History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides is said to be notoriously difficult to translate, and scholars have vigorously debated his text. Such debates about words and their meaning are themselves fitting to Thucydides’ work. He acknowledges that his “history will seem less easy to read because of the absence in it of a romantic element” (47-48). He states that he is not trying to entertain but to educate: Unlike poets and “prose chroniclers,” Thucydides is concerned with conveying truths about the war and, more broadly, human nature that will benefit his audiences. His dense and difficult style may be a product of his intention to employ language in the service of analysis and enduring truth rather than flights of fancy and fleeting entertainment.

Thucydides employs two conventions that appear in ancient Greek literature and philosophy in 5th-century Athens: speeches and dialogue.The History of the Peloponnesian War contains a total of 141 speeches delivered by Spartans, Athenians, and allies on both sides and one dialogue, "The Melian Dialogue." Among the speeches, Pericles’ Funeral Oration, delivered in Book 2, is one of the most famous.

Thucydides claims to reproduce speeches and dialogue in their speakers’ own words. He then adds, contradictorily, that owing to lapses of memory he had to creatively reconstruct speeches he heard himself or secondhand, from eyewitnesses. His method, he says, is to keep “as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation” (47). Given this, historians even in ancient times questioned the accuracy of the speeches. Contemporary scholars have noted that the speeches appear to be in Thucydides’ own voice and style.

Questions of accuracy aside, public speaking and rhetoric were highly-valued skills in 5th-century Athens, owing to the rise of democracy and debate. Speeches and dialogues became crucial mediums for political debate, decision-making, and philosophical development. Though the term rhetoric has become associated with argumentation that masks the truth, 5th-century Athenians believed the opposite. For them, rhetoric and debate were means of arriving at the truth. Thus Cleon’s complaint to the Athenian assembly in Book 3—that Athenians are swayed by novel arguments, are “victims of your own pleasure in listening,” and behave like an audience at a lecture rather “than a parliament discussing matters of state”—is a serious accusation (214). In response, Diodotus effectively scolds Cleon, saying “I do not share the view which we have heard expressed, that it is a bad thing to have frequent discussions on matters of importance,” adding that a “good citizen, instead of trying to terrify the opposition, ought to prove his case in fair argument” (217-18). Thus argument is not window dressing but a means for discovering truth.

In oligarchic Sparta, speakers did, as in Athens, present arguments to a voting body, but their speeches tended to be shorter and more concise, as suggested in Book 1: King Archidamus of Sparta gives a long, well-thought out speech urging Sparta not to rush into war. A Spartan ephor, Sthenelaidas, replies, “I do not understand these long speeches which the Athenians make” (86). King Archidamus had been friends with Pericles prior to the outbreak of war and as a result was now accused of being weak and sympathetic to Athens. Thus Sthenelaidas’ response uses few but biting words to reiterate a popular accusation. In a wry moment in Book 4, Thucydides alludes to the Spartans’ reputation for simple speech: He says of general Brasidas, “[h]e was not at all a bad speaker either, for a Spartan” (315).

While 5th-century Greeks generally saw rhetoric as a means of arriving at truth, they were not, according to Thucydides, above manipulating language’s meaning. During the plague, for example, Athenians argue about prophecies and their interpretation, with people adapting their “memories” of an oracle “to suit their sufferings” (156). Perhaps the most serious breach of rhetoric’s moral intent occurs during the civil wars that break out across the Hellenic world, when words “change their usual meanings” (243). In the past, what would have been:

described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character (243).

Words become twisted into vehicles for manipulation and control.

Finally, in Book 7, Thucydides notes that Nicias sends a letter, rather than a messenger, to Athens because he feared “that the messengers might not report the facts as they really were, either through lack of ability in speaking, or bad memory or a desire to say something which would please the general mass of opinion” (483). A letter would transmit his views “without having them distorted in the course of transmission” (483). This reflects the growing importance of written language in 5th-century Greece.