Thucydides and International Relations Melian Dialogue (Thuc. 5.84-116)

Thucydides and International Relations

Melian Dialogue (Thuc. 5.84-116)

Peloponnesian War (431-403 BCE)

Athens and Sparta: From Multipolar Interstate System to Bipolarity

“Thucydides the Athenian wrote the history of the war fought between Athens and Sparta, beginning the account at the very outbreak of the war, in the belief that it was going to be a great war and more worth writing about than any of those which had taken place in the past. My belief was based on the fact that the two sides were at the very height of their power and preparedness, and I saw, too, that the rest of the Greek world was committed to one side or the other; even those who were not immediately engaged were deliberating on the courses which they were to take later.” (Thuc. 1.1)

Thucydides and the “Realists”

Competitive Struggle for Security and Supremacy “Zero-Sum” Competition Power Ultimately the Final Arbiter International “System” of Anarchy the Rule “The problem is this: how to conceive of an order

without an orderer and of organizational effects where formal organization is lacking.” (Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (89))

Thucydides and IR Theorists“Realist School”

Absence of Effective International Peace-Keeping Agencies

Conflict Resolutions Usually Ineffective Power the Focal Point of Analysis Objective, Omniscient, “Scientific” Authorial Stance

Russell Meiggs on the “Melian Dialogue”

“[T]here is strangely little emphasis on the final penalty, the killing of the men and the enslavement of the women and children. Thucydides’ interest seems to be concentrated on the analysis of power and the logical implications of the natural law that the strong rule the weak.”

The Athenian Empire (1972) pg. 388

Athens and Melos

Colonized from Laconia (Sparta) in the “Dorian invasion”

Melos sent naval contingent to assist the Greek cause at Salamis in 480 BCE, though Melos was not a member of the “Delian League”

Melos was neutral at outbreak of Peloponnesian War Athenian general Nicias attacked Melos in 426 BCE Melos was besieged and sacked by Athenians in 416 BCE

Melos at Time of Persian Wars

Athenians to Melians (Thuc. 5.105)

“Our opinion of the gods and our knowledge of men lead us to conclude that it is a general and necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can. This is not a law that we made ourselves, nor were we the first to act upon it when it was made. We found it already in existence, and we shall leave it to exist forever among those who come after us. We are merely acting in accordance with it, and we know that you or anybody else with the same power as ours would be acting precisely the same way.”

Correctives to the “Realist” Interpretation

Thucydides and “Tragic Vision” (Cornford) Thucydides and Reader Response (Connor) Thucydidean Objectivity as Authorial Stance

F.M. Cornford, Thucydides Mythhistoricus (1907)

“Thucydides was one of those prophets and kings of thought who have desired to see the day of all-conquering Knowledge, and have not seen it. The deepest instinct of the human mind is to shape the chaotic world and the illimitable stream of events into some intelligible form which it can hold before itself and take in at one survey….The man whose reason has thrown over myth and abjured religion, and who yet is born too soon to find any resting-place for his thought provided by science and philosophy, may set himself to live on isolated facts without a theory; but the time will come when his resistance will break down. All the artistic and imaginative elements in his nature will pull against his reason, and, if once he begins to produce, their triumph is assured. In spite of all his good resolutions, the work will grow under his hands into some satisfying shape, informed by reflection and governed by art….as the long agony wore on, as crime led to crime and madness to ruin, it was only from a distance that the artist who was no longer an actor could discern the large outlines shaping all that misery and suffering into a thing of beauty and awe which we call Tragedy.” (pp. 249-50)

Melian Dialogue (5.84-116) as Tragedy

Placed immediately before the account of the Sicilian Expedition

Set in dialogue form in the manuscripts; cf. The stichomythia of Greek tragedy

“[T]he standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel and…in fact that the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.” (Athenians to Melians, Thuc. 5.89)

Thucydides“Melian Dialogue”

Greek Text

W.R. Connor, Thucydides (Princeton 1984)

Focus on reader response as most profitable approach to Thucydides’ text

Objectivity as an authorial stance in Thucydides Objective, omniscient stance as a vehicle for reader to

experience the war on a deep emotional level Thucydides’ text demands reader participation and

continual reassessment Throughout apparent truths are transformed or

subverted

Connor on the “Melian Dialogue”

“Whatever our reactions to what happens to the Melians, it is hard to escape a feeling of horror at what is happening to the Athenians. They remain in many respects as we have always seen them--clever, determined, vigorous, the fulfillment of the Corinthians’ description of them as a people unaccustomed to choosing tranquility for themselves or allowing it to others (1.70). But now all is changed, for despite their clear mindedness, they fail fully to perceive the dangers that surround them. They see the weakness of the Melians’ position with total clarity but in important respects fail to realize who they are and the implications of their words. The logic of their position compels them to suppress the freedom of island states. Yet the reader knows that another island, Sicily, will soon overcome an Athenian attack.” (Thucydides, pp. 154-5)

Euripides’ Trojan Women (produced 415 BCE)

Euripides’ Trojan Women: Death of the Trojan men, enslavement of the Trojan women; destruction of Troy.

“Siege operations were now carried on vigorously and, as there was also some treachery from inside, the Melians surrendered unconditionally to the

Athenians, who put to death all the men of military age whom they took, and sold the women and children as slaves. Melos itself they took for themselves,

sending out later a colony of 500 men.” (Thuc. 5.116)

“Do not fight it. Take your grief as you were born to take it,

give up the struggle where your strength is feebleness

with no force anywhere to help.”

Euripides, Trojan Women, lines 727-9