Politics and the Problems on Morality and Justice

As Strauss observes, "hardly anyone vivacious today would agree with this judgment" (1964, p. 145). In short, protestent readers of Thucydides atomic number 18 capable of reaching quite different conclusions as to the lessons that he has to teach regarding the consequences of the Pelopponesian fight, and hence by extension of the experience of governmental life.

The remainder of this try out will be devoted to an interrogative of the problem of political deterrent exampleity and justice as presented in Thucydides' history, and to an evaluation and critique of Strauss's interpretations of Thucydides. The argument presented here will differ sharply from that presented by Strauss, yet the ultimate conclusion reached is strikingly in accord with Strauss's. Strauss (1964, pp. 154-54) finds Thucydides to be essenti every last(predicate)y sympathetic to the value of the Spartans, which Strauss characterizes as "moderation and divine law." This essay will go game an argument which rejects that interpretation of Thucydides.

Yet Strauss finds in the end that Thucydides presented the Pelopponesian War as uniquely an Athenian tragedy, not a acknowledgment of Sparta. Athens is presented as a tragic hero, reaching spicy and in the end overreaching, while Sparta is ultimately a resistless actor, which has no genuine alternative to offer, and succeeds only due to Athens' failures (Strauss, 1964, p. 226). With that conclusion, this essay will find entire agreement.

The questions to be asked are twofold. First, what light do the mass slaughters at Melos and Plataea, and the avoided mass slaughter at Mytiline, shed on the moral issues approach by states at war? Second, what light does Thucydides' celebrate juxtaposition of the Melian massacre and the decision to invade Sicily shed on the relationship surrounded by political morality and political cause?

Mytiline was the chief city of Lesbos, and a long-established member of the Athenian alliance. chthonic the leadership of an oligarchic faction the city revolted against Athens; the Athenians dispatched a fleet and army and conquered it. The Athenian conclave then faced the question of how to deal with the Mytilineans.

Cleon, the leader of a hard-line faction, argued for valuey punishment. Athenian power was upheld only by blood and iron, he argued, and the Mytilineans were rebels who must be punished (Thucydides, 1972, pp. 213-17). This argument swayed the Assembly, and the men of Mytiline were sentenced to destruction en masse, the women and children to be sold into slavery.

If the Athenians act with undiscriminating harshness, all future rebel cities will conclude that any rebellion, only unpopular with much of the population, must be pursued by all with the uttermost desperation, because if rebellion fails, all alike will suffer the fatal consequences. It is the practicality and realism of this argument which carries the day, and causes the Athenian Assembly to reverse its decision.

Thucydides (1972). History of the Pelopponesian War. New York: Penguin.

This is the real link between Melos and Sicily. On both cases, the Athenians gave way to tunnel vision and absolutistic assumptions. The reality principle would have argued that Melos was never going to be a threat, and that whatever threat Syracuse might be in the future had not materialized, and was certainly not worth a pre-emptive strike that would definitely bring them into the war. With respect t
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