15 Jonathan J. Price, Thucydides and Internal War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 71–73. Price compares in substantial depth partisans’ psychology and actions in factional disputes with the conduct of soldiers and their state of mind.
16 A. W. Gomme et al., Historical Commentary (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1950, 1956, 1940, 1981), 3.82.l n., say that the clause διαφορῶν οὐσῶν ἑκασταχοῦ τοῖς τε τῶν δήμων προστάταις τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐπάγεσθαι καὶ τοῖς ὀλίγοις τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, which explains the clause ἐπεὶ ὕστερόν γε καὶ πᾶν ὡς εἰπεῖν τὸ Ἑλληνικὸν ἐκινήθη implies that “formally at least . . . Athens is not included among the sufferers from stasis.” He does, however, refer the reader to 2.65.11–2.65.12. But this is not right, as the clause διαφορῶν οὐσῶν ἑκασταχοῦ τοῖς τε τῶν δήμων προστάταις τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐπάγεσθαι καὶ τοῖς ὀλίγοις τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους merely explains how it happened that stasis disturbed all of Hellas. Thucydides does not mean that stasis did not occur in the states that did not call in the Athenians as allies of one party or another, but that the availability of the Spartans and Athenians as allies helped to cause and perpetuate stasis in many states. For descriptions of stasis at Athens, see John H. Finley, Thucydides (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1963 reprint), pp. 186–87, and Felix Wassermann, “Thucydides and the Disintegration of the Polis,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 78 (1947): 46–55.
17 The translation is by Richard Crawley from the 1910 edition of his earlier translation, Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War (London: J. M. Dent; New York: E. P. Dutton), available online at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu (accessed July 27, 2019). All subsequent translations of Thucydides are Crawley’s except where I have relied on Hobbes or modified the translation somewhat in accordance with a modern scholarly correction or argument. In those cases, I have indicated the fact of an alteration.
18 τὸ . . . ἐμπλήκτως ὀξὺ means literally “the strikingly swift or sharp.” See LSJ s. v. ἔμπληκτος II, “frantic.” ἔμπληκτος derives from the verb ἐμπλήσσω, which means “to strike.” One very clear delineation of the characteristics of a society that is fracturing along revolutionary lines can be found in Price, Thucydides and Internal War, pp. 71–74.
19 LSJ s. v. νόμος.
20 See Allison, Word and Concept in Thucydides, pp. 167–69. Prof. Allison notes that Thucydides indicates that theoretical nature of his discussion by eliminating specific singular terms referring to concrete things and replacing those sorts of nouns with abstract singular terms, many of which are conceptual words in Greek ending in “-sis” or abstract concepts composed of a neuter nominative adjective together with an article so that we have an abstract concept like τὸ δ᾽ ἐμπλήκτως ὀξὺ, “the strikingly swift (or sharp) or the plain τὸ ὀξὺ “the swift” or “the sharp.”
21 See Josiah Ober, “Thucydides and the Invention of Political Science,” Version 1.0, Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, November 2005, https://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/ober/020702.pdf (accessed July 1, 2019).
22 On this subject the work of James V. Morrison in his Reading Thucydides (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006) is invaluable. See, e.g., pp. 3–15.
23 See Simon Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides: Volume I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003, reprint of 1997 paperback edition): 3.83.1n. See also his further comments on this subject in Thucydides, pp. 186–90, in particular p. 186n.100. Hornblower here follows Martha Nussbaum’s The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 507f. and n.24. I follow Gomme et al., Historical Commentary on Thucydides, 3.83.1 n., on this point. Hornblower’s and Nussbaum’s translations, while quite reasonable grammatically, make Thucydides say that “simplicity [is] so large an element in a noble person or nature.” But this would mean that Thucydides is here asserting that a word that can include a sense of contempt for the person so characterized in it, especially if the person who is doing the characterizing is an ambitious, aggressive person like Thrasymachus (Plato, Republic, I.348d), contains an important characteristic of a noble character, more important than sophrosune, courage, honesty, and the beautiful, which seems hard to accept. See also the comment of E. C. Marchant: “πλεῖστον μετέχει—‘in which nobility of character is the chief element.’ Or, less probably, ‘which is a very important element of a noble mind.’” Cf. I. 84, 3, for a parallel grammatical usage (Commentary on Thucydides Book 3 [London: MacMillan & Company, 1909], 3.83.1 n.) For this type of simplicity as a kind of weakmindedness, see Plato, Republic, Book 3 400e.
In ethical terms, one important point that is not modern about the ancient concept of the person of virtue is the sense that that person’s actions are beautiful (kalon). See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1100b–1101a.
24 This is in effect the somewhat hesitating suggestion of Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides: Volume I: 3.83.1n. See also Morrison in his Reading Thucydides, p. 25.
25 David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding in Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995 [based on the original edition of 1777]), p. 5. For a more recently edited text, see https://davidhume.org/texts/e/1 (accessed November 21, 2019).
26 Simon Swain, “Man and Medicine in Thucydides,” Arethusa 27, no. 3 (Fall 1994): 303–27.
27 Patricia Curd, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae: A Text and Translation with Notes and Essays by Patricia Curd (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007, 2010), p. 29 (Fragment B21a) and pp. 75–76, where Curd notes that “the workings of our understanding hint at the nature of Nous.”
28 See L. Hau, “Thucydides,” Moral History from Herodotus to Diodorus Siculus (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2016), pp. 194–215, for a very good overview of this issue in scholarship on Thucydides.
29 See, e.g., 1.22.4, 3.82.2, cf. 1.76.3 (Athenian ambassador’s speech at Sparta), cf. 3.45.7 (Diodotus’ speech), 4.61.5 (Hermocrates’ speech at the conference at Gela), and 5.105.2 (the speech of the Athenians at Melos).
30 See Pownall, Lessons from the Past: The Moral Use of History in Fourth-Century Prose, pp. 6–9.
31 Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides, Volume I, 3.83.1n., observes that just because his speakers make the various moves of the Sophists we are not justified in concluding that he has a Sophistic view of relativistic moral values.
32 Stanley Rosen, Plato’s Statesman: The Web of Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 133–34.
33 Rosen, Plato’s Statesman: The Web of Politics, p. 151.
34 Mary-Louise Gill, “Method and Metaphysics in Plato’s Sophist and Statesman,” 2005, 2015 revision, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-sophstate/ (accessed December 1, 2019).
35 Plato, Sophist, translated with introduction by Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1996), “Introduction,” pp. 11–12.
36 Plato, Sophist, translated with introduction by Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem, “Introduction,” p. 12.
37 Seth Benardete, Plato’s Sophist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), “Commentary,” pp. 150–51.
38 A. E. Taylor, Plato: The Man and His Work (New York: Meridian Books, 1956), pp. 399–400. Taylor makes the important points that in the Nicomachean Ethics this is called Aristotle’s Principle of the Mean; and Aristotle never lays