Thucydides the perspicacious

Far from thinking that ‘might makes right’, the great historian’s analysis of war identifies a vice common to all states

by David Polansky & Daniel Schillinger  BIO

Bronze helmet, c460 BCE, classical Greece. Courtesy the British Museum

is a writer and political theorist in Toronto, Canada. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail and Foreign Policy, among other publications. He writes the newsletter Strange Frequencies.

is a lecturer in political science and a senior fellow of the Center for Civic Thought at Yale University, New Haven, US. He is the author of Luckless: The Idea of Luck in Ancient Greek Thought (2026).

It’s almost never a good sign when Thucydides is in the news. The ancient Greek historian of the Peloponnesian War is typically invoked either to alert us to the possible return of a bygone age of terrifying great-power conflict, or to confirm that strong states can and should advance their own material interests, irrespective of justice.

Earlier this year, the Canadian prime minister Mark Carney earned much acclaim when he quoted, at Davos, the most famous lines in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War: ‘The strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.’ While Carney intended his reference to be a critique of US behaviour under the Trump administration, Thucydides is also invoked in defence of aggressive or even imperialistic policies, especially in the United States. Yet those who look to Thucydides for either a justification or a critique of empire should be disappointed. Thucydides pulls no punches: he writes to expose the delusions of both the strong and the weak, the unjust and the just. Self-deception is a leitmotif of his History. Because self-deception is perennial, and because it can prove disastrous to victors and vanquished alike, Thucydides’ work remains timely and timeless, as he expected it would.

Thucydides introduces himself, at the outset of his work, as an Athenian who ‘wrote up’ the war between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians because he judged this war to be the greatest war, surpassing all prior wars, including the Trojan War (all references to Thucydides are to the Richard Crawley translation, with our own modifications where appropriate). The duration of the war contributed to its greatness, persisting for 27 years, from 431 to 404 BCE. Thucydides foresaw the enormity of the conflict, which began with its principal combatants – Athens and Sparta – at their peak as the Hellenic world’s greatest naval and land powers, respectively.

Sparta had been, for centuries, the pre-eminent Greek polis. But, following the Greeks’ repulsion of several attempted invasions by the Persian Empire (collectively known as the Persian Wars), Athens had established a powerful maritime confederacy. Over time, Athens transformed this ostensibly defensive alliance into an empire over a sizeable part of the Hellenic world. Eventually, Sparta was induced, by its own Peloponnesian allies, to declare war against Athens, ostensibly for a number of pretexts but, in reality, to check Athenian expansion.

Over its course, the war between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians would sweep up many smaller Greek cities, not to mention the Persian Empire and assorted non-Greeks. Ultimately, Athens would be defeated, and its empire dismantled, events which Thucydides survived long enough to witness but not to recount in his History.

Thucydides’ History elicits a range of searching reflections on war’s causes and consequences

The line Carney invoked is often associated with ‘realism’ in world politics. This is a somewhat woolly term that encompasses both a moral position of scepticism about the possibility of justice in political life and an analytical approach to understanding political events in terms of material power and interest. Thucydides is a plausible originator of realism inasmuch as he offers an unvarnished and unsentimental account of the operation of political power among Greek cities. His realism may be contrasted with the ‘liberal institutionalism’ of a thinker such as Immanuel Kant, who holds out hope for mutual cooperation and even perpetual peace among states.

During the 20th century, these lines of ideological disagreement came to define discussions of international politics in both academic and political discourse. For example, the British historian E H Carr warily observed, during the Second World War, the spread of what he called ‘utopianism’, as reflected in the excessive hopes that international institutions such as the League of Nations might foster world peace. In response, Carr offered a qualified defence of realism for providing a pragmatic and flexible guide to politics in a dangerous world: ‘realism is the necessary corrective to the exuberance of utopianism, just as in other periods utopianism must be invoked to counteract the barrenness of realism.’

Thucydides’ own relationship to realism is more ambiguous than his reputation might suggest, however. For one thing, he never uses the term itself (which does not much predate the 20th century – in fact, it was Friedrich Nietzsche who first applied the term to Thucydides). He also rarely issues judgments under his own name. Many of the most notorious lines in his History are spoken by historical figures. Would anyone suppose that lines spoken by Richard III contain clear statements of William Shakespeare’s own views?

No doubt, Thucydides provides ample material for those who hope to find realist perspectives in his work. It is also true, however, that his History elicits a........

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