Thucydides Roundtable, Book I: Fear, honor, and Ophelia
- fear: (déous) of the Persian threat triggered by Athens renouncing its 508 BC submission to Persia, heightened by Athenian participation in the sack of Sardis in 498 BC, frustrated in 490 BC at Marathon, and realized in Xerxes‘ 481 BC sack of Athens.
- honor: (times) from abandoning Attica to Xerxes in 480 BC for the common defense, their role in winning at Salamis, re-abandoning Attica in 479 BC just before Plataea, their victory at Mycale that same year, and their later leadership (hegemonía) of resistance to Persia after Sparta went home, a role formalized in the Delian League.
- interest: (óphelos) won by the gradual shift of the Delian League from a voluntary league of military contingents led by Athens to a prison of disarmed and discontented assets owned by Athens.
In 1.76.2, use of the catchphrase is closer in spirit to the use proposed by some users (and even readers) of the History of the Peloponnesian Wars: a fearsome threesome, forever hiding behind every good intent of the heart.
Internet sleuthing of the most amateur kind uncovers other English variations on the catchphrase:
- Google translates the “fear, honor, and interest” as “awe then and price hysteria and benefit” in 1.75.3 and “honor and awe and benefit” in 1.76.2.
- Thomas Hobbes, himself accused of political realism, translated 1.75.3 as…
So that at first we were forced to advance our dominion to what it is, out of the nature of the thing itself; as chiefly for fear, next for honor, and lastly for profit.
…and 1.76.2 as…
So that, though overcome by three the greatest things, honor, fear, and profit, we have both accepted the dominion delivered us and refuse again to surrender it, we have therein done nothing to be wondered at nor beside the manner of men. Nor have we been the first in this kind, but it hath been ever a thing fixed, for the weaker to be kept under by the stronger. Besides, we took the government upon us as esteeming ourselves worthy of the same; and of you also so esteemed, till having computed the commodity, you now fall to allegation of equity; a thing which no man that had the occasion to achieve anything by strength, ever so far preferred as to divert him from his profit
The Attic translated as “interest” by Crawley and “profit” by Hobbes, óphelos, can be read in ways both interesting and profitable. Perseus translates óphelos as “help, aid, succor”. Perseus’s online Greek-English Lexicon (published in 1940) lists a few possible meanings of óphelos:
A. help, aid, succor, esp[ecially]. in war
II. profit, advantage
2. source of gain or profit, service
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