Thucydides and the West

Nicias’ vocabulary puts him in a “conservative light”, his speeches have a “consistently high level of complexity”, he is “insistent on talking about himself”

D. P. Tompkins (1972) (Nicias)

Nicias’ speeches are “selfish”, the speeches illustrate “his sound judgement and his inability to impress this on others”, the “weakness of Nicias’ arguments reflects on the Athenians’ desperate position, not on his own intellect”, his personal fate “forms part of the pattern of reversals in book vii”

T. Rood (2004) (Nicias)

Nicias “the relative degree of individual involvement in events … is itself an aspect of narrative technique”, the narrative is that “Nikias was the wrong general for the expedition”, Thucydides’ fascination with this “particular outstanding individual” might have something to do with the question of voice and focalization in Thucydides

D. Gribble (1999) (Nicias)

Nikias is always portrayed like “a fish trying unsuccessfully to swim upstream”“emphasis on carefulness and being prepared is a trait shared by the other great men of war – Themistocles, Pericles, Archadimus”, Nikias is “the victim of τυχη”

J. T. Kirby (1983) (Nikias)

Nicias - “it was one thing to oppose the expedition in Athens, but he should not have wrecked it by his apathy, always gazing wistfully homewards from his ship”, remember that Plutarch was using Thuc. as a source and was making a point about the rich (cf. Crassus)

C. Pelling (1992) (Nicias)

Campaigning - logistics = “the science of supplying armies with everything they need in order for them to live, move and fight”, “inability to forage always continued to mean the end of campaigns in enemy territory”

S. O’Connor (2021) (Campaigning)

Campaigning - “an ancient soldier on campaign” … “needed little more than 3,000 calories per day” and the standard daily ration would have provided “about 2,800 calories”, armour alone was 20-30 kg of weight

P. Krentz (2007) (Campaigning)

Campaigning - OR 170 shows that the Athenians spent “4 tal. 2,000 dr.” on travelling expenses of the reinforcing voyage

L. Kallet (2001) (Campaigning)

Speeches - interaction “dynamic” because of the “tension between what is said and what happens”, Thucydides links speech and narrative via the use of the same event or a similar situation but the question is whether they are both accurate to what happened/what was said, theme of tyranny is common and used by Corinthians to “incite their allies to war”

J. V. Morrison (2006) (Speeches)

Speeches “serve historical knowledge and interpretation”, speeches “inextricably combine [with narrative] into a wider, and much more suggestive, whole”, 1.22.1 translated as “should be said, ta deonta” would mean there is no space for debates, “speeches might “only be as accurate ‘as possible’”, “a large number of reliable informants for an exchange” (like for the Sicilian debate in Book VI) or he “would have scarcely any informants at all, as they were nearly all dead” (Nicias’ final speech in Syracuse)

C. Pelling (2009) (Speeches)

Speeches - The Catalogue of troops is placed and designed to prove that the “Syracusan’s hopes for everlasting fame are well reasoned”, “sad triumph for Nikias to find the analysis he gave at Athens” was completely accurate “even to the point which he had hoped to avoid”, “direct contradictions between Alcibiades and Nikias” throughout the text, discussion at Athens is “duplicated at Syracuse: Nikias’ counterpart is Hermocrates” as he experiences a “Cassandra situation similar to that of Nikias”, even mere narration implies a “subjective element (because presentation includes judgement, evaluation, selection, arrangement, in short: interpretation)”

H. P. Stahl (2009) (Speeches)

Speeches - Thucydides has “presented the speeches in the manner or style in which he thought the individuals would have said what was required on a given occasion”, the “content of the speeches may not be identical in every aspect to the actual content of what was said” which seems to be fair assumption given the hinderance of things such as memory

T. F. Garrity (1998) (Speeches)

Battle - sneaky intentions Athens had and they managed to goad the enemy “into the fight at a disadvantage”, one has “to neutralise the enemy’s advantage while maximising one’s own” and trickery is simply this but to a greater degree, location was chosen where it “would be as difficult as possible for an enemy to attack”, “it is the absence of pursuit that the ancients felt compelled to explain”, “battles where the chase was prevented tended to have a relatively low body count”

R. Konijnendijk (2018)/(2021) (Battle)

he presents “pre-battle etiquette: a skirmish with missile weapons, sacrifice, infantry charge” in the battle of Syracuse, phalanx formation “concealed the limited combat skills of its members within its mass”, trickery “offered a more economic and easier avenue to victory”

E. L. Wheeler (2007)

Siege - “defence was too aggressive”, “They waged an unusually aggressive defence ... Greek siege armies were not accustomed to such harassment, and because hoplites did double duty as fighters and builders, the need to guard … took soldiers away from wall building”, “the influence of Gylippus in the defence of Syracuse was not so much on the military situation as on the internal politics of the city”, “Gylippus made the most of his opportunities and Nicias failed to exploit all the Athenian opportunities”, “The Athenian failure at Syracuse was not so much a testimony of the incompetence of Nicias as an example of the limitations of Greek siege capabilities during the Peloponnesian War”

P. B. Kern (1999) (Siege)

Siege - “The high degree of risk in such operations is evident in the disasters that befell both Athenians and Carthaginians in their sieges of Syracuse (414–413; 396/5 BC)”, their siege failure was “primarily due to the fact that the Athenians were unable to complete their circumvallation of the city” and “enhanced by the constant harrying of the enemy by cavalry”

L. Rawlings (2007) (Siege)

Piety - Eleusinian Mysteries became “a cherished part of the Athenian self-image” when Eleusis became on of the demes, they were attacking public monuments of the Athenians and a ubiquitous one at that, “the cult of the Two Goddesses signified peace”, grain was “fundamental to the identity of Demeter”, Herms were also a “medium of communication with the gods through prayer and sacrifice”

S. Hornblower (2009) (Piety)

Piety - Herms were older than democracy from Fourmont’s herm, Herms were erected by the tyrant as a “monument to the Eion victory” is also why they were important to the Athenians - marker of the foundation of the empire: the “base of Athenian power”, in the agora, Herm monuments were closely associated with magistrates and generals, so their mutilation also threatened the “authority of the officials”

R. Osbourne (1985) (Piety)

Piety - “ultimately responsible for the fall of the Athenian empire, in that they opened up a fatal breach of mistrust in Athenian political life”, they were part of Andokides’ anchisteia which makes it the work of a “group of hetaireiai, a wider synomosia” and therefore is no longer drunken sacrilege but a revolution, act of defiance against the gods and “ordinary conventions of society”, of the five separate occasions that involved profanation, Alcibiades appears in three

O. Murray (1993) (Piety)

Navies - sea could be controlled and fought over “no less than territory or women”, Athens contributed “more ships than all the Peloponnesian cities put together” in the Persian Wars, “play both of its two essential roles: as warships battling for control of sea-routes, and as transport vessels carrying armies overseas” while on an expedition, “harder for shipwrecked sailors to swim to land fast enough than it was for hoplites to run to safety”, The “decisive factor” of who would win “was the fear and determination” of the helmsman, captains and officers, large problem for generals was finding a place that could offer “food and drink for thousands of men”

H. van Wees (2004) (Navies)

Navies - “we know very little about the size of the fifth-century imperial fleet” of Athens; could be around 400 triremes, the cost for Athens to have these ships was 2,867,600 drachmas, 300 kilograms of food per day for the 200 men, “money came to be viewed as the new super-weapon that could win wars”, shipwrecked vessels would also become “veritable man-traps”

V. Gabrielsen (2017) (Navies)

Navies - These small boats are described with the word “περιπλεοντες” which could suggest that the Syracusans modified the famous periplous to suit smaller boats

Whitehead (1987) (Navies)

Tyranny - “‘tyranny’ is an umbrella term [that was] originally and could always be used indiscriminately with other terms for monarchy”, “Extraordinary honours were extended to the Tyrannicides’ direct descendants”, the Tyrannicides received cult honours in the Kerameikos, “From a position outside and opposed to democracy, tyranny could be represented as positive. From a position within and identifying with democracy, especially in political discourse and ideology, it was seen as entirely negative”

Raaflaub (2003) (Tyranny)

Tyranny - “Professor Thucydides (as we might call him) succumbed to the occupational temptation setting historians and commentators, namely ‘to correct error wherever they find it’, seems inadequate as an explanation for so sustained, carefully wrote, and in many ways uncharacteristic a piece of prose”

S. Hornblower (2009) (Tyranny)

Tyranny - “The Athenian ambassador to Camarina, Euphemus, is the last individual to use the tyrant-state analogy in Thucydides” … “point of Euphemus' remark is, rather, that as a tyrant the polis, like the individual, governs its conduct exclusively according to self-interest”, “The early rule of the Peisistratids most resembles Athens under Pericles”, “The identification of a consistent tyrant type in Thucydides thus helps us to understand more precisely the historian's use of the tyrant-state analogy for Athens during the war”

T. F. Scanlon (1987) (Tyranny)

Date they set sail

Spring 415 BC

Date Gylippus arrives

Winter 414 BC

Date of reinforcements and Night Assault on Epipolae

Summer 413 BC

Date of the final catastrophic retreat

September 413 BC

Date and day of the bright moon

August 27, 413 BC

Athenian assembly

6.9-6.23

Syracusan debate

6.33-6.40

General’s debate about how to start the expedition

6.47-6.49

tyrants digression

6.54-6.60

battle of Syracuse

6.69-6.71

debate of Camarina

6.76-6.87

Nicias’ letter

7.10-7.15

sea battle and taking Plemmyrium

7.21-7.24

night attack, moon, Athenian defeat

7.43-7.44

generals’ debate about whether to keep up the siege

7.47-7.49

speeches before the final naval battle

7.61-7.68