The art of the statesman also decides whether the citizens ought to learn or not and controls the art of what is learned or taught. In Athens, the basic political principle is democracy; the statesman decides what is to be learned or taught. The politicians rely on the art of rhetoric, which includes telling stories or myths (304c–d). This can hint at why Socrates disturbed the Athenian government so thoroughly. He implicitly and sometimes openly challenged the controlling ideas of the entire state.
Plato’s Republic begins with Socrates’ visit to the Piraeus, the home of the democratic forces in Athenian politics and a place that trade and the navy dominated (327a–b). The Piraeus was the location of great contradictions in Athenian public life as it was the center of Athenian expansionism in political power, the navy, and in trade. This is where Socrates was free to pursue his ideas but constrained by the dynamic, dangerous contradiction between Athens as she was and Athens as she aspired to be. So in the Republic Socrates goes down to the Piraeus where he discusses a just state. One Platonic irony here is that the Piraeus was the seat of commerce, the home of many foreigners who were attracted to the sense of commercial equality and concomitant financial opportunity, and also general human equality and freedom of Athens. It was also the center of the democratic movement in Athenian politics.55 The Piraeus was theoretically the safest place for Socrates to present his view of human justice, since the largest degree of apparent freedom resided there, but one freedom that was not allowed in Athens generally, as it turns out, was to question the underlying principles of that freedom and the nature of the Athenian Empire that generated all the political freedom and the time and means to pursue it.
In the first speech in Athens that Thucydides reports, the debate in Athens in 433 between the Corinthians and the Corcyraeans, the central facts that control the decision in favor of Corcyra are the recognition or simple belief that war was inevitable and the sense that Athens should not sacrifice the naval power of Corcyra to the interests of Corinth (1.44.2). In addition, as Thucydides notes, the island of Corcyra was conveniently located on the way to Sicily (1.44.2). Even as the war is beginning, the Athenians focus on practical, material advantage, an approach to life that war encourages. Here we see the war in one view: Naval and commercial expansion to Sicily are enabled by Corcyraean and Athenian support for the aristocrats (the ruling party) in Epidamnus, while the Corinthians supported the demos in a civil war. Athens here acts against the general direction of her broad social and political force for democracy (cf. 1.24.5–1.25.1). She acts for her imperial power. Corcyra, a naval power, offers more naval power to Athens, and, since war is the chosen method for solving problems of state here, Corcyra receives support.
In the first debate at Athens, both the Corinthians and the Corcyraeans implicitly acknowledge the force of logos or argument as such. The fact that there was a debate at all, and indeed a rather complicated one in which both sides appeal to justice (1.32.1, 1.34.1, 1.37.1, 1.40.1, etc.) in addition to expediency, shows that even at this late period just preceding the war there was among Greeks and especially the Athenians (to whom these speeches are addressed) a respect for discourse even if the Athenians’ decision is for military and economic advantage.56
The war eroded respect for logos, however, and pushed the Athenians toward unsafe and radical actions, most notably the Sicilian Expedition. Thucydides shows this process beginning among the Athenians with his account of the plague following directly upon the Funeral Oration. After describing the various aspects of the attacks of the plague (2.47.3–2.50), Thucydides turns to its effect on the morale of the people (2.51), and then to the way it upset the rites of burial (2.52, and especially 2.52.4). The rite of burial had provided the occasion for the Funeral Oration (2.35.1), in which Pericles praises the ideal of Athenian adherence to written and unwritten nomos (2.37, and especially 2.37.3), while the rite itself symbolizes this adherence. The plague, by disrupting this most important nomos, led to a general anomia: πρῶτόν τε ἦρξε καὶ ἐς τἆλλα τῇ πόλει ἐπὶ πλέον ἀνομίας τὸ νόσημα (“Nor was this the only form of lawless extravagance which owed its origin to the plague,” 2.53.1). The plague marked the beginning of the lawlessness that survived it.
There are many parallels between the effects of the plague and of stasis.57 Both were violent. Both decreased respect for religion (2.52.3, 2.53.4; cf. 3.82.8), and both were lawless (2.53.1, 2.53.4; cf. 3.82.6). In both situations, people thus became more daring (2.53.1, 3.82.4). In general, each of these phenomena destroyed established nomoi, that is, customs, rules, and laws. The swiftness of the plague caused a swift revolution in values so that people, thinking of their bodies and wealth as ephemeral, considered what was pleasurable, and what would lead to pleasure, as both honorable and useful.58
The plague, together with the first invasion of the Peloponnesians, changed the spirit of the Athenians (2.59.1–2), and for the first time in the war broke the unity of the polis of Athens. Pericles’ third speech was only partly successful in restoring the mood of the people, as they gave up the idea of settling their disputes with the Spartans, but also fined Pericles for his conduct of the war (2.65.2). In the chapter after Pericles’ last speech Thucydides details the political failure at Athens that followed his death. He had told them to be patient, to pay attention to the fleet, not to try to extend the empire, and not to risk the fortunes of the city during the war (2.65,7; cf. 1.144.1). The Athenians did the opposite of this. They allowed private ambition and private interests to lead them into activities unrelated to the war. When these projects were successful, they profited individuals, when unsuccessful, they injured the state (2.65.7). Thus, the desire for power arising from greed and ambition led to stasis. Thucydides’ analysis of the causes of decline in Athens corresponds to his general portrait of stasis in 3.82.
While Pericles was alive, he led the people rather than being led by them (2.65.8). But his successors, being roughly equal to each other, and desiring to be first in the city handed over the affairs of state to the whims of the multitude. Since the popular leaders after Pericles were interested primarily in their own advancement rather than in the prosperity of Athens, they brought the city into many blunders, in particular the Sicilian Expedition.59 Because they were ambitious, they recalled Alcibiades. For the first time, the city fell into civil discord (2.65.11).60 By 411 the city was already in stasis, which finally cost it the war.
Stasis is an organic development in a city and does not arrive full grown in one day.61 Because of his method Thucydides does not call attention to each stage of the emergence of stasis at Athens, although he does indicate, as they occur, certain incontrovertible signs of the political degeneration there. Once he has described the stasis at Corcyra and drawn out its general features, he assumes the effect of his description on the remainder of his narrative. He “state[s] the general character of an event in its first appearance and thereafter assume[s] it as the underlying condition of his narrative.”62 For him, the chief characteristics of stasis are its lack of moderation (3.82.3), its violence (3.82.2, 82.8), its emotional concentration on swift, thoughtless action (3.82.4–3.82.8), the overthrow and abuse of nomoi in order to further those actions (3.82.6), and the ultimate disregard for the political discourse that Pericles saw as the essential preliminary for all successful action (2.40.2).
Even before Pericles’ death, there are other serious signs of disturbance in Athenian politics beyond the fine that he suffered.63 After Potidaea capitulated, the Athenians, apparently because of their growing bitterness at their situation, blamed the generals for accepting the terms (2.70.4). They did this even though the generals had what appeared to be good reasons (2.70.2), thus providing an example of the Athenians’ punishment of their leaders, which reaches a crisis in Thucydides with the recall and condemnation of Alcibiades in absentia.64 The dangers of democracy are manifold, but in Thucydides’ narrative two of the most serious problems with this form of government are, first, that the people are fickle (2.65.4) and inclined to choose as leaders those who pander to their desires and reward them with money and, second, that democracy leads to tyranny by demagogues. In this respect, Thucydides’ ideas come close to Plato’s in the Republic (562c–d, 564e–566c). This raises the question
