This Means War: Thucydides Slow Read, Week 3

Ways to think about military history, and two things elsewhere this week

Photo by Nikos Giann on Unsplash

Traveling through Greece, one cannot escape the constant collision of the ancient and the modern—or, to be more precise, the hiding of the ancient under the modern. Ancient battle site after battle site, in particular, looks kind of like the serene image above—a large grassy space populated by grazing sheep or goats. But then, that is what many of these fields looked like in antiquity. After the battle, eventually the grass covered up the horrors yet again, and the sheep came back to graze.

Military historians generally have three dimensions to consider, moving from the highest bird’s eye view to the most close-up and detail-oriented:

1. Strategic (and, especially grand strategy) level—looks at the national approach over time. This means thinking no less about times of peace—diplomatic efforts—than about war. So, when Thucydides is describing at the end of last week’s reading Sparta’s decision to vote for war, he is showing what appears to be a deviation from Sparta’s traditional grand strategy: Spartans were not traditionally war hawks. King Archidamus’s argument to not go to war against Athens represents traditional Spartan grand strategy, which has been disrupted in 431 BC.

2. Operational level—campaign level analysis.

3. Tactics level—considering a particular battle or other military engagement.

Of course, there is always considerable overlap between these three, but it is still helpful to think of the differences, and we will keep coming back to them in greater detail as we continue. But first, considering that last week we ended with the Spartan vote to declare war on Athens, let’s start with the obvious question.

Is It War Yet?

This week, we are covering Book 1, sections 89-146 (pages 49-85 in this edition, if you’re using it). This will take us to the end of Book 1!

Thucydides observed last week that the real reason for the Spartan declaration of war was the Sparta’s fear “of the growing power of Athens.” He explains a bit more in an aside in this week’s reading, effectively outlining the transformation of Athens from the Delian League (just a league of allies, committed to protect each other originally against the Persians) into the Athenian Empire that controlled its allies:

My reason for relating these events, and for venturing on this digression, is that this passage of history has been omitted by all my predecessors, who have confined themselves either to Hellenic history before the Persian wars, or to the Persian wars itself.

Of course, whenever a particular bit of history has been omitted by one’s predecessors, you have to ask: why? Perhaps, because this bit of history didn’t make Athens look great, it was better not to talk about it.

The date historians now give for this transformation is 454 BC—that is when the Athenian statesman Pericles moved the Delian League treasury from the neutral island of Delos (birthplace of the god Apollo) to Athens. He then proceeded to use some of the league funds in ways whose ethics were somewhat questionable—Pericles embarked on a massive building program in Athens, including the Parthenon. So many of the stunning ruins we see in Athens today are from this period of public building and beautification of the city right before the Peloponnesian War.

Photo by Constantinos Kollias on Unsplash

There is a theological lesson here that Thucydides too could see: pride comes before the fall. Except, at this early point, we see plenty of pride from all sides—from Athens, from Sparta, from Corcyra (which is how the tiny Epidamnus affair blew up to be something big).

Thucydides spends the next several chapters going back to the earlier history of the growing power of Athens between the end of the Persian Wars and this declaration of war—a flashback of sorts, if this were a film. The point is to show: the Spartans may have been quick to vote for war, but they had legitimate reason to be concerned.

It is interesting to note Thucydides’s interest in narrating this history, which doesn’t show Athens in the best light. But he seems determined to document events without idealizing Athens. He wants to be honest in showing the Athenian imperialistic ambitions that made the Spartans so afraid that they decided to declare war.

Looking Forward

The concluding portions of Book 1 have a more episodic feel, as though Thucydides is just thinking back: wait, here is another important event that seemed minor in, say, 471 BC, but was a foreboding of the outbreak of the war. But at least, we conclude with an address from Pericles himself to the Athenians, as he reflects on the war that everyone now recognizes is inevitable:

I have many other reasons to hope for a favorable outcome, if you can consent not to combine schemes of fresh conquest with the conduct of the war, and will abstain from willfully involving yourselves in other dangers; indeed, I am more afraid of our own blunders than of the enemy’s devices.

Earlier on, we had read Thucydides’s explanation about the speeches in this work: some of them he heard, others he composed himself for those occasions when he thought a speech was called for in the narrative. In the case of this speech of Pericles, it is tempting to see it as a real speech—Thucydides would have been present in Athens at the time, so he would have heard it. Furthermore, he is describing events that would have had many other witnesses. There is no reason for him here to make something up whole cloth, even if he may have embellished the speech a little.

But this speech is also remarkably prophetic. He is advising Athens to not take on any additional foreign conquest projects during this war. And he states, “I am more afraid of our own blunders than of the enemy’s devices.” Guess what will cause the Athenian defeat eventually? In part, it will be a crazy stupid (as Thucydides will make sure to remind us when we get to it) scheme to start a truly wild conquest project. But at this time, it’s still over 15 years removed.

Next week’s reading: Book 2, sections 1-47 (pages 89-118 in this edition, if you’re using it).

Elsewhere This Week

1. The Road Not Taken: The Russian Journey (Religion and Liberty Online): I reviewed Paul Chaisty and Stephen Whitefield’s new book, How Russians Understand the New Russia. A taste:

No question about it: Living in the new Russia after the collapse of the USSR has not been easy, and it didn’t help that the transition was sudden, fast, and filled with uncertainty. But what do Russians themselves think about it—you know, the ones who stayed behind, who didn’t take the same road as my family? That is the question two Oxford University researchers, Paul Chaisty and Stephen Whitefield, investigate in their new book, How Russians Understand the New Russia. The book is short but packs a mighty punch, not least courtesy of the appended data tables. As the authors explain, their work “seeks to analyse how Russians view the hybrid political economy that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the focus on how citizens have supported or opposed the fused political and economic system as a whole—normatively democratic and market-based, in practice electoral authoritarian and patrimonial.”

Their methodology is survey-based, presenting concrete numbers behind every public opinion. The period the surveys cover is 1993 (just two years after the collapse) to 2021, shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. All together we have an analysis of three decades of post-Soviet life—an entire generation, in other words.

2. For Fairer Disputations, I reviewed Emily Hauser’s fascinating new book, Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World through the Women Written Out of It. In a nutshell, it’s a fascinating and highly readable exploration of what we can learn about women’s lives from archaeology. But also, it’s a reminder that our assumptions can both help and at times blind us to the truth about history. A taste:

In her new book, Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World through the Women Written Out of It, Classicist Emily Hauser looks at archaeological revelations to complicate the choppy and incomplete stories of women that we receive from the Homeric epics. This is a quest for the historical women of early Greece, an attempt to discover what their lives and experiences were really like. Hauser brings quiet, two-dimensional characters into three-dimensional reality filled with color and emotion. In the process, we get to know the epic characters better, along with the historical women’s experiences that they reflect. The archaeological evidence Hauser uncovers helps us to better understand a tension implicit in Homer’s epics between women’s apparent powerlessness and their documented historical and political significance.

… when we look again at those proclamations of the heroes as subjects with which the epics open, another picture emerges. We cannot overlook that the opening invocations are addressed to the Muses. “Sing, Muse,” Homer implores, or “tell me, “Muse.” Without these female goddesses’ speech, there will be no epics. We would not know the stories of these men without the inspiration of the female goddesses. The same can be said about much of women’s work, both in Homer’s stories and in the Bronze Age history they echo. It may be easy to overlook the essential role of women, but that does not mean it is accurate to do so. Such has been always the plight of the quieter works of care and service women perform, as opposed to the more visible heroes’ exploits on the battlefield.