Thucydides Roundtable, Book IV: Devastation

Laying waste the countryside was about inflicting pain. It makes sense in the context of a straightforward strategic utilitarianism: when a course of action (at first, refusing battle; later, continued resistance) becomes sufficiently painful to an actor, the actor will desist.  A crude linear model would make compliance a positively-sloped function of extortionate injury. A more sophisticated model would allow for a negative slope at small values of pain but would expect the curve to turn upward at higher values, even if perhaps only at a step-like discontinuity where the victim’s morale cracks. While this theory has inspired a great deal of behavior throughout history, it is too simple, as I think Thucydides understands, for he shows us three ways conflict eludes such resolution.

First, wrongs inspire hatred, and hatred is motivating.  Human beings are not eudaemonistic optimizers but have a keen sense of resentment that can lead them to sacrifice everything for the sake of retribution.  Thucydides makes at least one of his characters express this insight.

. . . if peace was ever desirable for both parties, it is surely so at the present moment, before anything irremediable befall us and force us to hate you eternally, personally as well as politically . . . (4.20)

On this score a policy such as devastation, while it might peel away a marginal ally or two, would tend to stiffen the enemy’s resistance and make it far more difficult to end the war.

Second, the model treats each of the warring states as monolithic. But in fact a policy of devastation is likely to have a different impact on different groups or social classes among the enemy.  Most obviously, country-dwellers will suffer worse than those who dwell behind the city walls.  Even among the country-dwellers, those whose wealth is transportable will (if given time to escape) fare better than those truly tied to the land.  Forewarned by Pericles, the people of Attica (or at least those upon whom Thucydides focuses) are surprisingly adept at mitigating the disaster which the Spartans inflict on them — the refugees even dismantle “the woodwork” of their houses, bringing it along with all their furniture into the city (2.14).  Even so, “deep was their trouble and discontent” (2.16) and “Pericles was the object of general indignation” (2.21.3).

On balance, this sociological complication adds to the efficacy of devastation, because it creates internal dissension within the enemy’s society. On the other hand, if most of the suffering falls on a class that has little or no political influence (as is often the case in war), suffering inflicted on the population has little strategic value.  In Athens’ case, the genius of Pericles (giving up his estate, should it be spared, as public property (2.13.1), and refusing to call an assembly when the people were ill-disposed (2.22.1), and eloquently interpreting losses as shared in solidarity and pride (2.43.1)) limited the divisive effect of devastation.  When the Spartans ravage the countryside on their way home for the first winter (2.23.1,3) they seem to be acting out of frustration and pique.

Third, the premises of devastation accord best with what has been called “act-based utilitarianism.” For a philosophy that takes the longer view — “rules-based utilitarianism” — devastation is problematic.  Let us render the land unable to support human life . . . what could go wrong?  In the policies of devastation pursued by both sides, we see a downward spiral into immiseration and mutual hatred which gravely weakened Hellenic civilization.  To destroy the orchards planted with human toil and love, depriving a future generation of food, is symbolic of cultural suicide. The impact of devastation calls to mind the laconic prophecy of Melesippus: “This day will be the beginning of great misfortunes to the Hellenes.”

Writing about the cultural degradation of the twentieth century, W. H. Auden imagined an amoral urchin and his outlook on life:

That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,

Were axioms to him, who’d never heard

Of any world where promises were kept,

Or one could weep because another wept.

Auden traces this dystopia to the loss of a Greek ideal, mirrored prophetically in the shield of Achilles which the hero’s divine mother studies with growing horror:

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