over among many of the fundamental values in Athens and within the minds their political exponents.
Thucydides thus uses ambiguity to ensure the reader’s engagement in this most important point, how to determine what is too much. Socrates raises several weaknesses of writing in the Phaedrus. He says the King of Egypt told Theuth, the inventor of writing, that his invention would promote forgetting (274e–275b). Socrates attempts to counter this by avoiding statements of doctrine and attempting to lead his interlocutors and even his readers to discover their own answers. Writing is unable to respond directly to questions (275d). Most seriously, writing cannot address an individual (276e). In addition to this, an individual soul is always moving (246c) and, as Heraclitus says (see Cratylus 402a, cf. 440a), we cannot step in the same river twice.
Yet the situation is even more complicated since there are two factors that change, the river and our souls. What we think we understand from a text once may not apply to us in the same way later. Some of Plato’s solutions are to use the dialogue for writing, to have even Socrates say different things about the same subject—depending on his interlocutor and the context, to avoid stating doctrines in his own (Plato’s) voice, and to employ a variety of types of writing including myth and precise analytical discussion to look at the same problems from different perspectives.
Thucydides rarely says openly what he thinks, and when he does speak and identify his point as a summary or a judgment, he speaks in ambiguous ways that take a long time to understand. He presents many points of view through many different speakers, some of whom even seem to disagree with themselves in other speeches or to see the same issue differently under different circumstances. Some of the speeches are much more difficult to read than the narrative, which makes us interact with them in slow and complicated ways. Plato and Thucydides have formally similar profiles in their own work. Thucydides speaks rarely, albeit more openly than Plato. Thucydides was an actor in the war he describes, and he presents himself as such more than once. Plato was, we have to assume, present with Socrates more than a few times, though he only shows himself as present once (in the Apology). There Socrates mentions him twice—first to point him out as in attendance in court (34a) and the second time to note that he proposes to pay a fine for Socrates (38b). In the Phaedo, Phaedo says that Plato was not there on Socrates’ last day (59b). Both authors make their presence felt in their absence, however. Finally, like Plato, Thucydides uses dramatic irony to make points that he does not state directly. Sometimes the irony seems almost impossible to resolve fully. Sometimes the irony just reflects something about the speaker or the situation in which various actors and military forces find themselves. Some of the most striking ironies occur in Pericles’ Funeral Oration itself.
Here we can turn to a more detailed review of the Funeral Oration in terms of the thesis that we can see in the Athenian speeches in Thucydides the gradual collapse of Athenian political discourse into the intellectual and emotional failures of stasis. Logos, for Thucydides, transmits to his readers what is permanent and valuable in the particulars he describes. Logos provides the means by which Thucydides and his readers can derive universal truths from particular experiences. If we consider the aspirations of the Athenians rather than their failures, it is clear that Athens’ love of beauty and wisdom, and hence her participation in the universal nature of logos, reveals itself in the Funeral Oration. Athens by herself is a school for Greece for all time. Athens teaches by her example, although this teaching has limitations that amount to flaws, as we have seen already. Logos in general teaches by training people in understanding. Those who love wisdom, philosophers, become wise through their use of logos and understanding of it, while those who love Athens (2.43.1) are members of the greatest polis in Greece and become wise through their political life in this polis.
The Funeral Oration praises Athens by a statement of facts rather than by adorning her with pleasing words (2.41.4). This speech, because it represents the universal power and spirit of the city, and because as a political speech it attempts to encourage that power and spirit, becomes universal itself.20 Pericles denies that Athens needs a Homer: the facts speak for themselves. But there is an obvious irony in this, as we have seen, in that Thucydides seems to consider himself the Homer of the Peloponnesian War, as the Archaeology makes clear (1.1.3, 1.10.3). He thus has engaged himself in a contest with Pericles as well as the implicit one with Homer. If in Pericles’ view Athens needs no Homer, what need is there for Thucydides to record Athens’ greatness? An answer to this question requires a more detailed comparison of the logos of Thucydides with the logoi of Pericles, of which the Funeral Oration is the preeminent example. In the process of this examination, we will be able to see the weaknesses in Pericles’ combination, as a political figure, of sophrosune and courage or manliness (andreia).
In the first place, Thucydides’ respect for Pericles is clear (cf. e.g., 2.65). Both agree on the need to state the facts without ornamentation (1.22, 2.41.4). Both praise practical abilities and intellectual attitudes in relation to action rather than deeds themselves.21 Thucydides’ praise of four men shows this in his case. He praises Pericles not for his deeds but for his ability to understand, speak, and act (1.139.4, 2.65.5–2.65.13, cf. 1.127.3).22 In particular, Thucydides praises him in 2.65 for his moderation (2.65.5), his foresight (2.65.5, 2.65.13), and for his integrity and liberality (2.65.8), in other words for his character. His tribute to Nicias is likewise a praise of his character:
καὶ ὁ μὲν τοιαύτῃ ἢ ὅτι ἐγγύτατα τούτων αἰτίᾳ ἐτεθνήκει, ἥκιστα δὴ ἄξιος ὢν τῶν γε ἐπ᾽ ἐμοῦ Ἑλλήνων ἐς τοῦτο δυστυχίας ἀφικέσθαι διὰ τὴν πᾶσαν ἐς ἀρετὴν νενομισμένην ἐπιτήδευσιν.
This or the like was the cause of the death of a man who, of all the Hellenes in my time, least deserved such a fate, seeing that the whole course of his life had been regulated with [practiced attention to conventionalized] virtue. (7.86.5, Crawley, modified as noted with [brackets])23
Nicias’ ἐπιτήδευσις, his “principles of conduct,”24 are in accord with his moral virtue (arete).25 Thucydides praises Antiphon for his ability to originate plans and to expound them (8.68.1). The estimate of Hermocrates also emphasizes his ability—his intellect, bravery, and experience in war (6.72.2). Even in his praise for Sparta and Chios, Thucydides focuses on their moderation, rather than on specific moderate acts (8.24.4).26
When Pericles praises those who have died first in the war, he turns directly to an exposition of Athens’ “principles of conduct” (ἐπιτηδεύσεως), her constitution and manner (τρόπων, 2.36.4). His praise of Athens thus emphasizes the spirit and character of the city, and the people’s devotion to the intellectual and beautiful (2.40.2). He is not praising the constitution per se.27 The special virtues of the Athenians are intellectual: they are adept at originating plans, or at least at considering them (2.40.2–2.40.3).28 These are the same qualities to which Thucydides frequently refers in his praise of individuals. Pericles seems to equate even courage with understanding (2.40.3, 2.43.1).29 His actual praise of the men who have died rests on an appreciation of their state of mind when they died.30 Finally, the most important remembrance of the dead is what is recorded in the hearts of men, not what stones may say (2.43.2–2.43.3). Both men seem to believe that a person’s character is the proper focus of praise or blame.
On the other hand, a basic difference between Thucydides’ logos and Pericles’ logoi is that Pericles’ speeches, including the Funeral Oration, are political and public, while Thucydides’ work at its highest level is philosophical history. His book is a political history of the Peloponnesian War and its antecedents, but Thucydides uses this groundwork as a basis on which he develops his philosophical ideas. The work is philosophical history in that it sees the particular events of the Peloponnesian War as images of human speech and action in general.
