Thucydides I.5

Chapter: I.5 ppg. 41-51

Maps: Maps of Bernard Suzanne.

This chapter is returns to the period at the end of the events of chapter 3. It is concerned mainly with the speech of the Corinthians to the Lacadaemonian Confederacy, advocating war with Athens, and the fate of Themistocles, Athenian hero of the struggle against Persia, and Pausanias, the Spartan King previously recalled for excessive ambition. In each case these latter betrayed the trust of their fellow citizens in their ambition for power and prestige. Themistocles made out slightly better of the two, escaping to Persia and finding some success there in the service of its king. Pausanias met a more macabre fate, after falling victim to his own treachery and a Spartan "sting" operation.

So how did the Corinthians argue? I think we can say that a core argument was that if we don't fight them "over there," we will have to fight them here:

If wise men remain quiet, while they are
not injured, brave men abandon peace for war when they
are injured, returning to an understanding on a favourable
opportunity: in fact, they are neither intoxicated by their
success in war, nor disposed to take an injury for the sake
of the delightful tranquillity of peace. Indeed, to falter
for the sake of such delights is, if you remain inactive,
the quickest way of losing the sweets of
repose to which you cling;

On the other hand, they did seem to be aware of certain hazards of excessive confidence:

to conceive extravagant pretensions
from success in war is to forget how hollow is the confidence by which you are elated. For if many ill-conceived plans have succeeded through the still greater fatuity of an opponent, many more, apparently well laid, have on the contrary ended in disgrace. The confidence with which we form our schemes is never completely justified in their execution;

So you pretty much have to concede that they had it all over Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfie, and Feith. Unlike our unfortunate contemporaries, they also set out a plausible strategy for victory.

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