The Fall of the Athenian Empire-(A New History of the Peloponnesian War) Donald Kagan - (1987)

X
PREFACE
of each situation. Inevitably, that will seem arbitrary in some cases,
but the nature of the evidence about the quality of the sources permits
no greater consistency. Introducing and following any general rule
would surely lead to more errors than the application of independent
judgment in each case.
One further question of method deserves attention. More than one
able and sympathetic critic of my earlier volumes has been troubled
by my practice of comparing what took place with what might have
happened had individuals or peoples taken different actions and by
my penchant for the subjunctive mood, or what is sometimes called
"counterfactual history." To my mind, no one who aims to write a
history rather than a chronicle can avoid discussing what might have
happened; the only question is how explicitly one reveals what one is
doing. A major difference between historians and chroniclers is that
historians interpret what they recount, that is, they make judgments
about it. There is no way that the historian can judge that one action
or policy was wise or foolish without saying, or implying, that it was
better or worse than some other that might have been employed, which
is, after all, "counterfactual history." No doubt my method has been
influenced by the great historian whom I have been studying for three
decades, who engages in this practice very frequently and more openly
than most. Let two examples suffice. In his explanation of the great
length of the Greeks'.siege of Troy, Thucydides says: "But if they
had taken with them an abundant supply of food, and ... had carried
on the war continuously, they would easily have prevailed in battle and
taken the city.'"' Again, in the conclusion to his summation and judgment
of Pericles' career, he says: "Such abundant grounds had Pericles at
that time for his own forecast that Athens might quite easily have triumphed
in this war over the Peloponnesians alone.'" I believe that there are
important advantages in such explicitness: it puts the reader on notice
that the statement in question is a judgment, an interpretation, rather
than a fact, and it helps avoid the excessive power of the fait accompli,
making clear that what really occurred was not the inevitable outcome
of superhuman forces but the result of decisions hy human beings and
suggesting that both the decisions and their outcomes could well have
6 1.1 1.2. To avoid prejudicing the question, I have not used my own translation but
that of C. F. Smith in the Loeb edition, which is reliable and attempts to stay closer
to the text than most. The Greek in the emphasized portion reads: P~Biwo:; &v ,.. uixn
Kpa.'ToiJVTE'i lLAOV.
7
z.6s.q: 11'civu lxv j)«;t8Lwo; 1TEPL'YEvicr6m ri)v 1T0ALV.