Book Two, Letter Six

Part 6 of 6

To Thucydides, on men, women, and democracy.

I have an apology to make, Thucydides.

There are some problems with the way that I have thought about this whole women issue, and they stem from an initial, and false assertion:

The very idea that there is a stronger sex, is fallacious.

History shows me that great courage, wisdom, valour and compassion are not the purvey of one gender, just as ignorance, insincerity, barbarism and hatred do not belong to one gender, or one culture or empire or race. There are also many problems with trying to look at history through a modern moral or cultural lens, the conclusions I draw can be misleading, or at worst, utterly false. In reading and learning any new subject, I must always be careful not to think that I own solid answers. I have been guilty of some of these crimes, and for that, Thucydides, I apologise.

These are the stories of the human animal. Perhaps the most socially complex creatures on the planet, we not only build empires and go to war and write music and make love, but we also tell stories about these things. Stories, I think, are neither true nor false, but occupy a loose state between both fact and fiction. The way we tell ourselves stories about the past, dominates the way we think about, and behave in the present. Your story, Thucydides, is still having an effect on us over two thousand years after you wrote it, and the people of my generation are reading your book, and understanding your story in our own way. We are making new conclusions about ancient history, actually people do this all the time, with all sorts of history. With each new archaeological dig, with each new book published, we reassess the past in light of new knowledge, and new perspectives are gained. Hopefully, we move towards the truth.

However, I am no archaeologist, or historian. I am just a student, writing letters to my dead friends. I am inspired by Petrarch, the French monk who discovered Cicero's letters in 1345 CE, and who seemed to have felt as I do, that the dead live on in us as we read their words. This is the immortality that Cicero spoke of: Only through writing may a person live forever.

Making my initial assertion about there being a stronger, or weaker sex, was really a bit of an experiment in perspective. The way we phrase our questions and the assertions we make upon beginning our search, define the outcome of our study. I like experimenting with different ways of thinking, and thinking about the Peloponnesian war from the women's perspective seemed like an interesting way to explore your magnificent book. I could have focussed on the peace treaties. I could have written to you about the propaganda styles of democratic speeches versus those of a monarchy. I could have made a study of the successful military tactics used in ancient warfare...perhaps in the future I will. This time around though, I decided to write about women. I want to know why you never mention women by name. Anthony Trollope, Cicero's biographer, says that there is no better way to know a person that by their own words, and so I have tried to read between the lines in an attempt to understand you, Thucydides, since we know so very little about you personally. It is an impossible task however, and my ideas about you may be completely false.

I have also learned a bit more about Spartan and Athenian society in the months since I first began reading your book (and writing most of this letter), and I have come to understand more about the powerful role women played in politics and war. I still find it curious that you never mention them, especially now that I understand something of the ways in which women were hugely influential in your time and place. The Athenian courtesans seems especially interesting. I have more questions than answers now, which is a state of being I enjoy immensely. There is so much more to read, so much more to learn, and reading your book has been the tip of the ice-berg. The stack of books on my bedside table grows ever taller.

*

I really should have finished reading the whole book before I began writing to you Thucydides . I have leapt to some unfair conclusions about you, and I am sorry. I still have one chapter left, so I will probably apologise again before I am done.

You see, I've finally read the last chapter of book seven. You're not pulling the wool over anyone's eyes. You're not shy of telling the truth, there is no romance in this chapter of the war: The defeat of the Athenian army on the island of Sicily. I almost don't want to repeat what you have to say, but it is important that I acknowledge my mistake in accusing you of having rose coloured glasses.

I speak of course, of the Athenian retreat. (Book 7, Chapter 7)

“...in the actual leaving of the camp there were sad sights for every eye, sad thoughts for every mind to feel. The dead were unburied, and when any man recognised one of his friends lying among them, he was filled with grief and fear; and the living who, whether sick or wounded, were being left behind caused more pain than did the dead to those who were left alive, and were more pitiable than the lost. Their prayers and lamentations made the rest feel impotent and helpless, as they begged to be taken with them and cried out aloud to every single friend or relative whom they could see; as they hung about the necks of those who had shared tents with them and were now going, following after them as far as they could, and, when their bodily strength failed them, reiterated their cries to heaven and their lamentations as they were left behind. So the whole army was filled with tears and in such distress of mind that they found it difficult to go away even from this land of their enemies when sufferings too great for tears had befallen them already and more still, they feared, awaited them in the dark future ahead.”

“...sufferings too great for tears...”

I don't want to go on quoting from this chapter, which is filled with stories of the suffering, imprisonment, starvation, degradation and death of the fleeing Athenian army. I feel pity for their human suffering, and considering the small percentage of people who actually held democratic voting rights in Athens, these soldiers seem to be the victims of powerful political greed and overreach. I don't know, war is a complicated mess.

But Thucydides, I do feel pity. For those men, those Athenian soldiers, raised to believe in the righteousness of their cause, raised and trained as warriors in the name of democratic freedom, were led to the slaughter by politicians and generals who didn't seem able to tell the difference between glory and greed. Of course, it's impossible to be sure about anything at this distance of time, but your book is full of passion, and I cannot help but feel moved by your story. People are driven by extreme circumstances to often choose between the lesser of two evils. Sometimes that is what war is. A choice between two evils. I shouldn't judge. The Spartans and Athenians both seem to have had justifications for choosing war, even if that choice opened the door to greater horrors than they could have imagined. The future is unwritten, and the Oracle speaks in riddles.

*

I've finished reading the whole book now. The last part, Book 8 is worthy of its own letter, but that will have to wait. If I'm going to start talking about the Persians, I want to make a whole letter of it.

Next I will find a copy of Xenophon's 'Hellenica', and read his continuation of the story where you left off. I'm looking forward to it, I love Xenophon's style. I just re-read his book 'On Horsemanship', and even though I know nothing about horses, and have no particular interest in them, it is wonderful just to take a walk in his world, and to see something of the world as he saw it.

I wonder about your death Thucydides, and there is some disagreement about your demise, but I wonder about the last page of your work. You leave us hanging, half way through a sentence concerning Tissaphernes making a sacrifice to Artemis...

Did you die at your writing desk?

Plutarch, in his biography of Cimon (since you were related to the family of that great man), claims that you were slain at Skapte Hyle, in Thrace. You had gold mines there didn't you? Thrace, home of those Thracian mercenaries who laid waste to Mycalessus. How strange, the way fate turns back upon its own narrative threads. Plutarch also claims that your remains were returned to Athens, where they were entombed along with those of Cimon.

Were you murdered at your desk while writing? An old man, hard at work on your book, which was not meant, “to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last forever.” Did you die by the sword or the dagger? Did you face your attackers and fall in battle, or were you assassinated by sly killers with some wartime grudge against you? We will never know. Pausanias claims that you were murdered on the road home to Athens after your exile was rescinded.

We will never know.

*

So Thucydides, in writing to you, from the future generations for whom you wrote, I say thank you. Your book is not very popular, but it is well known, (though I suppose that there might be more copies in print now than ever in any other time in history). There is a funny saying about you, well it's about you and Plutarch.

“Where Plutarch has one hundred readers, Thucydides has only one, and that one only came to Thucydides, recommended by Plutarch.”

Right about the time I wrote this letter, (between October and December 2018CE) the new Assassins Creed game came out. By chance, I began reading your book months before I had heard anything about the game, a game that tells something of the story of the Peloponnesian War in full animated colour, with music and action and romance. There is even a female Spartan-born mercenary named Kassandra, as a main character. There are a lot of female characters as major parts of the story too. I have been playing it a lot, exploring the islands you described, visiting the famous battlegrounds, I even get to sail around with Herodotus and talk philosophy with Socrates. Hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of people who play this game will learn something of what you hoped they might, something which you knew was important, and worthy of documenting with such devoted care and literary style. I think that soon, Thucydides, you might gain some ground on Plutarch and a few more people will read your book because of this game.

                      Kassandra, from Assassins Creed: Odyssey

We are the future you wrote this book for. You are speaking directly to us. With your every word you implore us to learn something, anything from the calamities of your time, and to put this to good use in solving our own modern troubles. For we are certainly in the teeth of your Thucydidean Trap: Many great rising national powers, the decay of old empires, the birthing of new ideologies, new people's movements, new political agendas, and new wars.

It all sounds familiar, doesn't it Thucydides?

I hope that we can learn from the example of your history.

With gratitude and respect,

Morgan.