Lecture Handout

Humanities 110
9 December 2013
Robert Knapp
Thucydides and the Limits of Democracy
I. Introduction: Where we are now
II. Four part thesis:
a. Athens provoked the Peloponnesian War by becoming a radically new kind of polis, a
radical democracy dependent on empire for the resolution of internal stasis
b. Crucial features of the new democracy (subsidies for public and military service and the
technology of rhetoric) made risky decisions more probable
c. Ignorance and fear of class conflict caused the city finally to turn tyrannical toward its own
citizens as well as toward subject-allies
d. The final victor of the Peloponnesian war was Persia
III. Final thoughts about intellectual and political history
Partial Bibliography:
Andrewes, A. “Thucydides and the Persians.” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 10.1 (1961): 1-18.
Web.
———. “Thucydides on the Causes of the War.” The Classical Quarterly New Series 9.2 (1959): 223-39. Web.
Andrews, James A. “Athenagoras, Stasis, and Factional Rhetoric (Thucydides 6.36-40).” Classical Philology
104.1 (2009): 1-12. Web.
Burke, Edmund M. “Athens After the Peloponnesian War: Restoration Efforts and the Role of Maritime
Commerce.” Classical Antiquity 9.1 (1990): 1-13. Web.
Cartledge, Paul. “What Have the Spartans Done for Us?: Sparta’s Contribution to Western Civilization.”
Greece & Rome Second Series 51.2 (2004): 164-79. Web.
Eckstein, Arthur M. “Thucydides, the Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, and the Foundation of International
Systems Theory.” The International History Review 25.4 (2003): 757-74. Web.
Finer, S. E. The History of Government From the Earliest Times. 3 volumes. Oxford ;New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997. Web.
Finley, M. I. “Between Slavery and Freedom.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 6.3 (1964): 233-49.
Web.
Galpin, Timothy J. “The Democratic Roots of Athenian Imperialism in the Fifth Century B.C.” The Classical
Journal 79.2 (1983): 100-09. Web.
Gilpin, Robert. “The Theory of Hegemonic War.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18.4 (1988): 591-613.
Web.
Jordan, B. “The Sicilian Expedition Was a Potemkin Fleet.” The Classical Quarterly New Series 50.1 (2000):
63-79. Web.
Kallet-Marx, Lisa. “Did Tribute Fund the Parthenon?” Classical Antiquity 8.2 (1989): 252-66. Web.
Meyer, Elizabeth A. “Thucydides on Harmodius and Aristogeiton, Tyranny, and History.” The Classical
Quarterly New Series 58.1 (2008): 13-34. Web.
Noah, Timothy. “The United States of Inequality: The Great Divergence.” Slate 3 Sept. 2010. Web.
Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death : A Comparative Study. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1982. Print.
Scanlon, Thomas F. “Thucydides and Tyranny.” Classical Antiquity 6.2 (1987): 286-301. Web.
Stahl, H.-P. Thucydides: Man’s Place in History. Swansea, Wales: 2003. Print.
Steiner, Deborah. “For Want of a Horse: Thucydides 6.30-2 and Reversals in the Athenian Civic Ideal.” The
Classical Quarterly 55.2 (2005): 407-22. Web.
Strassler, Robert B. The Landmark Thucydides. New York: 1996. Print.
Wohl, Victoria. “The Eros of Alcibiades.” Classical Antiquity 18.2 (1999): 349-85. Web.
Zelnick-Abramovitz, R. “Settlers and Dispossessed in the Athenian Empire.” Mnemosyne Fourth Series 57.3
(2004): 325-45. Web.

Terms: thetes, chora, herms (ithyphallic)
Quotations:
1. As soon as it was day Nicias put his army in motion, pressed as before, by the Syracusans and their
allies, pelted from every side by their missiles and struck down by their javelins. The Athenians
pushed on for the [river] Assinarus, impelled by the attacks made upon them from every side by a
numerous cavalry and the swarm of other arms, supposing that they should breathe more freely if
once across the river, and driven on also by their exhaustion and craving for water. Once there they
rushed in, and all order was at an end, each man wanting to cross first, and the attacks of the enemy
making it difficult to cross at all; forced to huddle together, they fell against and trampled one another,
some dying immediately upon the javelins, others getting entangled together and stumbling over the
articles of baggage, without being able to rise again. Meanwhile the opposite bank, which was steep,
was lined by the Syracusans, who showered missiles down upon the Athenians, most of them
drinking greedily and heaped together in disorder in the hollow bed of the river. The Peloponnesians
also came down and butchered them, especially those in the water, which was thus immediately
spoiled, but which they went on drinking just the same, mud and all, bloody as it was, most even
fighting to have it. (Thucydides 7.84, trans. Richard Crawley, rev. by Strassler)
2. What made the Peloponnesian War inevitable was the growth of Athenian power, and the fear which
this caused in Sparta. (Thucydides 1.23, trans. Rex Warner) I think the truest cause, though least
spoken of, was that the Athenians, in growing to great power and furnishing an occasion of fear to the
Lacedaemonians, compelled the latter to go to war (Thucydides 1.23, trans. Raphael Sealey, rev. by
Arthur Eckstein)
3. In the passage of greatest relevance here, 1.23.5-6, Thucydides' summary of the causes of the war
between Athens and Sparta appears to stress-- to the delight of political scientists--the crucial role of
a power-transition crisis. Political scientists define such a crisis as a response to a perceived dramatic
shift in the distribution of the capabilities of the states within an anarchic system. The shift can either
take the form of a dramatic increase in the capabilities of one of the major units in the system, and/or
a dramatic decline in the capabilities of another major unit, either in absolute or relative terms. When
the distribution of privilege, influence, and territory within a state system becomes severely
mismatched with changing realities of power, the result tends to be large-scale, often system-wide,
war that in turn creates a new configuration of privilege, influence, and territory better matched with
the distribution of power. In other words, historically the realignment of the structure of power and
privilege within an anarchic state system has tended to be accompanied by great violence: what the
political scientists call 'hegemonic war'. (Eckstein 758-59)
4. With the Greeks we enter a new world. . . . No less than anything else, perhaps more so, the Greeks
affected the practice and the theory of government. What they worked here was a revolution. From
the beginning of recorded history in Sumeria and Egypt—for some two-and-a-half thousand years—
every constituted state had been a monarchy: not only in the known world of the Middle East and
eastern Mediterranean, but in the worlds of India and distant China too. These monarchs had all been
absolute, and godlike too, except for the Jewish kingdom where God ruled the kings. Suddenly there
was government without kings or god. Instead, there were man-made, custom-built republics of
citizens. These Greek polities speak to us in a modern idiom . . . . (Finer, Vol. I, 316)
5. At least the people think themselves worthy of taking money for singing, running, dancing, and
sailing in ships, so that they become wealthy and the wealthy poorer. . . . they realize that the ruler is
necessarily hated by the ruled and that if the rich and aristocratic men in the cities are strong, the rule
of the people at Athens will last for a very short time. This is why they disfranchise the aristocrats,
take away their money, expel and kill them, whereas they promote the interests of the lower class. . . .
Someone might say that the Athenians' strength consists in the allies' ability to pay tribute-money; but
the rabble thinks it more advantageous for each one of the Athenians to possess the resources of the
allies and for the allies themselves to possess only enough for survival and to work without being
able to plot defection. (Constitution of the Athenians 15-16)
6. There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism. (Walter
Benjamin)