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A Note on the Tone of Greek Diplomacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

J. R. Grant
J. R. Grant
Affiliation:
Victoria College, University of Toronto
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Extract

This is manifestly a rather elusive subject, shifting with time, place, and circumstance, and obscured by insufficient evidence. However, an attempt to arrive at certain generalizations about Greek diplomacy, particularly in view of some modern assumptions which seem to be mistaken, may be thought justified.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , December 1965 , pp. 261 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1965

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References

1 This note obviously makes no pretence of exhausting the subject.

2 A prime ingredient in modern ideas of diplomacy; cf. Sir Ernest Satow, cited by SirNicolson, Harold, Diplomacy, 3rd ed. (London, 1963), p. 50:Google Scholar diplomacy is ‘the application of intelligence and tact to the conduct of official relations between the governments of independent states’; and Nicolson, , op. cit., p. 220.Google Scholar

3 Cf. Italy of the Renaissance.

4 Cf. Adkins, A. W. H., Merit and Responsibility (Oxford, 1960), pp. 7, 31, 37 ff.,Google Scholar et passim. For glaring examples of the standard at the interstate level see Hdt. i. 150, the Colophonians and Smyrna, and 6. 22 ff., the Samians and Zancle: (24. 2).

5 Nicolson, in discussing the qualities of a modern diplomat (op. cit., p. 76), emphasizes the need of modesty: ‘who is profoundly modest in all his dealings … who understands the perils of cleverness’ etc.; and again (p. 104), for the ‘ideal diplomatist’ includes modesty: ‘vanity fatal’.

6 These values of the Greeks were at once, I suppose, a cause of the polis-system, and fostered by it.

1 Cf. Busolt-Swoboda, , Gr. St., pp. 210 ff., 1240 ff.;Google Scholar and Thuc. 5. 28. 2: war, on the expiry of the Thirty Years' Peace Treaty between Argos and Sparta, is simply taken for granted, though admittedly this is a somewhat special case.

2 Cf. the provision for the yearly renewal of oaths (Thuc. 5. 18. 9, 23. 4), and for renewal at the Olympic games and the Great Panathenaea (Thuc. 5. 47. 10).

3 Cf. Nicolson, , op. cit., pp. 219 ff.Google Scholar

4 Cf. the failure of amphictionies, symmachies, federal unions, the limited resort to interstate arbitration, the impotence of . This is not to deny that a good deal of treaty-making was accomplished with considerable efficiency when interest dictated (cf. Busolt-Swoboda, , Gr. St., pp. 1250 ff.;Google ScholarBengtson, H., Die Verträge der griechischrömischen Welt [Munich and Berlin, 1962]), but the results were transient or of limited importance.Google Scholar

5 Cf. Thuc. 4. 22; 5. 45; Nicolson, , op. cit., pp. 80 ff. et passim.Google Scholar

6 Drama, while not ideal evidence, must, speaking broadly, reflect reality if it is not to be farce, melodrama, or fantasy, and Euripides' evidence, again broadly speaking, need scarcely be restricted to Athens.

7 In this respect one is tempted to think of the Greeks as the Irish of antiquity (not the insinuating, prevaricating Greeklings of Juvenal et al.); cf. O'Faolain, Sean, The Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 1964, p. 94:Google Scholar ‘For years I had enjoyed, as most Irish people enjoy, the hot and vivid pleasures of aimless disputation’ etc.; cf. also the constant stream of envoys to the Roman Senate in the second century B.C. with charges and countercharges. Domestic politics too, if we may judge from the case of Athens, showed these same qualities; Strasburger's opinion on the Mytilenaean debate (Hermes lxxxvi [1958], 32 n. 2),Google Scholar cited and criticized by Bradeen (Historia ix [1960], 261 n. 25),Google Scholar is not convincing: ‘kein Redner durfte wohl in der Wirklichkeit dem athenischen Volk so derbe Wahrheiten über seinen Charakter sagen’. Andocides 3. 17–19 is a good example of straight talk to the Ecclesia, and Demosthenes provides many others; cf. Aesch. 2. 49:

8 Cf. Rhes. 319 ff.: Hector, while admitting the advisability of tact, cannot resist giving Rhesus a piece of his mind— Heracl. 134 ff.: Copreus to Demophon—insults and threats; Supp. 399 ff.: the exchange between the Theban herald and Thesus—insult, threat, wrangle.

1 Cf. Headlam-Morley, J. W., Enc. Brit. 13th ed., vol. 29, p. 1037,Google Scholar on the German threat to Russia to recognize the Austrian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina: ‘The success was a notable one but it was dangerous. It was one which could not be repeated. Russia had given way to threats once; she could not afford to do so a second time. It left an intense feeling of indignation in St. Petersburg, which persisted, and became one of the most dangerous factors in the European situation.’ Green, J. R., A Short History of the English People (London, 1892), p. 831,Google Scholar on Philip's remonstrance to Elizabeth about Drake: ‘When the Spanish ambassador threatened that “matters would come to the cannon”, she replied, “quietly, in her most natural voice as if she were telling a common story”, wrote Mendoza, “that if I used threats of that kind she would fling me into a dungeon”.’

2 For the trustworthiness of Xenophon's speeches cf. Ryder, T. T. B., C.Q. N.s. xiii (1963), p. 240 n. 5 and reff.; whatever their degree of authenticity, they at least give us a contemporary's idea of a diplomatic speech.Google Scholar

3 This view of the Athenian Empire, consonant with Thucydides' account and the fundamental political attitudes of the Greeks, impresses as the essential truth, which recent controversy has done nothing to invalidate and little to enlarge: cf. de Ste Croix, G. E. M., Historia iii (1954), 1 ff.,Google Scholar D. W. Bradeen, ibid. ix (1960), 257 ff., and T. J. Quinn, ibid. xiii (1964), 257 ff. Expressions of Athenian unpopularity with the allies in Athenian speeches reported by Thucydides are not to be taken as Thucydidean invention but as further evidence of frankness in Greek speeches, diplomatic and domestic.

1 Tod, , G.H.I., i, 101:Google Scholar ‘This is the earliest appearance of the phrase or in an alliance, in place of the previous limitation to a specified number of years.’

2 Ryder's ingenious suggestion of ambassadorial strategy (op. cit., pp. 240 f.), not taken very seriously by himself, is excessively conjectural, and not necessary to explain the facts. It is more credible to regard the different opinions expressed by the ambassadors as evidence of Greek individualism and amateurism—getting their personal views off their chests—than as prearranged contributions to a nicely calculated strategy; Callistratus alone deserves the credit of taking a statesmanlike line. Ambassadors, it must be remembered, were commonly active politicians, engaged in open diplomacy, and as such prone to talk for the record; cf. Demosthenes' and Aeschines' conflicting accounts of their prowess in Macedonia.

3 Commentary, pp. 253 f,Google ScholarEssays in Greek History and Literature (Oxford, 1937), p. 186 n. 1;Google Scholar cf. Burn, A. R., Pericles and Athens (London, 1948), p. 196:Google Scholar ‘truculent, arrogant, provocative’; De Romilly, J., Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism (Oxford, 1963), p. 263:Google Scholar ‘a speech intended to frighten Sparta’; Brunt, P. A., Thucydides (New York, 1963), p. 343:Google Scholar ‘this implausibly unconciliatory speech’.

It should, incidentally, be noted that Gomme, by a strange inadvertence, alleges that Archidamus makes no reference to the Athenian speech (Commentary, pp. 252 f.);Google Scholar for the correct view see Pohlenz, M., Nachr. Ges. Wiss. zu Göttingen, 1919, pp. 103 ff.Google Scholar

4 Cf. Eur, ., Supp. 252:Google Scholar Adrastus to Theseus, after a speech trying to win his favour.

5 Cf. Xen, . Hell. 6. 5. 33 f.Google Scholar—Spartan ambassadors being conciliatory to Athens in 369 B.C., asking for aid: and Thuc. 74. 3 init. and 74. 3 fin.: not the language of extravagant boasting; cf. 144. 4, and nothing so blunt as 91. 4–7.

1 The delicacy with which the Athenian envoys carried out their presumed intention: (72. 1), is also noteworthy—indirect suggestion of Athenian power rather than crude assertion, which would indeed have been provocative.

2 Their hope (72. 1), to be sure, was disappointed: it turned out that there were more Sthenelaidai in Sparta than Archidamuses.

3 Cf. de Ste Croix, G. E. M., Historia iii (1954), 2 n. 2,Google Scholar who singles out this speech as ‘above all’ unauthentic, ‘above all because political and diplomatic speeches are seldom entirely candid’‐an excellent specimen of this a priori criticism of Thucydides’ speeches. Cf. also Brunt, , op. cit., p. xxvii, where it is implied that Thucydides never heard a public speech: ‘He could not conceive that even in public utterances men would have been less cool and objective than himself in recognizing and stating facts.’Google Scholar

1 Finley, J. H., Thucydides (Cambridge, Mass., 1942), p. 64;CrossRefGoogle Scholar cf. pp. 101, 287, et passim. It is sad doat Professor Gomme did not live to say his final word on the composition of the History.

2 For tentative steps in this direction cf. Pearson, L., Popular Ethics in Ancient Greece (Stanford, 1962), pp. 23 f., 172 ff., 185 f.;Google Scholar for firmer steps, SirAdcock, Frank, Thucydides and his History (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 32 f., 72 f.Google Scholar

Familiarity with the problem should not dull our astonishment at what the orthodox view of the Melian Dialogue requires us to believe: that an author with the appetite for fact (verbatim documents, masses of minute military and diplomatic detail) and the solicitude for accuracy (cf. 5. 65. 3; 68; 74. 1. 3) displayed in the immediately preceding pages, could, with a mere (5. 85), which must be interpreted in the light of 1. 22, be capable of switching to sheer fantasy or free invention.