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The Thucydidean Tetralogy (1.67–88)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Mabel B. Lang
Mabel B. Lang*
Affiliation:
Bryn Mawr College
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Extract

A new look at Thucydides’ account of the debate at Sparta motivating the Spartan declaration of war (1.67–88) may provide a footnote to valuable past discussion. Chief concerns about the debate have always been (1) the uniqueness of the four-speech set-up; (2) the oddity of an Athenian embassy in attendance at a Peloponnesian League meeting; and (3) the unlikelihood that any detailed report of speeches made to the Peloponnesian League or Spartan assembly came to Athens. Thucydides' judgement concerning the cause of the Peloponnesian War is far more likely to have been based on his knowledge of past and present relations between Athens and Sparta and members of the Peloponnesian League (Ξυμπ⋯σα γνώμη) than on any information about an actual debate (τ⋯ ⋯ληθ⋯ς λɛχθ⋯ντα). But for τ⋯ δ⋯oντα he needed a confrontation which would not only dramatize both opposition I and characters of Sparta and Athens but also put them in historical context, that is, in their Persian War roles as recorded by Herodotus. Only in this way is it possible to explain peculiarities of this confrontation which appear to duplicate characteristics of the Herodotean debate involving Athens and Sparta before the battle of Plataea. Thuc. 1.67–88 is like Hdt. 8.140–4 in comprising four speeches of which the first (A) 1 is answered by the third (Cl) and the second (B) is answered by the fourth (C2). In each case Cl and C2 are spoken by representatives of a single people: with the Athenians in Herodotus’ debate answering two different peoples, and with two different Spartans in Thucydides answering two different peoples.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , May 1999 , pp. 326 - 329
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1999

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References

1 Schwartz, E., Das Geschichtswerk des Thukydides (Bonn, 1919), pp. 102–24Google Scholar; Andrewes, A., ‘Thucydides and the causes of the war’, CQ 9 (1959), 223–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sealey, R., ‘The causes of the Peloponnesian war’, CP 70 (1975), 89–109 Google Scholar; Dover, K. J., A Historical Commentary on Thucydides V (Oxford, 1981), app. 2, pp. 415–23Google Scholar; Rhodes, P. J., ‘Thucydides on the causes of the Peloponnesian war,’ Hermes 115 (1987), 154–64Google Scholar; Badian, E., ‘Thucydides and the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war: a historian's brief’, in From Plataea to Potidaea (Baltimore, 1993), pp. 125–62.Google Scholar

2 Other Herodotean examples include: Candaules and Gyges (1.8.2–4); Delphic oracle and Sandanis (1.53.3; 56.1); Tomyris and Croesus (1.206–7); Oroetes and Polycrates' daughter (3.122.3–4–124.2); Aristagoras and Gorgo (5.49; 51).

3 I use ‘composing’ with Thuc. 1.22.1 well in mind, for what reports Thucydides can have had of any speeches made in either the Peloponnesian League meeting or the Spartan assembly will not have been very detailed, only in this case perhaps ‘the usual complaints about Sparta's inactivity’ with the rest to be supplied by τ⋯ δ⋯oντα.