Might is right - article on Thucydides

[Imperial Dave]

https://www.thecollector.com/melian-dialogue-thucydides/

One for the Graecophiles.

Ps Thucydides is one of my favourite ancient writers

[Ian61]

Thanks Dave I have bookmarked that site. It look like a lot of other good articles available there.

[Keraunos]

There is much in this that would set the teeth of the historian on edge, I think.  Alison's catchy "Thucydides Trap" is the product of a political scientist's imagination, not a careful reading of Thucydides and what else we know of the context of the war.  The interesting thing about the Athenian defeat at Aegospotami is that the Spartan fleet (paid for by the Persians) there destroyed an Athenian fleet that had been paid for by the Persians to beat up an earlier Spartan fleet - again paid for by the Persians - that had become threatening to Persian interests!  Thinking that the war is a simple struggle between Athens, Sparta and their respective allies and ignoring the influence of the major power in the region can lead to ideas about what was going on that don't add up.

[Jim Webster]

I confess that I have always liked the fact that ancient authors seem to accept Realpolitik without too much hypocrisy. "The Strong Do What They Can and the Weak Suffer What They Must..." 

[Imperial Dave]

It is thought provoking if not exactly new news

[Keraunos]

There is an interesting theory - plausible in the light of the very careful organisation of Thucydides' history - that he intended to end the history (but died before writing it) with the Spartan capture of Athens and decision not to destroy the Athenians as they had destroyed the Melians, contrasting the constraint of the the Spartans with the unbridled exertion of power by the Athenian democracy that Thucydides saw as having been corrupted after the death of Pericles.

[Imperial Dave]

A very neat counterpoint

[Mark G]

I tend to think the interesting thing is that it's one of the few occasions where the land power defeats the sea power.

Usually it's the ability to keep trading and controlling the trade routes that leads to the long term victor. 
If you can build a strong enough fleet to achieve parity or to meaningfully contest those routes - as Rome managed - then that's the other way.  But being gifted a fleet, that works too.
Neither is easy, or common, but one or the other is absolutely necessary

[Imperial Dave]

And Persian gold being the interlink 

[Nick Harbud]

I tend to think the interesting thing is that it's one of the few occasions where the land power defeats the sea power.

Usually it's the ability to keep trading and controlling the trade routes that leads to the long term victor. 
If you can build a strong enough fleet to achieve parity or to meaningfully contest those routes - as Rome managed - then that's the other way.  But being gifted a fleet, that works too.
Neither is easy, or common, but one or the other is absolutely necessary

Good job the Spartans never read Mahan.

 

[Keraunos]

Good job the Spartans never read Mahan.

 

The Spartans were into poems about pretty flowers and stomping on your enemy, not the theory of naval strategy.  They became a naval power thanks to the largesse of the dominant regional power, Persia.  To talk of the Peloponnesian war as being Athens (Navy) vs Sparta (Land) while ignoring everything else that was going on in the region is misguided.

[Imperial Dave]

Power games