a desire for power over others and the complications that arise from the Peloponnesian War—requires that we start from clarity about what moral terms mean. Yet this is very hard during civil war (stasis) where suspicion and violence rule. In this light, we can see Thucydides’ reflections on changes in political discourse in Corcyra as an example of an incipient social science applying also to Athenian political rhetoric. In order to understand what went wrong at Athens we must consider that there are moral terms that reflect real moral and immoral conduct, and we must at least accept the principle that we can agree on what moral terms mean, or else there can be no real discourse. This then leads naturally to consideration of how the relationship between the description of stasis at Corcyra and the Athenian political speeches can help in the analysis of Thucydides’ political philosophy. In such discussions we must assume that Thucydides has given much care and attention to the dramatic and rhetorical coherence of his work, and that his arrangement and emphases carry a great deal of meaning.13 The goal here is thus primarily to understand what Thucydides has to say about the political sphere. In attempting to understand Thucydides, reference to Plato can be very helpful or perhaps crucial, since to start with at least many of Plato’s concerns explicitly relate to those of Thucydides, for example Athens’ greatness, her failure, the complex core of that failure in the spirit of Alcibiades, and the disappointing end of Nicias (7.86.5).
Friedrich Nietzsche made significant use of Thucydides in formulating his own ideas. Nietzsche also devotes an important part of his thought toward praising what he sees as Thucydides’ pre-Platonic, Sophistic virtues and condemning what he seems to believe was Plato’s soft rejection of ancient Greek masculine and even violent values in favor of what turned out to be in Nietzsche’s view a forward shadow of Christianity in Plato.14 Nietzsche’s contrast of Plato with Thucydides also serves as a useful interpretive tool for understanding Thucydides’ larger purposes.
One significant question that lies at the heart of the implied discussion between Plato and Thucydides on value or excellence arete in political life and its manifestation in deeds and in political speech (λόγος, transliterated logos) is whether there is in fact a measure for deeds and in language that exists and is important in allowing us to formulate what we think are abstract general truths. An important passage in Thucydides that bears on this arises in his discussion of the development of revolution or stasis (στάσις in Greek, i.e., internal revolution deriving from political faction) in Corcyra (3.82) and the way that development affects political speech. This discussion of stasis in Corcyra clearly applies widely in Thucydides to his presentation of stasis in Athens, as we will see.
Yet the development of stasis in Athens raises the further question of whether the same kind of decline in the value and valuation of discourse or logos in Athens occurs also in the larger Greek world during the Peloponnesian War. This then exposes differences between war (in Greek πόλεμος transliterated polemos) and revolution or stasis. The clearest Athenian discussion of the distinction between stasis and war in ancient Greek thought occurs in Book 5 of the Republic (470b–d) when Socrates and Glaucon are talking. Socrates speaks first:
“It appears to me that just as two different names, war and stasis, are discussed, so also there are two things, indicating two different things. I mean the two, on the one hand, that which is one’s own and kin, and, on the other hand that which is different and foreign. The name stasis is said for the hatred of one’s own, and war applies to the hatred of the alien.”
“And you are saying nothing,” he said, “off the point.”
“Now look if this thing I say is also to the point. For I assert that the Greek stock itself is kin to itself, and to the barbaric, foreign and different.”
“Yes,” he said, “fine.”
“Then Greeks fighting with barbarians and barbarians with Greeks, we will assert are at war and are enemies by nature, and this hatred must be called war; but Greeks fighting with Greeks, we will assert are by nature friends, but in such a situation Greece is sick and factious, and in stasis.”
This passage in the Republic suggests that from Plato’s point of view at least, the Peloponnesian War should be considered a kind of stasis and not simply or primarily a war. And in fact, one of the major differences between war and stasis is that in war the combatants usually do not seek to obliterate the other side, while in revolution the complete elimination of the other side often becomes the goal because there has been a breakdown of fundamental human relationships. To use Thucydides’ prime example, the stasis in Corcyra ends when there is nothing left of the aristocratic party (4.48.5). The sources of the breakdown can be deep-seated ideological differences, familial antipathies (especially in aristocracies), and racial, tribal, or nationalistic differences to name a few.15 At the very least, it seems reasonable to see the deteriorating and then sometimes violent relationship between Athens and her allies or subjects in the Delian League as some kind of internal conflict with many resemblances to stasis, whether we look at the violent convulsions of the Greek world during the Peloponnesian War as kind of stasis in every respect or not. Thucydides does call the conflict a war (polemos, 1.1), however, which means that the fighting between Athens and Sparta at least starts off as a war even if later it develops some of the awful characteristics of stasis. 16 In fact, the entire Sicilian Expedition resembles a civil war in that it ends in the destruction of one side, the forces of the Athenians, and the destruction is so complete that “few out of many returned home.”17 The great and famous war of earlier times, the Trojan War, engulfed all of Greece but homecoming and peace was the result.
What then is stasis? The most useful definition of what it is relative to Thucydides’ and Plato’s thought is what Thucydides says after the Spartans defeat the Corcyraeans at sea. The Athenian commander Eurymedon arrives with sixty warships (3.80.2). This prompts the “Corcyraean demos” (ὁ δῆμος τῶν Κερκυραίων, or the Corcyraean people and not their leaders, 3.80.1) to attack their enemies, who seem to include anyone whom they regarded as their enemies, whether the hatreds were private, based on debt, or more strictly political (3.81.4). Thucydides then announces what seems to be the cardinal characteristic of stasis for him, which is the extremes to which violence goes in it. This violence has no limit, which Thucydides shows us by the examples he chooses: Fathers kill sons and temple suppliants are dragged away and killed or even just walled up in a temple and left to die (3.81.5).
Stasis breaks down human conventions, whether they are of the most sacred type, familial and religious, or whether they are broader important conventions such as respect for public discourse, legal rules, social structures, or even the basic values through which people express praise and blame (cf. 3.82 generally). What underlies this is a psychological paradigm, as Thucydides presents it, part of which is a kind of “frantic movement or violence” (τὸ . . . ἐμπλήκτως ὀξὺ ).18 Today we might call a city or country in stasis a population that exhibits a syndrome or a collection of symptoms, if we follow Thucydides’ definition. He defines stasis as a set of behavioral characteristics in chapters 3.81.5 to the end of 3.83. Stasis is marked by a breakdown in norms, which the Greeks called nomoi, the plural of the Greek word νόμος, which means usage, custom, law, human statute, and even melody.19 Thucydides’ behavioral definition is very abstract in that it includes many abstract words,20 but he does not offer a single complete political definition of stasis except to note a variety of political characteristics among other characteristics that we today might think are psychological such as an increasingly violent way of solving problems or a predisposition to favor extreme methods.
The observational focus in Thucydides’ definition, which is the definition of stasis we will use here, results from a confluence of factors. In the first place, the heritage of Ionian science emphasized observation. Thucydides himself was an observer and he takes up the position of an observer “at rest” (καθ᾽ ἡσυχίαν, 5.26.5) to pay attention to the war and then to draw intellectually vigorous and active conclusions. He is also reviewing
