Thucydides Roundtable, Concluding Analysis: What have we learned?

It was during the first period of this constitution that the Athenians appear to have enjoyed the best government that they ever did, at least in my time. For the fusion of the high and the low was accomplished with judgment, and this was what first enabled the state to raise up her head after her manifold disasters. (8.97.2)

A world of Greek values is summed up in that phrase “with judgment” (metria, ‘with moderation or due measure’) but I think it most significant that this judgment is not the prerogative of one element of society but appears to emerge, somewhat mysteriously, from the whole community and its will to survive. This passage invites comparison with 2.65.8, where the success of Pericles was ascribed to his masterful pre-eminence over the multitude that enabled him to “lead them instead of being led by them;” and I sense here an evolution in Thucydides’ political thought.

II. Learning in Thucydides.

In the course of a long war, somebody had better learn something. The historian need not highlight the fact of learning, but when he does, we ought to take notice. The siege of Plataea, as previously noted, showed the adversaries learning from each other — though the Plataeans usually seemed in the lead. Recounting his triumph at Sphacteria, Thucydides notes that General Demosthenes took pains not to repeat a mistake he had made at Aetolia (4.30.1).

More striking are the indications of a failure to learn. And here, notwithstanding their image as a curious, observant, and reflective people, it is the Athenians who most often fall short. They launch the expedition to Sicily while having only a vague and inaccurate idea of the size and population of the island (6.1.1) and perform a slipshod ‘due diligence’ that lets them be easily gulled by Egestaean silver (6.46.3-5). We must contrast this episode with the care the Spartans take before committing to Chios:

… the Spartans first sent to Chios Phrynis, one of the perioikoi, to see whether they had as many ships as they said, and whether their city generally was as great as was reported . . . (8.6.4)

The Spartans were wise to choose one of their perioikoi, that is, a civilian businessman, for this intelligence mission.

It’s a poor student who repeats a mistake after being burned by it. The Athenian fleet’s reliance on a local “market” for their rations (even when in proximity to the enemy) seriously impaired their battle-readiness and made them vulnerable in a way that Ariston exploited in the year 413 at Syracuse (7.40). Two years later at Eretrea the Athenians lost Euboea by falling prey to an almost identical tactic (8.95.4-7). But they still didn’t learn. In 405 at the Hellespont they got into the habit of seeking their meals farther and farther from their ships. Alcibiades warned them about it. Lysander took advantage: Aegospotami was their final “lunchtime” defeat. (Xenophon, Hellenica 2.1.25-28)

But the Athenians’ worst failure to learn, coinciding with their adversaries’ greatest achievement, concerned naval prowess. Athens began the war with unquestioned naval superiority. She convinced herself that it must always be that way, that no enemy could possibly learn the same skills (1.142.6 — 1.143.2) and ultimately outclass her. This is exactly what eventually happened — mainly as a result of the widening of the war to include Syracuse, a maritime power, and the Persian Empire, which disposed of substantial naval assets. In small things as well as great, the enemy kept learning after the Athenians stopped doing so, as with the reinforced catheads and novel ramming technique of 7.34 and 7.36.

The Spartans also may be taxed with a failure to learn, though it became apparent only after the period of which Thucydides was the historian. They saw the energies of resistance which the Greek city-states put up against a hegemon that reduced them to vassalage, energies that, with Persian assistance, prevailed. And then, with Athens subdued, they tried to make themselves a hegemon reducing the other city-states to vassalage — and provoked energies of resistance that, with Persian assistance, prevailed.

All the Greeks of that time seem to have missed what Mr. Strassler, in his astute epilogue, identifies as “the increasing inability of the traditional polis (city-state) to deal effectively with new problems of war, trade, and politics in a larger, Mediterranean framework.” Of this deepest failure to learn, he adds, “their myopic vision and sterile objectives embroiled the Greek cities in continuous and increasingly expensive warfare that not only impoverished them but . . . also allowed Persia to . . . neutralize [them].” A new organization, pioneered by Macedon, would give the Greeks ascendancy: but that empire would prove fissiparous upon the death of Alexander.

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