Introduction

If we are dependent on Thucydides to construct a historical narrative of the Peloponnesian War itself - Thucydides ‘wrote the history of the Peloponnesian War’ (Thuc. 1.1, with Loraux 1986) - we are scarcely less so for the period immediately preceding it: the roughly fifty years from the last major battles of the Persian wars, Plataiai and Mykale (479), and the establishment of the Athenian naval alliance (478) through to the beginning of conflict. Thucydides’ account can sometimes, of course, be supplemented, qualified or confirmed from other sources: Athenian decrees (M&L; for translations, Fornara, Osborne 2000), the pamphlet known as the ‘Old Oligarch’ ([Xenophon] Ath. Pol.), and later sources such as the Parallel Lives of Plutarch (especially of Perikles, Kimon, Aristeides), the derivative ‘universal history’ of Diodoros (largely based for this period on the fourth-century Ephoros of Kyme), or (with caution) Athenian drama. We are reduced, however, almost exclusively to fighting scholarly skirmishes on ground that the historian has chosen for us. We must attempt, moreover, not only to test the details of his account in sequence in a kind of commentary, but - as a prerequisite for writing any kind of narrative - to grasp Thucydides’ account as a whole.

Thucydides’ account of the period in Book 1 of his Histories is no straightforward sequential narrative. It is presented instead through a series of digressions, each taking a further chronological step back, embedded within his more detailed account of the immediate run-up to conflict. First, his account of the immediate professed causes for the war (1.23), the flashpoints of Epidamnos and of Poteidaia (1.24-65), leads to a first debate at Sparta and to the Spartan decision that Athens had broken the terms of their treaty (1.66-88). This decision then leads to a more extended narrative of the growth of Athenian power (the digression known as the ‘pentakontaetia’, or ‘the fifty years’, 1.89-117) stepping further back in time to the end of the Persian wars, bringing us back to the brink of war and to the conference of all Sparta’s allies to confirm the decision for war (1.118-25). A subsequent period of diplomatic posturing provides the narrative hook for a further step back, to accounts of the careers and falls of Pausanias and Themistokles (1.126-38), pivotal figures not only in the Persian wars but also in the shape of the following half-century; this concludes, as does Book 1 of the Histories, with Perikles’ recommendation to the Athenians to reject the seemingly small demands made of them as the thin end of the wedge (1.139-45).

Thucydides’ approach might on first reading appear disjointed. The structure of the book has indeed been seen as the result of the order of the work’s composition and of clumsy surgery on earlier drafts; his account of the pentakontaetia has been criticized not only for its lack of chronological clarity (for which Thucydides blames his predecessor Hellanikos, 1.97; all subsequent dates in this chapter should be understood to be approximate at best: see, e. g., Lewis 1992b: 499-505, Rhodes 1992a: 44-5, Badian 1993b) but also for its omissions, most notoriously of the Peace of Kallias that may or may not have been agreed between Athens and Persia (449; see recently Badian 1993a). Such criticisms, however, fail to reflect the differences between Thucydides’ objectives and those of his modern critics. In particular, the focus of the pentakontaetia is not to record all that his protagonists ‘did or suffered’ in that period (cf. Aristotle Poetics 1451b), but specifically on the twin themes laid out in an early programmatic statement (1.23; with Rood 1998; also Connor 1984):

As to the reasons why they broke the truce, I propose first to give an account of the causes of complaint which they had against each other and of the specific instances where their interests clashed: this in order that there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind about what led to this great war falling upon the Hellenes. But the real reason for the war is, in my opinion, most likely to be disguised by such an argument. What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta. (trans. R. Warner)

This focus is sustained by a series of similar authorial statements throughout Book 1. The first debate at Sparta concludes with a statement (which also effects a transition into the pentakontaetia) that the Spartan decision for war was made less on the basis of the speeches (the professed motives, in other words) than because they were ‘afraid of the further growth of Athenian power’ (1.88). Similar ideas conclude the penta-kontaetia: Athens’ growth in power had reached a point where it was beginning to encroach on Sparta’s relationship with her allies (1.118). And the final chapter of Book 1 recalls the distinction of 1.23, tacitly invoking again the distinction between professed causes and the underlying reason for conflict: ‘these, then, were the causes of complaint and the differences which occurred between the two powers before the outbreak of war... ’ (1.146). This focus demands of the reader a detachment from the cut-and-thrust of the diplomatic demands of the various protagonists. Rather than seeking to indict one party or another for infringing the terms of their earlier treaty, the Thirty Years’ Peace (cf. de Ste. Croix 1972: e. g., 290 focusing esp. on 7.18), Thucydides’ concern - like Herodotos’ in the case of the Persian wars (Harrison 2002; cf. Sealey 1957) - is to give a ‘thick description’ of the movement to war, and of the growing sense of the inevitability of conflict (e. g., 1.33,44) - clearly a self-fulfilling prophecy.