Thucydides and International Relations

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Thucydides and International Relations

• Melian Dialogue (Thuc. 5.84-116)

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Peloponnesian War (431-403 BCE)

• Athens and Sparta From Multipolar Interstate
  System to Bipolarity
• Thucydides the Athenian wrote the history of the
  war fought between Athens and Sparta, beginning
  the account at the very outbreak of the war, in
  the belief that it was going to be a great war
  and more worth writing about than any of those
  which had taken place in the past. My belief was
  based on the fact that the two sides were at the
  very height of their power and preparedness, and
  I saw, too, that the rest of the Greek world was
  committed to one side or the other even those
  who were not immediately engaged were
  deliberating on the courses which they were to
  take later. (Thuc. 1.1)

3
Thucydides and the Realists

• Competitive Struggle for Security and Supremacy
• Zero-Sum Competition
• Power Ultimately the Final Arbiter
• International System of Anarchy the Rule
• The problem is this how to conceive of an order
  without an orderer and of organizational effects
  where formal organization is lacking. (Kenneth
  Waltz, Theory of International Politics (89))

4
Thucydides and IR TheoristsRealist School

• Absence of Effective International Peace-Keeping
  Agencies
• Conflict Resolutions Usually Ineffective
• Power the Focal Point of Analysis
• Objective, Omniscient, Scientific Authorial
  Stance

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Russell Meiggs on the Melian Dialogue

• There is strangely little emphasis on the
  final penalty, the killing of the men and the
  enslavement of the women and children.
  Thucydides interest seems to be concentrated on
  the analysis of power and the logical
  implications of the natural law that the strong
  rule the weak.
• The Athenian Empire (1972) pg. 388

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(No Transcript)
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Athens and Melos

• Colonized from Laconia (Sparta) in the Dorian
  invasion
• Melos sent naval contingent to assist the Greek
  cause at Salamis in 480 BCE, though Melos was not
  a member of the Delian League
• Melos was neutral at outbreak of Peloponnesian
  War
• Athenian general Nicias attacked Melos in 426 BCE
• Melos was besieged and sacked by Athenians in 416
  BCE

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Melos at Time of Persian Wars
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Athenians to Melians (Thuc. 5.105)

• Our opinion of the gods and our knowledge of men
  lead us to conclude that it is a general and
  necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can.
  This is not a law that we made ourselves, nor
  were we the first to act upon it when it was
  made. We found it already in existence, and we
  shall leave it to exist forever among those who
  come after us. We are merely acting in accordance
  with it, and we know that you or anybody else
  with the same power as ours would be acting
  precisely the same way.

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Correctives to the Realist Interpretation

• Thucydides and Tragic Vision (Cornford)
• Thucydides and Reader Response (Connor)
• Thucydidean Objectivity as Authorial Stance

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F.M. Cornford, Thucydides Mythhistoricus (1907)

• Thucydides was one of those prophets and kings
  of thought who have desired to see the day of
  all-conquering Knowledge, and have not seen it.
  The deepest instinct of the human mind is to
  shape the chaotic world and the illimitable
  stream of events into some intelligible form
  which it can hold before itself and take in at
  one survey.The man whose reason has thrown over
  myth and abjured religion, and who yet is born
  too soon to find any resting-place for his
  thought provided by science and philosophy, may
  set himself to live on isolated facts without a
  theory but the time will come when his
  resistance will break down. All the artistic and
  imaginative elements in his nature will pull
  against his reason, and, if once he begins to
  produce, their triumph is assured. In spite of
  all his good resolutions, the work will grow
  under his hands into some satisfying shape,
  informed by reflection and governed by art.as
  the long agony wore on, as crime led to crime and
  madness to ruin, it was only from a distance that
  the artist who was no longer an actor could
  discern the large outlines shaping all that
  misery and suffering into a thing of beauty and
  awe which we call Tragedy. (pp. 249-50)

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Melian Dialogue (5.84-116) as Tragedy

• Placed immediately before the account of the
  Sicilian Expedition
• Set in dialogue form in the manuscripts cf. The
  stichomythia of Greek tragedy
• The standard of justice depends on the
  equality of power to compel andin fact that the
  strong do what they have the power to do and the
  weak accept what they have to accept. (Athenians
  to Melians, Thuc. 5.89)

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Thucydides Melian Dialogue Greek Text
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W.R. Connor, Thucydides (Princeton 1984)

• Focus on reader response as most profitable
  approach to Thucydides text
• Objectivity as an authorial stance in Thucydides
• Objective, omniscient stance as a vehicle for
  reader to experience the war on a deep emotional
  level
• Thucydides text demands reader participation and
  continual reassessment
• Throughout apparent truths are transformed or
  subverted

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Connor on the Melian Dialogue

• Whatever our reactions to what happens to the
  Melians, it is hard to escape a feeling of horror
  at what is happening to the Athenians. They
  remain in many respects as we have always seen
  them--clever, determined, vigorous, the
  fulfillment of the Corinthians description of
  them as a people unaccustomed to choosing
  tranquility for themselves or allowing it to
  others (1.70). But now all is changed, for
  despite their clear mindedness, they fail fully
  to perceive the dangers that surround them. They
  see the weakness of the Melians position with
  total clarity but in important respects fail to
  realize who they are and the implications of
  their words. The logic of their position compels
  them to suppress the freedom of island states.
  Yet the reader knows that another island, Sicily,
  will soon overcome an Athenian attack.
  (Thucydides, pp. 154-5)

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Euripides Trojan Women (produced 415 BCE)

• Euripides Trojan Women Death of the Trojan men,
  enslavement of the Trojan women destruction of
  Troy.
• Siege operations were now carried on vigorously
  and, as there was also some treachery from
  inside, the Melians surrendered unconditionally
  to the Athenians, who put to death all the men of
  military age whom they took, and sold the women
  and children as slaves. Melos itself they took
  for themselves, sending out later a colony of 500
  men. (Thuc. 5.116)
• Do not fight it. Take your grief as you were
  born to take it,
• give up the struggle where your strength is
  feebleness
• with no force anywhere to help.
• Euripides, Trojan Women, lines 727-9