/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18924897]

If you had to give aliens one book to explain human social dynamics, this could easily be it

[Anonymous No.18924917]

>>18924897
OP here
sorry guys I posted the wrong pic

[Anonymous No.18924929]

>>18924917
Your accidental post was better than your intended one.

[Anonymous No.18925499]

>>18924897
This wins my vote for most disturbing book I've ever read. I could clearly see this shit going down in North America in the near future and that freaked me out while I was reading it

[Anonymous No.18925855]

Why did Thucydides write so generously about Nicias when he was an abject failure, and so meanly about Alcibiades and Cleon when they backed up all their boasting with successful results?

[Anonymous No.18926525]

>>18925499

It really does transcend time

[Anonymous No.18926564]

>>18924897
I'm no boy of the soγ, but what about the hecking womanrinos?

>>18925855
He agreed with Nicias. To Thucydides he failed for all the right reasons. He's essential for the narrative a foil to the populist Hawks who had taken over Athens' politics and military after Pericles.

[Anonymous No.18927012]

>>18925855
Though it ca be difficult to tell exactly what Thucydides' own views are at times, but i think he was a supporter of the Athens brought about by Ephialtes and Pericles over Cimon. That is, in the more radically democratic than oligarchic Athens. I know people often see Thucydides as a critic of democracy and not a proponent, but i think he is more a critic of the class of leading citizens who followed Pericles and launched Athens into disaster. After all, in one of his rare pieces of authorial commentary, he states that Pericles was 'a far-sighted judge of the city’s strengths' and that 'under him it [athens] reached the height of its greatness', which would suggest—considering Pericles was one of the instigators of radical democracy in Athens—part of this was in the democratic elements (though it is possible he was just speaking strategically). And we find Pericles' account for the cities strengths in his great Funeral Orations (though it ends up being fairly ironic by the end of the book). If we treat it as a mostly aspirational vision on Athens, and if we treat Thucydides being somewhat in agreement with it as representing the cities strengths, i think it becomes clear why he so disliked Cleon and Alcibiades.
The relevant lists the virtues in the speech are that Athens:
>considers the interests of the many not the few, equal under the law but public appointment by merit
>has a spirit of freedom and tolerance in private matters, but severity and law abiding in public matters
>combines an interest in public and private matters
>all personally involved either in actual political decisions or in deliberation about them, in the belief that it is not words which thwart effective action but rather the failure to inform action with discussion in advance
If you look at this list, you can see that Cleon and Alcibiades breaks every one of these. Alcibiades and Cleon are both self-serving demagogues who wish to lead Athens for their own personal gain. Cleon explicitly says in the Mytilenean debate that the public deliberation of the pnyx was not the best way of deciding outcomes, and that the Athenians should simply act out their impulsive, emotional reaction. His support of the pylos expedition was also wholly self-interested, even if it did end up being very successful. Alcibiades has clear pretensions towards a less democratic Athens with himself at the head, which is already undermining the Periclean reforms. He also shows himself as in no way being law abiding with his destruction of the Herms before the expedition. So Alcibiades and Cleon both violate many on the ideals which Pericles lists out. While Pericles ruled Athens primus inter pares, Cleon wanted to undermine democratic deliberation while Alcibiades clearly wanted to rule Athens as an oligarch, not as an equal.

[Anonymous No.18927017]

>>18927012
All that said, i don't actually think Thucydides gives a good account of Nicias at all. The best he says of Nicias is that he was a man who thought he could do right by never wronging others, adn that he did not deserve the death that came to him. But if we look at all his other ventures, he is presented as an abject failure. If we recall the account which the Corinthian envoys give of the Athenians, they say they are 'a whirlwind of thought and action' for whom 'to hope for something is to have it'. That is, The Athenians are incredibly ambitious and who love ostentatious displays of daring. In this sense, Nicias' attempt to dissuade the Athenians from the Sicilian expedition but continually inflating the costs and odds is an utter failure as it only serves to inflame the passions of the citizenry to how great the expedition will be. If one of the praiseworthy traits Thucydides attributes to Pericles is that he understood the Athenian people and could steer them away from danger, Nicias is the complete opposite of this. We also see this in his dithering during the Sicilian expedition, where he falls into the exact trap which the Athenians admonish the people of Menos with: holding out unnecessary hope in the face of utter defeat, resorting to superstition over reason (nicias' full moon debacle which ended all chance of Athenian escape). Nicias even shows himself a coward in the face of defeat at the port, and it is Demosthenes that rallies the troops. Nicias' only virtue was that he was doing what he thought was best for athens, but he was not the ideal Athenain.
The only figures which i think Thucydides actual liked after Pericles were Brasidas and Demosthenes.

[Anonymous No.18927025]

>>18926525
i was amazed by how after i finished it i started to be able to guess accurately what various actors would do during international incidents and policy maneuvers

[Anonymous No.18927027]

I'm more interested in human antisocial dynamics. Atomized anonymous strangers interacting online. Can anything good ever come out of it?

[Anonymous No.18927931]

>>18925499
>Comparing America to Rome
I sleep
>Comparing America to Corcyra
Das it mane

[Anonymous No.18928012]

>>18927025
Such as?

[Anonymous No.18928079]

>>18927012
>>18927017
These are very good posts, anon; I appreciate it. I suppose you are right about Thucydides' treatment of Nicias. It only really seemed like he was going easy on him in comparison to his treatment of Cleon.

I understand the moral opprobrium that people (seemingly including Thucydides) have against Cleon given his role in the debates surrounding Mytilene, but besides that and his general demagoguery (which in my mind goes hand in hand with democracy and moreso in today's age than in that of Athens where most offices were still selected through sortition), I've always wondered at how he is presented as a giant braggadocios oaf who was inexperienced and generally thought of as incompetent, except that from a strategic point his actions were more often than not successful, and the only real military fault one can have against him is that he was unable to defeat Brasidas' forces in a theater that both he and Brasidas died. Just judging by his results he seems to be far more capable than Thucydides really gave him credit for being.

I suppose my reading of Thucydides is also somewhat colored by the general views that my old Greek history professor had as well.

[Anonymous No.18928089]

>>18928079
(Oh, and as far as the mutilation of the herms go, I have always thought that it would have made much more sense that Nicias and his supporters would have been behind it than Alcibiades, as a last-ditch attempt to get the Athenians to call off or delay the expedition to Sicily on account of bad omens or the sort. I am skeptical that Alcibiades was actually involved).

[Anonymous No.18928198]

Corinthbros
RISE UP

[Anonymous No.18928260]

>>18924897
Machiavelli

[Anonymous No.18928378]

>>18928198
Single most overrated city of antiquity; constantly in the shadow of Athens, Sparta, and Thebes.

[Anonymous No.18928395]

>>18928378

>Thebes.

Where? All I smell are charred ruins and salty slave tears

[Anonymous No.18928602]

>>18928198
The Coritheans were giga-jews. Conniving, mealy-mouthed cunts who goaded every faction into war and traded sides whenever it suited them.

[Anonymous No.18928898]

>>18924917
I decided to watch the chimera ant arc because of the memes and it was just an average shounen. Is that the joke? that HxH isn't good?

[Anonymous No.18929193]

>>18928602
But anon, I'm British.

[Anonymous No.18929937]

>>18928079
>>18928089
it seems possible that Thucydides had a personal grudge against Cleon. I would guess that Cleon had a hand in Thucydides' exile. Considering that Cleon became the leading citizen in Athens after the success of the the battle of Pylos in 425, and the first capture of Amphipolis which Thucydides was tasked to prevent was in 424, and that Cleon didn't die until the battle of Amphipolis in 422, Cleon was both present and influential in Athens at the time of Thucydides' trial. And further considering Cleon's hawkishness, demagoguery, and preference for punishment over clemency, it would not surprise me if he played a leading role in the judgement of exile. That is all speculation of course, but it could explain his particular disdainful portrait of Cleon, in the same way that Dante wrote many of his enemies in Inferno. But then again—though by no means an unbiased source!—we get a similar portrait of Cleon in Aristophanes' 'The Knights'. And speaking of prosecution, Cleon tried to prosecute Aristophanes so he was clearly no stranger to the courts.
As for the Herms, while Thucydides does seem to inidcate that the Athenians investigating the impiety were looking for heads to roll, and may have been bring charges against Alcibiades arbitrarily, I doubt it would have been Nicias who did it. After all, Thucydides describes Nicias as a man whose 'whole conduct of his life had been regulated by virtuous practices' and was very religious and superstitious. Based on that character, Nicias would be the last person to commit impiety, even to prevent the expedition. Upon double checking Alcibiades was charged with profaning the Mysteries, not vandalizing the Herms, and these charges do appear politically motivated. But with the accounts that we have of Alcibiades' character is would not surprise me if he did.

[Anonymous No.18930529]

>>18924897