New Imperialists : Ideologies of Empire

WORKMAN: When Might is Right 155
interest on the one hand and right on the other, as though these options
were somehow exterior to the existential tension at the centre of human
beingness. Nothing in Thucydides’ manner of thinking pushes the
notion that the texture of experience resolves itself into choices about
“interest” and “right.” Rather, the struggle for wise leadership is a struggle
of the soul – interior to human beingness understood transcendently –
and the nature of that struggle is not contingent upon the immediate
welter of options established by historical contingency. And most importantly,
as a pole in this struggle reason is assigned primacy; a good leader
must be reflective and thoughtful – period. Wise and moderate policy
emerges out of careful consideration and deliberation.
In its general thrust the Peloponnesian War is a history of the decline
of good leaders capable of pushing through moderate policies steeped in
deliberation and forged with care. This degradation was exacerbated by
the plague in Athens and by the outbreak of civil strife or stasis
throughout the Greek world. As Thucydides wrote of the Corcyrean civil
war:
What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was
now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party
member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way
of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an
attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character; ability to understand
a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfit for
action. 50
The signatures of this decay in Athenian political life included a decline
in the restraining force of convention (nomos), excessive pride and selfsatisfaction
(hybris), self-seeking and overreaching ambition (pleonexia),
hope unmediated with thoughtfulness (elpis), a general lack of foresight
(apate), and infatuation (ate). 51 The convergence of these failings
poignantly sets the narrative mood for the Melian dialogue and the
Sicilian debate. The inhabitants of Melos were given the option of
surrendering to the Athenians. Over the course of the dialogue the
Athenians claim that the gods are just as likely to be on their side as that
of the Melians, 52 chastise the islanders for merely hoping for the best, 53
reprove the Melians for failing to see that the Spartans would not come to
their rescue, 54 and mock the Spartan lack of daring. 55 The Melians, of
course, were destroyed by the Athenians, but any reader would have been