Perhaps it was only the ugly public "flex", sneering down and snapping with a ferocity worthy of a toxic parent (or a full-blooded Fascist) at an ally asking for continued support, a clear message of arrogant, intolerant power: "You're nothing without us, know your place and be thankful!" Or perhaps it was the terrible finality of realising -- having to accept -- that the United States that I once knew and could still recognise, is finally completely gone, but the recent events in the news, the "breakdown of diplomacy" and the bullying and berating of Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy (the leader of a allied sovereign nation!) by the hand-picked press, US Vice-president and US president, during a live broadcast of a meeting called in order to discuss the terms -- or perhaps more correctly, the price -- of peace, have put me in mind of an ancient Greek text of which I'm rather fond.
Fond is probably the wrong word -- from the time I first encountered it 35 years ago, the “Melian Dialogue” of Thucydides, (as related in Edith Hamilton's wonderful little 1942 book, “The Greek Way”) surprised and appalled me and simultaneously made me feel grateful for the picture it so succinctly paints of an Athens that had declined so much in so short a time as to have become the opposite of the civilised centre of art, culture, philosophy and democracy that we are still accustomed to think of it as having been.
Studies in neuroscience have suggested that the human brain has a tendency to retain negative memories for longer, and more vividly, than it does happy ones (a mechanism that aids in fight-or-flight decision-making at a semi-conscious, near automatous level). The history of civilisations and their achievements seems to work a little differently than this, and we happily and rather fuzzily think of Athens as existing for hundreds of years as the glittering gem she was before Thucydides, in that heady time that the West thinks of as the dawn of our own branch of human Civilisation, when Solon set the foundation for something truly extraordinary.
The Athens of Solon
In order to put things into context, here's a little bit of what we know (itself only a little bit) about Solon:
In the early 6th Century (BCE) Solon came forward as a guiding force in Athens and in 594 laid the foundations for the first democracy in our history, extending participation in governance, in a limited way, to the common people. Granted autocratic powers by the people, he repealed almost all the laws that had been put in place by his predecessor, Draco (the Lawgiver whose name today echoes in our description of governance and laws that are too heavy-handed -- that are, in a word, draconian.) and set in place a system more clement and fair. Having enacted his powerful world-changing reforms, Solon then promptly resigned and exiled himself abroad for ten years, so that he would not be tempted (or encouraged by others) to repeal any of the laws he'd set in place, knowing well that “Powerful men pull the city down.” He did not want his own power to corrupt him, or his own self-interest to interfere with the system he had worked to create. He didn't want to mess it up.
With some significant challenges and checks along the way, Solon's reformed Athens, unburdened by the barbaric past from which she was emerging, continued to grow and to foster a flowering of civilisation that we still celebrate today. By 490 (BCE) the flower had bloomed. As Hamilton puts it, “What followed was one of the most triumphant re-births of the human spirit in all history, when the bitter differences that divide men were far in the background and freedom was in the air -- freedom in the great sense, not only equality before the law, but freedom of thought and speech.”
After arduous struggle and the final defeat of the Persians in 480 BCE, the Athenians were chosen to lead a new confederacy of Free Greek States. It was an honour and a duty awarded to them by virtue of the fact that they had shown themselves to be capable of acting impartially, with generosity, and without putting their own interests above those of the other member city-states or angling for their own advantage. They were viewed, and indeed had comported themselves even in war, as true “children of Solon”. And so, for a brief and glittering time in human history, Athens became the leader and protector of what was then the Free World. It didn't last long though.
Solon had warned a century before that “Men are driven on by greed to win wealth in unrighteous ways, and he who has most wealth always covets twice as much.” We already know what he had to say about powerful men.
To quote Hamilton again, “In less than a generation the city that had been the champion of freedom had earned the name of Tyrant City... There are changes, even violent ones, in a state which do not affect the character of the people. But this change went deep down to the very roots of religion and morality."
Amazed at their final and decisive victory over the Persians, Athens took it as evidence that the world was indeed goverened by a Divine Justice, mysterious to humans, in which even the strongest (individual or nation) who tramples the rights of others inevitably finds punishment. It was a profound conviction that only the Divine Fortune of peace, honour and great prosperity could wash away.
The Athens of Thucydides
Thucydides was an Athenian historian and General who lived from around 460 to 400 BCE and was writing as a contemporary when he penned his famous History of the Peloponnesian War. Little is known of his life directly, apart from what he, himself tells us. He had some influence in Thrace, and was sent as a general in 424 BCE, to Thrasos, in order to help defend the region. That winter, the Spartans attacked nearby Amphipolis, a site of considerable strategic importance, which was only a half-day's sail away from Thrasos. The commander in charge sent an urgent request to Thucidides for help in fending off the Spartan attack.
Meanwhile, Brasidas, the Spartan general, apparently knew of Thucidides' influence with the Thracians and of his proximity to the city to which he was laying seige. Not wishing to have to fight the reinforcements that Thucydides would undoubtedly send, Brasidas quickly offered moderate terms of surrender to the Amphipolitans, and, not wanting to hang about in hopes of a better outcome when a good deal was set out before them already, they accepted.
Back in Athens, the news of Amphipolis' fall to Sparta was blamed on Thucydides, and he was exiled from the democracy. This, he tells us, put him into a peculiarly fortunate situation, in which he could travel freely among the Peloponnesians and their allies and observe the war with a genuinely impartial perspective.
Within his own lifetime, Thucydides had witnessed the foundation of all morality in Athens -- the regard for the rights of others -- crumble away.
To judge by his writing, Thucydides must have been an astute general. His fans celebrate him as the “father of scientific history”, because he is the first known to us to claim, or even think to claim, impartiality in his evidence-gathering and analysis of events, without reference to the intervention of the Gods. (We mark this as being very much in contradistiction to Herodotus, called later by Cicero the “father of history” but who, for all his enjoyable storytelling also bears the odious ephithet of his detractors, the “father of lies”)
Though he is said to have been inspired to write history by hearing a lecture by Herodotus when he was a boy, Thucydides developed a distinct incisive and intellectual approach to history, turning his focus upon the actions, natures and motivations of individual mortals, and showing the consequences of their attributes as the moulders of relations between not just themselves as individuals, but also of states. He held these relations to be ultimately constructed along lines motivated by fear and self-interest. And it's for this that he's also called the father of “political realism”.
When Herodotus wrote history, it was always with an aim to also entertain, a joyful experience for his leisurely, educated readers in much the same manner as a sprawling Victorian travelogue might enchant us today; Thucydides' intention in recording history was to furnish information for future historians, and to leave behind a guidance of precedent for future statesmanship.
His work is still studied in universities and military colleges worldwide, and this passage, the “Melian Dialogue” is still regarded as a seminal example of the kind of political realism that has dominated the field of international relations theory from its beginnings.
Within his own lifetime, Thucydides had witnessed the foundation of all morality in Athens -- the regard for the rights of others -- crumble away. The belief in a Divine Justice that punishes even the strongest of those who trample the rights of others was untenable in a new world order in which Athenian supremacy turned swiftly to Empire, and incompatible with all the wealth and power that came with it. The younger generations now considered, and observed as fact that power confers wealth, and vice versa. They grew, in power, peace and prosperity, to believe that it was not only right, but also necessary for the individual, as well as the state, to sieze every opportunity to gain advantage over others, even (perhaps especially) at the expense of others. Might was right, after all, and prosperity the reward of the industrious and the strong.
Writing in 416 BCE about the events that have become to us the "Melian Dialogue" Thucydides considered the Athenian motives to be purely for the sake of creating of an example, so that other smaller powers would not be tempted to repeat tiny Melos' mistake. As a classic case study in political realism as it is taught today, it's considered to be (according to Gregory Crane in his 1998 book “Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity: The Limits of Political Realism”) an illustration of how a country at war is motivated by concerns that are both selfish and pragmatic.
Echoing across the centuries, this passage shows us with the clear eye of a (likely scapegoated) exiled general and a man who understood the world and the times in which he lived, just how fast, and how far, the greatest democracy had fallen, and how in the space of a hundred years, Athens had gone from the champion of freedom to the Tyrant City that would find a swift, complete and humiliating defeat, surrendering unconditionally to Sparta in 405 BCE, just 11 years later.
From Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 5, Chapters 84-116, “The Melian Dialogue”, as related by Edith Hamilton:
This was little Melos, of no importance in herself, who wanted only to be neutral.
[...]The conversation Thucydides gives between the enyoys of the Athenians and the men of Melos shows what war did to the people who once had stood, as Herodotus said, in the perpetual choice between the lower and the higher, always for the higher.
To a plea from the Melians that they have done no wrong and that to make war on them will be contrary to all justice, the envoys reply “Justice is attained only when both sides are equal. The powerful extract what they can and the weak yield what they must.”
“You ignore justice,” The Melians answer, “and yet it is to your interest, too, to regard it, because if you ever are defeated you will not be able to appeal to it.”
“You must allow us to take the risk of that,” the Athenians say, “Our point is that we want to subjugate you without trouble to ourselves and that this will be better for you too.”
“To become slaves?” ask the Melians.
“Well -- it will save you from a worse fate.”
“You will not consent to our remaining at peace, your friends, but not your allies?”
“No,” The Athenians answer, “We do not want your friendship. It would appear a proof of our weakness, whereas your hatred is a proof of our power. Please remember that with you the question is one of self-preservation. We are the stronger.”
“Fortune does not always side with the strong,” the Melians say. “There is hope that if we do our utmost we can stand erect.”
“Beware of hope,” the Athenians reply. “Do not be like the common crowd who when visible grounds for hope fail betake themselves to the invisible, religion and the like. We advise you to turn away from such folly. And may we remind you that in all this discussion you have not advanced one argument that practical men would use.”
The Melians were unpractical and they fought. They were conquered with little trouble to Athens. She put the men to death and made slaves of the women and children. She had reached a point where she did not care to use fine words about ugly facts, and the reason was that they had ceased to look ugly to her. Vices by then, Thucydides says, were esteemed as virtues. The very meaning of words changed -- deceit was praised as shrewdness, recklessness held to be courage; loyalty, moderation, generosity, scorned as proofs of weakness. “That good will which is the chief element in a noble nature was laughed out of court and vanished. Every man distrusted every other man.” That was where the race for power brought the Athenians in the end.