68 “Besides, to recede is no longer possible, if indeed any of you in the alarm of the moment has become enamored of the honesty of such an unambitious part. For what you hold is, to speak somewhat plainly, a tyranny; to take it perhaps was wrong, but to let it go is unsafe” (Crawley’s translation of ἧς οὐδ᾽ ἐκστῆναι ἔτι ὑμῖν ἔστιν, εἴ τις καὶ τόδε ἐν τῷ παρόντι δεδιὼς ἀπραγμοσύνῃ ἀνδραγαθίζεται: ὡς τυραννίδα γὰρ ἤδη ἔχετε αὐτήν, ἣν λαβεῖν μὲν ἄδικον δοκεῖ εἶναι, ἀφεῖναι δὲ ἐπικίνδυνον. Thucydides, 2.63.2). There are several points that can be made about this, of course, not the least of which is the apparent derivation by Cleon of a similar point in Book 3, chapter 40.4, where he uses the very same word as Pericles did, ἀνδραγαθίζεσθαι. One large issue here appears to be how power politics applied to foreign affairs fosters the growth of a similar kind of political calculus within the state. See, e.g., Clifford Orwin, “Democracy and Distrust,” in Thucydides’ Theory of International Relations, edited by Lowell Gustafson (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), pp. 98–114 and especially pp. 100–2.
69 Taylor, Thucydides, Pericles and the Idea of Athens in the Peloponnesian War, pp. 60–65.
70 See Eric Robinson, “Democracy in Syracuse, 466–412 B.C.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 100 (2000): 189–205, for a complete review of the tradition that Syracuse was a democracy as that compares with what seem to the actual historical facts, which are more complicated than the tradition.
71 For the discussion of the contradiction between the goal of Pericles to make the idealized and theoretical Athens the focus of all civic life and the apparent actual sense of the people of Attica that their land was as much a part of their definition of themselves as Pericles’ vision, see Taylor, Thucydides, Pericles and the Idea of Athens in the Peloponnesian War, pp. 62–65 in particular.
72 Taylor, Thucydides, Pericles and the Idea of Athens in the Peloponnesian War, pp. 64–66.
73 Edith Foster, Thucydides, Pericles, and Periclean Imperialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 176 (Kindle location 1994). The entire section with the title “Thucydides on Attica and Athens” (pp. 174–83, Kindle location 1974–2075) contrasts the discussion of Theseus and his early political unification with Pericles’ later and more complete unification that included moving the people themselves.
74 Cf. ἡ ξυγκομιδὴ ἐκ τῶν ἀγρῶν ἐς τὸ ἄστυ (2.52.1) and ἐσεκομίζοντο ἐκ τῶν ἀγρῶν (2.14.1) as noted by Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides: Volume I: 2.52.1 n. See also Morrison, Reading Thucydides, pp. 147–48.
75 Cf. Morrison, Reading Thucydides, pp. 148–49: “Thucydides offers a glowing tribute to Pericles, yet if his leadership of Athens was analogous to Athens’ role as an imperial city, was Pericles then in some sense an enslaver? Does he retain a touch of the tyrant? If Thucydides admires Pericles, does this suggest that Thucydides admires aggressive power figures? These possibilities are at least suggested by the application of the term arche to the Athenian statesman.” This seems like a very fruitful way to consider such echoes and relationships. Was Pericles actually a tyrant? No, he was not, but some of his acts necessitated by the war that he accepted led him to take steps that in retrospect may suggest improper rule.
Note the imperfect tense of ἐγίγνετό (“was becoming”). Had Thucydides wished to contend that Pericles’ rule had solidified into the rule of one man, he might have used the perfect tense or perhaps the aorist.
76 As Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides: Volume I, 1.79.2 n., remarks, following E. Badian, From Plateia to Potidaea: Studies in the History and Historiography of the Pentecontaetia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), p. 230 n.40, “Archidamus is the only individual in Thucydides to be called σώφρων,” i.e., “moderate.”
77 Robert C. Bartlett, The Idea of Enlightenment: A Postmortem Study (Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 2011), p. 80.
78 Bartlett, The Idea of Enlightenment: A Postmortem Study, pp. 78–83.
79 Finley, Thucydides, p. 171.
80 See Laurie M. Johnson Bagby, “Fathers of International Relations? Thucydides as a Model for the Twenty-First Century,” in Thucydides’ Theory of International Relations, p. 29.
81 Orwin, “Democracy and Distrust,” p. 112.
82 Finley, Thucydides, p. 195: “The phrase expresses the instability born of the sufferings and demoralization [of Athens], and its emergence is the sign that these experiences had radically affect Athenian democracy.”
83 Virginia J. Hunter, Thucydides, The Artful Reporter (Toronto: Hakkert, 1973), p. 80.
84 See Nicolas Denyer, Alcibiades (commentary) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 88–89.
85 See, e.g., Monoson, “Remembering Pericles: The Political and Theoretical Import of Plato’s Menexenus,” pp. 489–513 and in particular, note 1 on page 508. Prof. Monoson notes that there is a reference to Socrates in Aristotle’s Rhetoric (1367b8). Yet this is not completely conclusive as the reference is to what Socrates said in the Menexenus not that Plato wrote it. But Prof. Monoson is correct that today the general view seems to be that the dialogue is by Plato.
86 See Monoson, “Remembering Pericles: The Political and Theoretical Import of Plato’s Menexenus,” pp. 500–2, who explains the attack on Pericles very clearly in terms of Socrates’ focus on regular family relations as the core of love in the city and on the Athenians’ claim of autochthony and the land they have in common with one another as a city as the counterpoise to the inequalities and injustices of family relations and positions in society.
Two other issues that are to some extent outside the boundaries of the topic here are Plato’s rejection of female inequality, which was a significant issue in Athens, his positioning of the family as a fundamental building block of sound polis in The Laws, and his rejection of the inherently sexual nature of the relationship between older, powerful men in Athens and the young, attractive and often rich and powerful objects of their attention, the boys born into the upper classes of Athenian society. The Meno reveals these issues as basic concerns related to education in Athens.
87 Finley, Thucydides, p. 225. While Thucydides’ definition of stasis in 3.82–3.83 is clear and full, he does not offer an articulated theory as to the stages in its development. On the other hand, he provides some clear examples, e.g., Corcyra and Athens. It is quite likely, to judge from his analysis of stasis and from the histories of later revolutions, e.g., the Roman Revolution and the French Revolution, that a psychological and sociological analysis would reveal some patterns in the emergence of stasis. The pattern we are exploring here is how one observer, Thucydides, saw changes in the emotion, violence, and values expressed in political speeches.
88 W. R. Connor, Thucydides (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 89 n. 24, 157, 159–61. See also Taylor, Thucydides, Pericles and the Idea of Athens in the Peloponnesian War, pp.60ff, where Taylor examines in detail the way in which the people of the outlying cities (as Thucydides calls them [2.16.2]) seem to respond to the idea that they must give up their land and move into Athens in order to fulfill certain important military objectives early in the war and also to live out the vision of Athens that Pericles lays out in the Funeral Oration.