Thucydides 1.3

CHAPTER III

Congress of the Peloponnesian Confederacy at Lacedaemon

OK, the MIT version sucks. Everything is incomplete. Project Gutenberg has a better version of the same Crawley translation here.

I am starting to suspect that I'm the only reader here, but I will keep posting my comments to the blog anyway, for my own convenience.

This chapter is all about four speeches: the speech of the Corinthian representatives, that of Athenians who were in town on othe business, that of the king of Lacedaemon (Sparta), and that of the Spartan ephor.

So what's an ephor anyway? This wikipedia article offers some insight into Sparta, but such insight is limited by the fact that:

The Spartans had no historical records, literature, or written laws, which were, according to tradition, expressly prohibited by an ordinance of Lycurgus (excluding, of course, the 'Great Rhetra,' supposedly given by Lycurgus himself).


By the time of this history, the Kings (there were two) had a mainly ceremonial role, with the real power wielded by the two ephors (elected for one year terms) and a council of elders.

Some excerpts:

Take time then in forming your resolution, as the matter is of great importance; and do not be persuaded by the opinions and complaints of others to bring trouble on yourselves, but consider the vast influence of accident in war, before you are engaged in it. As it continues, it generally becomes an affair of chances, chances from which neither of us is exempt, and whose event we must risk in the dark. It is a common mistake in going to war to begin at the wrong end, to act first, and wait for disaster to discuss the matter. But we are not yet by any means so misguided, nor, so far as we can see, are you; accordingly, while it is still open to us both to choose aright, we bid you not to dissolve the treaty, or to break your oaths, but to have our differences settled by arbitration according to our agreement. Or else we take the gods who heard the oaths to witness, and if you begin hostilities, whatever line of action you choose, we will try not to be behindhand in repelling you."

Such were the words of the Athenians

More later

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