Talking About Women

I am continuing re-reading a translation of Thucydides book “The Peloponnesian War” about the 27 year war between Athens and Sparta back in the fifth century B.C.

In Book I, Thucydides puts these words in the mouths of Corinthian ambassadors trying to talk the Spartans into taking the side of the oppressed against Athens:

“You don’t see that the best way to peace is to use your strength justly, but show that you have no intention to submit to injustice. For you justice seems to mean that you don’t bother anyone else and never strike back unless someone hurts you first. But this policy cannot be successful ….”

The Corinthians appear to be condemning the same policy that led to Nazi domination of Europe and Imperial Japanese domination of the Eastern Pacific and East Asia in 1930’s-1940’s. The Corinthians are urging the Spartans to take a Preemptive Policy. But it is really too late. In this case back in B.C., the Athenians had already come to dominate and exact tribute from much of the Aegean Greek world.

In his funeral eulogy of the war dead, Pericles says the famous line “Athens is the school of Hellas.” In my translation, Thucydides always calls the nation Hellas and the people Hellenes. “Greek” is from a much later Latin term. Also, he always calls the people of Sparta as Lacadaemonians, sometimes collectively with their allies as Peloponnesians.

In his funeral speech, Pericles says that it is a virtue for women “not to be talked about for either good or bad by men.” The ancient Greeks, at least the Athenians, were not into women’s rights.

In Book II Pericles gives a buck-up speech to the Athenians despairing over the course of the war. He explains why the Athenians are so hated: “ He who is less fortunate will envy us.” Thucydides, an Athenian himself, admires Pericles: “He led them [the Athenians] rather than was led by them….So Athens, in name a democracy, was in fact ruled by her greatest citizen.” And looking to the end of the war, without Pericles’ leadership, he says the Athenians “were at last overthrown, not by their enemies, but by themselves, and their own infighting.” Sounds familiar.