Book Two, Letter Nine

Part 3 of 6

To Thucydides, on men, women, and democracy.

I found three entries regarding women, that I would like to discuss specifically.

This first is from the speech given by Pericles (an Athenian leader), at the Athenian annual public funeral for the war dead. (Book 2, Chapter 4):

“Perhaps I should say a word or two on the duties of women to those among you who are now widowed. I can say all I have to say in a short word of advice. Your great glory is not to be inferior to what God has made you, and the greatest glory of a woman, is to be least talked about by men, whether they are praising you, or criticising you.”

                                                                           Pericles

Book 3, Chapter 5: Revolution in Corcyra

“The women also joined in the fighting with great daring, hurling down tiles from the roof-tops and standing up to the din of battle with a courage beyond their sex.”

This third passage is from the final words of Book 5, chapter 7:

“...the Melians surrendered unconditionally to the Athenians, who put to death all the men of military age whom they took, and sold the women and children as slaves.”

So that's about it. There a few other references to women being taken as slaves, but basically that's all you have to say about women. I'm not criticising you, not specifically, but it's the whole, the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence thing again. Now I'm sure it seems obvious to say that there would have been very few women among the officer corps with which you lived, but very few, and none at all mentioned ever, is a different thing entirely. No mothers, daughters or wives are ever mentioned by name. (At least I'm pretty sure...your book is huge, my copy is filled with my scrawled notes and underlined passages.)

You chose specifically to not write about women in anything but the broadest terms.

But I also wonder about the role of gender separation in your society. I understand that Athenian women in particular often led rather cloistered lives, separate from the affairs of men. Their lives and influence perhaps held little relevance for you. For a writer such as yourself, that is, a conspicuously detailed narrator of facts and figures and events, from political and social customs and ideologies, to the legal minutia of peace agreements - I suspect that you didn't write about women, because you might not have known much about women.

                                                           Athenian Women

I understand that your book is a political history book, you are very careful to not get dragged down into philosophy or overly emotional descriptions of battles or civilian suffering, but women are pretty much everywhere, and they exert their influence, political and otherwise in every sphere of human endeavour, even in the ancient world, so the lack of women in your book is conspicuous, and a little suspicious. It seems that there should have at least have been something said of Spartan women who are famous even now for their bravery, physical prowess and assertive natures.

                                                                Spartan Women

Archidamia: a Spartan Queen

340 - 241 BCE

Thucydides, you seem to confess to an unwillingness to write about women, by quoting from the aforementioned Pericles, and his intentional desire that nothing ever be known of women; a declaration that their silence and invisibility are their only glory.

Fascinating.

But there must have been women everywhere...what were they doing I wonder? You either didn't know, or didn't recognise their influence, or you would have written something about them other than to say they were sold into slavery or killed. Just how separate were the lives of men and women in your era? Did you really consider women not worth writing about at all? Herodotus before you, and Xenophon after you wrote about influential women, but not you Thucydides.

This actually plays into another idea I toy with, that is knowing something by its opposite.

We all know that war is a visceral, terrifying, murderous mess, but you rarely describe it in this way. Since I know you are omitting these details, all your descriptions become like code phrases for the actual terrors hidden beneath. Hence, lay waste to the land, has its real meaning in all the things it doesn't want to mention, and you, Thucydides, do not want to mention women.

Who exactly are you protecting with your mythology of battle? The soldiers? Well certainly, you were one of them, you saw both sides of the war. You served with the Athenians in battle for years before you were exiled to the Spartan allied territories, after your failed command at Amphipolis. You would want to justify your life, everyone does, that's normal. You certainly weren't pulling the wool over anyone's eyes who was there at the time, but I am from that forever you wrote this book for, and you certainly don't fool me either.

Why this romance of War?

I'm not criticising, again, not at all. I'm just struggling to understand you. I have nearly finished reading your book and I have loved every page. I live within a culture who romanticises war in ways just as powerful and illusory as you seem to, so I get it. You have to do it, you have to believe in the beautiful lie, because if all you believed in were the terrible facts, you couldn't possibly go on living.

In my day, Thucydides, many do not. Go on living, that is. Suicide amongst returned soldiers is currently at appalling levels, and I don't think for a moment that your book's romantic notions will help cure that ill in any way, but I do think that it says something about the usefulness of rose coloured glasses.

We live with a lot of terrible facts, and the romance of life doesn't always cover over the stain of reality. People slip off the edge all the time. We call it post traumatic stress disorder now. It used to be called other things...battle sickness, shell shock. Soldiers from the Vietnam War of the nineteen sixties and seventies are famous for returning from the war with the thousand yard stare.

Sometimes I think that no one really survives a war. Not the soldiers, not winners or the losers, and not the civilians caught in between.

P.S.

Here is the third and final promotional video for my album launch kickstarter campaign.  If you like multi-instrumental world fusion, well, just check it out...and watch a few other videos while you're there, I play a lot of different instruments.

Youtube Video

And the link to the Kickstarter page:

Kickstarter Page