true information. In addition to all of this he inherits the model of Greek Tragedy, which emphasizes showing difficulties through the interaction of word and deed rather than observing, describing, and stating conclusions. Plato too shares this approach deriving from Tragedy. Once one had seen the unfolding decline of a great empire that embraced or even invented many new and life-affirming arts and values (and of course failed to see its blind spots), it seems reasonable for someone like Thucydides to try to think about how to elaborate his program as stated in 1.22.4 and apply new types of thinking to this failure so as to help people prevent it from happening again. Political philosophy seeks to help us solve political problems in new ways that may include structural reforms, economic changes, and even changes in the relationship between external political values (foreign affairs) and internal political values. Thucydides’ research seems perhaps to have reached all the way to the idea of a mixing of the values of the few and the many (8.97.2), a problem that still affects us today in powerful ways.21 On the other hand, Thucydides famously offers only a few openly stated conclusions. One reason for this may be that conclusions we as readers reach for ourselves can be firmer and more sound, because we make some effort to reach them. Thus, the first efforts he is making in the development of the new field of history arise as a form of drama, which is a quite natural outgrowth of thought about how to present the human political predicament in a culture that first developed Western tragic plays. What this implies for understanding Thucydides is that the meaning of the work appears in our interaction with it through the questions we are trying to answer, our own preconceived ideas, and our place in history. This interaction occurs in the space that inevitably separates the knower from what we seek to know.22
While Thucydides’ use of a scientific gathering of information and evaluation of the results clearly informs his work, he also introduces a significant moral dimension, which he represents descriptively as changes in nomoi, quite similar to the changes in the axioseis or valuations of words. An important subject here is one part of this moral dimension, the use of language in political and military contexts in the Athenian speeches. Those who would eliminate or reduce in importance the question of morality from Thucydides face a difficulty in particular in relation to his narrative and summary of the stasis in Corcyra. One of the clearest statements Thucydides makes on the subject is καὶ τὸ εὔηθες, οὗ τὸ γενναῖον πλεῖστον μετέχει, καταγελασθὲν ἠφανίσθη (3.83.1), “the simplicity of which nobility has the largest share, was laughed at and disappeared” (3.83.1).23 The alternative translation here, favored by a number of commentators, is “the simplicity which is so large an element in a noble character, was laughed at and disappeared.” While the first translation seems more plausible for a variety of reasons, the second can seem correct too. Why would Thucydides write this way? It seems quite possible that we are to ponder both possibilities so that we consider very carefully a large number of questions, such as why simplicity would be laughed at in the first place, and what is nobility?24 What types of leaders who are not noble rely on appeals to simplicity? How important is simplicity, if it is important at all, in political life? Where else is it important? The answers to these questions will have many ramifications, notably in considering Nicias, but use of this type of ambiguity as a rhetorical device focuses our attention and brings us into a dialogue with Thucydides and some of the figures in the Histories. We then return to the question of morality and nomoi or customs in public life. What are their roles?
In the first place, Thucydides would not necessarily see an understanding of morality and values as conforming to our modern distinction between facts and values. In other words, it is quite reasonable even today in our modern terms to see the values that people have individually and in groups as phenomena that may be investigated using means that approach the scientific method. David Hume, for example, begins his most well-known work with the point that moral philosophy is the “science of human nature” when he says that “MORAL philosophy, or the science of human nature, may be treated after two different manners; each of which has its peculiar merit, and may contribute to the entertainment, instruction, and reformation of mankind.”25 The first manner of treating human nature is what Hume calls a consideration of “matters of fact” based on the observation that we are active beings. The second manner focuses on “relations of ideas” where we think of ourselves as reasonable beings who are the proper subject of speculative thought. While the basic distinction here has become a field of study all by itself, Thucydides begins his focus on facts, deeds, and words he observes and records. This then leads him to what some might call (and praise or deplore) speculative judgments about what is better and what is worse in human affairs. The continuity between these two modes of thought in Thucydides depends on measures and various types of standards, all of which can be observed or perceived in actions and then later reviewed in thought.
Thucydides anticipates Hume’s approach to considering human conduct scientifically by observing carefully first and attempting to record faithfully the things he sees and hears. Thus, for Thucydides, morals or habits of mind and conduct may be observed, classified, and reviewed in a way that is similar to any other set of acts and views of action. Thucydides as an observer works within the intellectual tradition of Ionian Empiricism, that is, the empiricist tradition in pre-Socratic philosophy including Hippocrates of Cos and other contributions to the Hippocratic corpus.26 Of course, the empiricist tradition in Ionia was larger than one of its most famous aspects, medicine, as when Anaxagoras states that generally “appearances are a sight of the things that are unseen.”27 If Thucydides gives the moral dimension of humans an additional position of importance in human life separate from a scientific interest in values and how they change, as many think that he does, then we may see his work as hypothesizing or propounding values and indirectly and artistically commenting on how those values change in revolutionary situations.28 It is clear that Thucydides sees human nature as definable and a subject for understanding, but clearly not the only such subject since he also considers causes for natural phenomena, for example, surges in the sea, as subjects amenable to study and what we would call scientific understanding (3.89.2–5). Human nature appears in regular forms that are amenable to reason and that can be measured or understood through standards.29 Whether his examination of acts, speeches, and values leads to a kind of moralizing is an interesting question.30 One clear approach that Thucydides seems to foster is review and consideration of words and deeds in particular for their effects on the way we speak and act, which is, from the scientific point of view at least, a review of mores or conduct and character. What we can or should do with what we learn from that internal discussion is somewhat dependent on our circumstances and resources. It is quite possible that one effect of Thucydides’ sometimes difficult and elusive style, a never-ending discussion of what he means, is something he intended as a way to make his work useful (1.22.4). The technique engages our speculative habit of mind and entangles his readers in a conversation.
The method I have adopted here to test these theses is a literary and philological analysis of Thucydides’ use of speeches, in particular Athenian speeches, as a reflection of his statements in his discussion of stasis in Corcyra. The details of the method are philological and analytical in style. The goal, however, is philosophical in the sense that Thucydides clearly wanted to create a work of general use in relation to one of the most fundamental aspects of our species, our political conduct conceived very broadly to include most if not all our efforts to get along with one another in practical and productive ways. Some basic conclusions would inevitably follow from showing how this characteristic of degeneration of political discourse manifests itself in Thucydides’ Athenian speeches. No one speech or speaker speaks for Thucydides; this includes even Pericles, whose political discourse is subordinate to Thucydides’. In a catalogue of degenerate types of discourse, some measure or standard is both implied and necessary. This standard seems to be the same as what the Stranger calls “measure” in the Statesman (e.g., 284e), as we will see. Plato’s discussion of the adversarial approach of one side in a revolution calling in outside aid from ideological allies, that is, democrats calling upon outside democratically inclined populations and aristocrats calling for help from other aristocrats (Republic, Book VIII, 559d–560a), seems to derive partly from Thucydides’ observations. This adversarial approach in stasis
