In Our Time - The Mytilenaean Debate

Episode Date: June 20, 2019

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why Athenians decided to send a fast ship to Lesbos in 427BC, rowing through the night to catch one they sent the day before. That earlier ship had instructions to kill all adult men in Mytilene, after their unsuccessul revolt against Athens, as a warning to others. The later ship had orders to save them, as news of their killing would make others fight to the death rather than surrender. Thucydides retells this in his History of the Peloponnesian War as an example of Athenian democracy in action, emphasising the right of Athenians to change their minds in their own interests, even when a demagogue argued they were bound by their first decision. WithAngela Hobbs Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of SheffieldLisa Irene Hau Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of GlasgowAndPaul Cartledge Emeritus AG Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, University of Cambridge and Senior Research Fellow of Clare CollegeProducer: Simon Tillotson

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoy the programs. Hello, in 427 BC, the Athenians voted to kill all adult men in Mitolini on Lesbos, where they just crushed a revolt, and to enslave the women and children and raise the city to the ground.

When they had second thoughts the next day, they debated if such a brutal act really was in the interests of Athens, and if not, were they allowed to change their minds? By a narrow margin, they voted on a lighter punishment, and their sailors then rode through the night, carrying new orders to stop the slaughter. As Cicidides tells it, the Athenians had been on the brink of losing their moral compass, and had saved themselves just in time. We need to discuss the metellanian debate are Angie Hobbes, Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, Lisa Haar, senior lecturer in Class at the University of Glasgow, and Paul Cartlidge,

Ameriagian Levantis, Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge and Research Fellow at Clare College. Paul Cartilage, this debate happened in the context of the Peloponnesian War. What had prompted that war? It's what we normally call the Peloponnesian War. It's really the Athenoponnesian War. It depends which side you are on and which side you're looking at it from. But to put that war, which was a kind of world war among Greeks,

and indeed around the Greeks were non-Greeks, Persians, who had a particular interest in what went on in the eastern Mediterranean. This is a world war going back to an attempt by the Persian Empire to conquer probably most of mainland Greece. That was a failure. Out of that failure arose an Athenian alliance, basically a naval alliance based on either tribute or the contribution of ships or men. That alliance had the aim of liberating such parts of the Greek world

as were still in the Persian Empire, and keeping the whole Greek world free, as well as punishing the Persians for invading the Greeks. Had Sparta not come up to the mark when the Persians invaded, I don't think those united, relatively disunited, but a few united Greeks would have won the Persian wars. So you have two major power blocks, two major alliances, the Spartan, based on land,

based largely in the Peloponnese and Central Greece. you have Athens and naval alliance in the Aegean. In 432, there was a terrific standoff between those two great powers of the Greek world, small by our standards, but great powers by their standards. And the issue was one of tension between, it's rather like a Cold War, if I can put it in those terms. And so the Spartans made an ultimatum to the Athenians to do various things. The Athenians refused.

So the Spartans said, you Athenians have broken the agreement that we made 14 years before. We're going to invade you. And so the, as it were, world war broke out. Four years later, we're now in the year of the Middle Indian debate. And in between the outbreak of the war and 47, the one major event that had affected Athens in particular was the outbreak of plague. And that plague had killed, and it would kill ultimately, about a third of all Athenian citizens. and that included their principal architect, the principal strategist of their mainly defensive policy and strategy of resistance to the Spans.

And that architect was Pericles. Well, that was brilliant. Thank you very much indeed. But we have Sparta, Supreme on land, Athens with the Supreme Navy, that scarcely met because they don't face up to each other for a while. But what was a relationship between Athens and Mitalini? Mitalini was one of the ship contributing allies. Allies either contributed ships or they contributed money. And if they contributed ships, they also contributed men. And they were, to some degree, more independent.

Mitalini was the most important of the five cities on the island of Lesbos. Mitalini had its own quasi-imperialistic ambitions. It wished to control the whole island. And so there were tensions between Athens and Mitalini in terms of Mitalini's role, as it were, within the alliance. Why did Mitterlini think they could get away with the revolt? Well, that's partly because, and this is an extreme annoyance to the Athenians, a Spartan fleet, a very rare occurrence in the eastern Aegean,

actually pitched up and encouraged the Middle Indianians. But that wasn't by accident because we know that the year before of what we're going to be talking about in 428 BC at the time of the Olympic Games, so we're in August 428, Middleenean representatives had had quiet word with Sparta in particular as leader of the rival alliance. In other words, they'd treated with the enemy, and the enemy Sparta agreed to send a fleet into the Eastern Mediterranean, which prompted the revolt of the Middle Indians from the Athenian alliance. Nevertheless, the Middalenians did not have time to prepare properly and so on,

and so we moved to the Athenians getting across there in time. main source of this is Eucydides, who was he, and why did he write the history of that war? Well, we don't actually know very much about him. What we know, we know exclusively from what he himself wrote. So he was clearly a wealthy Athenian citizen. As such, he must have taken part in running the Athenian democracy. He must have taken part in going to war. He must have gone to war for Athens as a citizen soldier. And when the war broke out, he decided to write it down. He says literally that he wanted to write the war because he realised it was going to be a great war. The evidence, I think one of you mentioned that he was a general. Is there some evidence by that?

Yes. He tells us himself again in 424, so three years after the events we're going to talk about here, the Eucydides was a general. He didn't do very well. He lost the northern city of Amphipolis to the Spartans. And for that, the Athenians condemned him to exile, which was not a bad thing actually for. for a historian. Because it meant that he could now go and talk to both sides of the war. And that makes his work so much more interesting for us. So describe to the listeners what he actually did. He wrote the history of the war and gave us your opinion of it, please.

Well, he wrote a history of the war and he wrote it while the war was going on. So he traveled, he talked to the people who participated, he talked some of the decision makers. but of course he didn't have written sources. He didn't have newspapers. He didn't have archives. He could only talk to participants in the war. Well, newspaper writers talk to participants too. So it isn't a bad source, is it?

If you talk to those of two questions. There are problems with eyewitness reports, of course. And Thucydides recognises this. He says himself that eyewitnesses don't always agree on what happened. They can't always remember what happened. And we would very much like to know what he did about that. because when we get into the actual narrative of the war, he tells us a very streamlined story

without telling us what sources he used for which parts. Are you convinced by it? Not all of it, no. Are you convinced by it enough of bit for us to do this programme about him? Yes. What level of conviction is that? I think Thucydides had more things to say

than just the history of the war. I think he had plenty of things to say about human motivation, human psychology, morality. And I think the Mitalina debate plays a large part in what he has to say about that. Mitalina debate is going to be the centre of this discussion. In that debate, in which speeches are given at length, do you think he copied those down? Or is that again reported on? I don't think he copied them down. I think he was there.

I think he listened. But we know there were two debates. He says this is the second debate. And he doesn't give us the speakers. On two successive days. Yes, and it doesn't give us the speeches on the first day. So I would not be surprised if he had amalgamated the speeches from the first and the second debate and amalgamated more speeches because more than two people clearly spoke on these occasions.

So I don't think he copied down these two exact speeches the way they were exactly spoken. They read very coherently, don't they then? Yes, they do. Is that because of him or because of them? Probably a little bit of both. But I'd like to say it's mainly Thucydides. Angie, and the city of Mitalina on Lesbos revolted. So would they help Grants to be confident?

I think they thought, well, we've got a navy, we've got our own fleet. They at least initially really thought the Spartans were going to turn up in time to help them. In fact, Sparta made many delays and kept promising help and it didn't come. Also, I think they thought, well, Athens has been really struck by the plague in 4.30. going to be weak. This is a good moment to strike. So I think they thought this was a pretty good time to have a revolt. And what else did they do to their city while they were getting ready or trying to do? They built fortifications. They sent out to the Greek cities on the Ionian coast to try and get more supplies in. They sent out to Sparta and indeed Boeisha to try and get

more help. So they were building up this big rebellion, but their plans were revealed to the Athenians. By whom? Do we know? We don't, but we think that there were Athenian sympathizers within Mitalin itself, because Mitalin was ruled by an oligarchy, but as in many Greek city states, there was also a democratic faction. And on the whole, the

oligarchs were in sympathy with Sparta and on the whole, the democratic factions were in sympathy with Athens. So somebody told the Athenians what was going on, and the Athenians started to come out to try to persuade the Mitaleneans to stop with a force before the Mitalinians were really ready. And were the Spartans really ready to support them at that time? Well, no. No, they took a long, long time. And even when they did send some ships, it was too

little too late. Sparta, for all their very military ethos, they were very good at repelling invaders from Sparta, but they were very slow to help others. So what was behind the revolt? Why were they so keen? Despite the plague, which Paul tells us about, in the introduction, they were still a very powerful entity. This little island in Lesbos, what did you think it, what chance do you think it took? Well, as Stuart, sorry.

Yes, as well, as Paul has said, Mitterline is the biggest city on Lesbos, and it has its own little mini-imperialistic dreams. It wants to control Lesbos. It wants to control, really, all the city states on it. So it just took its chances? Yeah, absolutely. Was there anything in the disparate opinion,

were an oligarchy and Athens was striving to be a democracy. Did that matter in the scheme of things? Yes. Because the oligarchic rulers in Mitalin think they are going to get a very sympathetic hearing from Spart from the Peloponnesian League, who on the whole tend to support oligarchies and those, as I said, the democratic faction in Mitterlin think they will be listened to sympathetically by Athens. So absolutely. So as Paul was saying, it's almost, He talked to the Cold War, but also I would say it's a bit like the build-up to World War I. You've got these alliances building up, and it's a kind of domino effect. Yeah, we must remember there are lots of states. There are lots of city states all over the place.

So when we say Athens, we mean a conglomeration of it and dip in Sparta. So they revolted. The Athenians got wind of it and put it down. And Paul, then what? Then we come towards a debate. How did Athenians generally make their decisions of business? about such major matters. They make decisions because they are a democratia,

which means the power of the mass of the citizen body of adult male-free Athenians, in public, aided by, and part of the process which Thucydides is completely silent about, a standing council of 500 men, chosen by random lottery from across the entirety of the Athenian state, and certain members,

50 of them were at any one time in permanent session, ready for any eventuality or emergency. So it was they who prepared the agenda for the first day of debate. It was they who reconvened the Assembly on the second day of debate. The Athenian Assembly was absolutely all-powerful. It was, as we would say, sovereign, but there were ways of revisiting a sovereign assembly decision. And one of them was, of course, to hold another debate, the very following. day on the exact same issue with presumably maybe new arguments but no new evidence. In what way could they be called a democracy then?

Right. Well, Demos has two senses. It means the people as a whole. That's to say all Athenian adult male free citizens. It also means the majority who happen to be poor. So they have to work for a living. And the Athenian democracy at different times availed itself of both those meanings. The Kratos bit, Demos, means. strength, power, might. So the Demos is powerful. And by our standards, 30,000 to 50,000 people is smaller than a Wembley Cup final crowd, but it is by ancient Greek standards vast, because the normal size of a Greek city in the latter part of the 5th century BC, BCE, was between 500 and 2,000, the modal size. Most of the thousand or so Greek cities fell between

500 and 2000. Athens was ginomously bloated. And yet they managed over 100 years by now. Athens had been a democracy for something like 80 years by this time. It had moderated itself. It had modulated in various ways. It was used to doing democracy. This is how you make a decision. And they did it in public in a forum on often one day. So they had the first day. These are how Thucydides didn't write about the first day, he wrote about the second day. But what can we piece together about the first day? Well, what Thucydides says about the first day was that the Athenians were very angry and they made the decision to execute all the Mitalinian men

and sell the women and children and slaves in anger, he says, specifically. And then overnight they changed their minds because they realised that this was savage and extreme decision, he says. Is there any sense that we can track back from what they said on the first day by what they said on the second day where certain arguments were repeated, especially the arguments by Leon, who, if you want to succeed as an imperial power, it's necessary not to have friends but to be ruthless and feared. He followed that line.

Certainly, I mean, Cleon says himself that he hasn't changed his mind. He's basically repeating what he said the day before. And Thucydides also says that the second speaker, Deauditors, had spoken to the same effect the day before. So Thucydides is making it sound as if they're pretty much, the same arguments the second time around. And is there any evidence to the contrary? Not particularly, no.

So he's just setting up an argument and a counter argument there between the two. But they're very firm, and he's very firm, about imperial power must take no prisoners, be ruthless, right and wrong, doesn't play a part at all, power is what matters, and show your power, eliminate them and move on.

Is that about right? Yes, that's about right. Angie, can you add what we know about that first decision? Well, I think Lisa's really covered that very well. I mean, we can pick up with Clay on the... Well, let's pick up on the second day. Yes, so I mean...

So the end of that decision was that they would send their fleet, which they did, to deliver the answer and the execution. And the fleet is sent off. It is sent off. It is sent off. It's only a ship. Yeah, well, one ship, yeah. A ship is sent off with the orders to put the male inhabitants to death and enslave all the women in children.

The ship sets sail. And as Lisa has described, they have this... sort of the Athenian people have wake up thinking, oh my goodness, what have we done? Now, Cleon, who, as we've been hearing, was the most vigorous proponent of this harsh policy the day before. It's very interesting that they changed their mind in that way. Did they woke up thinking, did anybody stir this waking up? Well, I guess if they'd made the decision in a fit of anger, and then you sleep on it and you wake up and you think, oh my goodness me. Paul wants to come in a same.

Well, I don't think they slept. on it. I think that at that time, Sparta was, as it were, threatening Athens, besieging Athens. Athens was confined behind its walls during the summer. And so lots of people were in the city who normally

wouldn't have been, and they would be meeting people they'd not met before. Oh, you're from the same tribe as me. I haven't realised that because I've never had an occasion. What I think happens immediately after the decision is that one or two people who'd voted the other way who are influential, start

saying, come on guys, you know, is that really such a good idea? And so yes, you're completely right. Thucydides says it's overnight and in the morning. But I think the decision is not the product just of waking up. I think there's bars, they're drinking, this social... Sorry, Andy, I interrupted you. No, no, no, no, no. We're both interrupted you. Not at all. So Thucydides gives clear on this really famous speech. It's the kind of the quintessence of the Athenian demagogue and, as least... was saying it. He probably puts a lot of speeches and condenses

them into one. He says Cleon was this time the most violent of the men in Athens and he was also had the most ability to persuade the Athenian people. Populist. Exactly. And well all those voting in the Assembly, all those voting in the Assembly.

And Cleon makes four main points. One, as you've said, he says, well, forget about compassion. You have to face up the fact your empire is a tyranny. Tyrannies are maintained, not through goodwill,

but through strength. And if you want to go in for philanthropy, well, give up your empire. But if you want to keep your empire, then it's just the rule of the stronger. And in any case, people don't actually respect people who treat them well.

People will respect you if you make no concessions. Secondly, don't mess around changing your mind. Sit is a better served. By bad laws and decisions so long as you stick by those bad laws and decisions. If you change your mind and even if you have a better law in mind, that's a disaster. So stick by what you've decided.

And if you change your minds, you will be traitors to your own selves. Thirdly, don't waste time thinking, reflecting, just get on with it. Trust your instincts. Trust your gut instinct. And fourthly, listen. Who should you listen to? Don't listen to the intellectuals. Don't listen to the people who know stuff.

you want to listen to a man of the people who doesn't know much but has common sense. And you won the day, Paul? He did, first time round. Yeah, well, still. We're on day one still. No, no, this is day one. No, this is day one. Cleon's day one.

Well, he certainly repeated. He repeated it on day two. Yeah, you're told. I've given you a condensation of the speech that Thucydides gives to Cleon on day two because I thought we'd moved on to day two. Yeah, but let's get straight for listeners. or they're going to be very confused as I seem to be. But I don't think I am, because what you say on day two

is that Cleon regurgitates some of the stuff as which you have done eloquently, one, two, three, four that it done on day one. That's correct. He's then responded to by diodotus. And are we interested in what diodotus had said? Yeah, we're on day two with diodotus. If we move on to him.

Second thoughts. Yeah, right. Well, he starts off very calmly. He says, calm down guys. He, in other words, reject. the notion that it's good to make decisions in anger under high emotion without rational argument. So he starts off very reasonably. And what's peculiar, and it goes back to what Lisa was saying,

how far do we think that Zucydidean speeches are in every respect or in significant respects faithful to what was actually said? I don't think he would have expatiated in the way that he, in fact, did on various theories of punishment. And it's actually a most interesting philosophical discussion. So I'm not really the best person to talk to about that. But his main argument is this, that by being too broad brush, too crudely cruel and vicious in the way that Cleon wished this, they would actually trigger further such revolts.

Rather than as Cleon advocates by being tough now, you will prevent, you will deter any future revolts. He then goes on, and it's very interesting here, he thinks that the division between the poor and the rich, who broadly speaking, it's a division between those who favor restricted government, that is oligarchy, as opposed to open, broad government, mass government, that's democracy. He thinks that's very important because he thinks that throughout the, the entirety of the Athenian Empire, and he may be exaggerating, every city more or less is divided into the same two that the Middle-Lenean people was. So you've got a few rich who are pro-Sparton or anti-Athenian, you've got many, many poor who are pro-Athenian and anti-Sparton.

So he says, my more moderate proposal, which by the way doesn't let off the Middilenean ringleaders, a lot of them get killed. And he doesn't say, oh, we must be Clement. He says we must be pragmatic in our punishment. Can I hear it at Lisa now, do you want to develop that? Yes, I do, because I think the most remarkable thing about his speech really is the fact that, like Cleon's speech, this is based entirely on self-interest. And the auditors makes a virtue out of this. He says explicitly, I don't want you to think about pity, compassion and justice. I want you to think exclusively about what's in your own interest.

that's actually quite shocking. And there are two ways to read that, I think. You can see it as damning evidence of how cynical the Athenians have become. They could now only respond to arguments of self-interest. But actually, I've been wondering for a long time whether saying, don't think about pity, compassion and justice, it's a bit like saying, don't think about a big pink elephant riding a bicycle. All of a sudden, the only thing anyone can think about

is a big pink elephant riding a bicycle. all of a sudden the only thing the audience can think about is pity, compassion and justice. And I think by saying that, Diodotus gives an opportunity for the Athenians who might be thinking exactly along those humanitarian lines to pretend that they're voting from self-interest and to vote for the milder proposal anyway. You have to remember they voted by hand so there was no secret ballot. Everyone could see what everyone else was voting. and I think that's extremely important.

Does I understand, doubt it has won by a very narrow margin? Yes, he did. And so it was touch and go even with his arguments. And Cleon was, there's a feeling in the text that Cleon is a bit disgraced by body. Went too far the first day, went too far the second day. Well, Thucydides introduces him by saying he was the most violent man in Athens, which is an extraordinary introduction. I think Angie wants to come in.

Well, I completely agree with your interpretation. that Deodotis is actually being very cunning here. And we should note that he even says the way things are in Athens at the moment, the only people who get to persuade the people are those who dissemble their true motives. Now, I think his true motives are, in fact, moral ones. And I think he sneaks in some morality

because he says, well, you know, if you kill all the male inhabitants, this won't actually act as a deterrent, because all it will do is give your opponents no room to manoeuvre. They will have to fight you to the bitter end. And then even if you win, you're going to take over a city in ruins,

which will not be able to pay you any tribute money, far better for you, far more secure for you, to treat people well. So they don't want to establish good order in your relations with your allies and your subjects. And then they won't need to rebel. I think he's cunningly bringing in some moral arguments. Do you agree with that, Lisa?

Yeah, I would absolutely agree with that. And also I think it's really important that about half of Deodotis's speech is about how one should debate and make decisions in the Assembly. And as you said, he's absolutely says, do not make decisions based on anger or fear. We need reasoned argument. We need reflection. You do need to listen to the experts, as it were. So he's part of what Thucydides is doing, I think, is not just giving us this wonderful analysis of power relations. but also how do you do democracy?

Paul, there's still a lot of talk about what I've received from you as being in the text of Eucydides, which you're still rather uncertain about. So good arguments are presented by all three of you about what was said in terms of what Eucydides said, and you're not too sure about Eucydides all the time. Is that right? That is right, but it's not because he's not brilliant. It's rather the reverse, that we are a little worried that he's manipulative, A famous Dutch historian once said that the historian, every historian, is the obedient servant of his or her own point of view.

So it is the historian who selects what episodes, what events. It's the historian who chooses what sources he or she will accept. And it's the historian who, as Thucydides says in his very first sentence, writes the war. So we have to be very suspicious of Thucydides, but we also, I think all. of us admire him quite intensely. Let's see knowing away Cucydides, is or what's your view of you? No, I would agree with that. I think

well, I hesitate to say this in front of Paul, who is a bona fide historian, but to me it matters perhaps less what Diodysus and Cleon really said than how Thucydides presents this. I find Thucydides's analysis of the

Athenian mindset and the Athenian sort of moral degeneration extremely interesting. But actually he isn't saying much about morality in its higher sense, as we would understand it. One of them is saying, smash them, and the other is saying, well, if you smash them, it won't be as good for us

as if you don't quite smash them, but smash them all the same. Yes, well, the auditors is saying punish the people who were behind the revolt, don't punish the rest of them, don't destroy the city. But I think, I mean, you may well disagree with me, but I think of Thucydides actually is quite a profound moralist in the way that he edits, in the way that he juxtaposes different scenes.

Because what he's doing is giving us this brilliant analysis of power. How should it operate? How does it operate? What's the relationship between power and justice? Is there any role for justice in interstate relations? But also, what's the effect on people's moral behavior, not just of the effect of power, but the effect of the stress of war, of plague, of famine.

So I read his text as this, you know, scathing analysis of what humans are capable of under duress. I absolutely agree. Paul, sorry, please you. Paul. I was just going to pitch in and say that he starts off also. He has a preface, which is very interesting. It's very reflexive.

And he says that he's writing not just for my immediate readers, and actually most of them would be listeners, but for my... Mankind, forever. This is a possession. So in other words, you in some way acquire what he's written, and you have it. You then can use it.

He wants it to be useful. So there's an assumption here, and he makes explicit what his assumption is that humans in societies are always going for the foreseeable future to be more or less motivated by the similar sorts of things. And they're always going to act more or less

along the same prognosis, the same diagnosis, and so on. Well, now, was the... He talks about how empires behave. Absolutely. Well, one thing that strikes some readers, maybe not Angie, because both of you, interestingly, have pulled out the moralising, and there is a view that he was a moralist, but there is another way of reading him,

which is how extraordinarily little morality plays, actually, both in his own account, that is the narrative, and in the speeches that he chose to write up. So this was changed, the decision was changed on the second day, by which time the first boat, the fleet boat, set up across the gym to do the business. And they double racked, double, twice as many people on board the next boat,

which rode through the night to try to catch them up, pale, but got there just in time somehow rather to stop the worst happening. Can you tell us, can you flesh that out a little bit more than I do? Yes. Thucydides gives us a very dramatic account of this second ship, which is sent out and how the rowers take turns, rowing and sleeping, they eat while they row, they have a fortunate wind, and because of all of these circumstances,

they actually get to Metilina just as the general is reading the first order, so they literally interrupt him on the beach. No, you keep going. And he ends this paragraph, was saying, so close did Mitalina come to danger. So it seems to me that he is extremely interested in this narrow, narrow margin by which most the Mitalinians were saved. It could so easily have gone the other way.

It was because the rowers exerted themselves and they had a favourable wind. So what in fact did happen to the Mitalines then? Well, the ones who were behind the revolt, the oligarchs who had instigated the revolt, are all killed. That's about a thousand people. there's still a lot of people.

But all the rest of them get to survive and the women and children are not sold into slavery. And from then on, Middleland, behaves itself? No. About 15 years later, they revolt again. But by then, and we're not told by these studies, but I imagine the oligarchs had been deprived of their exclusive control of the organs of government.

But at any rate, they revolted in a very, very minor way. These studies merely mentioned it not in passing, but he doesn't dwell on it, whereas 47 he uses this as an imperialist moment. Can I ask you what Cleon says about empires and goes up to Machiavelli and goes right to the 20th and 31st century in action all the time, the same thing. Did the ideas of morality that you've extracted from it, did they resonate at all at the time or after the time? They did, I mean, partly from the Middle and Aan debate. and also from the Mealian dialogue.

Are we going to... Before we move to the Mealian dialogue, can you just stick with this for one second? Yes, well, they did. So the Roman... Well, quite soon after Thucydides's life, we have the Greek philosopher Plato, and he takes a lot of Thucydides' portrait of the demagogue,

and he mixes up with his own experience of demagogues and tyrants. And he was alive at the time, too, wasn't he? Well, he might have been born in 428, 427. He might have been a tiny baby, but he will have heard about this, and he will have read Thucydides. And he takes this portrait of the demagogue, Thucydides' portrait of Cleon, and he uses that in Republic 8 and 9.

He takes a lot of the ideas about the relationship between power and justice and whether justice can exist between individuals or states of different levels of power. He is against democracy. And he uses that in book one of the republic, and he gives those ideas to a sophist called Thrasimachus. So Plato definitely uses this.

The Roman historian Salas, uses the basis his debate between Caesar and Cato on what to do with the Catalanian conspirators on the Middle-Aan debate. And it does crop up again. We don't, I mean, we see some of the same ideas in Machiavelli, but I haven't found evidence of whether Machiavelli read this.

We know that Hobbes not only read Thucydides but translated Thucydides, magnificent translation. So these ideas, you know, they keep going and are still going. Can we, Lisa, can we move on briefly now because we haven't a great deal of time left?

There was an episode a few years later, 11 years later, with Milos. And were the Athenians in the same mood in the same context there. Well, with Mitalina, they change their minds and they don't actually destroy the city.

With Milos, they do destroy the city. The situation is different, though. Milos is not a subject ally that's revolting. It's a neutral state and the Athenians want it in their alliance and the Milians refuse to join the alliance. And then Thucydides doesn't give us the debate in Athens as we get the debate between Cleon and Deodotus. He gives us not a debate of,

two set speeches, but a dialogue between Melian representatives and Athenian representatives to discuss whether the Melians should just surrender or hold out against the Athenians. And the same themes coming up? Some of the same themes are coming up. And the interesting thing here, I think, is that Emilians have this very traditional argument based on honour, justice. They say that gods will support us because we're in the right. The Spartans will help us because of our.

kinship with them. And the Athenians just brush all of that aside and say, but that's really stupid. It's about your self-preservation here. And the Athenians then famously say, it's a law of nature that the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must. So that's very, very

close to saying might as right. But doesn't go that far? Not quite. Not quite. Almost. Plus I'd add that Milos was an oligarchy, like Mitalini, and was tiny. It's a 500 But if they did say might is right, how much further has to go?

Might makes right is the closest. That speech comes. It doesn't actually go to might is right, which is... In sense, it's almost more sinister, because as the Melians interpret what the Athenians are saying, it's that actually right has nothing to do with the case. You know, why are you talking about this? As Lisa said, it is a law of nature always has been, always will be, that people try to take control.

And that's how it is, and we're not the first to do it. We won't be the last. This is how it is. It is even more chilling than Cleon's speech in the middle of the Lane debate. But Cicidides is an artist, and so this is a relatively minor episode. Therefore, the issues which Angie and Lisa have discussed stand out, because we're not thinking,

what if Milos isn't destroyed? We're thinking, gosh, power, might, nasty. Just one second. And then immediately after it, Thucydides launches into the longest single descriptive episode consecutive in his entire surviving work. By the way, not all of it was completed. And what survives is broken off in the middle of a campaign, in the middle of a year. He doesn't finish his war. But at any rate, that Sicilian expedition is, as it were, the answer to, what happens if you think?

Just because you're so strong that you can do pretty much what you were. want you come a cropper. That's where morality comes into the picture. Ah, there go. Because now the Athenians get what's coming to them because of the way they've been behaving. And they were also ignorant as well. Thucydides is very hot on the ignorance of the masses. And the

Melians actually say, or at least Thucydides makes the Melians say, I'm sure that this particular Melian dialogue was almost entirely constructed as a play by Thucydides. Why are you sure of that? Well, I mean, he even gives, he writes it as a a dramatic dialogue in a play.

He puts you in a million speaking, Athenian speaking and so on. That might be his way of doing it that time. Well, he wasn't there. He didn't hear it. He would have heard the first debate, the Middle Lanayan debate and the Assembly. He wasn't there for this one. I'm just stirring it up.

I know, I know. But the millions, the millions say at one point, they say, well, hang on Athens, you better be a bit careful, just dismissing all talk of justice and fair dealing to those less powerful than you, because one day you might be one of the less powerful people. You might come crashing down and woe betide you.

And then as Paul has said, woe does betide them in the Sicilian expedition. And also woe betides them when they lose the Peloponnesian War. Sparta wins. Why doesn't Sparta do to them what they did to... Obedoside, yes. Well, the Spartans themselves said, and our source is no longer Thucydides, but Xenophon, who actually knew Spartans. He lived in Sparta.

His kids went through the Spartan education system. they said the reason they didn't destroy it. It would be wrong for them to destroy a city that had saved or helped to save Hellenism, the Greeks, from the Persian occupation in 484.79. So Athens's record as a beacon of Hellenism justified it. I have a little bit more of a cynical view, which is that Sparta included among its alliance two cities which within 10 years are going to revolt against. them, Corinth and Thebes, and if you keep Athens alive under a nasty dictatorship, pro-Spartan, and with a bodyguard and with a garrison on the Acropolis, then Athens is pitifully weak. It has no or very few ships, but it can be a listening post against Thieves and Corinth. In that sense, as it was Athens, could Athens be called the author of its own misfortunes? I certainly think Thucydides presents it that way. I mean, we don't know how his work would have ended, of course, if he had finished it.

Maybe there would have been an Athenian dialogue at the end. Who knows? But he's certainly, in his narrative of the Sicilian expedition where the Athenian troops are at the end massacred as they retreat after having been defeated. He keeps having little echoes of what the Athenians did before, little echoes of Athenian arrogance. And he says things like they had come to enslave others, but now they went away completely defeated.

So he clearly wants the reader to keep in mind how the Athenians had behaved at sort of their bleakest point of defeat. Angie gave us a resumer earlier on, but very quickly, how effective do you think this debate was in the discussion on democracy? Lizzie, you're looking quizzical.

Well, it's a very famous debate, and it was famous already in antiquity. I think more than democracy, it has a lot to say about, power and I think that has fascinated readers always. And Pericles, I mentioned briefly at the beginning, Cleon is a kind of false Pericles. So a reader who'd read what Thucydides wrote about Pericles

and what speeches he'd put in Pericles, then sees Cleon. Angie quoted, Your Empire is a tyranny. Pericles said, your empire is a tyranny in that it's very difficult to manage and you've got to keep it, but it's not a tyranny in it. itself. As well as the relations between power and justice, I think it has lots to tell us about democracy, how democracies can be subverted by demagogues into becoming tyrannies, about how

democratic debate should be conducted, could be conducted, and how democracies themselves, never mind being subverted, can act as tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority, as John Stuart Mill put it. So lots to learn about both democracy and power. Well, thank you very much for going like steam engines. It was terrific. Thank you very much. Thanks to Angie Hobbs, Lisa Howe and Paul Cartley's next week. It's Doggerland, the vast area now covered by the North Sea,

which was on some ideal home for Stone Age humans until the waters rose and Britain was cut off. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. That's great. There you see.

You're still on. You're still on. This is the pod. Every word you say now is going to go on the same thing and then whizz around the world. So what did we miss out? We missed out discussing how Thucydides says he writes his speeches. He says that he, as far as possible, tries to go along with the gist of the main things that each speaker said, but he also puts into their mouths what he felt was appropriate to the occasion. It sounds like I wouldn't want a journalist to me.

So... He says necessary, and the question is what does that mean, necessary to convince Thucydides, who's a peculiarly skeptical listener, or necessary given the person speaking, given the audience to which that person was speaking, and given the circumstances in which that speech was delivered. We don't know the answer.

It's a very unbivocal sentence. He is full of such ambiguity. And it's kept Thucydides scholars in work ever since. It's a good thing about it. There's even a question whether he was a historian and there's a famous article by French historian called Nicolaureau. You see, did, not a colleague. He's not a historian like you and me, post-19th century scientific historian.

He's much more of a literary artist and a sort of dramatist and a philosopher and all that sort of stuff, but you wouldn't see him sitting in the desk next to you in the Bodleian library. Well, they haven't invented history yet. So how could he be? Well, I would disagree with that, but we can have a little go about. As a layperson. You've been banging on about it for the last three questions, very eloquently.

Do you don't believe anything he said? You meet for discussion and your colleagues meet for books for centuries. I think that's a fair reaction, actually, to our way of putting it. But we are, of course, within a particular French. So Thucydides' authority is a major issue. And because we do actually have a much later source called Diodorus, he covered the whole of the same period. How much later was it?

His first century, BC. But Theodorus says he wants the romantic and mythic element. No, no. Just a second. He was centuries on Thucydides. Four centuries later. But what I mean is that we do have another source. Four centuries later, we're talking about Thucydides was there in it.

He was a general, a rotten general, but a general. But he was very aware that. Even if you are there, you can't always remember, and your memory is selective. But I think the shades of opinion between the three of us are really good repress, because I think he does put speeches into people's mouths, and he does exercise a lot of artistic sculpting, but I also think he's pretty accurate on a lot of things. You're a fair bit more sceptical than me,

and you're probably somewhere in the middle. And I think the three of us are such a really good representative sample of different ways of intemper, Someone recently, when I told them I was going on this programme, said, I do not believe diodotus ever existed. I believe he is the Thucydidean in French. Well, I disagree violently with that because that would undermine his authority. Because people who read...

Because if you're reading him and you know that there was no such person who addressed... He was an official. It's clear he was an official and he was... Cleon, what we didn't put in, we didn't have time, is Cleon makes lots of... a preemptive strikes against Deodotus about, oh, you know, people who try and persuade you out of your original decision have been bribed

to do so. And it was officials who would be bribed. So Deodotus was probably an Athenian official. I completely agree. A very good article suggested is either one of the generals, and we don't know the names of seven of the ten in that four to seven, or he was one of the ten treasurers

who would handle the imperial finance. They had to be very, very rich. Lisa, you'll be on this. Yes, no, I do think he existed. But we don't know anything about him from any other sources. So he clearly wasn't a major figure at the time. Why did Thucydides choose to give us this particular speech? Well, maybe because the auditor spoke to this effect.

But it could also be that Thucydides wanted a speech like this in there. And he thought, who can I use to present this speech? I can't use one of the really well-known politicians. Everybody knows they wouldn't say that. I will choose the auditors because no one remembers what he said anyway. Yes, excellent. And no laws of libel at the time. There were.

No, it was. It's good to be wrong sometimes. One thing I didn't mention is that an assembly meeting after the religious ritual starts with the herald of the people announcing on a particular agenda item, who wishes to speak. And this is so unlike most oligarchic assemblies where it's all worked out beforehand, who's going to speak, who's going to be allowed to speak. Athenian Assembly potentially was catastrophically disordered.

And so he may well have been, as Lisa says, one of the, you know, also spoke. Yeah. But you can, you get to the stage where you can make anything more want of futility and therefore he amounts to nothing in a way, doesn't he? No, no, you know. Well, you now change your, it's only water. No, but as a philosopher, a moralist. He is a historian. He is a historian.

He does. He is a different kind of historian. He's a different kind of historic section. Can't you accept there are different kinds of historians from your good selves? Of course. And what I'd say, you said there was no such thing as history. Herodotus sets out what he understands his project to be and how you go about it. And he's got a rank order of types of evidence.

And he calls this project Historia. Thucydides, because he's not going to accept that he's merely Herodotus' successor. He is actually. He uses a different word zetesis, which is like a forensic inquiry, a litigation bit of research. I wasn't accusing you being historian. I was just using the word to sort of bring, bring.

Well, you took against us. So fiercely. No, that's a fair distinction. I mean, Aristotle, he goes back to Aristotle, historian, rubbish. It only tells you what else you buy these things and what happened to him. It's an absolute pleasure, re sort of. of re-engaging with Thucydides, who I last read in entirety, you know, many years ago.

I've absolutely loved it. I'm currently writing an article on this. Just so enjoyable. Very debate. Fabulous. Everybody listening goes and reads Thucydides. Time well spent. Absolutely.

Why do you break up so abruptly in the middle of such a week? Well, we think he probably just died. But it literally breaks. In other words, the grammar of the last sentence is incomplete. There were lots of stories about him being murdered and things, aren't there? And there's a story that his daughter, he had a daughter, was actually one who saw it through the press, if I can use that anachronistic way of putting it.

Through the Paris roll. Some people think Thucydides' daughter is absolutely, like Milton's daughters with Paradise Lost, absolutely key figure, but for her... We all have daughters. Sometimes... I agree. I'm entirely keen on my daughter as well. That's a good title for a novel, isn't it?

Cucydides's daughter. Somebody should write it right. now. Well, someone suggested she wrote the last bit of it. It breaks off, but that she cobbled that last bit together. What's more reliable? I mean, what's more reliable? You're looking at that stage. Let's assume there was a debate. You accept that. It lasted two. I'm just, I'm not being silly. I'm trying to get to the basis. There was a debate. It lasted two days. There were speakers four, which went one way, and against, which went the other way. Now, you've been very good.

I mean, it's been brilliant listening to you about... I don't like that word, but it has been, never mind. I listened to you about Eucydides. But what other sources would you use that are better than him for the time? I don't think I can find any of that are better. I mean, I would use Diodorus, Siculus as well. Four Athenians followed Thucydides.

His work breaks off. Xenophon, I mentioned. Three others continued him. None of them went back. To 431 BC to do it all over again. And to me, that suggests they thought he'd done a pretty good job because they would have been alive. They would have known the truth of this.

I think a lot of the speeches, you know, are maybe a lot of illiterary embellishment, but I think in terms of factual narrative, I have a lot of faith in it. No, I have complete faith in there being two debates, one on the first day where they decided to destroy Midalina and one on the second day where they decided, day where they decided not to.

But I'm not sure I trust that these speeches or anything much like them were actually given. Or anything much like them. Oh, wow, fighting talk. That's a huge thing. You mean so? Cleon didn't say that's... I have no idea what Cleon said or anyone else.

Well, I would agree with that because how long does it take to recite those six chapters? Probably longer than the audience is willing to listen. Because if you think the assembly's got to be over in the of daylight. They're in a war. They're cooped up. So there's not a real restriction as there would be in winter. So it could be six hours. You could have. Presumably this was the only item on the agenda, whereas a normal assembly meeting would have religious matters, this matter,

that matter, you know, so there would be a whole range of issues. This is presumably just this. But Lisa's perilously near saying you just don't believe that anything they said was accurate. It was he made the lot of. I don't think we can check. This is the thing. I don't think we have any chance of ever knowing what was said on those two days. All we can say is what Thucydides reports. But you weren't... You started from the beginning. Was there a Cleon?

Yes. Oh, yes. He was a lot of sources for Cleon. He was a demagogue. He was absolutely a very part of the... And was there a debate saying we should send their ships to... Yes. And that's a start, isn't it?

Oh, absolutely. And Aristophanes gives us also a very unfavourable view of Cleop. Thucydides might be a bit biased against Cleon because Cleon might have been one of the people who forced him into exile after he failed to save Amphiphylus in 424. But I don't think ever anywhere you will read a more scathing and brilliant portrayal of a demagogue ever.

But in Aristotovny's knights, there's a character who represents Cleon. He's called a jag-toothed monster. And there's a story, whether true or not, that Cleon took Aristophanesophon. to court in some context for, as you say, slander. I wouldn't like to try to prove that at this time. Thank you very much.

I think a producer is pawing at the door, Simon. To your coffee. I'm going to have enough. Thank you so much. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. We all live in a digital world. How we work, how we play, the way we live, navigate the world, morals, laws, memories. Even how we generate a thought and we share it with someone, these are all filtered,

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