whole, however, the conclusions I have drawn from the proofs quoted may, I believe, safely be relied on. Assuredly they will not be disturbed either by the lays of a poet displaying the exaggeration of his craft” (1.21.1).
But now we are reaching a high point on the path to knowledge, so Thucydides’ competition becomes clearer—it is Homer himself, who is also always present for Plato. One monument of evil deeds is Thucydides’ book, and another is the fame of Athens in the hearts and minds of those who have studied Athens.10 The book reveals the flaws in Periclean Athens as well as its luminous strengths. It is a radical but still developing democracy built on external power, and that power outside the city inevitably influences how people who are in Athens think about their general relationships with others.11 This is a fundamental problem in political life in Athens. Thucydides shows this almost in passing in the Funeral Oration, but the signs are unmistakable, an expansionist foreign policy based on compulsion and power, a desire for more allies as subjects (as at 2.64.3 in Pericles’ third speech), and a definition of the city itself that is intellectually attractive and in accord with the technological and political power of democracy—a strong and dangerous navy as a core representative of democratic power. The freedom of Athens attracts supporters from the numerous lower classes in poleis outside of Athens, but the attraction of freedom and equality is based on unequal power.12 It is also quite clear that Pericles’ definition of the city is abstract in some ways, an idea of a free, enterprising community of spirit that is an “education for Hellas” (2.41.1).13
The conflict between the idea of the city as an abstraction divorced even from the land, and the actual city in which the Athenians live is another source of emotional conflict that in the end contributes to Athens’ ruin. Is the city the physical city of Athens that Pericles advises the Athenians not to risk in Thucydides’ account of Pericles’ instructions (2.65.7), or is the city the larger concept, the “sea and the city” that Pericles tells the Athenians to safeguard (1.143.5)?14
The evil deeds here that are part of the monumental history of Athens, passing reminders that sometimes Athens had to do bad things to make a greater good, resemble the start of ruin in Solon’s famous poem, where he says,
ταχέως δ᾽ ἀναμίσγεται ἄτῃ,
ἀρχὴν δ᾽ ἐξ ὀλίγης γίγνεται ὥστε πυρός:
φλαύρη μὲν τὸ πρῶτον, ἀνιηρὴ δὲ τελευτᾷ:
οὐ γὰρ δὴν θνητοῖς ὕβριος ἔργα πέλει
It [wealth] is mixed quickly with ruin (ἄτη, “ate” transliterated), [Ruin] in the beginning small like fire, insignificant at first but grievous in the end, For mortals’ deeds of violence do not live long.15
The monuments of good and evil deeds that Pericles extols are, except for the intellectual testaments of Thucydides and others, not “imperishable” (2.41.4). And Solon is right that “mortals’ deeds of violence do not live long,” or at least we all hope he is right.
Thucydides’ history shows us that while Pericles was a great leader, perhaps one of the greatest, his city and his view of that city had a deep moral flaw, that no strong personal honesty and good judgment were able to overpower. The flaw was the desire for more, or pleonexia, that rather quickly rose to dominate the internal politics of Athens as that expressed itself in the Athenians’ united desire in sailing to conquer Sicily for “sights and spectacles,” conquest, personal gain, and pay that would last forever (6.24.3). They were united in their desire each to satisfy his own goals. Further, their desires were “excessive” (ἄγαν), desires for more—in what seems like one of the two natural interpretations of Thucydides’ ambiguous phrase, διὰ τὴν ἄγαν τῶν πλεόνων ἐπιθυμίαν (on account of “the enthusiasm of the majority [that] was excessive” or on account of “their excessive desire for more”).16 The “excessive desire for more” suggests the famous injunction at Delphi, “nothing to excess” (μηδὲν ἄγαν, transliterated “meden agan”).17 Thucydides’ method, like Plato’s, is partly that of the famous tragedians. He very rarely intrudes directly into the narrative, which forces his readers to interpret.18 Here Athens’ flaws are fatal, and they lead to a great mistake, the Sicilian Expedition, which “failed not so much through a miscalculation of the power of those against whom it was sent, as through a fault in the senders” (2.65.11). It was one of many mistakes produced by the competing leaders after Pericles’ death. The flaws are flaws of character, in this case pleonexia, but the fatal mistake is a mistaken calculation that arises out of a desire to win more.19 The problem that Pericles faced was mixing moderation (nothing to excess in one account, sophrosune or “moderation” in another) and courage. He clearly had the courage to move Athens to the sea and to fight Sparta, but his moderation was personal. He did not translate it into a government that had a formal structure that would restrain the people or a single leader. The ability to mix sophrosune and courage is quite a difficult skill to attain, as the Stranger makes clear in the Statesman (306b):
Ξένος
καὶ μὴν σωφροσύνην γε ἀνδρείας μὲν ἕτερον, ἓν δ᾽ οὖν καὶ τοῦτο μόριον ἧς κἀκεῖνο.
Νεώτερος Σωκράτης
ναί.
Ξένος
τούτων δὴ πέρι θαυμαστόν τινα λόγον ἀποφαίνεσθαι τολμητέον.
Νεώτερος Σωκράτης
ποῖον;
Ξένος
ὡς ἐστὸν κατὰ δή τινα τρόπον εὖ μάλα πρὸς ἀλλήλας ἔχθραν καὶ στάσιν ἐναντίαν ἔχοντε ἐν πολλοῖς τῶν ὄντων. (306b)
Stranger:
[And I suspect that you believe that] certainly sophrosune is other than courage [or manliness], but nevertheless, [that] this also is a part of that of which courage is a part.
Younger Socrates:
Yes.
Stranger:
Concerning these things then one must be brave to present a certain astonishing argument.
Younger Socrates:
What sort [of argument]?
Stranger:
That this pair in a certain way has a very great enmity and opposing faction (stasis) among many of the things that are. (306b)
This analysis applies to Periclean Athens and indeed even of the unresolved contradictions in Pericles himself. In his discussion of the start of the disastrous Sicilian Expedition, Thucydides makes his readers ponder why Athens became enamored of faraway conquests. He later suggests some answers to that. Plato looks into the conceptual contradictions in political leadership generally, but this relates to Athens where an application of the Stranger’s ideas suggests that if the political
