and that in stasis political discourse degenerates. In Plato (Book VIII 560d), the boasting speeches in the soul of the democratic men do battle with the speeches of the older (and by implication aristocratic) men and at last conquer them. As Socrates outlines in the Republic, the boasting speeches, calling shame (αἰδώς, transliterated aidos) simplicity (ἠλιθιότης, elithiotes), they thrust out aidos or “shame” as a fugitive with dishonor (ἀτίμως, “with dishonor”);28 calling “moderation” (σωφροσύνην) a lack of manliness, they spatter mud on it and exile it.29 We can see here that an important part of Plato’s analysis parallels Thucydides’: Moral qualities that in normal times were honored are treated dishonorably during stasis. The partisans also drive out measure and well-ordered expenditure, while castigating them as “rustic and illiberal” (ἀγροικίαν καὶ ἀνελευθερίαν). After Adeimantus agrees with Socrates’ description, Socrates recounts the corresponding new praise of what had been blameworthy: the boasting speeches next in blazing light bring back insolence from exile, along with anarchy, wastefulness, and shamelessness directly praising them and also calling them by fair names. They call insolence a good education, anarchy freedom, wastefulness magnificence, and shamelessness manliness.30 In Plato as in Thucydides, stasis engenders changes in the values of political and moral expressions. Socrates’ analysis of the way human characteristics are honored and blamed with words opens up one of Thucydides’ densest passages. Socrates explains that values such as shame are treated dishonorably (ἀτίμως, “with dishonor”), while partisans cast out moderation. Then partisans bring back into the city a swarm of bad characteristics as if they have religious values or, as James Adam notes, as if they are deities to be worshipped in religious mysteries.31 In other words, Socrates makes explicit what in Thucydides hangs on the word axiosis, a great change in values that results in the use of new names and in replacements of old names with new ones.
In Thucydides we may, as the result of modern social science, wonder whether the values ascribed to these political and moral expressions should be seen as facts. Thucydides certainly appears to have real conviction about what good values are and what bad values are as expressed in political speeches generally. The changes he records are facts. But are the values assigned to words before stasis correct? Thucydides quite clearly views these values as grounded in correct evaluations of good and bad conduct. This then makes the reader wonder if some conduct is objectively good and other conduct objectively bad. How are we to understand the basis for the comparisons Thucydides makes in his review of changes in language and values during stasis in Corcyra? The acts committed during stasis are evaluated in such a way that they match an idea like manliness (3.82.4).32
The word that reveals the process Thucydides has in mind here is ἐνομίσθη (3.82.4), which is the aorist (or past) passive form of the Greek verb νομίζω (“think,” “enact,” “to be customary [in passive forms]”). The process of creating or supporting a custom (νόμος, “custom,” “law,” “practice,” transliterated nomos) begins with thinking.33 Customs begin in practice with groups conducting themselves in similar ways.34 What enables us to make these distinctions in value is a kind of measurement. The measure is not either nomos or phusis, which are the opposed candidates for the source of meaning in the Cratylus, but a third quality, a mixture of inherent or natural order, customary order, and whatever order there is in a series of events, all of which are anchored in our human, physical beings and what appear to be our eternal or common needs and desires along with our aspirations and our weaknesses, in short the measure of a human being. In clothing, the measure is the female or male child or adult.35 In political life, the situation is more complex but the individual person and the people in a given polis or state are at the very least the basis for the mean, though we must add to that special consideration for our needs, desires, aspirations, and weaknesses. Politically we must also add some kind of founding myth or account for almost every type and instance of a civic unit (Statesman, 273e4–274e3). Such archetypal stories work their way into our customs or nomoi and our language to become part of the measure of our words, our ideas, and our deeds. When we use the resulting concepts, we are using the art of measurement (metretike) as applied to human life (Statesman, 283e).36 This is the art or measurement that the Stranger divides into two parts, the part that concerns arts that measure number, length, breadth, and thickness as compared with their opposites, and the other part that measures in relation to “the moderate, the fitting, the appropriate, the timely or needful and all the other arts that lie in the mean between the extremes” (Statesman, 284e). This second group of qualities against which things are measured presents those qualities to us through language. These are the qualities that generally relate to what are called moral values. The revolution in values engendered by stasis challenges these values in particular, which are the fundamental values of the family, social, and political worlds. The revolution in language makes it difficult and verging on the impossible at times to live in a stable moral universe and to describe normal and deranged or disturbed actions and words. Plato’s Statesman helps to elucidate the complex meaning of Thucydides’ description of the collapse in stasis of descriptions and discourse of actions and words that represent and identify values.
While Plato in the Republic sees stasis as a disease specifically of the democratic polis, Thucydides makes no such limitation. But this is a superficial disagreement that arises out of the differing aims of the two books. Plato in Book 8 is describing the various forms of government and the types of souls analogous to them, while Thucydides is extracting philosophical and permanent truths (1.22.4) from actual events. As we will see later, however, Plato and Thucydides do seem to agree about certain aspects of the highest type of polis. And while Thucydides does not say so, stasis is the political disease most characteristic to democracy, because in democracy there is a well-developed party of the commons.37 There are also frequently parties of disaffected nobles. And finally, as Thucydides does show, there are in democracy unscrupulous politicians of varying political persuasions with access to public fora. These politicians are willing to take advantage of popular animosities and oppositions. Factions can also arise from various business interests, especially a moneyed interest. In the United States, one of the largest examples of faction would be the partisans of slavery and the consequent Civil War, which had as a result one of the first instances of total war including wide destruction in noncombatant areas delivered by General Sherman to the inhabitants of Georgia.38
Many of the characteristics of stasis Thucydides mentions show up in Athens during the war. Pericles told the Athenians to stay at home during the war and to attempt no new conquests, recommending in essence a policy of quietism and rest with respect to anything outside the war (2.65.7). The Athenians did the opposite, allowing a private desire for gain and honor to overwhelm their public spirit (2.65.7). The pleonexia of the Athenians is notorious for its role in their downfall (cf. 4.21.2, 4.41.4). This desire for more motivates many of the participants in stasis (3.82.6, 3.82.8). Disturbed motion again replaces orderly public spiritedness.
Thucydides then stands himself as a principle of orderly activity and the ordering process of political contemplation through writing in contrast to the increasingly frantic violence of Athens in her war against Sparta and the Peloponnesians. But the question of the fundamental position of Thucydides must be addressed from the start. His book has had many champions. Some see in him the beginning of what is called scientific history, others see him as primarily a political realist, while still others see in him either a political idealist who views Pericles as the ideal leader or a complex historian with a little bit of all of these ideas. There are also no doubt many parallels between Thucydides and the Greek tragedians.39 Another view is that Thucydides is a type of Sophist. Friedrich Nietzsche embraces this view:
My recreation, my preference, my cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides. Thucydides, and perhaps the Principe of Machiavelli, are related to me closely by their unconditional will not to deceive themselves and not to see reason in reality—not in “reason,” still less in “morality.” . . . For the deplorable embellishment of the Greeks with the colors of
