The Mind of Thucydides (Cornell Studies in Classical Philology) by Jacqueline de Romilly

Author:Jacqueline de Romilly
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2017-12-15T06:00:00+00:00

Chance and Intelligence

As narrated by Thucydides, the battle, though neither dry nor disembodied, may be offered chiefly as a lesson.

It is first of all a lesson to the strategists: the causes of θόρυβος are shown clearly so that they may learn how to protect their own armies from it, and how to instill it in their enemies. That is, no doubt, a rather broad lesson. Xenophon and Caesar, military experts more than dialecticians, would offer more instructive details in this regard. But what Thucydides loses in technical precision, he gains in forcefulness. Unlike Caesar, he does not provide information on the number of divisions, on the topography, or on the particularities of complex movements;87 he simplifies in order to highlight only the general principle and to show it with perfect clarity. Moreover, he reveals this general principle first, and in such a way that the whole exposition comes to refute or confirm its value. This is what other historians almost never do.88 It is precisely this aspect that gives Thucydides’ lessons their rational and privileged quality: owing to the combination of reason versus reason and reason versus action, the readers perceive at every instant not only the how of every measure taken, but also the why of every success.

The lessons that emerge have significance beyond the level of strategy. More than the triumph of this or that tactic, what Thucydides shows us is in fact, in any battle, the triumph of reason. Precisely because any military victory corroborates reason, it is obvious that reason can and must be the agent of victory. The art of foresight, always essential for Thucydides, thus finds its most striking justification.

There is no question that moral qualities are necessary; but in Thucydides we find them subordinate to intellectual ones. The question that Herodotus raises à propos of Amompharetus89 is thus settled; and Thucydides insists, in Brasidas’s speech, on the merits of a strategy based on observation and trickery. Even the courage of the troops, always indispensable of course, rests ultimately to some extent on reason. The speeches, by their very inclusion in the narrative, imply that the soldier will be more or less valiant as he understands the advantages of his situation;90 besides, we have seen that Phormio neatly disposes of the concept of innate courage, preferring a notion of confidence based on experience. This same distinction appears again, as Louis Bodin (1914) has shown, in Plato (Protagoras 351a); but in particular it corresponds to the concept frequently defended by Pericles.91 Whereas for Homer, the gods could alter a man’s courage, in Thucydides courage is tied to experience, to superior skill and to reason.

Thus, in the end, every human means is subordinate to intelligence. A single aspect remains outside, and that is τύχη, “chance.” Thucydides recognizes it and emphasizes its role. In fact, that is the word he uses for everything that cannot be foreseen by even the most astute analysis. Yet it is precisely for that quality that it has a place among the leaders’ calculations.

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