Thucydides

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

CHAPTER 1

THE ARCHAEOLOGY

Hume, echoed by Kant, said the first page of Thucydides was thecommencement of real history. But it is a puzzling and difficultbeginning—an idiosyncratic introduction to as complex an argument as isto be found anywhere in the eight books of the work or indeed in all thepages of ancient historical writing. After a brief statement of the anticipatedgreatness of the subject matter, the grand and potentially moving themeof the nature of the Peloponnesian War is abandoned for a digressionarguing that early Greek history was all on a small scale. This section,commonly called the "Archaeology," demands a reader of exceptionalpatience and determination. The ancient critics sometimes deplored itsdifficult style and peculiar arrangement, explaining how Thucydides shouldhave written the introduction to his work. Modern scholars have beentroubled by the difficult language and complexity of arrangement; thegreatest of them, Wilamowitz, admitted that "in spite of its deliberatestructure" the first book remained to him "a chaos."

The opening repudiates many principles of ancient rhetorical composition.It does nothing to ease the reader into the subject matter or theapproach. It abjures blandishments, ingratiations, or promises, except thebald statement that Thucydides, even at the beginning of the war, expectedthat it would be "great and most worth relating of all previous events."But the nature of this greatness is not specified for many chapters. Initially,there is only the assertion that this was the greatest kinesis, movement ordislocation, for the Greeks or even for most of mankind. The assertionseems excessive: What of the dislocations that followed the Trojan Waror the immense movements and destruction of the second Persian invasion?Almost immediately we lose sight of the Peloponnesian War and its effects,"the moral as well as the material loss—the fabric of society nearly broken,both intellect and virtue weakened or abused." Instead the focus turns toa negative point—that the events of early Greek history were never oflarge scale. Nor are the arguments in support of this position alwayscompelling. The lovers of Herodotus are understandably outraged: "Thucydidesmagnifies his own subject at the expense of the wars of Helleneand Barbarian, ludicrously missing the oecumenical significance and wantonlycompressing the duration and magnitude of the Herodotean theme."

Instead of a rhetorical magnification of the theme of the work we encounterat the outset a polemical essay on the nature of early Greek history,instead of the beginning of the narrative about Thucydides' own time, arevisionist argument about the remote past. The opening sentences set thework apart from the amiable discursiveness of Herodotus and, no doubt,from the inflated rhetorical history of the funeral orations and the displaypieces at the Olympic and other festivals. This work, we soon recognize,belongs instead with other examples of a new approach to the past detectableamong the fragmentary remains of the prose literature of the latefifth century B.C. The label "Archaeology" widely used in modern discussionsof the opening section of the work reflects, albeit obscurely, thisconnection. Although open to the false inference that Thucydides wastrying to unearth whatever information he could about the ill-documentedearly history of Greece, the term connected this portion of Thucydides'work with other late fifth-century reconstructions of the remote past. Theopening chapters are not an attempt at a comprehensive description of earlyGreece. Thucydides has much more to tell about early Greece than hereports here, as a glance at the beginning of the sixth book shows. Heknows—or claims to know—a great deal about the history of Greek colonization,and elsewhere displays detailed knowledge of episodes in theearly history of both Athens and Sparta. But in the Archaeology he hasconstructed an argument, an essay of revisionist history that presents afresh view of how Greece had once appeared.

Hesiod's idea of a Golden Age is representative of the radically differentview of the past held by earlier Greek thinkers. In his view there had oncebeen a happy stage of easy rapport between men and gods and even afterthat time, ages of heroic accomplishment, blessed in comparison to "contemporary"travail and misery. The myths and legends about early Atticasuggested a view similar to that in Hesiod. They reported times full ofviolence and dissension but set apart by a hero, Theseus, who unified andintegrated the state, secured freedom from the domination of King Minosof Crete and established Athens' ancestral ways. Such myths reflect atraditional way of viewing the past and a sense that improvements in man'ssituation can come only by divine intervention or by recapturing the lostglory of earlier days.

This view persisted through the fifth century and even later, at least insome quarters. It appealed to various audiences and took various forms,including highly moralizing versions. For the epideictic orator, the patrioticpoet, the painter at work on public monuments, history was often the stagefor the recurring struggle between bravery and cowardice, greed and restraint,right and wrong. History was the projection of moral qualities andconflicts.

But during the fifth century many thinkers began to repudiate such viewsof the past. When they imagined the early stages of human life, they foundthem anything but "golden." Life had been harsh, squalid, brutish, andshort. Only gradually, by the accumulation of knowledge and by discoveriesand inventions had mankind escaped vulnerability to the wild beastsand the elements. This radically new view of the past can be detected inmyth and poetry but often appeared in the prose essays and speeches thatcan be grouped together as archaiologiai. Thucydides' "Archaeology"concerns a later stage of human development man many of these accounts,for it deals not with man's first emergence from savagery, but with thehistory of Greece and the development of common actions among theGreeks and of a concept of "Greekness." But its view of the past is similarto that of the other archaeologies we know. It is polemical, and quiteunsentimental. It has no place for Golden Ages or great heroes. Highlyimpersonal, it concentrates not on individual qualities or exploits, but onthe gradual escape from instability and the accumulation of power in theGreek world.

In the second chapter, which immediately follows the assertion that earlyGreek history was never on a large scale, Thucydides begins to draw hispicture of earliest Greece:

It appears that what is now called Greece was originally not securely settled. Inearly times there were uprootings and each group readily left its own land whenforced by those with a momentary superiority. There was no trade nor were contactsby land or through the sea without fear—each group grazed enough of their landto subsist on, neither accumulating financial reserves nor farming the land, sinceit was unclear when someone else would descend on them and take everythingaway. Everything was unwalled. So, thinking that they could seize what theyneeded for their daily necessities from any other source, they were easily uprootedand for this reason acquired strength neither in size of cities nor in any otherresource. (1.2.1-2)

This paragraph—in the Greek two long amorphous sentences—introducesmany of the major ideas in Thucydides' reconstruction of early history. Itemphasizes the lack of stability, the ease with which settlements were"uprooted" and the absence of capital accumulation. It depicts a pre-agriculturalworld, without walls, trade, secure communications, or anytrue unity. Even the name "Hellas" had yet to emerge.

The gradual attainment of greater stability and power comes as a resultnot of the heroism of Theseus or some other legendary civilizer but isassociated with a name that to an Athenian or Ionian Greek would havebeen one of the most savage in Greek history—Minos of Crete. He becomesa prototype of Aegean imperialism, who uses his navy to rule the islands,wipes out piracy and enjoys the profits. He is one of the few individualsto emerge out of the normally impersonal account of the Archaeology,focussed as it is on process rather than individual qualities or achievements.Although Minos is no benevolent or altruistic ruler, his navalpower makes travel over the seas safer and results in an improved situationfor many Greeks: "Those who lived near the sea now applied themselvesto the acquisition of money and lived more securely. Some even encircledthemselves with walls since they were now wealthier than they had been"(1.8.3). Imperialism brings its benefits, not only for the imperialists buteven for the subjects. What makes it possible is sea power. Thus it is notsurprising that this selective survey of early Greece should turn into a briefessay (13-15.1) on early Greek naval history, for "the ones who acquiredstrength were not least those who applied themselves to naval power, thanksto the income in money and the domination of others" (1.15.1). Thesedevelopments anticipate Athens' naval pre-eminence. Near the end of theArchaeology, Thucydides remarks that the Athenians "became nautical,"that is, they abandoned their city and took to the ships at Salamis. But thechange was more than a momentary one, for the Athenians became therebythe leader of one of the two great coalitions in the Greek world, a navalempire ranged against the formidable land power of Sparta and her PeloponnesianLeague (1.18.2).

At a material level, naval supremacy is the primary route to power inGreek history and the Athenian naval empire is the culmination of a processthat reaches back to Minos. But there is also a psychological or ethicalside to the growth of power. The rhetorical tradition emphasized the boldnessand courage of the Athenians in the Persian Wars and the significanceof the valor and manliness of their traditional heroes. Thucydides leaveslittle room for such lofty motives. The cause of the growing prosperity inthe time of Minos was not courage or heroism, but something much deploredin the aristocratic literature of early Greece—the profit motive,kerdos: "Desiring profits the weaker put up with the 'slavery' imposed bythe stronger and the more powerful having surpluses (sc. of capital) subjugatedthe lesser cities." Here we encounter the dynamic representedas a cause of many phenomena in early Greek history. The developmentsThucydides describes are not the result of heroes or heroism but of desiresthat had often been deplored in early literature. Self-interest, the desirefor profit, and even fear lead to the growth of power and security in Greeceand to an escape from the squalor and danger of early times. The analysisof power within the Archaeology is consistent with many of the dominanttendencies in contemporary intellectual life—an unsentimental, unheroicview of the past and an emphasis on the drives for power, self-protection,and self-interest. These are viewed as common to men of the past and toThucydides' own contemporaries and hence as providing a method ofsorting out the reliable information about the past from exaggerations andfabrications. Even more important is the implication that if the nature ofman is essentially the same throughout time, then it should be possibleboth to understand the past and to learn from it. The tone at this point inthe work is confident and optimistic, a corollary to the idea of progressthat we encounter in the, Archaeology.

In summary, then, the opening chapters of the work are not so much adescription of early Greece or a chronicle of events of early times as theestablishment of a way of looking at the past. The label "Archaeology"is inappropriate in so far as it suggests the unearthing of whatever remainsfrom the past; Foucault's use of "Archaeology" to mean "the history ofthat which renders necessary a certain form of thought" comes much closerto making the term appropriate for this section, for it analyzes forcesthat have long operated in Greek history and that are likely still to beevident in the great war that he has chosen for his subject. It is an anatomyof power based on a view of man's nature. At every level it calls for anunsentimental approach to events, emphasizing the significance of self-interestand fear in individual conduct, of naval might and financial reservesin military matters, and of imperialism as a source of power and greatness.Although far removed from the myths and commonplaces of epideicticoratory and popular history, the rejection of conventionality and sentimentalityaffirms the writer's authority and reliability. Enlightened authorand sophisticated audience are in rapport.

The Archaeology is also, however, a demonstration of Thucydides'techniques of historical analysis. At first the emphasis is on the obscurityof the past: "Because of the length of time it was impossible to find outwith clarity about the things before these events and even more remotematters" (1.1.3). But as the Archaeology develops, the tone begins toshift; the "impossible" becomes the "difficult": "I found that the pastwas of this sort, although it was difficult to feel confidence in each indicationone encountered" (1.20.1). Later, confidence grows: "A personwho concludes, nonetheless, from the above mentioned indications that itwas of approximately the sort I have described would not go far wrong.He will put no confidence in the lofty versions told by the poets, whoembellish events to make them seem greater, nor in the compositions ofthe speech writers who choose versions that are entertaining to listen toover more truthful ones, even though much of what they tell has turnedimplausibly to legend over time and is based on no critical examination"(1.21.1). Finally, as we shall see, the Archaeology promises an exactitudesufficient for useful inferences about the past and the future.

The method upon which this growing confidence is based becomesevident as the Archaeology proceeds. It involves the careful study ofdetails, to be noted also in contemporary Hippocratic medicine and in thetechniques of rhetorical instruction developed by the Sophists, who trainedtheir pupils to go through a case point by point assessing what was probableand improbable. Thucydides indicates he used a similar process in investigatingreports about the events in the war: "I felt I should record thefacts about the actions in the war not as I learned about them from somechance source, nor as I guessed they would have taken place. Instead Iwent after each one with as much detail work as I could, both events atwhich I was present and those about which I learned from others." Thecrucial word, epexelthon, I have rendered colloquially, as "went after,"trying to catch its military overtones (cf. 5.9.10) and its use for prosecutionin the law courts.

A further similarity to the techniques of the law courts is evident in theopening sentences of the work and again in chapter 20 when Thucydidestalks about his method of drawing inferences from tekmeria. Tekmeria arenot "proofs" of incontrovertible evidence, but "indications"—facts orobservations that point in a certain direction. They do not entail generalizations;rather the leading themes of the Archaeology—the importanceof sea power and financial reserves—guide him in the selection of corroboratinginstances from myth, poetry, archaeology, anthropology, and thelike. The consistency and coherence of the picture that emerges help validatethe method. If it can produce such plausible results about the remoteand ill-attested past, it is likely to be much more convincing when appliedto contemporary history, the main subject of the book.

As we recognize the affinity between Thucydides' method in the Archaeologyand that used by speakers in the law courts, we also becomeaware of a further progression. The work begins, as we have seen, withan apparent repudiation of the methods of rhetorical composition. Laterthe criticism of "speech writers" (logographoi) reminds us again of thesharp difference between Thucydides' work and more popular oratory andhistoriography. The work moreover, initially presents itself as a treatise,devoid of rhetorical embellishment, meant for private study rather thanpublic performance but conceived with a very major subject. Graduallyit becomes evident that the opening chapters are a demonstration, and aproud and eloquent one, of Thucydides' methods. By the end of the Archaeologywe recognize that it is in fact an epideixis, a rhetorical displaypiece, and not a conventional one, but an exhibition of a new techniqueof analysis and a fully appropriate proemium to the rest of the work,emphasizing in good rhetorical fashion the greatness of its subject matter.
(Continues...)Excerpted from Thucydides by W. Robert Connor. Copyright © 1984 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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