Thucydides Roundtable, Books I & II: Everybody Wants a Thucydides Trap

Nowhere is more careful attention demanded than Thucydides’ treatment of the Megarian Decree. Like all Greeks of the age, the Athenians had long memories. Their enmity for Megara began a generation earlier, when Athenian blood was lost as consequence of Megarian betrayal. The Megarian betrayal came during a day of war, Athen’s first life-and-death struggle with the men of Sparta. The proximate causes of the this dispute were more recent, however. Thucydides reports that Athens “accused the Megarians of pushing their cultivation into consecrated ground and the unenclosed land on their border, and of harboring runaway slaves.” Thucydides’ description of the Athenian response: a “Megara Decree, excluding the Megarians from the use of Athenian harbors and of the market of Athens.” (1.139.2)

The Megarians declared that this degree stood “in defiance of the treaty” (1.67), and the Spartans apparently agreed. The decree was the price of peace; the Spartans informed the Athenians that “war could be prevented if they revoked the Megara decree” (1.139.2) and it was on the question of whether or not to revoke the decree (for, said those against it, there was “folly [in] allowing it to stand in way of peace” (1.139.4). In face of these questions Pericles was dismissive:

“I hope that none of you think that we shall be going to war for a trifle if we refuse to revoke the Megara decree, which appears in front of their complaints, and the revocation of which is to save us from war, or let any feeling of self-reproach linger in your minds, as if you went to war for slight cause. Why, this trifle contains the whole seal and trial of your resolution. If you give way, you will instantly have to meet some greater demand, as having been frightened into obedience in the first instance; while a firm refusal will make them clearly understand that they must treat you more as equals. Make your decision therefore at once, either to submit before you are harmed, or if we are to go to war, as I for one think we ought, to do so without caring whether the ostensible cause be great or small, resolved against making concessions or consenting to a precarious tenure of our possessions. For all claims from an equal, urged upon a neighbor as commands before any attempt at legal settlement, be they great or be they small, have only one meaning, and that is slavery. [1.40.4, emphasis added]

The argument that Thucydides puts into Pericles’ mouth is simple: the coming war is not really about the decree at all, but more fundamental questions of power and rank. Is Athens subordinate to Sparta? Or are the two polis equal in rank? That was the real question being decided by this war. Any “ostensible cause” to get things rolling would do—in this case that ostensible cause just happened to be the embargo of Megara.

Readers will notice a similarity between Pericles’ talk of “ostensible causes” and Thucydides’ earlier distinction between “immediate” and “real“ causes of the war. This cannot be coincidence, though it is difficult to tell if Thucydides places this argument in Pericles’ mouth to strengthen his own argument about the cause of the war, or if Pericles’s understanding of the war’s origins is part of the reason Thucydides admires him so. By the time Pericles made this statement he was probably correct. That the Spartans hoped to use the issue as a stand in for the competition between the two polis was proven by the uncompromising demand that followed it:

“”Lacedaemon wishes the peace to continue, and there is no reason why it should not, if you would leave the Hellenes independent.” (1.39.3)

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