Vision, Fear, and Knowledge in Thucydides' History by Bradley Kenneth Hald A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Classics University of Toronto © Copyright by Bradley Hald 2020 Vision, Fear, and Knowledge in Thucydides' History Bradley Hald Doctor of Philosophy Department of Classics University of Toronto 2020 Abstract In this dissertation I explore sense perception and emotional psychology in Thucydides’ History from several angles. My primary sensory focus throughout is the visual, while the principal emotion I examine is fear. Vision, as W. R. Connor noted, is “the privileged sense” in the History, just as fear is the text’s most pervasive and most frequently cited emotion. I show that vision is not isolated from the other senses, nor is fear from other seemingly discrete—or antithetical—emotions. Rather, in the historical world Thucydides fashions, multiple senses and emotions consistently exhibit interactive and even complementary relationships with one another. Furthermore, as I emphasize in every chapter, both the senses and the emotions depicted in Thucydides’ text are consistently entwined with cognitive processes, both in the narrative and in the recorded speeches. Each chapter focuses on passages of vividly depicted human sensory perception and psychology. The first half of the study seeks to use some of the historian’s battle narratives to draw certain metatextual conclusions about the work and our approach to it as readers. I argue that by looking closely at the sensory and psychological processes that Thucydides attributes to the agents of history, we are able to gain insights into the historian’s narrative self-positioning as well as into aspects of the intellectual and emotional utility he claims for his text. The second half of the study engages with both rhetorical and narrative ii passages in order to examine the visual, epistemological, and emotional dynamics at play in two particularly ideologically charged moments within the History. I argue that Thucydides uses these moments, in part, to demonstrate the limits of ideological structures, whose highly prescriptive modes of seeing, knowing, and feeling struggle to sustain themselves against the exigencies of the historical world he depicts. iii For my parents, and for Poppa-Bill iv Acknowledgments This project has followed a long and winding road, one whose end I could not have hoped to reach without the support of more people than I can name. Each shares a part in this accomplishment, and my few words of thanks here are only a small token of my gratitude. It was in a graduate seminar of Victoria Wohl’s where the ideas for this dissertation first began to take shape. Without her generosity, patience, unflagging support, and always-incisive commentary, none of this work would have been possible. Whatever I have accomplished here owes an immense debt to her sharp and penetrating mind. This work is further indebted to the members of my committee, Ben Akrigg and Ryan Balot, and to my external reader, Karen Bassi, all of whose guidance and occasional skepticism challenged me to more deeply interrogate my conclusions and sharpen my readings of Thucydides’ text. I am grateful also to Erik Gunderson for agreeing to read the dissertation and for suggesting several lines of future inquiry. I could not have finished this project, completed the PhD program, or, indeed, accomplished anything else in the Classics Department without the reliable help of Coral Gavrilovic and Ann-Marie Matti, whose patience, energy, and optimism have never ceased to amaze me. Several institutions provided the resources for me to complete this dissertation. First and foremost, the generous support of the Classics Department at Toronto has allowed me to explore every avenue I wanted to during this research. I am also indebted to the American School of Classical Studies in Athens for broadening my horizons immeasurably and providing both time and space to read and write, and to the Jackman Humanities Institute for providing further time and space during the crucial period when this project began to take its final form. More good friends and colleagues have played a part in this journey than I can list here— certain core groups of friends from Boulder to Berkeley to UCLA to Toronto to Athens: Josh Hyden, Kimberly Merryman, and Catherine Weaver; Marissa Henry and Josh Smith; Adam Barker, Marion Durand, Alex Milodowski, Maria Oberlinner, and Katie Sutor; Brigidda Bell, Alison Cleverley, Alex Cushing, Nicole Daniel, John Fabiano, Chiara Graf, Janet Mowat, Ted Parker, Mike Pawliuk, Tim Perry, and Alessandro Sisti; John Campbell, Bridget Tobin, Tucker, and even Oliver; Michele Asuni, Jeff Banks, Bill Beck, Brandon Braun, and Tania Contrucci. I v would not have made it through the most difficult stages of this process without the support and patience of Efi Tsiolaki. For the encouragement, commiseration, inspiration, and most of all, for the friendships of these remarkable people, I am inexpressibly grateful. My brother Dave has given me consistent support, and frequent sass, throughout this journey. I am grateful for both. I would never have thought to choose this path if not for the curiosity to read, question, and understand instilled in me by my parents, and I could not have finished this PhD if not for the inspiration provided by my grandfather. This dissertation is dedicated to them. vi Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 Darkness Visible: Vision, Knowledge, and Fear in Thucydides’ Plataean Episode ............. 14 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 14 Plataea as Paradigmatic ........................................................................................................................... 24 (In)visibility and Fear in the Dark........................................................................................................... 31 Two Conclusions .................................................................................................................................... 50 Affective Soundscapes: Auditory Epistemology and Fear at Sphacteria and Epipolae ....... 59 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 59 Theoretical Approach: “Auditory Affect” .............................................................................................. 64 Shouting, Shock, and ‘Pure’ Affect: Sphacteria ..................................................................................... 73 Subversive Epistemologies of Sound: Epipolae ..................................................................................... 83 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 96 The Emotional Economy of the Citizen Gaze in Pericles’ Funeral Oration ....................... 101 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 102 Idealized Viewing: Citizens and City ................................................................................................... 106 Idealized Viewing on the Battlefield (2.42.4) ....................................................................................... 122 Idealized Emotion: Eros over Deos ...................................................................................................... 139 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 150 Futures Real and Unreal: Fear and Hope in the Sicilian Expedition .................................. 154 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 154 Constructing a Hopeful Gaze: the Sicilian Debate ............................................................................... 159 Performing the Optimistic Gaze: 6.24 .................................................................................................. 170 A Spectacle of Conquest ....................................................................................................................... 179 Conclusion: The End of the Expedition and the Collapse of an Ideology ............................................ 192 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 198 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 206 vii Introduction τὸ μὲν Ἡροδότου κάλλος ἱλαρόν ἐστι, φοβερὸν δὲ τὸ Θουκυδίδου. While (the work) of Herodotus is a thing of cheerful beauty, that of Thucydides is fearsome. (Dion. Hal. Pomp. 3.21) For the final major battle of the ill-conceived Athenian campaign to Sicily, Thucydides offers one of his most vividly detailed, and most extensively celebrated, narrative passages in the entirety of the History of the Peloponnesian War. After the disastrous defeat at Epipolae, the Athenians have been blockaded