Thucydides Roundtable, Book I: Knowing Thyself and Knowing the Enemy

[by Marc Opper]

The decision to go to war is one with which political leaders have grappled from time immemorial. An integral part of that decision involves an assessment of the political, economic, and military parameters by and belligerents of both themselves and their rivals. In Book I of The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides provides two speeches, one each by the leaders of Sparta and Athens, that reflect what was probably the consensus view of each side in the period immediately prior to the war [1]. In this post I use these speeches as a means to consider how political leaders perceive the world around them and draw on some examples temporally and geographically far-removed from Greece to illustrate the importance of ideology in shaping the decision to go to war and decisions on the strategies belligerents adopt in their pursuit of their goals.

Following the outbreak and conclusion of hostilities between Athens and Corinth over the latter’s colony Corcyra (1:24-1:54) and a series of conflicts between Sparta’s allies and Athens, the Spartans held an assembly of the Peloponnesian League at which they discussed the possibility of going to war with Athens. After speeches from both the Corinthians and the Athenians, the Spartan king Achidamus delivers a speech in which he does not foreclose the possibility of conflict, but emphasizes the importance of undertaking comprehensive preparations for a conflict against

…a people who live in a distant land, who have also an extraordinary familiarity with the sea, and who are in the highest state of preparation in every other department; with wealth private and public, with ships, and horses, and hoplites, and a population such as no one other Hellenic place can equal, and lastly a large number of tributary allies. (1:80:3)

He asserts the importance of monetary resources and states that

war is a matter not so much of arms as of money, which makes arms of use. And this is more than ever true in a struggle between a continental and a maritime power. First, then, let us provide money, and not allow ourselves to be carried away by the talk of our allies before we have done so: as we shall have the largest share of responsibility for the consequences be they good or bad, we have also a right to a tranquil inquiry respecting them

He strikes a remarkably humble tone when he states that

In practice we always base our preparations against an enemy on the assumption that his plans are good; indeed, it is right to rest our hopes not on a belief in his blunders, but on the soundness of our provisions. Nor ought we to believe that there is much difference between man and man, but to think that the superiority lies with him who is reared in the severest school. (1:84:4)

The Spartans acknowledge their inferiority in resources and manpower in comparison to Athens, but believe those deficiencies can be overcome through adequate preparation.

The Athenian king, Pericles, is more verbose in his assessment of Athens and Sparta and far more confident than Achidamus:

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