One significant question that lies at the heart of the implied discussion between Plato and Thucydides on value or excellence arete in political life and its manifestation in deeds and in political speech (λόγος, transliterated logos) is whether there is in fact a measure for deeds and in language that exists and is important in allowing us to formulate what we think are abstract general truths. An important passage in Thucydides that bears on this arises in his discussion of the development of revolution or stasis (στάσις in Greek, i.e., internal revolution deriving from political faction) in Corcyra (3.82) and the way that development affects political speech. This discussion of stasis in Corcyra clearly applies widely in Thucydides to his presentation of stasis in Athens, as we will see.
Yet the development of stasis in Athens raises the further question of whether the same kind of decline in the value and valuation of discourse or logos in Athens occurs also in the larger Greek world during the Peloponnesian War. This then exposes differences between war (in Greek πόλεμος transliterated polemos) and revolution or stasis. The clearest Athenian discussion of the distinction between stasis and war in ancient Greek thought occurs in Book 5 of the Republic (470b–d) when Socrates and Glaucon are talking. Socrates speaks first:
“It appears to me that just as two different names, war and stasis, are discussed, so also there are two things, indicating two different things. I mean the two, on the one hand, that which is one’s own and kin, and, on the other hand that which is different and foreign. The name stasis is said for the hatred of one’s own, and war applies to the hatred of the alien.”
“And you are saying nothing,” he said, “off the point.”
“Now look if this thing I say is also to the point. For I assert that the Greek stock itself is kin to itself, and to the barbaric, foreign and different.”
“Yes,” he said, “fine.”
“Then Greeks fighting with barbarians and barbarians with Greeks, we will assert are at war and are enemies by nature, and this hatred must be called war; but Greeks fighting with Greeks, we will assert are by nature friends, but in such a situation Greece is sick and factious, and in stasis.”
This passage in the Republic suggests that from Plato’s point of view at least, the Peloponnesian War should be considered a kind of stasis and not simply or primarily a war. And in fact, one of the major differences between war and stasis is that in war the combatants usually do not seek to obliterate the other side, while in revolution the complete elimination of the other side often becomes the goal because there has been a breakdown of fundamental human relationships. To use Thucydides’ prime example, the stasis in Corcyra ends when there is nothing left of the aristocratic party (4.48.5). The sources of the breakdown can be deep-seated ideological differences, familial antipathies (especially in aristocracies), and racial, tribal, or nationalistic differences to name a few.15 At the very least, it seems reasonable to see the deteriorating and then sometimes violent relationship between Athens and her allies or subjects in the Delian League as some kind of internal conflict with many resemblances to stasis, whether we look at the violent convulsions of the Greek world during the Peloponnesian War as kind of stasis in every respect or not. Thucydides does call the conflict a war (polemos, 1.1), however, which means that the fighting between Athens and Sparta at least starts off as a war even if later it develops some of the awful characteristics of stasis. 16 In fact, the entire Sicilian Expedition resembles a civil war in that it ends in the destruction of one side, the forces of the Athenians, and the destruction is so complete that “few out of many returned home.”17 The great and famous war of earlier times, the Trojan War, engulfed all of Greece but homecoming and peace was the result.
What then is stasis? The most useful definition of what it is relative to Thucydides’ and Plato’s thought is what Thucydides says after the Spartans defeat the Corcyraeans at sea. The Athenian commander Eurymedon arrives with sixty warships (3.80.2). This prompts the “Corcyraean demos” (ὁ δῆμος τῶν Κερκυραίων, or the Corcyraean people and not their leaders, 3.80.1) to attack their enemies, who seem to include anyone whom they regarded as their enemies, whether the hatreds were private, based on debt, or more strictly political (3.81.4). Thucydides then announces what seems to be the cardinal characteristic of stasis for him, which is the extremes to which violence goes in it. This violence has no limit, which Thucydides shows us by the examples he chooses: Fathers kill sons and temple suppliants are dragged away and killed or even just walled up in a temple and left to die (3.81.5).
Stasis breaks down human conventions, whether they are of the most sacred type, familial and religious, or whether they are broader important conventions such as respect for public discourse, legal rules, social structures, or even the basic values through which people express praise and blame (cf. 3.82 generally). What underlies this is a psychological paradigm, as Thucydides presents it, part of which is a kind of “frantic movement or violence” (τὸ . . . ἐμπλήκτως ὀξὺ ).18 Today we might call a city or country in stasis a population that exhibits a syndrome or a collection of symptoms, if we follow Thucydides’ definition. He defines stasis as a set of behavioral characteristics in chapters 3.81.5 to the end of 3.83. Stasis is marked by a breakdown in norms, which the Greeks called nomoi, the plural of the Greek word νόμος, which means usage, custom, law, human statute, and even melody.19 Thucydides’ behavioral definition is very abstract in that it includes many abstract words,20 but he does not offer a single complete political definition of stasis except to note a variety of political characteristics among other characteristics that we today might think are psychological such as an increasingly violent way of solving problems or a predisposition to favor extreme methods.
The observational focus in Thucydides’ definition, which is the definition of stasis we will use here, results from a confluence of factors. In the first place, the heritage of Ionian science emphasized observation. Thucydides himself was an observer and he takes up the position of an observer “at rest” (καθ᾽ ἡσυχίαν, 5.26.5) to pay attention to the war and then to draw intellectually vigorous and active conclusions. He is also reviewing some political phenomena in depth for the first time in writing that relies on what he attempts to determine is objectively true information. In addition to all of this he inherits the model of Greek Tragedy, which emphasizes showing difficulties through the interaction of word and deed rather than observing, describing, and stating conclusions. Plato too shares this approach deriving from Tragedy. Once one had seen the unfolding decline of a great empire that embraced or even invented many new and life-affirming arts and values (and of course failed to see its blind spots), it seems reasonable for someone like Thucydides to try to think about how to elaborate his program as stated in 1.22.4 and apply new types of thinking to this failure so as to help people prevent it from happening again. Political philosophy seeks to help us solve political problems in new ways that may include structural reforms, economic changes, and even changes in the relationship between external political values (foreign affairs) and internal political values. Thucydides’ research seems perhaps to have reached all the way to the idea of a mixing of the values of the few and the many (8.97.2), a problem that still affects us today in powerful ways.21 On the other hand, Thucydides famously offers only a few openly stated conclusions. One reason for this may be that conclusions we as readers reach for ourselves can be firmer and more sound, because we make some effort to reach them. Thus, the first efforts he is making in the development of the new field of history arise as a form of drama, which is a quite natural outgrowth of thought about how to present the human political predicament in a culture that first developed Western tragic plays. What this implies for understanding Thucydides is that the meaning of the work appears in our interaction with it through the questions we are trying to answer, our own preconceived ideas, and our place in history. This interaction occurs in the space that inevitably separates the knower from what we seek to know.22
While Thucydides’ use of a scientific gathering of information and evaluation of the results clearly informs his work, he also introduces a significant moral dimension, which he represents descriptively as changes in nomoi, quite similar to the changes in the axioseis or valuations of words. An important subject here is one part of this moral dimension, the use of language in