and these men demanded an active war on land as well as sea.

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Athenian Victory in 425 BC Batttle of Sphacteria Athenian Arrogance; More Extremes Wisdom of Pericles Gone

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Cleon’s ability was proved in 425 when the Athenian ﬂeet besieged a Spartan army on the island of Sphacteria, near Pylos. No admiral seemed capable of taking the stronghold; but when the Assembly gave Cleon charge of the siege (half hoping that he would be killed in action), he surprised all by carrying through the attack with a skill and courage that forced the Lacedaemonians to an unprecedented surrender. Sparta, humbled, offered peace and alliance in return for the captured men, but Cleon’s oratory persuaded the Assembly to reject the offer and continue the war. His hold on the populace was strengthened by a proposal, easily carried, that the Athenians should henceforth pay no taxes to the support of the war, but should ﬁnance it by raising the tribute exacted of the subject cities in the Empire (424).

In these cities, as in Athens, the policy of Cleon was to get as much money out of the rich as he could ﬁnd. TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Battle of Amphipolis, 421, Athens loses, Thucydides out Thucydides becomes an hist.

Death of Cleon, Peace of Nicias, 421 BC

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Death of Cleon, Peace of Nicias, 421 BC

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 421 Peace of Nicias

Three factors turned this peace into a brief truce of six years:

1. the diplomatic corruption of the peace into “war by other means”; 2. the rise of Alcibiades as the leader of a faction that favored renewed hostilities;

3. and the attempt of Athens to conquer the Dorian colonies in Sicily. (415 Sicilian Expedition)

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 446 BC Athenian war in Boeotia a failure (Alcibiades' father killed 446 BC Sparta invades Attica, lays waste farms towns

Alcibiades 416 Outrage at Melos Alcibiades

death of Alcibiades

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 PELOPONNESIAN WAR

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Alcibiades 450 BC The motion to punish to Melos was supported by 406 BC Alcibiades and his support for any motion usually sufﬁced to carry it, for he was now the most famous man in Athens, admired for his eloquence, his good looks, his versatile genius, even for his faults.

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Greek Democracy: Pericles to Alcibiades

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Sicilian Expedition 415

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 The Athenian Disaster at Sicily 415 BC

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Sicilian Expedition 415

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 PELOPONNESIAN WAR

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 The Death of Alcibiades 406 BC

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Philip King of Macedon and son Alexander conquer Athens 338 BC

TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 Why did Athenian democracy fail? 1. 338 BC conquered by larger state. 2. Class conﬂict (old families, Pericles, Alcibiades) 3. Slavery 4. Sexual politics (pederasty, jealousy) 5. Aristotle: lack of "Philia" 6. philosophers didnt believe in it. 7. War. aggression. empire. 8. Direct democracy doesn't work for large state. (or maybe for anybody) TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 TuesdayMarch 17, 2020 TuesdayMarch 17, 2020