All this attention, both serious and silly, raises the question: What can we truly learn from Thucydides, a writer who lived over two millennia ago, about power relations today? Quite a bit, in my view, but not necessarily in the way people like to. This moment is not, of course, the first time modern policy experts have turned to Thucydides for his insights.
The cognoscenti have long known of the utility of his history. To take a prominent example, during the Cold War much used to be made of the bipolar world of Thucydides. America was often cast in the role of Athens because both were democracies, while militarized, oligarchic Sparta was played by the Soviet Union.
But this analogizing got things backwards in strategic terms: Sparta much like the United States led an alliance of relatively free, vulnerable allied states who looked to it for protection against a repressive imperial power. Thucydides himself foresaw the utility of his work. He says that he wrote it not to entertain for the moment but to be of lasting value, because people could use it to clearly understand past events and also understand future events given that, people being people, similar sorts of things will happen again.
But as we have seen, one can get the analogies wrong. Thus, the dangerous, decades-long American-Soviet standoff did not result in catastrophic war the way the Athens-Sparta confrontation did.
Now, to be fair to Allison, Destined for War does not go quite this far. He is more cautious. In 12 of these, he says, war resulted and in four it did not. Moreover, his goal is not really to make a prediction. And yet the risk of misunderstanding Thucydides remains when he is used this way, however carefully. He provides a powerful case study of continuity and change in war; and as with Clausewitz, the lessons he identifies should not be reduced to glib epigrams.
Thucydides chronicled an epochal war so as to make the conflict available for examination by future generations in the hope of producing greater understanding of war itself. That contemporary students of war still commend him to us for insights on the nature and character of war proves that he was indeed successful in creating a history that is truly a possession for all time.
Mark Gilchrist is a serving Australian Army Officer. The views provided here are his own and do not reflect any official positions. The killing of all the males and selling of women and children into slavery is not to be celebrated as a demonstration of power, but mourned for what is says about a state that debases itself through using power in this way.
Ibid, Thucydides, This article appeared originally at Strategy Bridge. Sign In Subscribe Ad-Free. Why Thucydides Still Matters. By Mark Gilchrist November 29, Protesters carry an injured comrade during clashes in a side street near Tahrir Square in Cairo, on November 23, Eon Images.
In conclusion During 20 years of exile, he worked on his history—collecting information, writing and revising. Sparta, located in the Peloponnese the southern peninsula of mainland Greece , was most powerful as a land force.
Its system of government favored austere militarism and adherence to tradition. The initial 10 years of the conflict saw annual Spartan land raids countered by Athenian sea attacks. In , the Athenians under their leader Cleon made an unsuccessful attempt to retake Amphipolis. Both Cleon and the Spartan general Brasidas died in the battle, pushing the war-weary sides to negotiate a treaty.
An uneasy peace followed, but six years later Athens launched a seaborne expedition against Syracuse, an ally of Sparta in distant Sicily. This proved disastrous, and the Athenians were driven from the island in by the combined Sicilian and Spartan forces.
Athens surrendered to Sparta in Thucydides is careful to note that at times he records only the gist of what was said, or what he thinks should have been said. At other times the speeches form dialogues, as stronger and weaker parties debate the ethics of war. The Melian dialogue, from just a few years later, records the leaders of a neutral island pleading with Athens for their survival. Thucydides, unlike Herodotus , makes very little reference to the Greek gods as active agents in history, preferring to understand events in terms of their human causes.
It took several generations for Thucydides to attain his now-unassailed place as one of the greatest historians of all time. Aristotle , who lived a few decades later and wrote about the same era, never mentions him. The Republic deals chiefly with the best political order, the best regime. This orientation leads to the deprecation of actual political life, since this life, when seen in the light of the best regime, cannot but appear deficient.
Thucydides, however, examines political life on its own terms and examines actual cities, primarily Athens and Sparta. Perhaps, then, Thucydides is only an especially precise historian.
Thucydides, under the cloak of being just a chronicler, provides the reader with a basis for statesmanship and philosophizing. An ordinary historian might select only the events such as decisive battles that were important for the course of the war but Thucydides has also selected events that did not affect the course of the war, but throw light on the war as a whole or, indeed, any war.
It tells us about man and politics in general. Thucydides narrated the Peloponnesian War not merely because he happened to live at the time, but because the war was singularly memorable.
It was, so to speak, the first universal war, and not only the most memorable Greek war. Thucydides describes the slow increase in civic wealth and power through the ages, culminating in the great power and wealth of the Athenians at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. There was also an advance from original, universal barbarism, to the distinction between barbarism and what we may call Greekness, or civilization.
Thucydides knew of other advanced civilizations such as the Egyptians, but he wants to convey a fundamental problem: the human race has two poles, barbarians and Greeks; and the Greeks in turn have two poles, Sparta and Athens. Sparta and Athens were at their height when the war broke out.
For any people to be at their highest point in regard to war presupposes that they must have lived for a long time unperturbed by wars. The highest point in regard to war presupposes the highest point in regard to peace. If we assume then, that not only Sparta and Athens are the fundamental opposites, but also war and peace or motion and rest , then the Peloponnesian War is the climactic war that reveals these opposites at their highest point.
According to the Athenians, it has always been established for the weaker to be kept down by the stronger; no one who can acquire something by force is dissuaded by the argument that it is unjust to do so; justice has no place, unless between equals in power I. They claim to wage a just war, which is, as such, supported by the gods.
In the end, of course, the Spartans do win the war. According to the Athenians, justice has no place in power politics, while according to the Spartans, justice does have power in the world.
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