his children, so he educates the people insufficiently, since he does not create laws as educators of a constitutional structure that would lead the people toward moderation.42 To repeat an earlier point, Thucydides is clear as to his view of the actual structure of the rule of Athens: “What was in word a democracy was becoming in deed rule (arche) by the first man” (2.65.9, translation mine). The plague exposes this and the other weaknesses in the polis. Then Pericles’ death and the subsequent failure of Athens to allow a leader of equal stature to arise at last set the state on a path to ruin (2.65.10, 12). It is ironic that the plague first attacked Athens in the Piraeus, the vital center of her naval dominance and the epitome of her technical superiority (2.48.2). Piraeus and the fleet were for Themistocles the center of Athens’ power (1.93.7), and Themistocles is for Thucydides the prototypical Athenian (1.138.3), able to respond with versatility to almost any situation, which is a quality Pericles also praises in the Athenians (2.41.1).43
Athens is an education for Hellas, an idea that seems to be based in the Athenians’ confidence in their freedom or “liberality” (τῆς ἐλευθερίας, 2.40.5), which in turn makes them versatile (2.41.4), which then leads to Athens’ power, which she has acquired through the “habits” of her people (τῶνδε τῶν τρόπων, 2.41.5). But this too actually is ironic since Athens lost the war. In that sense Thucydides’ history shows us the irony of the idea that Athens is an education for Hellas. It is an education in that the narrative and speeches, like the action and the speech of a tragedy, show that the protagonist, which in a way is Athens herself, becomes a beacon of freedom and democracy and then turns greedy, and tyrannical as the result of an underlying character flaw, a love of power and the monumental results of that power shown in good and bad deeds. The Athenians fall victim to a collective desire for adventure and gain in particular in Sicily. Thucydides reveals this progression in the character, actions, and speeches of the major political figures, Pericles, Cleon, Diodotus, Alcibiades, Nicias, and lesser figures like Theramenes. Then a mistake in agreeing to Nicias’ overly subtle plea for more power—as a deterrence to the expansion of the war—had the further ironic result of increasing the size of the resulting catastrophe. Athens is an education for the Greeks and an education that arises within the Greek world. That education has informed political life in the West precisely as Thucydides hoped it would, as a glorious experiment in imperial democracy that suffers a defeat memorialized in his book, a lesson and a possession for ever (1.22.4). One model for what Thucydides has presented us with is the Persians of Aeschylus, which develops sympathy for the defeated, that is, the Persians and their tyrannical leaders, in the war between the Greeks and the Persians that ended seven years before the play was produced.44 In Thucydides’ book, we develop a strong sense of the pathos of the emerging tyrannical power Athens, as the city careens toward defeat and eventually loses completely. One of the deepest historical ironies then is that Pericles himself was the choregos or producer of the Persians.45 Thucydides also makes use of Herodotus’ narrative of the Persian Wars to compare Athens’ imperial development to the failed ambitions of Persia against Greece, as Tim Rood has recently argued quite successfully.46
Like Themistocles, Pericles saw the fleet as the physical means of Athens’ dominance (2.62.2). Even the highest achievements of man’s intellect cannot, however, escape the forces of nature. This does not in itself lessen Athens’ achievement in Thucydides’ eyes, although it is here in the Piraeus where the plague entered that imperial Athens began her tragic end. Pericles himself recognizes that it is in the nature of all things to decay (2.64.3),47 and that some events even turn out contrary to reason (1.140.1).
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