February 9 – Christmas Every Day

Excerpts from the Peloponnesian War

For a historian one of the most interesting passages comes from the attempt by Thucydides to date the moment that the war started. The ancient Mediterranean lacked a universal calendar and you can see in this excerpt the problem that caused:

For fourteen years, the thirty year’s peace which was concluded after the recovery of Euboea remained unbroken. But in the fifteenth year, when Chrysis the high priestess of Argos was in the 48th year of her priesthood, Zenesias was ephor of Sparta and Pythdorous had four months of his archonship to run at Athens, in the tenth month after the engagement at Potidaea at the beginning of spring, about the first watch of the night, an armed force of somewhat more than 300 Thebans entered Plataea, a city of Boeotia, which was an ally of Athens.

Thucydides was very much of the Henry Kissinger realist school of international relations:

Abstinence from all injustice to other first-rate powers is a greater tower of strength than anything that can be gained by the sacrifice of permanent tranquillity for an apparent temporary advantage.

The only sure basis of an alliance is for each party to be equally afraid of the other.

[Y]ou know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Let him remember that many before now have tried to chastise a wrongdoer, and failing to punish their enemy have not even saved themselves; while many who have trusted in force to gain an advantage, instead of gaining anything more, have been doomed to lose what they had. Vengeance is not necessarily successful because wrong has been done, or strength sure because it is confident; the incalculable element in future exercises the widest influence, and the most treacherous, and yet in fact the most useful of all things, as it frightens us all equally, and thus makes us consider before attacking each other.

And a sadly prophetic look at the tone of today’s social and political discourse:

Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation held to a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defence. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either do break up your party and afraid of your adversaries.

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