The Tragedy of the Athenian Ideal in Thucydides and Plato. John T. Hogan

blame their generals anyway because, as Thucydides says, the people had let their success confuse their strength with their hopes (4.65.3–4.65.4). They had already this early in the war lost their sense of what was rationally possible. The frustration with the generals recalls both the earlier criticism of the generals who had accepted terms at Potidaea (2.70.4) and the fining of Pericles (2.65.3). The Athenians’ growing severity toward their leaders bespeaks increasing irrationality and political disunity, which Thucydides reinforces by implicitly contrasting the Athenians’ attitude with the unity of the Sicilians (4.65). The freedom the Athenians feel to take part in public debate is perverted into contempt for leaders, revealing an inherent weakness of democracy, which Plato too sees when he has Socrates describe the democratic city in Book 8 of the Republic. There the democratic city thirsts for freedom, and when it gets bad wine pourers as leaders it becomes drunk, punishing its rulers for not indulging the people (Republic 562c–d). Plato’s account of the succession of regimes, from oligarchy to democracy and from there to oligarchic tyranny, parallels what seems to have been the general historical flow of internal conflict in Athens and what is the flow of internal conflict in Athens according to Thucydides. The last stage in that particular sequence involves ostentatious expense in Plato’s account and a kind of seemingly religious procession (560d–e). Plato names hubris first at the start of a parade of vices (560e1). This befits Alcibiades’ presentation of himself in the debate regarding the Sicilian Expedition where he claims that his expenses and Olympic victories show the power of Athens (6.15.1–3) and his extraordinary superiority to others puts him above them (6.15.4).

      Thucydides’ view of democracy has important implications for how we are to understand his portrait of Pericles. It seems clear that for him democracy is not the highest form of government (8.97.2). Under Pericles, when the city was ruled in name by a democracy (2.65.9), there was rule by the first citizen, and Athens reached her peak. For Thucydides, the question of the highest form of government may not be the same as an enquiry into his view of the highest historical manifestation of the political life in the polis in the middle to late fifth century BC. He differs from Plato in that, for him, in a democracy a very high-type leader such as Pericles may emerge, although such an emergence is almost an accident, not dependent upon the institutions of government. He sees the same forces in the decline of democracy that Plato sees, however, as in the end Athens falls into an internal war of factional passions.

      Plato and Thucydides experienced the collapse of Athenian political life at the end of the fifth century in very different ways but they share a sense of catastrophic loss. For Plato the crux of the loss is the death of the most profound thinker of the age, which then comes to symbolize the uncertain and sometimes fateful relationship between philosophy and political life. Plato’s apparent solution is to conclude that until philosophers rule as kings or kings philosophize and at the same time political power and philosophy occur together, there will be no end of ills in cities and among humans generally. This presents us with what seems like a similarity between Plato and Thucydides in that they both appear to see a deeply thoughtful ruler as one possible solution to the political problems that human life presents. But Pericles is far from a philosopher in Plato’s or Socrates’ view, and in reading Thucydides we must ponder the ways in which he presents the Athenians’ catastrophic loss in Sicily as inevitable. This leads the reader back to the text to see what causes the impression of impending tragedy.

      The Menexenus, which includes a parody of Pericles’ Funeral Oration, is most likely Plato’s, although the authorship is still disputed.⁸⁵ Socrates questions Pericles’ raising of children in the Protagoras (320a) and states that Pericles was the author of Athens’ troubles in the Gorgias (519a). In the Menexenus Socrates delivers a speech that he attributes to Pericles’ courtesan and companion Aspasia (236b), composed of remnants of the speech she wrote for Pericles, his famous Funeral Oration. The attack on Pericles is purposeful and relentless.⁸⁶

      Although stasis as a fully defined condition or syndrome may not have developed until 411, the recall of Alcibiades represents the beginning of very dangerous stasis in Athens.⁸⁷ Thucydides had said this in the chapter on Pericles’ successors. He repeats this judgment in the introduction to Alcibiades’ speech at the assembly held to consider the best way to equip the ships bound for Sicily. Alcibiades’ indulgence of his desires had much to do with the ruin of Athens:

      ὢν γὰρ ἐν ἀξιώματι ὑπὸ τῶν ἀστῶν, ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις μείζοσιν ἢ κατὰ τὴν ὑπάρχουσαν οὐσίαν ἐχρῆτο ἔς τε τὰς ἱπποτροφίας καὶ τὰς ἄλλας δαπάνας: ὅπερ καὶ καθεῖλεν ὕστερον τὴν τῶν Ἀθηναίων πόλιν οὐχ ἥκιστα.

      For the position he held among the citizens led him to indulge his tastes beyond what his real means would bear, both in keeping horses and in the rest of his expenditure; and this later on had not a little to do with the ruin of the Athenian state. (6.15.3)

      The people, fearful of the magnitude of his paranomia and ambition, thinking that he aimed at tyranny, became his enemy. Although he was the best general Athens had, the people entrusted others with the affairs of state. This soon destroyed the polis (6.15.4). Soon after the Sicilian Expedition the city fell into a formal condition of stasis during which, although she held out for a number of years, her power declined (2.65.12). Athens finally gave in and lost the war as a result of internal disputes among the citizens. Thucydides implies a medical model for understanding stasis as a disease. Plato explicitly calls the class warfare of stasis a disease in the Republic (νόσημα, 563e), and in the Sophist (228a–b).

      In general, Thucydides depicts a decline in political life in Athens during the war. This movement is not a straight line, however, but full of peaks and valleys. Alcibiades, for instance, stands out for his ability, and once even for his service to Athens (8.86.4), yet he appears late in the Histories. Cleon, on the other hand, has his most significant moment in Book 3 in the debate over Mytilene. The Melian Dialogue, which as we shall see, represents a serious falling off from the tone and substance of speeches near the beginning of the war, occurs near the middle of the Histories.

      Although the dramatic progress of political degeneration at Athens does not follow a straight line, there are two overriding factors that support such an overarching interpretation of how Thucydides presents political discourse in Athens during the war. In the first place, we have Thucydides’ explicit statements in 3.82 of the effect of war on men’s emotions and their ways of using logos during political revolutions. Second, the dramatic force of the Histories is such that Thucydides’ portrayal of the war has a sense of inevitability about it. Thucydides presents various aspects of the decline in Athens’ fortunes. He describes the plague and the loss of Pericles, then he shows us Cleon, who serves as the form of the demagogue. After this we have the Melian Dialogue, and finally the Syracusan adventure, which seems doomed from the start. All this contributes to a general impression that Athens will lose the war.⁸⁸ The decline in political discourse or rhetoric during the war forms part of this picture. The resolution of the apparent conflict between Thucydides’ high praise of Pericles and the feeling we have as readers of the Histories that Athens will lose the war represents one of the most important intellectual challenges that Thucydides sets for his readers.

      Thucydides selects and emphasizes in order to develop his own philosophical account of the Peloponnesian War.⁸⁹ The decline of political discourse at Athens plays, as we shall see, a significant role in this account. This decline mirrors several other movements in the Histories: from political power to pure violence; from arche or “rule” to tyranny; from being to becoming; from orderly rest combined with moments of rest to disorderly and then frantic political and military motion; from trust to suspicion; from public to private; and from a polis presented as an organized one in the Funeral Oration to inhabitants of Athens each pursuing their many dreams and recoiling from their many fears at the start of the Sicilian Expedition (6.30.1–2).

      For Thucydides, a well-ordered polis and freedom from internal contention provide the essential bases for political achievement and power. Therefore, an examination of his description of the development