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Crystal Zhao (sz3273)

Paper 1.3

RHE 330D, Fall 2010

Professor Roberts-Miller

10/12/2010

The Treaty as a Scapegoat

When reading the deliberative speeches in Thucydides’s The Peloponnesian War, the

contentions were caused by a breach of the peace treaty between Athens and Sparta. At least

this would have been your perspective if you were a member of the audience at the time. When

speakers tried to persuade the Peloponnesos to go to war, laying the blame of breaching the

treaty on the opponent was particularly effective. In fact, that is probably the reason why the

issue of the treaty was tossed around ceaselessly in the deliberations prior to the Peloponnesian

War. So, what does Aristotle, being a rhetorical expert, have to say about this? How does he

evaluate the usage of treaties in speeches? And if the treaties were actually not the true reason

causing the Peloponnesian War, then what was? What does Aristotle think about taking

speeches at face value, despite the speakers having hidden intentions?1

“Blame them for violating the treaty and let’s go to war!”

The first time the treaty is mentioned in a significant context is when the Athenians were

deliberating whether or not to join an alliance with Corcyra. The heated tensions between

Corinth and Corcyra seemed to be the catalyst to the frenzy of alliance pleas. Corinth was

prepared to battle Corcyra over the issue of Potidaea; they “built ships and prepared the strongest

naval force they could” (Thucydides I.31). Their readiness distressed the Corcyraeans,
1
Works consulted for introduction: Kagan and Thucydides
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motivating them to seek cooperation from a reluctant Athens. As questioned by Kagan, “Why

should they [the Athenians] consider an alliance that would involve them in hostilities against

Corinth, at least, and possibly the Peloponnesian League?” (42). The Athenians were hesitant in

submitting to Corcyra’s request for participation because the alliance could easily violate a long-

standing peace treaty with Sparta, which had very detrimental consequences. It was required for

the Corcyraeans to manipulate the context of the situation regarding the treaty between the two

superpowers. In an address to the Athenian assembly, they explained, “You will not break the

treaty…by receiving us, the allies of neither side” (I.35). The Corcyraeans insisted that, based

on the conditions in the treaty which “expressly permitted alliance with a neutral” (Kagan 42),

there was no legal way in which the Athenians would be in violation of it. However, it does not

seem as though they rule out the possibility of a breach of peace. The Corcyraeans further

argued that if anyone still “fears to break the treaty by acting on this conviction, let him

understand that…fear combined with strength will contribute to the enemy’s fear” because “you

will be able to oppose them with our ships added to your own” (I.36). The Corcyraeans knew

that their strong navy would be difficult for the Athenians to turn down since both of their navies

combined would mean that Athens could be a close-to-invincible power, able to fight whatever

war a breach of the treaty may incur.

The Corcyraeans were not the only state to mold their arguments with the treaty,

however. Immediately following the Corcyraeans’ testimony, the Corinthians tried to use the

treaty to their own advantage. They asserted that the treaty does not include “a provision for

those [neutral countries] who take this action [to join an alliance] in order to harm others” (I.40).

The Corinthians insisted that because the Corcyraeans had the wrong motive (which was to be

able to go to war with Corinth) in mind, it would be wrong for Athens to join an alliance with
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them. They said to Athens, “You would not simply become their auxiliaries but our enemies”

(I.40). The Corinthians basically accused Athens of possibly violating the treaty because they

would become opponents.

Upon having heard Corinth’s argument, it would not have been unusual for Athens to

devise a strategy to defend Corcyra that complied with the treaty, since they did not want to

initiate a war with the Peloponnesian League. They still advanced to make “an alliance with the

Corcyraeans…but forming a defensive pact” because “if the Corcyraeans requested them to sail

with them against the Corinthians they would be breaking the treaty with the Peloponnesians”

(I.44). This way, the Athenians would not have to break the treaty by fighting Corinth – they

would only need to shield Corcyra while the two engaged in war. After fighting though, the

Corinthians “feared that the Athenians, on the assumption that the treaty had been broken

because they had come into conflict, would not let them leave” (I.52) to go home. Ironically, the

Corinthians thought Athens would attack them for breaking the treaty. They test the Athenians

by asking that “if you are breaking the treaty, start here by taking us prisoner and treating us as

enemies” (I.53). Instead of putting the focus on themselves, they cautiously shifted it to the

Athenians. The Athenians, still not desiring a bigger war, knowingly declared, “Peloponnesians,

we are not starting a war, and we are not breaking the treaty” (I.53). They knew that if a

violation of the peace treaty was acknowledged, the would-be Peloponnesian War would

commence at that moment.

After the siege of Potidaea by the Athenians, however, the treaty started to be used to

incite war between the Delian and the Peloponnesian leagues. The Corinthians were not so

friendly with them anymore regarding the treaty because they had attacked Potidaea. In addition,

the Aiginetans alleged “that they did not have the autonomy guaranteed by the treaty” and the
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Megarians proclaimed “their exclusion from both the ports of the Athenian empire and the

market of Attica in violation of the treaty” (I.67). Other countries echoed Athens’s breach of

peace in support, seeking to wage a war between Athens and Sparta. This, however, was still not

enough for the Corinthians. They sought the Spartans for assistance, urging them, “For those

who break treatises are not the ones who go over to others because of their isolation but the ones

who do not help those to whom they swore their oaths” (I.71). Because the Spartans were

probably afraid to violate the peace treaty just as the Athenians were, the Corinthians made their

request by saying that Sparta would indeed be breaking the peace treaty if they did not help an

allied country. The Athenians responded to all these countries, telling the Lacdaemonians to

“not break the treaty, do not transgress your oaths, but arbitrate our differences in accordance

with our agreement” (I.78). The Athenians, having spoken of treaty’s importance in preventing

the Peloponnesian War, encouraged negotiation over blatant violation. But in the end, the

Lacedaemonians decided “that the treaty had been broken and that they must go to war” (I.88).

Additionally, the Corinthian leaders say to their people, “You will not be the first to break the

treaty, which indeed the god, in bidding you go to war, regards as already transgressed” (I.123).

They even go as far as to claim divine permission in order to beseech all Corinthians to be in

support of war.

The Actual Reasons for Inciting the Peloponnesian War

The entire concept of tossing around blames that are relevant to the peace treaty is very

bizarre. It is full of consistencies and no one ever comes up with a set of concrete criteria in

determining who has broken the treaty. According to both Kagan and Thucydides, there are
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other underlying motives leading up to the Peloponnesian War. The peace treaty between

Athens and Sparta essentially acted as a scapegoat cause of war.

Even in the Corcyraeans’ initial request to the Athenians for an alliance, they “argued

that a war between Athens and the Spartan Alliance was inevitable and on its way…since war

could not be avoided, Athens must accept the Corcyraean alliance” (Kagan 42-43). In this “most

weighty argument” (Kagan 43), the treaty is not mentioned even once. The Corcyraeans do not

seem to think that the inevitability of the Peloponnesian War is relevant to the peace treaty. The

Athenians genuinely believed it. They accepted the alliance with the Corcyraeans to guarantee

themselves a strong navy that would give them the upperhand in an inevitable war.

Another main reason why the Peloponnesian War gave way was because the members of

the Peloponnesian League felt threatened by Athenian power. The Corinthians, to the rest of the

Peloponnesians, set up a “picture of the arrogance of the Athenians and the danger presented by

their growing power” (Kagan 55). The Corinthians did not seem to truly regard the Athenians as

having broken the peace treaty – they regarded the Athenians as an expanding empire that they

did not want to see expand. The Spartans also found themselves in favor of war “not because

they were persuaded by the arguments of their allies, ‘but because they were afraid that the

Athenians might become too powerful, seeing that the greater part of Greece was already in their

hands’” (Kagan 56). The Spartans felt that their empire was being threatened by the Athenian

empire and feared to be diminished by it. In fact, there had always been “a faction in Sparta,

dating back at least half a century, that was jealous and suspicious of the Athenians and

implacably hostile to Athens” (Kagan 62). This untrusting attitude was not newly developed; it

had been present long before the onset of the conflict between Corcyra and Corinth. And so the

Spartans voted to go to war.

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But why does it seem that using the treaty to point fingers is more important? And why,

within Thucydides’s The Peloponnesian War, are there so many inconsistencies such as a

country denying having broken the treaty due to reluctance to go to war and then later willing to?

In deliberating whether or not to go to war, is centering appeals on the peace treaty between

Athens and Sparta an effective strategy? And since Aristotle is such an expert on rhetoric, how

does he evaluate such a deliberative method?

What does the expert of rhetoric have to say about this?

The treaties, though inconsistent with the actual reason for war, still caused the outbreak

of the Peloponnesian War. The “rhetors” in the deliberations prior to the fighting appealed to

their crowds by repeatedly mentioning the peace treaty between the Athenians and the Spartans.

In fact, all of their arguments seemed to be centered on the treaty. However, Aristotle, the

supposed master of deliberative rhetoric, particularly pertaining to Ancient Greece, does not

mention a thing about treaties. Instead, he says, “The main matters on which all men deliberate

and on which political speakers make speeches are some five in number: ways and means, war

and peace, national defence, imports and exports, and legislation” (I.iv.1359b). At first glance, it

seemed to me as though treaties just might be mentioned under war and peace, or even more

likely, legislation. However, in war and peace, Aristotle’s main points appear to be that a rhetor

should know “what wars his country has waged” (I.iv.1359b) and “the relative strength”

(I.iv.1360a) of neighboring countries. No treaties are mentioned. Under the topos of legislation,

Aristotle focuses on types of government, to “know how many different forms of constitution

there are” (I.iv.1360a) and its developments. Again, no treaties are mentioned. And just to be
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convinced that Aristotle really does not mention treaties under any of the topoi, I investigated

what he had to say about each of them. And still, no treaties are mentioned.

Aristotle also does not provide commentary on hidden intentions either. He does

expound upon how Corinth (or anybody for that matter) used the excuse of the Athenians

breaking the peace treaty (as opposed to bluntly stating their reluctance to allow Athens to

become a dominant Grecian power) to successfully induce war. The closest to describing this

strategy is when Aristotle describes forensic rhetoric. The Peloponnesians probably realized that

the “arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential

facts, but is merely a personal appeal to the man who is judging the case” (Aristotle I.i.1354a).

And sure enough, they succeeded in their appeal, but in the wrong Aristotelian context. Aristotle

meant for that type of rhetorical persuasion to be inherent in forensic rhetoric, not deliberative or

political rhetoric.

It is rather unusual for Aristotle to have failed to include treaties as a topos, or even as a

part of a topos, in deliberative rhetoric. It is even more unusual for him to not include that the

deliberative rhetor may have topoi present in his speech that mask his real, hidden intentions.

Misleading speeches seem to have a recurring presence in the political world. In the past century

alone, there have been numerous occasions in which leaders have led their people to believe

certain reasons to go to war that they themselves may not even consider a priority (i.e. Iraq War).

A very infamous example of this kind of leader is Adolf Hitler. In his speeches, he portrayed a

concept that would resonate well with the crowds – Lebensraum. It was a concept that “Hitler

returned to…in innumerable speeches…where he expounded upon his ideas of foreign policy”

(Kershaw 57). The rationale behind Lebensraum (“living space”) was “that only increased

territory for settlement allowed for the population growth essential to the strength and vitality of
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a great power” (Kershaw 56). His audience probably did not think any further than that he meant

for his country to prosper, that Hitler wanted an increase in land so the German people can fare a

better life. However, the idea was actually “implicitly social Darwinist and racist…that the more

vital, creative races should properly triumph over inferiors” (Kershaw 56-57) and Hitler “added a

further vital racial component to it: antisemitism” (Kershaw 57). Put in the plainest terms,

Hitler just wanted to take over the world through racism – a mentality in which his audience

would have found difficult to distinguish in his speeches. The motives present in his speeches

were not reflective of his true motives.

Because nobody is perfect, not even the genius dubbed the master of rhetoric.

The issue of the peace treaty between Athens and Sparta seemed to have a looming

prevalence in contributing to the onset of war. Various ancient Greek states were involved in the

act of tossing around accusations as to who broke the treaty solely to instigate the would-be

Peloponnesian War. The blames are a significant presence in the debates leading to the start of

war, but they are not the true reason as to why both the Peloponnesians and the Athenians decide

to engage in it. Rather, it is because that the Athenians believed that the war with Sparta is

inevitable and that Sparta feared the growth of the Athenian empire. Thucydides writes, “As to

why [the Spartans and Athenians] broke the peace…I consider the truest cause the one least

openly expressed, that increasing Athenian greatness and the resulting fear among the

Lacedaemonians made going to war inevitable” (I.23). But why have the Ancient Greek

deliberative rhetors targeted the peace treaty as the main feature of their arguments? Because it

worked. And using an argument that is not the speaker’s truest belief in deliberative speeches
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still works to this present day. It is a shame that Aristotle seemed to have not caught on to such a

trend – but who’s perfect?

WORKS CITED

Aristotle. The Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle. Trans. W. Rhys Roberts and Ingram

Bywater. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1954. Print.

Kagan, Donald. On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace. New York:

Doubleday, 1995. Print.

Kershaw, Ian. “Berlin, Summer and Autumn 1940.” Fateful Choices. New York: Penguin Group,

2007. 54-90. Print.

Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War. Trans. Steven Lattimore. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing

Company, Inc., 1998. Print.