Comment by Aidevah | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Aidevah | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

>For example, most people these days who read Thucydides' Melian Dialogue would assume the correct conclusion is to side with Melos, and it's often a shock that Thucydides himself sided with the Athenians.

Can you please elaborate what you mean by this? Thucydides, being a native Athenian, obvious fought on the side of the Delian League/Athenian Empire; that isn't so much a choice as a natural course of action, the allegiance to your family/polis being a central part of the identity of the Hellenes. His history of the war was written after he went into exile, and written in a largely neutral way. In fact Thucydides went out of his way to paint certain Athenians, such as Cleon in a very negative light, and was very positive on certain Spartan generals such as Brasidas.

The placing of the Melian Dialogue is particularly interesting not just because it's the only dialogue in the whole work, but because it was immediately before the end of the book, and the following book deals exclusively with the disastrous Sicilian expedition of Athens. Readers going through the work in order would read about the arrogance of the Athenian delegates in the dialogue, directly before reading the absolute misery of the Athenians sent on the Sicilian expedition where they were eventually completely destroyed. It's easy to get the impression that the Athenians have been hoisted by their own petard, and it seems reasonable that is precisely what Thucydides the historian want us to take away from it. Not that the expedition was depicted without sympathy to the Athenian soldiers, the two battles of the Great Harbour of Syracuse contains some of the most gut wrenching scenes of battle ever written in a history, and it's painful to read even now because of the masterful way Thucydides records the despair that have taken over the Athenians by the end of the second battle when their fate was sealed.

Given this larger context, I don't think it is reasonable to say Thucydides "sides with the Athenians" in the Melian Dialogue. It is true he did not record his own moral judgement on the events in the work, but the structure of the history suggests that he certainly did not support what Athens did to Melos.

I was hoping for a response like this!

First, regarding Cleon. I think it's important to ask why Thycydides didn't like Cleon. I would argue that it had nothing to do with regret of Athenian Empire, and more to do with the fact that he wasn't Pericles. It is clear to me that Thucydides believes that if Pericles had still been alive, Athens would have won the war. I believe he viewed Cleon as sub-par and undeserving.

Regarding Brasidas, one argument is that he spoke more highly of him because he had more information about him, seeing as he (Thucydides) was exiled to Sparta. I'll be honest, it's been a few years since I read the book and I don't fully remember his accounting of Brasidas, so maybe I need to revisit it.

One important thing you don't mention is his treatment of Alcibiades. He is very harsh on him, treats him as a bit of a rich kid playboy, who uses his charisma and ego to bully the Athenians into the Sicilian expedition in the first place. I would argue that Thucydides blamed the failure of the expedition, and thus the downfall of the Athenian empire, on Alcibiades. This is especially clear to me if you look at how Thucydides treats Nicias, who in many ways was Alcibiades' counterpoint.

For these reasons, I would actually argue that Thucydides viewed the Athenian empire as great, the Melians as indignant peons, and was very sad to see the collapse of the empire.

Very interesting points! I admit that my interpretation is very much coloured by the excellent introduction to the Oxford World Classics edition of the Histories written by P.J. Rhodes. I believe Thucydides was far too cynical to buy into the propaganda, and was less than wholly enthusiastic about the way Athens conducted the war, as the placing of the Melian Dialogue directly before the Sicilian Expedition showed. The prominence of Pericles' funeral oration certainly showed that he did not lack pride in his native polis.

The animosity towards Cleon is definitely related to the stark contrast with Pericles, and there's no doubt Thucydides mourned Pericles' death. On the other hand the capture of the Spartans on Sphacteria was due to Cleon, whether it was up to luck or not, and although his attempt on Amphipolis was unsuccessful he paid with his life. These two events largely ended the first phase of the war on grounds more or less favourable to the Athenians, so I would say Cleon doesn't deserve the extra ire directed at him by Thucydides, Athens certainly had worse generals.

Speaking of which, the portrayal of Alcibiades is indeed also very negative (and in my opinion well deserved). Whether or not the presence of Alcibiades himself in the expedition would have changed the outcome is an open question, but his removal was due to political intrigue (democratic politics is always messy) and hardly his own fault. Anyway he carries the family curse so can't be too harsh on him :).

The point of your original post was that historians biases colour our own views. I think the fact that we spent all this effort here trying to guess what Thucydides might or might not have felt about certain things is in itself a testament of the neutrality of his work. It is very difficult to paint him as a partisan purely from the text in his own works, so in this case I believe Thucydides is actually a counterexample to the original argument.

My argument was that the Sicilian expedition would not have happened without Alcibiades.

Also, the point of my original post was that a bias might color our views, but that's different from doing a character assassination like I believe the article did on Gibbon.

BTW, happy to discuss this more via email, nobody reads Thucydides anymore :/

I personally wanted to thank you both for opening my eyes a little. It has been a while since I questioned my own assumptions when it comes to literature.

This is basically why I visit HN.

I think this deserves a better response.

I remain convinced that Thucydides remained siding with the Athenians, even after his exile. I have a few reasons.

First, the question of why he even wrote the history in the first place. He starts the book by saying that he started writing it when the war broke out (not after, as you said before), because he believed it would be greater than any war before it. Not because he thought the Athenian empire had gone too far, and not because the Spartans (or the colonies) deserved better treatment. Now much ink has been spilled about why the war (specifically Corcyra) happened, and whether it could have been prevented, but even if he were asking that question, that's again different from saying the Athenians went too far.

Second, while it is true that the Melian Dialogue is the only dialogue, it is not the only place where grand speeches are made. In fact, you could consider the Corcyra drama (between Athens, Sparta, and Cocrya) a dialogue of sorts, it's just not presented that way. So while it is true that he changed the format of delivery for the Dialogue, I don't think it's reasonable to assume he offered it more importance, and thus sided with Melos.

Third, the work is not only unfinished, but it ends mid-sentence. To carry through until the actual end of the war (404 BC), you need to pick up Xenophon. We have no way of knowing if there would be another dialogue, or if Thucydides would come out explicitly taking a side one way or another.

Finally, if you want to argue that he'd say the Athenian empire was dangerous, I'd need a good reason as to why. Consider how it came into being, as a result of the Persian war. Most of the colonies were quite happy with Athens protecting them from Xerxes, and it wasn't until Athens moved the treasury away from Delos that things got bad. And consider all the great things that came out of Athens: greek theatre, philosophy, mathematics, etc. Sparta offered none of this. In fact, most of the things we know about Sparta come from Athenian sources.

Therefore, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that Thucydides generally sided with Athens, and if anything, his issues were not with the empire, but with people like Cleon and Alcibiades, who (I imagine) he'd argue were not deserving of their titles, and dragged the wonderful empire into ruin.

However, I have not read the piece by P.J. Rhodes, so I will check that out.

You have some very detailed reasons why Thucydides would side with the Athenians; I appreciate that.

> Finally, if you want to argue that he'd say the Athenian empire was dangerous, I'd need a good reason as to why. Consider how it came into being, as a result of the Persian war.

Thucydides himself would have been very close to the halls of power in the conflict against Persia, if sources are correct that he is related to Miltiades, the Athenian general whom was one of 10 strategoi at Marathon. (how he is related is uncertain; wikipedia seems to suggest his father Olorus also had a daughter (so Thucydides had a sister) who married Miltiades, making Miltiades his brother in law. But this is uncertain; it could very well be that Thucydides father and great grandfather, or uncle etc were named "Olorus". Nonetheless the sources about Thucydides being from a well to do family with interests in mines and being from Thrace are agreed upon)

Thucydides, like many of our learned in the past few thousand years, attempts to present himself as a "just the facts" narrator (a counterpoint to his crazy other, Herodotus, who unabashedly presents the will of the gods, oracular prophecies, dreams, etc all intertwined in a tale seemingly spun by your drunk grandfather). As to your question why he thought the Athenian empire was dangerous... Leo Strauss, who in City+Man noticed that Thucydides has a habit of detailing the aftermath of the Sicilian Expedition in terms of all the "natural destruction" (floods, earthquakes, famines etc) that befell Athens after the Expedition, thought that the timing was not incidental.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com