Brendan’s Reviews > The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War > Status Update

Alcibiades:
“Love of country is what I do not feel when I am wronged, but what I felt when secure in my rights as a citizen. I do not consider that I am now attacking a country that is still mine; I am rather trying to recover one that is mine no longer; and the true lover of his country is not he who consents to lose it unjustly…but he who longs for it so much that he will go to all lengths to recover it.”

“We should remember that we are only now enjoying some respite from a great pestilence and from war, to the no small benefit of our estates and persons, and that it is right to employ these at home on our own behalf, instead of using them on behalf of these exiles whose interest is to lie as well as they can, who do nothing but talk themselves and leave the danger to others,

So much of world history can be seen as an attempt to transcend the brutal terms of Athens as they prepared to crush Melos:

“…since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

International law, much of religion, philosophy, and diplomacy all seek to escape this ‘law of nature’

Feels familiar:

“[Sparta] had failed to get the treaty accepted by her Thracian allies or by the Boeotians or Corinthians, although she was continually promising to unite with Athens to compel their compliance if it were refused. [Sparta] also kept fixing a time at which those who still refused to join were to be declared enemies to both parties, but took care not to bind herself by any written agreement.”

“The present prosperity had persuaded the Athenians that nothing could withstand them, and that they could achieve what was possible and what was impracticable alike, with means ample or inadequate it mattered not. The reason for this was their general extraordinary success, which made them confuse their strength with their hopes.”

“Indeed sensible men are prudent enough to treat their gains as precarious, just as they would also keep a clear head in adversity, and think that war, so far from staying within the limit to which a combatant may wish to confine it, will run the course that its chances prescribe; and thus, not being puffed up by confidence in military success, they are less likely to come to grief and most ready to make peace, if

“The sufferings which revolution entailed upon the cities were many and terrible, such as have occurred and always will occur as long as the nature of mankind remains the same… In peace and prosperity states and individuals have better sentiments, because they do not find themselves suddenly confronted with imperious necessities; but war takes away the easy supply of daily wants and so proves a rough master that

“Good deeds can be shortly stated, but where wrong is done a wealth of language is needed to veil its deformity.”

Cleon again:
“Great good fortune coming suddenly and unexpectedly tends to make a people insolent: in most cases it is safer for mankind to have success in reason than out of reason; and it is easier for them, one may say, to stave off adversity than to preserve prosperity.”

From the speech of the demagogue Cleon:

“Bad laws which are never changed are better for a city than good ones that have no authority; unlearned loyalty is more serviceable than quick-witted insubordination; ordinary men usually manage public affairs better than their more gifted fellows. The latter are always wanting to appear wiser than the laws, and to overrule every proposition brought forward, thinking that