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Thucydides does not take sides between the Athenians and the Spartans in his account of the Peloponnesian War. The most famous passage from that book is, of course, his version of the so-called Melian Dialogue, where a group of islanders who had otherwise remained neutral during the war debate whether they should submit to the will of the more powerful Athenians or whether they should try warding them off. The Dialogue is about why Athens acts as it does, and what the Melians should do in response to it. When the Melians rationalise their opposition to the impending Athenian invasion on moral grounds, the Athenians point out that moral grounds are not good enough. Indeed, far from appealing to moral qualms, the Athenians argue, the Melians should consider who they are, what they possess, and what they do not possess. In terms of security and power, they are nowhere near the Athenians. An Analysis of Thucydides Views on the

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Allison to describe an apparent tendency towards war when an emerging power threatens to displace an existing great power as the international hegemon. The term is based on a quote by ancient Athenian historian and military general Thucydides , which posited that the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta had been inevitable because of Spartan fear of the growth of Athenian power. The term was coined by American political scientist Graham T. Allison in a article for the Financial Times. Allison expanded upon the term significantly in his book Destined for War , which argues that "China and the US are currently on a collision course for war". The term describes the theory that when a great power 's position as hegemon is threatened by an emerging power , there is a significant likelihood of war between the two powers. Thucydides's Trap refers to the natural, inevitable discombobulation that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power To advance his thesis, Allison led a case study by the Harvard University Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs which found that among 16 historical instances of an emerging power rivaling a ruling power, 12 ended in war.

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In Part 1 of this series of articles about what is widely regarded as the greatest surviving piece of ancient historical writing, I tried to sketch out who Thucydides was, to introduce his great work about the war between Athens and Sparta that ran between and BC, his motivations for writing it, the surprising and hidden structures within the narrative, and the points he was trying to make. In the next few articles I want to focus on some particularly significant episodes within his book, what they were about and why he presented them as he did, even selected them at all.

In the previous article I pointed out all the paired structures threaded through the narrative, with some pairs then paired with others in a complex weave of underlying narrative threads. You have to remember that everything a historian chooses to write down is there for a purpose, why select some things to record and let others be forgotten — a highly subjective act in itself? Many of these dual narrative devices are compare-and-contrasts, whether speeches preceding events or one event being contrasted with another to make an authorial point. He is far far greater than that.

The Island

The war between Athens and Sparta was one between a whale and an elephant. Athens could not hope to challenge the army of Sparta and its allies on land while the latter simply lacked an effective ths to even begin to challenge the huge and near-professional Athenian navy which gave it maritime supremacy in the East Mediterranean and commercial dominance.

These were still potentially vulnerable to assault by a superior army but fortunately the Spartans were utterly inept and unimaginative practitioners of siege warfare for all their brilliance in pitched battle, and so they never really tried. They were reduced to invading Athenian territory Attika every Summer, destroying the harvest, any houses etc, camping outside the walls and then returning home.

So as the Spartans withdrew from Attika to winter quarters after their first invasion of the war, the Athenians gave a public funeral for those who died fighting for them in the year, the oration being given by the leading Athenian statesman and general of the time, Pericles. I will quote just one passage to illustrate this.

Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands, not of a minority, but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law, when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class but the actual ability which the man possesses. Thucydidess one so long as he has it in him to be of service to the state, is kept in political obscurity because of poverty. And, just as our political life is Statistics Business and open, so is our day-to-day life with our neighbour if he enjoys himself in his own way. We are free and tolerant in An Analysis of Thucydides Views on the private lives; but in public affairs we keep to the law.

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This is because it commands our deep respect. Now clearly this is an idealisation of Athens as a country and society, and the truth was always somewhat less than this, but this is the only article source funeral oration that Thucydides reports, let alone quotes in full, and the reason for that is that he wishes, from the lips of his statesman hero Pericles, to say what Athens tried to be at the start of the war, and what follows shows how this society was destroyed as much from within as by external military defeat.

Furthermore, th next passage — the Great Plague of Athens — showed a snapshot of what was in store.]