Thucydides on the Outbreak of War
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THUCYDIDES ON THE OUTBREAK OF WAR by Seth N. Jaffe A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy Graduate Department of Political Science University of Toronto © Copyright by Seth Nathan Jaffe (2012) Abstract Thucydides on the Outbreak of War By Seth N. Jaffe A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Political Science University of Toronto (2012) This project illuminates Thucydides’ political thought through a novel interpretation of the first book of the History of the Peloponnesian War. It explores how Thucydides reveals the human causes of war through the outbreak of a particular war, the Peloponnesian war. The primary claim is that Thucydides intends the breakdown of the Thirty Years’ Peace between Athens and the Peloponnesians, which inaugurates the great Peloponnesian war, to be understood by grasping how the characters of the Athenian and Spartan regimes contribute to the outbreak of the war and, crucially, how Athens and Sparta differently express human nature. In broad outline, the History’s first book reveals how the regime characters of Athens and Sparta inform their respective foreign policies, but also how the interaction between the two cities—informed by the distinctive necessities pressing upon them— causes the Hellenic status quo to tremble and fall. Throughout the first book, while never obscuring the specific events triggering war, Thucydides progressively develops and expands his original statement that it was Spartan fear of Athenian power that compelled the fighting. The study argues that necessity (or compulsion) is the bright thread that Thucydides uses to guide his reader through the episodes of the first book, from the immediate causes of the Peloponnesian war to the human causes of war, from the particular events to the History’s universal themes. ii This project is dedicated to my parents, Allan and Wendy, and to my sister, Devorah. iii Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………....ii Dedication………………………………………………………………………………...iii Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………iv Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 I. Interpretative Approach……………………………………………………………...12 II. The Outbreak of War………………………………………………………………..17 The Manifest Quarrels…………………………………………………………………...25 I. The First Quarrel—Epidamnus, Corcyra, Corinth, Athens……………………….....26 II. Debate at Athens……………………………………………………………………37 III. The Corcyraeans at Athens………………………………………………………...40 IV. The Corinthians at Athens………………………………………………………....53 V. The Athenian Decision……...…………………………………………………........67 VI. The Battle of Sybota……………………………………………………………….68 VII. The Second Quarrel—Corinth, Potidaea, Athens………………………………...72 Congress at Sparta as Truest πρόφασις for War………………………………………...78 I. Character and Advantage—The Corinthians at Sparta…………...……………….....82 II. Necessity as Advantage—The Athenians at Sparta……………………………….103 III. The Spartan Debate……………………………………………………………….136 IV. Education, the Spartan Way—The Speech of Archidamus……………..………..138 V. The Speech of Sthenelaidas……...………………………………………………..152 VI. The War Vote………………………………………………………………….....155 VII. The Athenian Logic of the Truest πρόφασις……………………………………157 The Truest πρόφασις, the Pentecontaetia………………………….…………………..161 I. The Elements of Empire…………...…………………………………………….....163 II. Themistocles and the Vision of Empire……...……………………………………166 III. Pausanias and the Ambition for Tyranny…………...………………………….....168 IV. Hegemony to Empire…………….…………………………………………….....171 V. The Conclusion of the Pentecontaetia……………………………………………..180 The Truest πρόφασις, the Archaeology………………………………………………..185 I. Ancient Times………………………………………………………………………188 II. The Trojan War……………………………………………………………………201 III. Motion After Troy………………………………………………………………...203 IV. Rest and Growth………………………………………………………………….204 V. Athens and Sparta…………………………………………………………………208 The Corinthian Speech to the Spartan Alliance………………………………………...216 I. The Vote of the Peloponnesian League………………………………………….....221 iv The Greatest πρόφασις for War………………………………………………………..223 I. The Cylonian Conspiracy and the Curse of the Goddess…………………………..226 II. The Curse of Taenarum……………………………………………………………231 III. Spartan Trust and the Treachery of Pausanias……………………………………233 IV. Athenian Mistrust and the Loyalty of Themistocles……………………………...236 V. The Spartan Logic of the Greatest πρόφασις……………………………………..240 Pericles on Necessity and War………………………………………………………….245 Conclusion—Thucydides on the Outbreak of War……………………………………..260 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………263 v Facts, with him are subordinated to ideas, and rather than contrast two particular states he goes back to the basic differences between the two orders and two sets of principles. —Jacqueline de Romilly vi Introduction The following study explores the political thought of Thucydides1 through a novel interpretation of the first book of the History of the Peloponnesian War. It traces new paths through the thicket of the work’s opening 146 chapters, revealing how the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war sheds light on the causes of war in general and how these in turn explain the great conflagration. The importance of Thucydides’ first book has long been recognized. It introduces the History and sets the stage for the war.2 Why then is there the need for another study on the origins of the war?3 Doesn’t Thucydides himself tell us that the growth of Athenian power inspired Spartan fear, which made war necessary (1.23.6)?4 What could be clearer? 1 The only certain information we know of Thucydides’ life comes from the History itself. He began writing from the beginning of the war (1.1.1); he was old enough to understand it when it first broke out (5.26.5) and lived to its conclusion (2.65.12 with 5.26); he suffered from the plague in Athens (2.48.3); he was an Athenian general in the Thraceward regions in 425/4 BC (4.104.4) and linked by blood to the Thracian royal family, having some hereditary right to the gold mines there (4.105.1); and finally, he was exiled from Athens for twenty years after his failure to relieve Amphipolis (5.26.5). He was presumably allowed to return to Athens in the general amnesty of 404 BC. Since the minimum age to become an Athenian general was thirty, scholars conjecture that Thucydides was born between 455-460 BC. He is believed to have lived until at least 396 BC. His History ends abruptly in the year 411 BC. 2 Stahl, for example, notes that book one “has always been of central importance to Thucydidean scholarship” … “provid[ing], so to speak, the exposition for the entire work …” Hans-Peter Stahl, Thucydides: Man’s Place in History (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2002), 37. 3 The book divisions are not Thucydidean, but what is now called book one represents a clear cleavage within Thucydides’ own narrative, which is likely the reason it was designated a single book in antiquity. The indispensable historical work on the causes of the Peloponnesian War remains G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (London: Gerald Duckworth, 2002). For a different view, see Donald Kagan, The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969); as well as a more recent military study, J. F. Lazenby, The Peloponnesian War: A Military Study (London: Routledge, 2003). Also important are D.M. Lewis “The Archidamian War” in David M. Lewis et al., The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. 5: The Fifth Century BC, 2nd Revised & enlarged. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 370–432. A. Andrewes, “Thucydides on the Causes of the War,” Classical Quarterly NS9 (1959): 223-239. And P. J. Rhodes, “Thucydides on the Causes of the Peloponnesian War,” Hermes 115 (1987): 154–165. 4 On necessity in Thucydides’ History and especially in book one, see Martin Ostwald, Ananke in Thucydides (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988). 1 Because of this apparently simple sentence, scholars of international relations have claimed Thucydides as their own, the archetypal realist, the first proponent of power politics, and a man preeminently interested in scientific causation in war.5 While Thucydides assuredly has much to say about the balance of power and the outbreak of war, his famous statement cannot be interpreted in isolation, nor, indeed, is it scientific in any contemporary sense. To start, it requires the History’s involved first book as supplement, which would mire these seekers after causal generalizations in the historical weeds, or, worse, in literary interpretation. Second, as we will see, Thucydides’ account is largely psychological, in no way bound up with efficient causation. The devil is in the textual details, in the manner Thucydides develops his argument about power, fear, and necessity through the unfolding episodes of the first book.6 His statement about the “causes” of war is a road-sign, not a destination. 5 On the famous sentence about power, fear, and necessity, see Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 93. Kenneth Waltz, the father of neorealism, argues that Thucydides’ statement about Athenian power and Spartan fear is a third image claim. Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 159. W. Daniel Garst correctly rejects this view. See Garst, ”Thucydides and the Domestic Sources of International Politics” in Lowell S. Gustafson ed., Thucydides’ Theory of International Relations: A Lasting Possession (Baton Rouge: Louisiana