Money and the Corrosion of Power in Thucydides: The Sicilian Expedition and Its Aftermath

by Lisa Kallet; Thucydides and Internal War by Jonathan J. Price

Review by: Gregory Crane
The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 124, No. 1 (Spring, 2003), pp. 150-153
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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150 BOOK REVIEWS

Lisa Kallet. Money and the Corrosion of Power in Thucydides: The Sicilian
Expedition and Its Aftermath. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 2001. xiv + 347 pp. Cloth, $55.

Jonathan J. Price. Thucydides and Internal War. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni?

versity Press, 2001. xii + 410 pp. Cloth, $70.

These two new contributions to Thucydidean studies are similar in scope

and execution. Each pursues a thesis so weil defined that dust jacket summaries
do them justice. Kallet argues that "the second half of Thucydides' history con?
tains a damning critique of Athens and its leaders for becoming corrupted by
money and for failing to appropriately use their financial strength to support
military power." Price contends that "Thucydides consciously viewed and pre?
sented the Peloponnesian War in terms of a condition of civil strife?or stasis, in
Greek." Many, if not most students of Thucydides would find each of these
propositions reasonable, and some might argue that book-length narratives are
not needed to establish these basic theses one way or another.
Nevertheless, Thucydides requires careful study, and each of these books
contains strong analyses of many key sections and themes from the History. Both
studies shed a great deal of light on Thucydidean historiography beyond their
immediate topics. Thucydides, however, enjoys the mixed blessing of popularity
among more learned policy makers who trot him out from to time as a founder
of realist thinking. In such contexts, tendentious remarks from the Melian dia?
logue or similarly complex contexts appear as aphorisms, and Thucydides is
reduced to a sound bite. Those who are students of Greek culture, political
philosophy, international relations, or some related field can easily skim these
books for their core arguments but would benefit from closer readings of the
particular discussions within them, many of which exhibit considerable insight
and originality.
Kallet's book builds on the foundations of her earlier research on Money,
Expense and Naval Power in Thucydides 1-5.24 (California, 1993). Kallet begins
her new work with the Melian dialogue but largely skips over the remainder of
Book 5 and concentrates here on Books 6-8. The introductory chapter on the
Melian dialogue introduces a core theme, which the Sicilian narrative will ex-
tend: where proper strategy uses imperialism as an investment to acquire more
tangible revenue or to maintain existing sources of income, the conquest of
Melos as a display of power cannot possibly yield enough revenue to justify the
initial expense. The Athenians pursue this adventure not because it will improve
their financial base but because they wish to demonstrate their power for third
parties to observe. The radical realism of the Melian dialogue thus becomes an
exercise in traditional (and by Thucydides' standards, wasteful) display of wealth
and power. Thus, even as Thucydides' Athenians see themselves as progressive
thinkers untrammeled by illusion, they let their illusion of sophistication blind
them to the regressive policy that they are actually pursuing.

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 BOOK REVIEWS 151

The following four chapters comprise a fairly discrete monograph on the

Sicilian expedition. The analyses of the speeches and major actions in this section
of Thucydides constitute a significant contribution to our understanding of
Thucydidean narrative. Kallet's discussion of the debate between Nikias and
Alkibiades at the opening of Book 6 (31-48) traces issues of public/private,
community/individual, and archaic/contemporary in a clear fashion that would
make it a useful reading in an introductory class on Thucydides. She traces the
language of display and seduction, articulating the means whereby the Athenians
succumb to problematic strategic judgments.
I particularly enjoyed chapter 2, which explores the relationship between
the Ionian revolt in Herodotus and the Sicilian Expedition in Thucydides. I
remain uncertain in my own mind as to how much Thucydides has Herodotus in
particular in mind and the degree to which Herodotus and Thucydides shared
cognitive models that were almost invisible elements of Greek ideology. Given
the limited sample of Greek source materials, we may never achieve any cer-
tainty, but even if one takes a strong stand for common culture versus
intertextuality, the detailed comparison is enlightening and helpful.
Chapter 3 focuses on the famous atrocity at Mykalessos, where Thracian
mercenaries, who had arrived too late to join the Sicilian expedition and were
sent home, expressed their frustration by massacring the people of this small
Boeotian town. Kallet connects this spectacular event with the superficially dry
discussion of economie measures such as replacing tribute with an empire-wide
maritime tax. She argues that the economie discussion is not a digression but
rather provides the context for the horrible events at Mykalessos. Dry as the
discussion may be, accounting errors can lead to catastrophic events with grave
emotional and moral consequences.
The final Sicilian chapter is entitled "Periousia Chrematon, Gnome, and
Leadership." In essence, Kallet points out that, in Thucydides' view, the Athe?
nians had succeeded in replenishing their treasury and even their supply of
military manpower. Ambitious as the Sicilian expedition may have been, it was
not a lost cause from the start. This is, of course, not a new idea (Thucydides
himself makes this observation), but Kallet does a good job of focusing on the
relevant financial issues.
The final chapters provide welcome views on two topics that those of us
who work on Thucydidean historiography too often pass over. Chapter 5 pre?
sents an extensive discussion of Thucydides and the inscriptions in which Kallet
is able to demonstrate her ability as an epigrapher and historian as well as an
analyst of texts. The final chapter explores the role of money in the often-
neglected eighth book. The theme of money provides Kallet with a device to find
more structure and interest in the Ionian war than most. This chapter thus would
repay reading in and of itself, and it constitutes one of the best demonstrations of
Kallet's method.
Price's work argues at length that the Peloponnesian war conforms to the
model of stasis as outlined in Thucydides' famous case study of stasis at Corcyra.

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152 BOOK REVIEWS

Price confronts a major challenge to his argument on pages 67-72: if the Pelo?
ponnesian war is a stasis, how does stasis differ from polemosl Put another way,
what insights do we derive if we develop a more or less formal model of stasis
and then apply it to the Peloponnesian war? Price finds relatively little in
Thucydides or other Greek authors to articulate the distinction. Polemos basi-
cally emerges as conflict without the social breakdown that occurs in stasis.
Unlike stasis, polemos can bring a society together. Unlike stasis, polemos is less
likely to be pursued to the bitter end. Unlike stasis, polemos allows far more
freedom for neutrality. But Price finds relatively little to establish norms for
regular polemos against which to contrast stasis.
Price argues that stasis does not involve struggle between particular types
of political entity but reflects instead an internal conflict between groups that
initially shared common values and language. As a result, each group needs to
distinguish itself from its opponent. Shared values need to be redefined in such a
way that each side can claim to monopolize them, where war against an external
enemy drives citizens together and strengthens societal bonds.
I support the main thesis of the book?my only reservation is that the
main idea is not, by itself, very far-reaching. Of course the Peloponnesian war?
which pitted Greeks against one another?was different from the Persian wars
that preceded it (although plenty of Greeks followed Xerxes in that conflict). The
Greek-speaking peoples scattered throughout the Mediterranean had indeed
spent centuries attempting to forge a collective identity, but these hundreds of
independent states spent a great deal of their energy competing with and distin?
guishing themselves from each other. The Peloponnesian war, as Thucydides
makes clear, worsened this situation and eroded many of the shared cultural
values that the Greek-speaking peoples had struggled to establish. The terrible
events that took place in the Corcyrean stasis were, of course, typical of what
happened in other places?otherwise Thucydides would not have offered Corcyra
as a case study. Clearly, Thucydides sees bad things happening to Hellenic values
during the Peloponnesian war.
I found the book as a whole, however, very useful and stimulating?even
when I found myself disagreeing with particular points and arguments. The book
falls into four parts. The first part ("The Model of Stasis") articulates Thucydides'
model of stasis and lays the foundation for the subsequent broader analyses. The
second part ("Logoi") concentrates on the effect that stasis has on words, caus-
ing them to change their meaning and leading to a breakdown in communication.
This part contains a number of useful expositions of individual speeches and
political vocabulary. Many of these terms are extremely complex and have defied
clear definition for thousands of years. Price begins with a discussion of the
Corcyrean debate in Book 1 where he seems to assume that justice had enjoyed
a more well-defined meaning than I find plausible. I often have the feeling that
Price attributes too much agreement on meaning and excessively efficient com?
munication to the pre-war era. Nevertheless, I found that my disagreements
challenged me to think substantively about my own assumptions, and I learned a
great deal from this section.

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 BOOK REVIEWS 153

The third part (uErga") continues to describe how symptoms similar to

those at Corcyra were endemic in Thucydides' narrative. It covers the more
tangible effects of the war. I found the opening section, with its summary of
atrocities and moral disintegration, a useful survey. The final part ("Thucydides
and Hellas") draws the Archeology, the Pentekontaetia, and the Persians into the
argument. The concluding section ("Thucydides' Hellas") briefly summarizes
how the "disunification and disintegration" of Hellas constitutes a main theme of
the history.
Both of these books thus expand our understanding of central elements in
Thucydides' narrative. While each author seems to aim at a classical audience,
the roles of money and of moral disintegration in Thucydides are topics of
considerable importance in modern society. It is hoped that the work that these
two scholars have performed will have implications, direct or indirect, beyond
classics as well.

Gregory Crane
Tufts University
e-mail: gcrane@tufts.edu

Gesine Manuwald, ed. Der Satiriker Lucilius und seine Zeit. Zetemata 110.
Munich: C. H. Beck, 2001. 206 pp. Paper, ?49.90.

In mid-February 2001 at the University of Freiburg, a symposium was held

under the aegis of Professor Eckard Lefevre on the theme "Lucilius, Identity, and
Alterity." Moving with lightning speed, Gesine Manuwald edited fifteen of the
papers given there and had them ready in June so that Beck could publish them
in record time. This is the swiftest production of the doings of such a symposium
that I have come across. If only there had been some really new things to say
about Lucilius, it would make this monograph invaluable. Unfortunately, no new
fragments have appeared, and the identity of Lucilius remains shrouded in mys-
tery for lack of new historical evidence. As for alterity, most of the participants in
the project did not feel comfortable with addressing that aspect of Lucilius,
probably again for lack of useful data on the satirist and his period.
Nine of the fifteen papers come from the hands of students and faculty at
the University of Freiburg. In addition, there are contributions from Johannes
Christes of Berlin, C. J. Classen of Gottingen, Ursula Gartner of Leipzig, Severin
Kostner of Erlangen, Werner Krenkel of Rostock, and Eckart Olshausen of
Stuttgart. All of the titles try to link Lucilius with a genre like epic, with a specific
poet like Callimachus or Aristophanes, or with a cultural or historical phenom?
enon like the city of Rome or the times in which the poet lived. One essay alone
addresses a specific satire, predictably the Trip to Sicily in Book 3, which provides
enough surviving lines to allow a discussion of fifteen pages.
Several of the essays illustrate the difficulty of putting a confident hand on
the "identity" of Lucilius. Even the famous disclaimer of ambition to become a

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