wonder if some of the differences between the two men are more matters of degree. It is also interesting to consider some of the passages that we will encounter in which the language of one or two words or sentences is what Hornblower reflect a quality he calls “polyinterpretability.”4
The disturbances of stasis overturn a great number of customs (3.82, especially 3.82.6), including the axiosis of words (3.82.4). This entire dense passage describing the horrible effects of stasis on all political order and achievements stands as a contrast to the Funeral Oration, which is an exaltation of the custom of burial. While in the Funeral Oration Pericles reaches for the timeless expression of beautiful devotion to the city (e.g., 2.41.4, 2.43.3), in the description of stasis Thucydides shows how when the state fails, people degenerate into the pleasures of immediate and emotional action (3.82.6–3.82.8).
A number of the words Thucydides uses to portray stasis emphasize his concern in this passage with the movement and disturbance of stasis. Stasis moved forward savagely (οὕτως ὠμὴ <ἡ> στάσις προυχώρησε) until it engulfed all that was Hellenic (πᾶν . . . τὸ Ἑλληνικὸν, 3.82.1). This neuter phrase, which is Thucydides’ customary way of referring to Greece as a whole (cf. 1.1.1), has implications here beyond the entire physical Greek world. It also implies that stasis overturned all that was Greek, the customs and civilizations of the Greeks, and made the people more barbaric. Plato’s identification of strife between Greek cities as a kind of faction or stasis (Republic V.471a) makes the same point through the many particulars of any Greek conflict with Greeks.
The war made it easy for partisans to bring in outside forces to change or revolutionize a state.5 In contrast to this change, Thucydides places the constant of human nature (ἕως ἂν ἡ αὐτὴ φύσις ἀνθρώπων ᾖ, “as long as the nature of humans is the same” [my translation], 3.82.2), which allows him to see the general forms stasis takes as part of a larger stable picture of man.6
The clinical nature of the description of stasis recalls the description of the plague, which first challenged the customs at Athens and weakened the people (2.54.1, 2.61.3). Like stasis, the plague has differing particular manifestations (2.51.1, cf. 3.82.2), but also like stasis it has a general form (τοιοῦτον ἦν ἐπὶ πᾶν τὴν ἰδέαν, “Such then, . . . were the general features of the distemper,” 2.51.1; cf., μᾶλλον δὲ καὶ ἡσυχαίτερα καὶ τοῖς εἴδεσι διηλλαγμένα, The sufferings of stasis appeared “in a severer or milder form, and varying in their symptoms” 3.82.2). Like stasis, the plague overturned customs and pushed the people toward immediate actions for their satisfaction (2.51.2–2.51.3). Stasis is a political illness characterized by the examples Thucydides provides, which naturally raises the question of the nature of a healthy polis. We will consider this more thoroughly in connection with Pericles’ speeches and the speech of the Athenian ambassadors in Book 1, but for now it is enough to recognize that the frantic violence of stasis represents the lowest type of political action for Thucydides. The destruction in Corcyra did not end until one party had killed almost all the other (4.48.5). One forward-looking result of the narrative of the plague is to give the reader a sense when reading the discussion of stasis in Corcyra that we have seen this process before. Indeed, Thucydides’ comment at the end of his introduction to the description of the plague creates an ironic sense of foreboding:
λεγέτω μὲν οὖν περὶ αὐτοῦ ὡς ἕκαστος γιγνώσκει καὶ ἰατρὸς καὶ ἰδιώτης, ἀφ᾽ ὅτου εἰκὸς ἦν γενέσθαι αὐτό, καὶ τὰς αἰτίας ἅστινας νομίζει τοσαύτης μεταβολῆς ἱκανὰς εἶναι δύναμιν ἐς τὸ μεταστῆσαι σχεῖν: ἐγὼ δὲ οἷόν τε ἐγίγνετο λέξω, καὶ ἀφ᾽ ὧν ἄν τις σκοπῶν, εἴ ποτε καὶ αὖθις ἐπιπέσοι, μάλιστ᾽ ἂν ἔχοι τι προειδὼς μὴ ἀγνοεῖν, ταῦτα δηλώσω αὐτός τε νοσήσας καὶ αὐτὸς ἰδὼν ἄλλους πάσχοντας. (2.48.3)
All speculation as to its origin and its causes, if causes can be found adequate to produce so great a disturbance, I leave to other writers, whether lay or professional; for myself, I shall simply set down its nature, and explain the symptoms by which perhaps it may be recognized by the student, if it should ever break out again. This I can the better do, as I had the disease myself, and watched its operation in the case of others. (2.48.3)
As students, or literally “someone looking” (τις σκοπῶν) we can see the effects of stasis as a kind of disease, a social and psychological disease perhaps, “if it should ever break out again,” or a moral disease in a deeper sense, that has effects quite similar to the plague. Or if we are in an army or leading an army, we might see incipient suspicion as the beginning of a collapse of order.7
One of the singular fatalities of stasis is the customary use of words: καὶ τὴν εἰωθυῖαν ἀξίωσιν τῶν ὀνομάτων ἐς τὰ ἔργα ἀντήλλαξαν τῇ δικαιώσει (3.82.4).8 Thucydides’ perception of this change or perversion of language is, as we shall see, central to his entire understanding of the war and its effect on the polis. Before we can consider the larger implications of the statement, however, it is important to look into exactly what it means.
It is often stated that Thucydides here asserts that the partisans in the various staseis changed the meanings of the words they used and by this is understood the denotations of words or their referents.9 Thus, taking Thucydides’ first example, acts that once were called “rash boldness” (τόλμα ἀλόγιστος) were in stasis considered “courageous loyalty” (ἀνδρεία φιλέταιρος). In other words, the first phrase was abandoned while the second changed its referent. This interpretation is imprecise. The root of axiosis (ἀξίωσις) suggests that it ought strictly to mean “act of assigning worth or value.” To express this in idiomatic English, axiosis should be translated “valuation,” “estimation,” or “evaluation.”10 The virtue of these translations in place of the customary ‘meaning’ is that “valuation” and “estimation” carry with them implications of judgment and opinion, while “meaning” is too close to “dictionary definition.”11 For Thucydides, writing before our modern fact/value distinction,12 it is possible or even likely that there was no fixed difference between what we would call the meaning of a value-laden term and its actual moral significance. Yet this should not in any way obscure Thucydides’ intensely expressed interest in the moral significance of the words and deeds in his Histories.13
Different and specialized meanings have also sometimes been given to τῇ δικαιώσει (dikaiosis in the nominative case).14 Dikaiosis basically means “making or setting right,” and Thucydides’ use of it conforms to this core meaning.15 τῇ δικαιώσει is a type of instrumental dative, the dative of cause, expressing a motive.16 Since this dative is frequently used with verbs of emotion, it is appropriate here in the context of the heightened emotions of partisans in stasis.17 Because people made their own self-serving judgments of what right was, they changed the axiosis of words to suit and support their judgment.
The phrase ἐς τὰ ἔργα (transliterated es ta erga) “for the things or deeds” has also created some difficulty. Classen-Steup take the phrase with τὴν εἰωθυῖαν ἀξίωσιν τῶν ὀνομάτων (the customary evaluation of
