sometimes approach in contexts that are relevant to the type of truth being sought. Thucydides seems to agree with Socrates on this point: We should search out what we do not know and not accept that we cannot know or that we must not try to know (Meno, 86b–c). Thucydides certainly makes clear the effort required to ascertain the truth in both of his introductions (1.22 and 5.26) and by implication also in the pathos of his explanation of how he understood the plague both as a victim and as an observer of its effects (2.48.3). If the truth we wish to understand is social and political then we aim at that truth and approach it as social and political beings. If the truth involves a measurement, we are limited by the structure and moments of the measuring devices. In fact, the measurement of certain new kinds of military power depends on the action required to create such power. A significant portion of this action depends one techne (τέχνη, “skill,” “craft,” or “art”) or another. Military power, especially with the introduction of navies as important or even crucial parts of military power, results from the projection of various skills and arts. Such skills depend on measurement and measuring devices of various types. Pericles himself, as a general aiming to use military power to create political power, provides Thucydides and us with one example of this point. In his last speech, Pericles seeks to bolster the courage of the Athenians by showing them that their innovations in naval warfare have created a new type of power, a power that is constrained only by the will of the Athenians. Their navy can go anywhere ships can reach (2.62.1–3). This power is measured differently from power on land. Technology and training become the measuring stick, but the measure exists only after the idea of such a force has been put in place.32 Politics also depends on skill or techne. 33 In this sense, a general, such as Pericles, works like a political leader. The complex revelation of the political leader or statesman in Plato’s Statesman sheds further light on the qualities of Pericles, as we will see, but prior to the discussion of the statesman Plato seeks the Sophist in the dialogue of that name and catches him in a web of reason by equating Non-Being with the Other (Sophist, 257b, 258e–259a).34 This approach to Non-Being defines it as partly personal for each of us so that what we think does not exist is in fact what is other or different in relation to us.35 This organizes and makes rational the confusions of relativity and relativistic thinking.36 What we do not understand is other or different. Far from being a Sophist, Thucydides seems to anticipate the issue of the Other in political life at the very beginning of his Histories when he observes the same point that many young readers of Homer have wondered about, “Why doesn’t Homer call the Greeks Hellenes? And why are only some of them Hellenes?” Thucydides’ answer is that at the time of Homer the Greeks were neither conscious of themselves as a separate group nor conscious of foreigners as barbarians (1.1.3).37 What is not us or ours is what is “other” in regard to us. That “other” can be categorized and quantified, which enables us to understand it. One of the most important applications of Plato’s assignment (in the Statesman) of Non-Being to the concept of Other occurs in the political world with the statesman serving as the type or model of the political being:
Ξένος (The) Stranger:
πότερον οὖν, καθάπερ ἐν τῷ σοφιστῇ προσηναγκάσαμεν εἶναι τὸ μὴ ὄν, ἐπειδὴ κατὰ τοῦτο διέφυγεν ἡμᾶς ὁ λόγος, οὕτω καὶ νῦν τὸ πλέον αὖ καὶ ἔλαττον μετρητὰ προσαναγκαστέον γίγνεσθαι μὴ πρὸς ἄλληλα μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ [284ξ] πρὸς τὴν τοῦ μετρίου γένεσιν; οὐ γὰρ δὴ δυνατόν γε οὔτε πολιτικὸν οὔτ᾽ ἄλλον τινὰ τῶν περὶ τὰς πράξεις ἐπιστήμονα ἀναμφισβητήτως γεγονέναι τούτου μὴ συνομολογηθέντος.
Νεώτερος Σωκράτης (The) Younger Socrates:
οὐκοῦν καὶ νῦν ὅτι μάλιστα χρὴ ταὐτὸν ποιεῖν.
Ξένος (The) Stranger:
πλέον, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἔτι τοῦτο τὸ ἔργον ἢ ‘κεῖνο—καίτοι κἀκείνου γε μεμνήμεθα τὸ μῆκος ὅσον ἦν—ἀλλ᾽ ὑποτίθεσθαι μὲν τὸ τοιόνδε περὶ αὐτῶν καὶ μάλα δίκαιον. (284b–284c)
(The) Stranger:
Then, just as with the Sophist we compelled that which is not to be, when the argument escaped us on this point, so now also the greater again and the lesser must be compelled to become measurable not just relative to one another but also to the genesis of measure. For, it is not possible, at least, for either the statesman or any other person to have become without dispute knowing of things concerning actions unless this has been agreed to.
Younger Socrates:
Then now too as much as possible we must do the same thing.
(The) Stranger:
This work, Socrates, is still more than that—and yet we remember the length of that, how great it was, but to set down just such a point concerning them is also very just. (284b–284c)
The Younger Socrates then asks what sort of thing the Stranger means. And the Stranger replies that he will need to explain more fully later but for now the answer is adequately and beautifully shown, that all the arts are in a similar state and our argument says that the “greater and the lesser are at the same time measured not only in relation to one another but also in relation to the coming into being of the mean” (μεῖζόν τε ἅμα καὶ ἔλαττον μετρεῖσθαι μὴ πρὸς ἄλληλα μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς τὴν τοῦ μετρίου γένεσιν, 284d).
This crucial passage in the Statesman explains that what is better and what is worse can arise politically and that we can learn how to measure them. The epistemology derives from the Sophist, to which the Stranger makes a specific reference (“the Sophist” in 284b, cf. Sophist 235). The Stranger’s next step in the argument is to undertake a division between the sciences that rely on mathematics and measure with “number, length, depth, breadth, and thickness” (284e), and those sciences that measure in regard to “the moderate,” “the fitting, and the needful” and all the other standards that are situated in the mean apart from the extremes (284e).38
What is the subject in Plato to which we apply these considerations of the standard of what is moderate, fitting, and needful? It is the character and action we see in human life and our broadly conceived political relations with one another. The analogous word for Thucydides that helps us supply the mean or the moderate is what he calls human nature, or the human, or nature (φύσις, transliterated phusis). He refers to “the human” (τὸ ἀνθρώπινον) in his discussion of his method (1.22.4) and to human nature when he explains the characteristics of stasis (ἕως ἂν ἡ αὐτὴ φύσις ἀνθρώπων ᾖ, “as long as human nature remains the same,” 3.82.2). A number of times important speakers in the speeches he reports refer to “the human” and “human nature,” for example, the Athenian ambassadors at Sparta (1.76.3), Diodotus in his response to Cleon (3.45.7), Hermocrates at the conference at Gela (4.61.5), and the Athenians at Melos (5.105.2). Of course, in the last three instances, the speakers are emphasizing one part of human nature in one degree, but overall Thucydides presents a picture of human nature as something that can be known and characterized
