Thucydides’s Histories: The Impact of Stereotypes During the Peloponnesian War
Corinthian representatives provide a constructive comparison of the Spartan and Athenian stereotypes at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war from 431 BCE to 404 BCE1. In The History of the Peloponnesian War, the Spartan stereotypes are confirmed by their action’s at first, however they soon surprise the opposing districts of Greece by overcoming the negative stereotypes placed on them. Contrary to the Spartans, the Athenians completely lived up to other’s expectations as a risk-taking society. Readers who look to find the truth about ancient Greek relations search to gain an unbiased view of Thucydides’ stereotypes and how the stereotypes eventually impacted the outcome of the war. He also addresses the downfall of dunamis, otherwise known as power. Thucydides implicitly offers praise to the Spartans war tactics, thus producing his work dedicated on trying to improve the Athen’s war strategies.
Thucydides points out early on that the cause of the Peloponnesian war is due to the overwhelming fear that Sparta has towards Athens’ growth2. In essence, the Spartans did not want their government to become a direct democracy, which would mimic the government in Athens. After news of Athenian expansion breaks out, the Spartans call upon a Corinthian representative to uphold the Greek tradition of cross-examination by other city-states. The first criticism that the Spartans received by the Corinth’s was that they had a fear of losing and thus they are homebodies who were slow to make moves3. The negative side of the Spartan stereotypes appear to be true in the early stages of the war. At first, the Spartans contemplate whether they should go to war or not ...
... middle of paper ...
... someone who wished to be a neutral source, it is suggested that Thucydides presents the stereotypes of the two city-states at the beginning of the History of the Peloponnesian war as a prelude to themes to come ahead. Thucydides wanted readers to understand that the Spartan’s won only because the Athenian’s developed arrogant habits. It can be inferred that Thucydides believed that the Athenians were destined to win if they didn’t underestimate their opponent’s power. Through his use of stereotypes, he also proved that though a stereotype may initially have a bad reputation, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the stereotyped characteristic will only lead to negative results. Thucydides frames the histories as a handbook for the Athenians to prepare them for the next war in hopes that they learn from their mistakes, though Athens never regains it’s pre-war prosperity.
The main themes in this book are war, power, heroism, love, loyalty and growth. We are given further insight into the classical Greek society as Alexas reminisces about his family life, his training as an athlete, the Olympic Games, his homosexual relationship with his mentor Lysis, and his encounters with Socrates the Philosopher. The main characters seem dogged by guilt, loneliness or failure, often the failure to love. The book ends on a triumphant note, with the Athenians defeating the Spartans, and liberating their city from the corrupt politicians.
Thucydides set out to narrate the events of what he believed would be a great war—one requiring great power amassed on both sides and great states to carry out. Greatness, for Thucydides, was measured most fundamentally in capital and military strength, but his history delves into almost every aspect of the war, including, quite prominently, its leaders. In Athens especially, leadership was vital to the war effort because the city’s leaders were chosen by its people and thus, both shaped Athens and reflected its character during their lifetimes. The leaders themselves, however, are vastly different in their abilities and their effects on the city. Thucydides featured both Pericles and Alcibiades prominently in his history, and each had a distinct place in the evolution of Athenian empire and the war it sparked between Athens and Sparta. Pericles ascended to power at the empire’s height and was, according to Thucydides, the city’s most capable politician, a man who understood fully the nature of his city and its political institutions and used his understanding to further its interests in tandem with his own. After Pericles, however, Thucydides notes a drastic decline in the quality of Athenian leaders, culminating in Alcibiades, the last major general to be described in The Peloponnesian War. While he is explicit in this conclusion, he is much more reticent regarding its cause. What changed in Athens to produce the decline in the quality of its leadership?
Dating back to 449 B.C., Sparta and Athens always had an alliance, but as time grew that balance slowly began to fall as one felt threatened by another. Before any sight of unsteadiness the Spartans and Athenians had a bound partnership. Beginning after their domination of the Persian war, the two states slowly became aware of one another’s growing power. More time went by, and the Spartans began to grow conscious of the other states, feeling wary and paranoid around them (Fox, 170). No state was particularly to blame for the strain on their peace treaty, nor for the war, it came as the two states developed. Eventually the two states had clashed enough and declared war. Although the Spartans gave the Athenians a chance to back down and temporarily stall war, the two states would never be equal, their allies resented one another far too much. The growing urge for power was bound to take over sooner or later. Finally, after 7 years of uneasy tension, Sparta could wait no longer and declared war against Athens (Fox, 167). Although the Athenians and Spartans lived together in peace for so long, they existed in a fragile balance that was bound to eventually lead to war.
From this evaluation and historical representations given by philosophers and historians during approximately the same era that is represented within 300. It is argued that the popular culture incarnations of Sparta as the ‘Noble, selfless fighters with a warrior mentality’ and the Persians as the ‘Evil, tyrannical, overindulgent, oppressors’ were not entirely historically accurate.
The stunning Greek defeat of the Persians, the specter of which lurks behind the events of the Peloponnesian Wars, was for Herodotus proof of the superiority of Hellenic form of government and way of life, and Herodotus ends his history at this pinnacle of Greek history. Thucydides then accepts the task of chronicling Greece’s unraveling from a position as the dominant power of the Mediterranean, and a center of cultural, technological, and political development to the final result of the Peloponnesian Wars—a fractured, demoralized, and dependent Greece that lies wide open to foreign conquest. This result is, for Thucydides, apparent from the beginning of the conflict. Greece can only dominate when the balance of power between Athens and Sparta is maintained, and the destruction of either is tantamount to the destruction of the whole. An accurate understanding of the national characters of Athens and Sparta makes it clear which of the two will ultimately be the victor of a long, arduous military struggle, but the same understanding of national character makes it equally apparent that the one which can dominate militarily cannot lead Greece. The speeches made at the First Lacedaemonian Congress emphasize not only the character of the two nations in conflict, but more broadly, the inevitability of Hellenic demise as a result of this conflict.
Thucydides was right to claim that all wars can be explained by Fear, Honor, and Interest. All Wars are related to the three characteristics as stated by Dr. Nation (Dr. Nation video). The Athenians thought process was that the weak would be ruled by the strong and that was the nature of conflict (Strassler p. 43). Looking at the Peloponnesian war itself will illustrate how fear, honor and interest were involved with how this war developed. The initial unnamed Athenian that made that statement was probably using it to deter war with Sparta when it mostly incited the war (Dr. Nation Video). The Athenians wanted to maintain and sustain their city state but also expand it. They were expanding through their alliances and this is what invoked the
The major theme that comes out clearly in the text is the theme of warfare and glorious death. Right from the beginning of his book, Thucydides, writes the story of the war between the Athenians and the Spartans. The theme of warfare is therefore evidenced by the Athenians preparation, the author says, ‘…beginning at the moment that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war and more worthy of relation than any other that had preceded.’ This shows that the war that was to start was a unique one that had never happened before in history, in Thucydides opinion. This to me shows a bit of an exaggeration but more importantly this dramatic portrayal of the Peloponnesian war shows that war was seen as a part of life in Athens. In the text, we don’t find Thucydides describing war as being dark, catastrophic, or destructive which is how we would depict war nowadays. Instead we find him describing the war as this huge event that will go down in history as the greatest war to be fought.
The book written by Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, contains two controversial debates between distinguished speakers of Athens. The two corresponding sides produce convincing arguments which can be taken as if produced as an honest opinion or out of self-interest. The two debates must be analyzed separately in order to conclude which one and which side was speaking out of honest opinion or self-interest, as well as which speakers are similar to each other in their approach to the situation.
Thucydides, Dent, J. M., & Dutton, E. P. (1910). The Peloponnesian War. London & New
The roots of the Peloponnesian war can be traced long before 431 BCE, when it officially started. It can be traced back to as early as the Persian Wars, where the Athenians had found their home burned by the hands of the Persians. That disaster left the Athenians with no home and no sanctuary. Even though that was a defeated battle amidst a victorious war, they still had reason to believe that the Persians will come back for more. Apprehensive at the thought of having their city burned yet another time, the Athenians knew they had to do something. Naturally, they chose to get help. Gathering up the neighboring city-states around them, the Athenians formed the Delian League; an alliance working directly to defend the whole of Greece from Persian attacks (Kagan 8). In the beginning, this worked out well; everybody got their say on what went on in the league, and everybody was satisfied. However, the Athenians saw that if they were to take more power, the members of the league would not be strong enough to resist. Therefore, that was exactly what they did; they took more and more power until what was the Delian League became the Athenian Empire (Kagan 8). As they grew even more powerful and wealthy, their neighbors of Sparta and the Peloponnesian League, Sparta's alliance, could not help but notice (Kagan 13). In 431 BCE, lighted b...
Thucydides believes that democracy is a naturally flawed form of government. By looking through the lens of human nature, the flaws are not seen to be attributed to democracy in itself. By the use of speeches that were given, by his “account” in the era of the Peloponnesian war, the thriving and failing ways of democracy can be seen. Support for this position is provided in the work that Thucydides presents to us is the form of speeches. These speeches were often given in the form of debate, and included the Mytilenean debate, the debate before the Sicilian Expedition, but also the Pericles’ Funereal Oration. Within the perspective that Thucydides gave, it is revealed that human nature is a cause for democratic government to be undermined.
The Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) was a conflict between the Athenian Empire and the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta that resulted in the end of the Golden Age of Athens. The events of the war were catalogued by the ancient historian Thucydides in The History of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides’ writings showed the ancient Greek belief that there is a parallel between the city-state and the character of its citizens; in order for the city-state to be successful, its citizens must be virtuous. Thucydides did not believe that the true cause of the Peloponnesian War were the immediate policies of the Athenian Empire against the city-states in the Peloponnesian League but rather the fundamental differences in the character of the two city-states
The causes of the Peloponnesian War proved to be too great between the tension-filled stubborn Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta. As Thucydides says in Karl Walling’s article, “Never had so many human beings been exiled, or so much human blood been shed” (4). The three phases of the war, which again, are the Archidamian war, the Sicilian Expedition and the Decelean war, show the events that followed the causes of the war, while also showing the forthcoming detrimental effects that eventually consumed both Athens and eventually Sparta effectively reshaping Greece.
We have now examined Thucydides' strongest arguments for Athenian rule. It is clear that Athens had a stronger claim to rule than the Melians had to remain sovereign. We also know that Athens' claims hold up when we examine them for validity. Thucydides beliefs in Athens' claims were therefore well founded.
In the year approximately 500 B.C., the Greek civilization came upon a time of peace. Because of the tranquil times, the civilization’s society had more time to focus on writing, math, astronomy, and artistic fields, as well as trade and metallurgy. Out of all the city-states of Greece, two excelled over all the rest, Sparta and Athens. Even though they were the most advanced and strong civilizations, they were bitter enemies. While Athens focused mainly on the people’s democracy and citizen rights, Sparta were ferocious and enslaved its original inhabitants, making them unable to leave