In order to understand how Athens in particular changed during the war, we must first look at the speeches of Pericles, which represent for Thucydides the highest achievement of Greek political speech if we set aside Thucydides’ own logos, which then parallels the logoi (plural of logos) of Socrates and Plato.
Before we do this, however, it will be best to address briefly certain questions about how to interpret the speeches in Thucydides. In general, he invites comparisons of speeches by making them abstract and general, and by using a number of verbal echoes. Many scholars have taken the position that the speeches can and should be compared.50 Yet in making such comparisons, one must also consider the different rhetorical demands made on each speaker or group of speakers, because according to Thucydides’ own account, his composition of the speeches is not a simple matter.
Thucydides says that in writing the speeches he made the speakers say what seemed to him to be necessary (τὰ δέοντα, ta deonta) in each case, while keeping as close as possible to the overall intent, purport, or thought (τῆς ξυμπάσης γνώμης) of what was really said (τῶν ἀληθῶς λεχθέντων, 1.22.1). Thucydides distinguishes here three aspects of each speech: (1) what was actually said, (2) the overall intent or general purport of the speech, and (3) what seemed to him to be necessary to say. Thucydides’ program for his speeches has been the subject of thorough scholarly examination. While the first two aspects of the speeches seem clear, the third still occasions some dispute. Here, however, I will take ta deonta as referring to what was rhetorically necessary in order to support the purport of the speech.51
The rhetorical demands on each speaker have an important influence on the speeches as Thucydides presents them. This means that in comparing the speeches one must be sensitive to the requirements imposed on the speaker by the situation in which Thucydides places him. Even rhetorical considerations must be used with care in interpreting the speeches, however. For instance, Thucydides puts both Diodotus and Cleon in front of the same Athenian audience in the same situation, but they make very different speeches. Their different characters and the goals of their speeches distinguish them. Thucydides presents their speeches because he wants us to see the differences in the characters of the speakers and in the general wisdom and humanity of the courses of action they recommend.52 These speeches, and indeed all the speeches, reflect more largely the speaker’s general intent (τῆς ξυμπάσης γνώμης) than they do the rhetorical demands the speaker faces.53 Thucydides uses the general intent of Pericles’ speeches to articulate a political ideal. It is to these speeches that we will turn next.
NOTES
1 Strauss, The City and Man, pp. 140ff.
2 White, When Words Lose their Meaning, pp. 87–89.
3 Morrison, Reading Thucydides, p. 25.
4 See Hornblower, Thucydides and Pindar, pp. 80–81 and 367, as well as his comments in A Commentary on Thucydides: Volume 3 at 6.24.4, 7.86.5, and 8.97.2. See also 2.43.1 where Pericles asks his people to become lovers of the city or, on another interpretation, lovers of the power of the city.
5 Thucydides uses the word νεωτερίζειν (3.82.1), literally, to do something new, to revolutionize a people or a situation. The word is often associated with violence. See LSJ s.v., νεωτερίζω.
6 For a relatively recent and very thorough review of the apparent influence of Greek medical thought on Thucydides, see Simon Swain, “Man and Medicine in Thucydides,” 303–27. On page 317, Swain notes that Thucydides describes the general form that stasis takes. He uses the plural of the word εἶδος (transliterated eidos), which is the same word Plato frequently uses for his forms. Swain says that Thucydides “gazes on the teratology” of the social symptoms of stasis and compares them with the “constancy of human nature.”
7 E. Greenwood, Thucydides and the Shaping of History (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), p. 41. See also Hans-Peter Stahl, Thucydides: Man’s Place in History (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2009), p. 219.
8 I have taken and somewhat adapted what follows in chapter 1 largely from my article “The ἀξίωσις of Words at Thucydides 3.82.4,” John T. Hogan, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 21 (1980): 139–49, though I have deleted some of the more specialized or technical points. I have copied (without quotation marks) or only slightly modified significant portions of the text here from pp. 139, 143–45, and 147–48 of the original article, which the thoughtful copyright policies of Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies and Duke University made possible. Duke kindly makes all issues of Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, among other journals, available online: https://grbs.library.duke.edu/.
9 Cf., e.g., Gomme et al., Historical Commentary, 3.82.4 n.; Finley, Thucydides, p. 229; and Albin Lesky, History of Greek Literature, trans. James Willis and Cornelis de Heer (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1963), p. 463. See also LSJ s. v. ἀξίωσις IV where τὴν εἰωθυῖαν ἀξίωσιν τῶν ὀνομάτων is translated “the established meaning of words.” For a general discussion of the nature of linguistic reference and its relation to value, see Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics, pp. 67f. and 114–15. In addition to Hogan, “The ἀξίωσις of Words at Thucydides 3.82.4,” pp. 139–49, see John Wilson’s “The Customary Meanings of Words Were Changed. Or Were they? A Note on Thucydides 3.82.4,” Classical Quarterly 32 (1982): 18–20, and, e.g., Dino Piovan’s “The Unexpected Consequences of War. Thucydides on the Relationship between War, Civil War and the Degradation of Language,” or “Las inesperadas consecuencias de la guerra. Acerca de la relación entre guerra, guerra civil y degradación del lenguaje en Tucídides,” Araucaria. Revista Iberoamericana de Filosofía, Política y Humanidades 19, no. 37 (2017): 181–97.
“This view is followed now by most scholars, among whom also Nussbaum, 2004, p. 751, n. 24 (this reference is from the 2004 Spanish translation of Martha Nussbaum’s The Fragility of Goodness, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). However Orwin 1994: 177 n. 11 is against their interpretation” (Piovan, p. 187 n.19). See also Lisa Irene Hau’s Moral History from Herodotus to Diodorus Siculus (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), p. 212, where she adopts the translation of “values” as the standard one provided by J. Mynott in his new translation of Thucydides (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Cf. Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides: Volume 1: 3.82.4 n., who now also relies on the translation “valuation.”
More generally, see June Allison’s careful review of the subject of Thucydides’ comments on language here: Word and Concept in Thucydides, pp. 163–80 and esp. p. 169 n. 15.
10 See Piovan, “The Unexpected Consequences of War. Thucydides on the Relationship between War, Civil War and the Degradation of Language,” pp. 181–97.
11 Thomas Hobbes’ The History of the Grecian War in Eight Books, Written by Thucydides (1629) translates as “value.” Cf. again also John Wilson, “Thucydides 3.82.4,” (Classical Review 32, 1982), pp. 18–20, who translates the entire phrase as the “usual verbal evaluations.”
12 Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 39ff.
13 Bagby, “Fathers of International Relations? Thucydides as a Model for the Twenty-First Century,” pp. 39–41.
14 “At their will and pleasure,” LSJ s.v. δικαίωσις III; Cf. Müri, “Politische Metonomasie,” 67f. “nach ihrer Willkür.” J. Classen and J. Steup, Thukydides (Berlin, 1885–1914) ad loc.: “die subjektive Auslegung, wie sei nach dem Umstanden recht d.i. gelegen war.”
15 Δικαίωσις occurs in four other places in Thucydides. At 1.141.1, it means “claim of right.” See LSJ s. v. δικαίωσις II, cf. Classen-Steup (“eine mit dem Anspruch auf ein Recht