Thucydides and International Relations
Melian Dialogue (Thuc. 5.84-116)
Peloponnesian War (431-403 BCE)
 Athens and Sparta: From Multipolar Interstate System
to Bipolarity
 “Thucydides the Athenian wrote the history of the war
fought between Athens and Sparta, beginning the
account at the very outbreak of the war, in the belief that
it was going to be a great war and more worth writing
about than any of those which had taken place in the
past. My belief was based on the fact that the two sides
were at the very height of their power and preparedness,
and I saw, too, that the rest of the Greek world was
committed to one side or the other; even those who were
not immediately engaged were deliberating on the
courses which they were to take later.” (Thuc. 1.1)
Thucydides and the “Realists”





Competitive Struggle for Security and Supremacy
“Zero-Sum” Competition
Power Ultimately the Final Arbiter
International “System” of Anarchy the Rule
“The problem is this: how to conceive of an order
without an orderer and of organizational effects where
formal organization is lacking.” (Kenneth Waltz, Theory
of International Politics (89))
Thucydides and IR Theorists
“Realist School”
 Absence of Effective International Peace-Keeping
Agencies
 Conflict Resolutions Usually Ineffective
 Power the Focal Point of Analysis
 Objective, Omniscient, “Scientific” Authorial Stance
Russell Meiggs on the “Melian Dialogue”
“[T]here is strangely little emphasis on the final penalty,
the killing of the men and the enslavement of the women
and children. Thucydides’ interest seems to be
concentrated on the analysis of power and the logical
implications of the natural law that the strong rule the
weak.”
The Athenian Empire (1972) pg. 388
Athens and Melos
 Colonized from Laconia (Sparta) in the “Dorian
invasion”
 Melos sent naval contingent to assist the Greek cause at
Salamis in 480 BCE, though Melos was not a member of
the “Delian League”
 Melos was neutral at outbreak of Peloponnesian War
 Athenian general Nicias attacked Melos in 426 BCE
 Melos was besieged and sacked by Athenians in 416 BCE
Melos at Time of Persian Wars
Athenians to Melians
(Thuc. 5.105)
“Our opinion of the gods and our knowledge of men lead
us to conclude that it is a general and necessary law of
nature to rule whatever one can. This is not a law that we
made ourselves, nor were we the first to act upon it when it
was made. We found it already in existence, and we shall
leave it to exist forever among those who come after us. We
are merely acting in accordance with it, and we know that
you or anybody else with the same power as ours would be
acting precisely the same way.”
Correctives to the “Realist” Interpretation
 Thucydides and “Tragic Vision” (Cornford)
 Thucydides and Reader Response (Connor)
 Thucydidean Objectivity as Authorial Stance
F.M. Cornford, Thucydides Mythhistoricus (1907)
“Thucydides was one of those prophets and kings of thought who have
desired to see the day of all-conquering Knowledge, and have not seen it.
The deepest instinct of the human mind is to shape the chaotic world and
the illimitable stream of events into some intelligible form which it can hold
before itself and take in at one survey….The man whose reason has thrown
over myth and abjured religion, and who yet is born too soon to find any
resting-place for his thought provided by science and philosophy, may set
himself to live on isolated facts without a theory; but the time will come
when his resistance will break down. All the artistic and imaginative
elements in his nature will pull against his reason, and, if once he begins to
produce, their triumph is assured. In spite of all his good resolutions, the
work will grow under his hands into some satisfying shape, informed by
reflection and governed by art….as the long agony wore on, as crime led to
crime and madness to ruin, it was only from a distance that the artist who
was no longer an actor could discern the large outlines shaping all that
misery and suffering into a thing of beauty and awe which we call
Tragedy.” (pp. 249-50)
Melian Dialogue (5.84-116) as Tragedy
 Placed immediately before the account of the Sicilian
Expedition
 Set in dialogue form in the manuscripts; cf. The stichomythia
of Greek tragedy
 “[T]he standard of justice depends on the equality of power
to compel and…in fact that the strong do what they have the
power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.”
(Athenians to Melians, Thuc. 5.89)
Thucydides
“Melian Dialogue”
Greek Text
W.R. Connor, Thucydides (Princeton 1984)
 Focus on reader response as most profitable approach
to Thucydides’ text
 Objectivity as an authorial stance in Thucydides
 Objective, omniscient stance as a vehicle for reader to
experience the war on a deep emotional level
 Thucydides’ text demands reader participation and
continual reassessment
 Throughout apparent truths are transformed or
subverted
Connor on the “Melian Dialogue”
“Whatever our reactions to what happens to the Melians, it is
hard to escape a feeling of horror at what is happening to the
Athenians. They remain in many respects as we have always
seen them--clever, determined, vigorous, the fulfillment of the
Corinthians’ description of them as a people unaccustomed to
choosing tranquility for themselves or allowing it to others
(1.70). But now all is changed, for despite their clear
mindedness, they fail fully to perceive the dangers that
surround them. They see the weakness of the Melians’ position
with total clarity but in important respects fail to realize who
they are and the implications of their words. The logic of their
position compels them to suppress the freedom of island states.
Yet the reader knows that another island, Sicily, will soon
overcome an Athenian attack.” (Thucydides, pp. 154-5)
Euripides’ Trojan Women (produced 415 BCE)
Euripides’ Trojan Women: Death of the Trojan men, enslavement of the
Trojan women; destruction of Troy.
“Siege operations were now carried on vigorously and, as there was also
some treachery from inside, the Melians surrendered unconditionally to the
Athenians, who put to death all the men of military age whom they took, and
sold the women and children as slaves. Melos itself they took for themselves,
sending out later a colony of 500 men.” (Thuc. 5.116)
“Do not fight it. Take your grief as you were born to take it,
give up the struggle where your strength is feebleness
with no force anywhere to help.”
Euripides, Trojan Women, lines 727-9