Princeton Readings in Political Thought: Essential Texts since Plato - Revised and Expanded Edition

Thinking Politically: An Introduction

IN THIS ANTHOLOGY you will find selections from important works of political theory that span some 2,500 years, from the ancient Greeks through today. The author of each wrestles, in his or her own time, place, and way, with the most basic questions that human beings can ask about living together—questions about justice, and about relations and institutions of power.

Studying political theory forces us to wrestle with these questions in order to clarify what politics is all about. Indeed, the word theory comes from the ancient Greek theoria, which means viewing, speculation, contemplation.¹ Here is just a partial list of what political theorists look at, speculate about, and contemplate:

What is power?

What defines a citizen and what are a citizen’s obligations?

Who should be sovereign in a political community? Who should be included in the community? Who can be excluded?

When does a government become illegitimate? When is it legitimate to rebel against political authority? Are there rights with which a government may never tamper?

How far should a government intrude into our private lives?

What should be the role of the state in a just society? What is a just society?

What means and what ends are legitimate in politics?

Formulating questions like these can be deceptively simple. Political philosophers frequently find that half their task is defining the very words they use, for how one demarcates terms will affect how one thinks through political problems. Indeed, we can see this throughout the entire history of Western political thought. At its dawn, in The Republic (see chapter 2), we find Plato seeking to answer the question: What is justice? In attempting to explain this basic term, he concluded that justice was to be found in a society with a proper division of labor, in which everybody plays the role for which he or she is naturally best suited. The ideal state, Plato thought, would be a dictatorship of its smartest citizens, philosopher-kings. The vast majority of the people were simply not competent to govern; they would have other tasks. If we skip ahead—over two millennia ahead—we find the same question still being posed: What is justice? In the 1970s a Harvard professor, John Rawls, inaugurated a renaissance in political theory with a book entitled A Theory of Justice (see chapter 59). He argued that given fair conditions in which to select the principles governing their society, everyone would choose equal liberty, equal opportunity, and the idea that inequalities—socioeconomic differences—would be acceptable provided they are to the benefit of the least advantaged in society.

Plato and Rawls obviously reached different conclusions when trying to define justice. But to grasp their respective contributions—and to see what both of them have to say to us nowadays—we must not just think about their conclusions but must examine the structure of their arguments as well. What claims do they make and how do they make them? Are they justified? How do they construct their assertions?

II

Now you may be saying to yourself, Theory, philosophy—it all seems so abstract. Don’t these theorists just weave grand webs out of the recesses of their minds? What effect do they all have on the real world anyway? The impact has been more than you might imagine. Ideas are, of course, only one element of what makes history. Still, how people think politically very much affects how they act politically.

Consider this: when the French Revolution took place in 1789, one powerful influence on leading revolutionaries was the ideas of the Geneva-born political theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau, even though he had died eleven years earlier. Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains, reads the incendiary first sentence of his book The Social Contract (see the selection in chapter 17). One was completely free, Rousseau argued, only in a state of nature where there were no governments nor social constraints. Since life in society always requires governance and rules (which, when enforceable, are forms of coercion), and since we will not live in a state of nature, Rousseau asked: Under what conditions can we say that these chains are legitimate?

Rousseau wrote that we are politically free when we are subject to laws we have embraced ourselves. So he insisted that the People should be sovereign and that their General Will should be the author of a land’s basic laws. These were subversive ideas in prerevolutionary France, a hierarchical society in which the Crown was sovereign and the inhabitants of this realm were the king’s subjects, not self-governing citizens. No wonder that The Social Contract was banned in Paris and Geneva when it was first published in 1762. Its author had to flee into exile. Yet when the revolution came, captivated crowds—or so the story goes—listened as the celebrated revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat read Rousseau’s book aloud on Paris street corners.

For another example, take a case closer to home. In the late seventeenth century, the British political theorist John Locke articulated a famous theory of revolution in his Second Treatise of Government (see chapter 13). When Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues wrote the Declaration of Independence, shortly after the shot heard ’round the world was fired at the British by American farmers in Concord, Massachusetts, they did so with Locke’s ideas very much in mind.

Locke argued that there were rights that belonged to human beings by nature—the rights of life, liberty, and property—and that government was entrusted to protect them. Should a government violate this trust, it was no longer legitimate. Then, citizens had a right to overthrow it and establish a new one. Locke’s ideas were tied to the nonviolent Glorious Revolution of 1688, which established a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary supremacy in Britain: the king was now below, instead of above, the law (although Locke’s book was written before this revolution).

Jefferson and the American colonists, facing King George III almost a century later, declared that it was a self-evident truth that human beings are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which were life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Because George III had violated those rights (and others!), Americans no longer owed him fealty. Independence was declared, and the colonies became an independent American republic. Later, in 1787, when the delegates assembled in Philadelphia to debate the principles of and then write the U.S. Constitution, among them were men deeply immersed not only in Locke’s writings but in European political theory in general. They read, thought, and talked about political ideas as they fashioned the document that would govern the United States.

III

Early in this anthology, in the section on the ancient world, you will read Aristotle, Plato’s pupil. In the fourth century BCE he asserted, in Politics, that man is a political animal, a being who can fulfill his nature only through participation in a political community. If you didn’t live in one, Aristotle asserted, you were either less than human or more than human.

Even if you accepted this in principle, you would probably say it differently nowadays. You would probably say that men and women are political animals. Aristotle, living when he did, didn’t accept the equality of women and also believed that slavery was natural. This just gives you a hint at how political ideas get reshaped over centuries. As you read this anthology, you will see that as concepts of human nature and human history change, so do concepts of politics. For one example, Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages didn’t accept the idea that we are political animals. For them, religion came first and foremost. They thought religiously and fit politics into their theology. Later, when we enter the modern world, politics reasserts its independence.

But then, in the nineteenth century, we find one of the most important liberal political philosophers, John Stuart Mill, trying to assert the individual’s independence from politics by delineating those dimensions of life in which government had no right to intervene—areas that ought to be strictly matters of individual liberty. Government ought not to interfere with acts that are strictly self-regarding, he argued. Otherwise we will be unable to develop and fulfill ourselves as individuals. At the same time, Mill recognized that despotism comes not only from abusive governments but also from apparently nonpolitical sources. He warned of the tyranny of majority opinion, of how popular views can have a chilling effect on individual creativity. People are often intimidated by new or unusual ideas. He once declared that no society in which eccentricity is a matter of reproach can be a wholesome state.

Mill himself took up an unpopular cause in the Britain of his day: feminism. He was an early advocate of women’s rights (and as a young man he was once arrested for trying to distribute information about birth control on London streets). This, of course, raises an interesting question: How far does thinking politically extend? In various sections of this anthology you will find writings concerning the status of women and the oppression of women. Is this political? Certainly, if you define politics in terms of power exercised by and among human beings.

However, some political thinkers contend that we should define politics more narrowly so as to keep an eye on specific features, dynamics, and questions—questions like the nature of the state and different forms of government. Take, for example, Max Weber, a formidable political thinker of the early twentieth century who is often called the father of sociology. In his brilliant essay Politics as a Vocation (see chapter 37), he defined the state as a "human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. This is a famous definition. Think of all the important questions it raises (and which Weber explored in many writings): What does legitimate force mean? Or a human community and a given territory"? Do we specify these on the basis of size? Population?

And again: What about relations of power within this state? Weber’s work, it is sometimes said, is a debate with the ghost of Karl Marx. It is easy to see why. Marx insisted that we could never think of the state or governments without placing them within a larger socioeconomic totality. He asked: If economic life is dominated by a small part of the population—the ruling class—then won’t socioeconomic power be translated into political power?

Marx contended that the state, the organization of political power within a society, was simply a means by which one social class oppresses other classes. Since for him all history is the history of class struggle, governments simply try to keep the have-nots in order on behalf of the haves. Consequently, the state is an executive committee asserting the interests of the dominant economic class. Marx believed it possible to create a classless society in which the state would eventually vanish. If there is no ruling class and if society is organized cooperatively so that socioeconomic resources benefit all, there would no longer be a need for government as we have known it, he thought. In that case, politics would vanish and, presumably, we would no longer need to think politically.

IV

Who is right? Who is wrong? Of course, there is no simple answer. You may find that even when some political theorists seem very wrong—terribly wrong—you may learn a lot from their errors. As John Stuart Mill argued in On Liberty, even if you believe something to be completely true—absolutely true—unless it is contested and debated and argued, it may well turn into a useless dogma.

So, in opening these pages, we invite you to think politically, to wrestle with great debates about political ideas. Some may lead you to see the world with new eyes, and some of the ideas may simply infuriate you. Perhaps unsettling arguments will raise for you new questions and open some new horizons about the ways power is exercised. If so, you may want to explore political theory in more depth. Perhaps these introductory selections will inspire you to read the full texts.

Note

1. F. E. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon (New York: New York University Press, 1967), 194.

PART ONE

Classical Political Thought

Introduction to Part One

THE ATHENIAN VICTORY OVER PERSIA AT MARATHON (490 BCE) assured Greek independence from oriental despotism and allowed the development of democracy and thus of the culture and politics we know today as European and Western. Ten years later, Athens, a polis (city-state), was besieged and burned by Persian King Xerxes in a subsequent invasion. Athenians (acting selflessly as a community) had abandoned their city in order to trap the invaders and destroy their fleet at sea. Their sacrifice allowed the combined Greek forces to defeat the Persian army at Platea. The Athenian navy thus played a crucial role in liberating Greek cities from sixty years of occupation. Athens’s leading role in these victories confirmed its power, while its naval hegemony extended over its Greek allies. Once the threat of invasion was eliminated, the Athenian fleet patrolled the Mediterranean to protect it from pirates, securing trade routes and allowing an explosion of commerce, the production of arts, and the development of a civic culture. This era would be the subject of controversy and debate throughout the ages. The political leader of this age, Pericles, was equivalent to prime minister of Athens for thirty years. He described Athens at the height of its glory, the first year of the great war between Athens and Sparta: Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy.

Direct democracy in Athens developed without the bloodshed that characterized relations between the many (poor) and the few (rich aristocrats) of other Greek cities. Pericles thus spoke in a political context in which all citizens could vote and participate in the Assembly, the legislative body that ruled Athens. The Assembly met regularly as well as for specific emergencies and functioned with the Council (Boulē) of Five Hundred acting as an executive committee for the Assembly. These two institutions, as well as the courts with large juries, were important for popular control of government. Women, slaves, and foreigners (metics) were barred from politics. As naturalization was very difficult to secure, most people lived in the city without the right to participate in the very institutions that would earn the Athenians political immortality. Perhaps one-tenth of a population of 400,000 or 500,000 were active citizens, either in the huge juries, sometimes with as many as 1,501 members, that decided questions of law and politics, or in the civil and military functions decided through lot, election, or choice. Face-to-face politics was thus possible, with citizens knowing one another and making decisions of war and peace accordingly.

The Greek polis elevated the concept of civic harmony and celebrated the notion of a common life. The Athenian constitution, inaugurated at the end of the sixth century BCE, allowed the realization of this ideal. The experience of constitutional rule was relatively recent by the time Pericles gave his famous funeral oration. The reforms of Solon, and the beginning of democracy, first occurred with the establishment of popular control of the all-important law courts at the beginning of the sixth century and the elimination of imprisonment for debts that had been instrumental in driving Greek citizens into exile or servitude. Cleisthenes, whose constitutional reforms were adopted in 507 BCE, attacked the principle of aristocratic power by transforming the system of tribes and initiating a new set of bonds based on locality rather than kinship. Individuals were now citizens on the basis of the deme (district) they belonged to, reducing the distinctions that had existed between citizens on the basis of blood ties. The community became more powerful through the gradual process of elevating individual citizens and the civic community, at the expense of the aristocracy and its interests.

In the city of Pericles and Plato, class structure was thus more fluid, with a growing class of nonnoble rich citizens. The positions of slaves, who made up perhaps one-third of the population, and all other noncitizens were correspondingly more ambiguous. Many slaves were independent small producers who paid a body rent to their masters. Slaves occupied the managerial positions that citizens despised. Citizen and slave, freeman and noncitizen, almost all men worked, and the traditional division between those who labored and those who had the leisure to be engaged in politics was consequently less absolute.

Despite reforms that emphasized the equality of citizens and the unity of the civic body, the legal status of women in Athens was incompatible with a free life. Neither aristocratic nor laboring women, let alone slave women, could participate in the political life of the city. Although women could inherit property, they could not manage it. Their primary responsibility in addition to domestic labor was to bear citizens for the city. Women’s freedom was restricted in all areas of daily life, and those women who had not produced a male heir could legally be compelled to marry a next-of-kin to maintain property within the family. Urban Athens restricted the social and economic role of aristocratic women who were stripped of previous tribal and ancestral familial powers. Although all women found themselves restricted by democratic laws and institutions, women who were not citizens had greater mobility than the wives and daughters of citizens, for restrictions keeping the latter out of the public sphere did not apply to foreigners. Paradoxically, in Sparta, which was a far less democratic agrarian society, women had access to the sphere of production and exchange; they maintained the power to control and manage their property. Democracy, which sought to expand political freedom, did not include women. Plato’s politics, profoundly hostile to democracy, proposed remarkable freedom and equality for women, and he was able to imagine women rulers and philosophers, and even women warriors, in The Republic.

The central character of most of Plato’s thirty-five dialogues is Socrates. Socrates is usually credited as the principal founder of Western philosophy and was spokesman for an antidemocratic ideology. With the exception of what is found in the writings of Xenophon, Aristophanes, and Plato, very little is known with any certainty about Socrates except that he fought in the Peloponnesian War. In 399 BCE he was tried and convicted of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens. Most of his interlocutors were aristocrats. Although there are speculations that Socrates was a commoner, strong evidence (education, level of military service, and an advantageous marriage) suggests that he belonged to the upper stratum. At his trial he attributed his poverty to preoccupation with the examination of life, which led him to neglect material affairs.

Socrates was Plato’s teacher, as Plato was Aristotle’s. They were the originators of the tradition of classical political theory, which addressed prevailing questions about the nature of ventures like courage, moderation, piety, friendship, and the possibility of the good life in the just state. They also investigated and interrogated contemporary cultural conventions like tragedy, poetry, and sophistry. Classical political thought includes not only the writings of Plato and Aristotle but also the later political teachings of the Stoics and Skeptics and the Romans.

The Apology is Socrates’s defense of philosophy and his recommendations for political reform. He is the champion of government by knowledge and proposes that philosopher-kings (or queens) are the best rulers. The Apology presents the account of Socrates’s trial by democratic detractors. Told that he could avoid the death penalty by paying a small fine and remaining silent about politics, Socrates insisted that the unexamined life was not worth living. He would not accept exile or the injustice of silence. Reason, he also insisted, must be applied to questions of politics and ethics.

In The Republic, Plato enquires into the nature of justice and asks what is the best kind of human life. In opposition to the Periclean ideal of versatility, he proposes a Spartan-inspired specialization of function. Aristotle would attempt to provide the definitive critique of Plato’s political recommendations, claiming in Politics that the arrangements of The Republic would make the state too unified. According to Aristotle, the state was an organization that oversaw other organizations, each with its own separate interests. He insisted that constitutional safeguards were essential to the good state and argued against the communism of Plato’s Republic. Instead, he was for a middle-class community and for a mixed oligarchic-democratic constitution. The debate between Plato and Aristotle continues today in different guises and arenas. The questions posed are fundamentally the same: How should men, and now women, live in common; what is the best way to order human affairs? What is justice?

1

Thucydides

From The Peloponnesian War

Thucydides (460?–400? BCE) was an Athenian whose History of the Peloponnesian War remains a landmark in historical writing. The war, in which he served as a general, was fought between Athens and its allies in the Delian League and Sparta and its allies in the Peloponnesian League. Thucydides’s military failures forced him into exile in 424–423 BCE. In his method of writing history he sought to be nonjudgmental, assembling facts and trying to explain what caused the events he interpreted. His focus was on human actions and interests, and he did not use religious or metaphysical explanations. The war, he believed, originated in Sparta’s fear of mounting Athenian power and ambitions. Thucydides’s roots were in the Sophist movement, professional intellectuals of Athens and targets of the philosophies of Socrates and Plato. Rhetoric—and his reporting of speeches—was also an important dimension of his historiography.

In Pericles’s Funeral Oration, the leading democratic statesman (and a general) of Athens eulogizes animating principles of his polis and its ideals of citizenship. It was a speech honoring war dead. What Thucydides gives us is generally considered to be imaginative re-creation of the speech. In 416 BCE Athens attacked the island of Melos, which was neutral in the war. In the second reading, The Melian Dialogue, Thucydides reconstructs the arguments of Athenian representatives who tried to convince the Melians, who had no chance of winning, to be pragmatic and come over to the Athenian side and pay a tribute. The Melians refused the offer, believing justice and the Gods were on their side and that they might in the end be victorious, perhaps with Spartan help (they thought themselves to be of Spartan descent). Athens went on to assault and defeat them, executing Melian men and taking women and children into slavery. The Dialogue is a foundational text in the realist theory of international affairs.

Pericles’s Funeral Oration

In the same winter the Athenians gave a funeral at the public cost to those who had first fallen in this war. It was a custom of their ancestors, and the manner of it is as follows. Three days before the ceremony, the bones of the dead are laid out in a tent which has been erected; and their friends bring to their relatives such offerings as they please. In the funeral procession cypress coffins are borne on wagons, one for each tribe, the bones of the deceased being placed in the coffin of their tribe. Among these is carried one empty bier decked for the missing, that is, for those whose bodies could not be recovered. Any citizen or stranger who pleases joins in the procession: and the female relatives are there to wail at the burial. The dead are laid in the public sepulchre in the most beautiful suburb of the city, in which those who fall in war are always buried—with the exception of those slain at Marathon, who for their singular and extraordinary valour were interred on the spot where they fell. After the bodies have been laid in the earth, a man chosen by the state, of approved wisdom and eminent reputation, pronounces over them an appropriate panegyric, after which all retire. Such is the manner of the burying; and throughout the whole of the war, whenever the occasion arose, the established custom was observed. Meanwhile these were the first that had fallen, and Pericles, son of Xanthippus, was chosen to pronounce their eulogium. When the proper time arrived, he advanced from the sepulchre to an elevated platform in order to be heard by as many of the crowd as possible, and spoke as follows:

Most of my predecessors in this place have commended him who made this speech part of the law, telling us that it is well that it should be delivered at the burial of those who fall in battle. For myself, I should have thought that the worth which had displayed itself in deeds would be sufficiently rewarded by honours also shown by deeds, such as you now see in this funeral prepared at the people’s cost. And I could have wished that the reputations of many brave men were not to be imperilled in the mouth of a single individual, to stand or fall according as he spoke well or ill. For it is hard to speak properly upon a subject where it is even difficult to convince your hearers that you are speaking the truth. On the one hand, the friend who is familiar with every fact of the story may think that some point has not been set forth with that fullness which he wishes and knows it to deserve; on the other, he who is a stranger to the matter may be led by envy to suspect exaggeration if he hears anything above his own nature. For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity. However, since our ancestors have stamped this custom with their approval, it becomes my duty to obey the law and to try to satisfy your several wishes and opinions as best I may.

I shall begin with our ancestors: it is both just and proper that they should have the honour of the first mention on an occasion like the present. They dwelt in the country without break in the succession from generation to generation, and handed it down free to the present time by their valour. And if our more remote ancestors deserved praise, much more do our own fathers, who added to their inheritance the empire which we now possess, and spared no pains to be able to leave their acquisitions to us of the present generation. Lastly, there are few parts of our dominions that have not been augmented by those of us here, who are still more or less in the vigour of life; and the mother country has been furnished by us with everything that can enable her to depend on her own resources whether for war or for peace. That part of our history which tells of the military achievements which gave us our several possessions, or of the ready valour with which either we or our fathers stemmed the tide of Hellenic or foreign aggression, is a theme too familiar to my hearers for me to dilate on, and I shall therefore pass it by. But by what road we reached our position, under what form of government our greatness grew, out of what national habits it sprang—these are subjects which I may pursue before I proceed to my panegyric upon these men; for I think them to be themes upon which on the present occasion a speaker may properly dwell, and to which the whole assemblage, whether citizens or foreigners, may listen with advantage.

Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighbouring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favours the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if to social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way: if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book, or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace.

Further, we provide plenty of means for the mind to refresh itself from business. We celebrate games and sacrifices all the year round, and the elegance of our private establishments forms a daily source of pleasure and helps to banish our cares; and the magnitude of our city draws the produce of the world into our harbour, so that to the Athenian the fruits of other countries are as familiar a luxury as those of his own.

If we turn to our military policy, there also we differ from our antagonists. We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality; we trust less in system and policy than in the native spirit of our citizens; and in education, where our rivals from their very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness, at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger. In proof of this it may be noticed that the Lacedæmonians do not invade our country alone, but bring with them all their confederates, while we Athenians advance unsupported into the territory of a neighbour, and fighting upon a foreign soil usually vanquish with ease men who are defending their homes. Our united force was never yet encountered by any enemy, because we have at once to attend to our marine and to despatch our citizens by land upon a hundred different services; thus wherever they engage with some such fraction of our strength, a success against a detachment is magnified into a victory over the nation, and a defeat into a reverse suffered at the hands of our entire people. And yet if with habits not of labour but of ease, and courage not of art but of nature, we are still willing to encounter danger, we have the double advantage of escaping the experience of hardships in anticipation and of facing them in the hour of need as fearlessly as those who are never free from them.

Nor are these the only points in which our city is worthy of admiration. We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all. Again, in our enterprises we present the singular spectacle of daring and deliberation, each carried to its highest point, and both united in the same persons, although usually decision is the fruit of ignorance, hesitation of reflection. But the palm of courage will surely be adjudged most justly to those who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger. In generosity we are equally singular, acquiring our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favours. Yet, of course, the doer of the favour is the firmer friend of the two, in order by continued kindness to keep the recipient in his debt, while the debtor feels less keenly from the very consciousness that the return he makes will be a payment, not a free gift. And it is only the Athenians who, fearless of consequences, confer their benefits not from calculations of expediency, but in the confidence of liberality.

In short, I say that as a city we are the school of Hellas; and I doubt if the world can produce a man, who where he has only himself to depend upon, is equal to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility as the Athenian. And that this is no mere boast thrown out for the occasion, but plain matter of fact, the power of the state acquired by these habits proves. For Athens alone of her contemporaries is found when tested to be greater than her reputation, and alone gives no occasion to her assailants to blush at the antagonist by whom they have been worsted, or to her subjects to question her title by merit to rule. Rather, the admiration of the present and succeeding ages will be ours, since we have not left our power without witness, but have shown it by mighty proofs; and far from needing a Homer for our panegyrist, or other of his craft whose verses might charm for the moment only for the impression which they gave to melt at the touch of fact, we have forced every sea and land to be the highway of our daring, and everywhere, whether for evil or for good, have left imperishable monuments behind us. Such is the Athens for which these men, in the assertion of their resolve not to lose her, nobly fought and died; and well may every one of their survivors be ready to suffer in her cause.

Indeed if I have dwelt at some length upon the character of our country, it has been to show that our stake in the struggle is not the same as theirs who have no such blessings to lose, and also that the panegyric of the men over whom I am now speaking might be by definite proofs established. That panegyric is now in a great measure complete; for the Athens that I have celebrated is only what the heroism of these and their like have made her, men whose fame, unlike that of most Hellenes, will be found to be only commensurate with their deserts. And if a test of worth be wanted, it is to be found in their closing scene, and this not only in the cases in which it set the final seal upon their merit, but also in those in which it gave the first intimation of their having any. For there is justice in the claim that steadfastness in his country’s battles should be as a cloak to cover a man’s other imperfections; for the good action has blotted out the bad, and his merit as a citizen more than outweighed his demerits as an individual. But none of these allowed either wealth with its prospect of future enjoyment to unnerve his spirit, or poverty with its hope of a day of freedom and riches to tempt him to shrink from danger. No, holding that vengeance upon their enemies was more to be desired than any personal blessings, and reckoning this to be the most glorious of hazards, they joyfully determined to accept the risk, to make sure of their vengeance and to let their wishes wait; and while committing to hope the uncertainty of final success, in the business before them they thought fit to act boldly and trust in themselves. Thus choosing to die resisting, rather than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonour, but met danger face to face, and after one brief moment, while at the summit of their fortune, escaped, not from their fear, but from their glory.

So died these men as became Athenians. You, their survivors, must determine to have as unaltering a resolution in the field, though you may pray that it may have a happier issue. And not contented with ideas derived only from words of the advantages which were bound up with the defence of your country, though these would furnish a valuable text to a speaker even before an audience so alive to them as the present, you must yourselves realize the power of Athens, and feed your eyes upon her from day to day, till love of her fills your hearts; and then when all her greatness shall break upon you, you must reflect that it was by courage, sense of duty, and a keen feeling of honour in action that men were enabled to win all this, and that no personal failure in an enterprise could make them consent to deprive their country of their valour, but they laid it at her feet as the most glorious contribution that they could offer. For this offering of their lives made in common by them all that each of them individually received that renown which never grows old, and for a sepulchre, not so much that in which their bones have been deposited, but that noblest of shrines wherein their glory is laid up to be eternally remembered upon every occasion on which deed or story shall call for its commemoration. For heroes have the whole earth for their tomb; and in lands far from their own, where the column with its epitaph declares it, there is enshrined in every breast a record unwritten with no tablet to preserve it, except that of the heart. These take as your model, and judging happiness to be the fruit of freedom and freedom of valour, never decline the dangers of war. For it is not the miserable that would most justly be unsparing of their lives; these have nothing to hope for: it is rather they to whom continued life may bring reverses as yet unknown, and to whom a fall, if it came, would be most tremendous in its consequences. And surely, to a man of spirit, the degradation of cowardice must be immeasurably more grievous than the unfelt death which strikes him in the midst of his strength and patriotism!

Comfort, therefore, not condolence, is what I have to offer to the parents of the dead who may be here. Numberless are the chances to which, as they know, the life of man is subject; but fortunate indeed are they who draw for their lot a death so glorious as that which has caused your mourning, and to whom life has been so exactly measured as to terminate in the happiness in which it has been passed. Still I know that this is a hard saying, especially when those are in question of whom you will constantly be reminded by seeing in the homes of others blessings of which once you also boasted: for grief is felt not so much for the want of what we have never known, as for the loss of that to which we have been long accustomed. Yet you who are still of an age to beget children must bear up in the hope of having others in their stead; not only will they help you to forget those whom you have lost, but will be to the state at once a reinforcement and a security; for never can a fair or just policy be expected of the citizen who does not, like his fellows, bring to the decision the interests and apprehensions of a father. And those of you who have passed your prime must congratulate yourselves with the thought that the best part of your life was fortunate, and that the brief span that remains will be cheered by the fame of the departed. For it is only the love of honour that never grows old; and honour it is, not gain, as some would have it, that rejoices the heart of age and helplessness.

Turning to the sons or brothers of the dead, I see an arduous struggle before you. When a man is gone, all are wont to praise him, and should your merit be ever so transcendent, you will still find it difficult not merely to overtake, but even to approach their renown. The living have envy to contend with, while those who are no longer in our path are honoured with a goodwill into which rivalry does not enter. On the other hand, if I must say anything on the subject of female excellence to those of you who will now be in widowhood, it will be all comprised in this brief exhortation. Great will be your glory in not falling short of your natural character; and greatest will be hers who is least talked of among the men whether for good or for bad.

My task is now finished. I have performed it to the best of my ability, and in words, at least, the requirements of the law are now satisfied. If deeds be in question, those who are here interred have received part of their honours already, and for the rest, their children will be brought up till manhood at the public expense: the state thus offers a valuable prize as the garland of victory in this race of valour, for the reward both of those who have fallen and their survivors. And where the rewards for merit are greatest, there are found the best citizens.

And now that you have brought to a close your lamentations for your relatives, you may depart.

The Melian Dialogue

The following summer, Alcibiades sailed to Argos with twenty ships, seized three hundred Argives still suspected of having Spartan sympathies, and then imprisoned them on nearby islands under Athenian control. The Athenians also sent a fleet against the island of Melos. Thirty of the ships were their own, six were from Chios, and two were from Lesbos. Their own troops numbered twelve hundred hoplites, three hundred archers, and twenty mounted archers. There were also about fifteen hundred hoplites from their allies on the islands. The Melians are colonists from Sparta and would not submit to Athenian control like the other islanders. At first, they were neutral and lived peaceably, but they became openly hostile after Athens once tried to compel their obedience by ravaging their land. The generals Cleomedes, son of Lycomedes, and Tisias, son of Tisimachus, bivouacked on Melian territory with their troops, but before doing any injury to the land, they sent ambassadors to hold talks with the Melians. The Melian leadership, however, did not bring these men before the popular assembly. Instead, they asked them to discuss their mission with the council and the privileged voters. The Athenian ambassadors spoke as follows.

We know that what you are thinking in bringing us before a few voters, and not before the popular assembly, is that now the people won’t be deceived after listening to a single long, seductive, and unrefuted speech from us. Well, those of you who are sitting here can make things even safer for yourselves. When we say something that seems wrong, interrupt immediately, and answer, not in a set speech, but one point at a time.—But say first whether this proposal is to your liking.

The Melian councillors said, There can be no objection to the reasonableness of quiet, instructive talks among ourselves. But this military force, which is here, now, and not off in the future, looks different from instruction. We see that you have come as judges in a debate, and the likely prize will be war if we win the debate with arguments based on right and refuse to capitulate, or servitude if we concede to you.

ATHENIANS:

Excuse us, but if you’re having this meeting to make guesses about the future or to do anything but look at your situation and see how to save your city, we’ll leave. But if that’s the topic, we’ll keep talking.

MELIANS:

It’s natural and understandable that in a situation like this, people would want to express their thoughts at length. But so be it. This meeting is about saving our city, and the format of the discussion will be as you have said.

ATHENIANS:

Very well.

We Athenians are not going to use false pretenses and go on at length about how we have a right to rule because we destroyed the Persian empire, or about how we are seeking retribution because you did us wrong. You would not believe us anyway. And please do not suppose that you will persuade us when you say that you did not campaign with the Spartans although you were their colonists, or that you never did us wrong. No, each of us must exercise what power he really thinks he can, and we know and you know that in the human realm, justice is enforced only among those who can be equally constrained by it, and that those who have power use it, while the weak make compromises.

MELIANS:

Since you have ruled out a discussion of justice and forced us to speak of expediency, it would be inexpedient, at least as we see it, for you to eradicate common decency. There has always been a fair and right way to treat people who are in danger, if only to give them some benefit for making persuasive arguments by holding off from the full exercise of power. This applies to you above all, since you would set an example for others of how to take the greatest vengeance if you fall.

ATHENIANS:

We’re not worried about the end of our empire, if it ever does end. People who rule over others, like the Spartans, are not so bad to their defeated enemies. Anyway, we’re not fighting the Spartans just now. What is really horrendous is when subjects are able to attack and defeat their masters.—But you let us worry about all that. We are here to talk about benefiting our empire and saving your city, and we will tell you how we are going to do that, because we want to take control here without any trouble and we want you to be spared for both our sakes.

MELIANS:

And just how would it be as much to our advantage to be enslaved, as for you to rule over us?

ATHENIANS:

You would benefit by surrendering before you experience the worst of consequences, and we would benefit by not having you dead.

MELIANS:

So you would not accept our living in peace, being friends instead of enemies, and allies of neither side?

ATHENIANS:

Your hatred doesn’t hurt us as much as your friendship. That would show us as weak to our other subjects, whereas your hatred would be a proof of our power.

MELIANS:

Would your subjects consider you reasonable if you lumped together colonists who had no connection to you, colonists from Athens, and rebellious colonists who had been subdued?

ATHENIANS:

They think there’s justice all around. They also think the independent islands are strong, and that we are afraid to attack them. So aside from adding to our empire, your subjugation will also enhance our safety, especially since you are islanders and we are a naval power. Besides, you’re weaker than the others—unless, that is, you show that you too can be independent.

MELIANS:

Don’t you think there’s safety in our neutrality? You turned us away from a discussion of justice and persuaded us to attend to what was in your interest. Now it’s up to us to tell you about what is to our advantage and to try to persuade you that it is also to yours. How will you avoid making enemies of states that are now neutral, but that look at what you do here and decide that you will go after them one day? How will you achieve anything but to make your present enemies seem more attractive, and to force those who had no intention of opposing you into unwilling hostility?

ATHENIANS:

We do not think the threat to us is so much from mainlanders who, in their freedom from fear, will be continually putting off their preparations against us, as from independent islanders, like you, and from those who are already chafing under the restraints of rule. These are the ones who are most likely to commit themselves to ill-considered action and create foreseeable dangers for themselves and for us.

MELIANS:

Well then, in the face of this desperate effort you and your slaves are making, you to keep your empire and they to get rid of it, wouldn’t we, who are still free, be the lowest of cowards if we didn’t try everything before submitting to slavery?

ATHENIANS:

No, not if you think about it prudently. This isn’t a contest about manly virtue between equals, or about bringing disgrace on yourself. You are deliberating about your very existence, about standing up against a power far greater than yours.

MELIANS:

But we know that there are times when the odds in warfare don’t depend on the numbers. If we give up, our situation becomes hopeless right away, but if we fight, we can still hope to stand tall.

ATHENIANS:

In times of danger, hope is a comfort that can hurt you, but it won’t destroy you if you back it up with plenty of other resources. People who gamble everything on it (hope is extravagant by nature, you see) know it for what it really is only after they have lost everything. Then, of course, when you can recognize it and take precautions, it’s left you flat. You don’t want to experience that. You Melians are weak, and you only have one chance. So don’t be like all those people who could have saved themselves by their own efforts, but who abandoned their realistic hopes and turned in their hour of need to invisible powers—to prophecies and oracles and all the other nonsense that conspires with hope to ruin you.

MELIANS:

As you well know, we too think it will be hard to fight both your power and the fortunes of war, especially with uneven odds. Still, we believe that our fortune comes from god, and that we will not be defeated because we take our stand as righteous men against men who are in the wrong. And what we lack in power will be made up for by the Spartan League. They will have to help us, if only because of our kinship with them and the disgrace they would feel if they didn’t. So it’s not totally irrational for us to feel hopeful.

ATHENIANS:

Well, when it comes to divine good will, we don’t think we’ll be left out. We’re not claiming anything or doing anything outside man’s thinking about the gods or about the way the gods themselves behave. Given what we believe about the gods and know about men, we think that both are always forced by the law of nature to dominate everyone they can. We didn’t lay down this law, it was there—and we weren’t the first to make use of it. We took it as it was and acted on it, and we will bequeath it as a living thing to future generations, knowing full well that if you or anyone else had the same power as we, you would do the same thing. So we probably don’t have to fear any disadvantage when it comes to the gods. And as to this opinion of yours about the Spartans, that you can trust them to help you because of their fear of disgrace—well, our blessings on your innocence, but we don’t envy your foolishness. The Spartans do the right thing among themselves, according to their local customs. One could say a great deal about their treatment of others, but to put it briefly, they are more conspicuous than anyone else we know in thinking that pleasure is good and expediency is just. Their mindset really bears no relation to your irrational belief that there is any safety for you now.

MELIANS:

But it’s exactly because of this expediency that we trust them. They won’t want to betray the Melians, their colonists, and prove themselves helpful to their enemies and unreliable to their well-wishers in Greece.

ATHENIANS:

But don’t you see that expediency is safe, and that doing the right and honorable thing is dangerous? On the whole, the Spartans are the last people to take big risks.

MELIANS:

We think they’ll take on dangers for us that they wouldn’t for others and regard those dangers as less risky, because we are close to the Peloponnese from an operational point of view. Also, they can trust our loyalty because we are kin and we think alike.

ATHENIANS:

Men who ask others to come to fight on their side don’t offer security in good will but in real fighting power. The Spartans take this kind of thing more into consideration than others, because they have so little faith in their own resources that they even attack their neighbors with plenty of allies. So it’s not likely that they’ll try to make their way over to an island when we control the sea.

MELIANS:

Then maybe they’ll send their allies. The sea of Crete is large, and it is harder for those who control the sea to catch a ship than it is for the ship to get through to safety without being noticed. And if that doesn’t work, they might turn against your territory or attack the rest of your allies, the ones Brasidas didn’t get to. And then the fight would shift from a place where you have no interest to your own land and that of your allies.

ATHENIANS:

It’s been tried and might even be tried for you—though surely you are aware that we Athenians have never abandoned a siege out of fear of anyone.

But it occurs to us that after saying you were going to talk about saving yourselves, you haven’t in any of this lengthy discussion mentioned anything that most people would rely on for their salvation. Your strongest arguments are in the future and depend on hope. What you’ve actually got is too meager to give you a chance of surviving the forces lined up against you now. You’ve shown a very irrational attitude—unless, of course, you intend to reach some more prudent conclusion than this after you send us away and begin your deliberations. For surely you don’t mean to commit yourselves to that honor which has been so destructive to men in clear and present dangers involving dishonor. Many men who could still see where it was leading them have been drawn on by the allure of this so-called honor, this word with its seductive power, and fallen with open eyes into irremediable catastrophe, vanquished in their struggle with a fine word, only to achieve a kind of dishonorable honor because they weren’t just unlucky, they were fools. You can avoid this, if you think things over carefully, and decide that there is nothing so disgraceful in being defeated by the greatest city in the world, which invites you to become its ally on fair terms—paying us tribute, to be sure, but keeping your land for yourselves. You have been given the choice between war and security. Don’t be stubborn and make the wrong choice. The people who are most likely to succeed stand up to their equals, have the right attitude towards their superiors, and are fair to those beneath them.

We will leave now. Think it over, and always remember that you are making a decision about your country. You only have one, and its existence depends on this one chance to make a decision, right or wrong.

Then the Athenians withdrew from the discussion. The Melians, left to themselves, came to the conclusion that had been implied by their responses in the talks. They answered the Athenians as follows: Men of Athens, our decision is no different from what it was at first. We will not in this brief moment strip the city we have lived in for seven hundred years of its freedom. We will try to save it, trusting in the divine good fortune that has preserved us so far and in the help we expect from the Spartans and from others. We invite you to be our friends, to let us remain neutral, and to leave our territory after making a treaty agreeable to us both.

That was the Melian response. The talks were already breaking up when the Athenians said, Well, judging from this decision, you seem to us to be the only men who can make out the future more clearly than what you can see, and who gaze upon the invisible with your mind’s eye as if it were an accomplished fact. You have cast yourselves on luck, hope, and the Spartans, and the more you trust in them, the harder will be your fall.

Then the Athenian envoys returned to the camp. Since the Melians would not submit, the Athenian generals immediately took offensive action and, after dividing their men according to the cities they came from, began to build a wall around Melos. Later the Athenians left a garrison of their own and allied men to guard the land and sea routes and then withdrew with most of their army. The men who were left behind remained there and carried on the siege.

At about this same time, the Argives invaded the territory of Phlius, where they fell into an ambush set by the Phliasians and the Argive exiles, who killed about eighty of them. The Athenian raiders on Pylos took a great deal of booty from Spartan territory, but despite even this, the Spartans did not renounce the treaty and declare war. They did, however, announce that if any of their people wished to raid Athenian territory, they could do so. The Corinthians made war on the Athenians over some private quarrels, but the rest of the Peloponnesians held their peace. The Melians staged a night attack on the part of the Athenian wall opposite their market and captured it. They killed some men and withdrew into the city carrying grain and as many other useful provisions as they could, taking no further action. The Athenians kept a better watch from then on. And so the summer came to an end.

The following winter, the Spartans were about to march into Argive territory, but the omens from sacrifices made before crossing the border were unfavorable and they turned back. This balked expedition led the Argives to suspect some of their citizens. They arrested some, but others managed to escape. At about the same time, the Melians again captured yet another part of the Athenian wall when only a few men were on guard duty. Because of this, another contingent later came from Athens, under the command of Philocrates, son of Demeas. By now, the Melians were completely cut off, and there were traitors within the city itself. So, on their own initiative, they agreed to terms whereby the Athenians could do with them as they liked. The Athenians thereupon killed all the males of fighting age they could capture