On Justice Power and Human Nature

Published in 1993, Paul Woodruff’s Thucydides: On Justice, Power and Human Nature, Selections from The History of the Peloponnesian War is a curated collection of original translations from the ancient Greek historian and general’s landmark work. Woodruff is an award-winning professor, author, and scholar of ancient Greek philosophy, and his selections from Thucydides speak to the topics that his subtitle enumerates, featuring several of the History’s most famous speeches and debates. These include Pericles’s Funeral Oration, the Mytilenean debate, and the Melian dialogue. Woodruff introduces his translations with summaries that place his selections in the context of the work as a whole.

This guide refers to the 1993 paperback edition.

Plot Summary

In Chapter 1, Woodruff provides excerpts from the opening of Thucydides’s History, in which he introduces himself, explains his intention and rationale for documenting the Peloponnesian war, and provides historical background on the two main combatants, Athens and Sparta. Thucydides declares that his History will differ from previous accounts because his is based on evidence collected from and cross-referenced by eyewitness accounts. Unlike poets, who create works that entertain in the moment, Thucydides aims to provide an education on human nature and dynamics that will have lasting value because neither ever changes.

Interspersing short summaries and excerpts from Thucydides’s first and second books, Chapter 2 explores the conflicts between Sparta and Athens and the speeches made in both cities prior to the formal declaration of war. Woodruff explains the web of grievances Sparta’s allies presented to them against Athens and the justifications both Spartan and Athenian leaders used to rationalize their willingness to go to war. Thucydides characterizes these grievances as the manifest reasons for the war. The true cause was Sparta’s fear that Athens was becoming more powerful.

Chapters 3-5 explore the various ways human dynamics and delusions compel communities to make self-destructive choices. Pericles is the primary topic of Chapter 3. Woodruff summarizes and provides excerpts from the Athenian general’s Funeral Oration for the first war casualties and Thucydides’s discussion of the plague that shortly thereafter devastated Pericles’s city and eventually took his life. Woodruff points out how Thucydides sets the Funeral Oration’s “bright picture of a wonderfully civilized city” against the plague episode that “shows how easily civilization slips away” (81) during difficult times. In Chapter 4, Woodruff provides excerpts and summaries of events around two cities under duress, one that was destroyed (Plataea by Sparta) and one that narrowly escaped destruction (Mytilene by Athens). Chapter 5 focuses on civil war and its destructive consequences, drawn from Thucydides’s third and fourth books, which cover events on Corcyra.

In Chapter 6, Woodruff’s excerpts and summaries revolve around three key events in the war that show powerful parties choosing violence out of fear and mistrust. Sparta influences Athenian ally Acanthus to revolt because they fear Acanthus will propel Athens to greater power, both by paying tribute and by discouraging other cities to revolt. The Peace of Nicias between Athens and Sparta is meant to bring hostilities to end, but neither city can trust the other. The Melian Dialogue shows Athens attempting to justify the annihilation of Melos with dispassionate reason, but fear again underlies the decision, in this case that leniency will provoke their allies to see them as weak.

The passages Woodruff selects in Chapter 7 cover the promise, planning, and ultimate annihilation of the Sicilian Expedition, which Thucydides addressed in his sixth and seventh books of Histories. In Chapter 8, Woodruff summarizes the events that followed the expedition’s catastrophic failure, drawing on Xenophon’s Hellenica to bring readers through the end of the Peloponnesian war and its aftermath for both Sparta and Athens.