Increasingly, the most interesting aspect of investigating fake or dubious Thucydides quotes on the internet is not establishing their fakeness (Morley’s Law: the majority of quotations attributed to Thucydides on the internet fall into one of three categories: not quite what he said, not really what he meant, or not actually Thucydides at all) but exploring the processes by which anyone came to believe in them in the first place, and what this tells us about the cultural image of Thucydides. I’m grateful to @regponciano over on the Twitter for bringing a quote from a blog by one Steve Fuller on Post-Truth and the STS Symmetry Principle to my attention:
While it is possible to defer democracy by trying to deflect attention from the naked power dynamics, as Latour does, with fancy metaphysical diversions and occasional outbursts in high dudgeon, those are leonine tactics that only serve to repress STS’s foxy roots. In 2017, we should finally embrace our responsibility for the post-truth world and call forth our vulpine spirit to do something unexpectedly creative with it.
The hidden truth of Aude sapere (Kant’s ‘Dare to know’) is Audet adipiscitur (Thucydides’ ‘Whoever dares, wins’).
Total bollocks – obviously I’m talking about that final sentence – but it turns out to be interesting total bollocks. No, it isn’t Thucydides, and not just because he didn’t write in Latin. “Who dares wins” is of course the motto of the Special Air Service, later adopted by similar forces in other countries, and a brief internet search suggests that the motto was invented – in English – by its founder, David Stirling, early in WWII. But clearly that’s an inadequate pedigree for many people, hence not only the Latinised version (which is scarcely mentioned on the internet before 2008 or so, and then largely in discussions about the best way to translate the SAS motto into Latin for a tattoo or, heaven help us, an inscribed sword) but also the suggestion on the rather lame Wikipedia page that the sentiment of the motto at least can be traced back further:
An early statement of the idea is ‘τοῖς τολμῶσιν ἡ τύχη ξύμφορος’ (“fortune favours the bold”) from the Ancient Greek soldier and historian Thucydides.
Again, nope. Once you strip out all the sites that simply reproduce this Wikipedia passage without attribution, there isn’t a lot of support for this. The Greek Army Aviation Centre has apparently adopted a version of it as their motto (I can’t be bothered at this point to try and work out when they did this; the Centre was founded under that name in 1961, but I don’t know whether they adopted the emblem at that point, or later, or took it over from a previous organisation), but otherwise the main discussion is on a translation forum, with someone looking for a source for the quote (for a tattoo, again) and being told that it’s actually from Aeneid 10.284, “audentes fortuna iuvat” – which is true, except that Turnus actually used the singular, audentis. Oddly, the Wikipedia page on this phrase thinks it comes from line 344, but it does supply the further information that this and other variants come originally from Terence’s Phormio, in the form “Fortes fortuna adiuvat”.
It seems unlikely in the extreme that these modern attempts to link Thucydides and the SAS have very deep historical roots – but this isn’t the first time that the connection has been made. In 1566, when the Turks were threatening Venetian territories, one Bernardino Rocca urged the Governor-General of Venice to draw the lesson from, among other examples, Alcibiades’ speech urging the attack on Syracuse, “che la fortuna favorisce i coraggiosi”, that fortune favours the brave (noted in Kinch Hoekstra’s excellent chapter on ‘Thucydides and the bellicose beginnings of modern political theory’ in the invaluable collection on Thucydides and the Modern World edited by Harloe and Morley, p. 30).
Rocca’s book, Imprese, strategemi et errori militari (loosely, Actions, Strategems and Military Errors) looks to be well worth exploring for further possible references to Thucydidean military exempla, if I had the time to work through C16 Italian; for the moment, I would simply note that at this point, at least, the focus is on Alcibiades’ argument as an example of strategic boldness, rather than the Sicilian Expedition as the epitome of ‘Who dares, needs to be very lucky…’ Which might not make for such a good tattoo.
Further thoughts: obviously certain sorts of people would be entirely happy with the SAS symbol and original motto in English… Having it put into Latin or Greek sets up a distance from the original while keeping the sentiment – how far does it retain a military association, given the wider habit of adopting Greek (or ‘Greek’) symbols and phrases to assert a link with the Spartans?
Sphinx 
Thanks for this, which is very interesting on many different levels! It reminds me of the good old days when scholars argued over Jacques Derrida’s fake philology — even before the era of ‘fake news’! I will try to credit you in my book on ‘Post-Truth’.
Thank you for responding. I’d be very interesting to know how you came across, or came up with, that ‘Thucydides’ reference – and also whether you engage more widely with his work in considering post-truth, especially given his account of the collapse of agreed meaning and shared values under conditions of factionalism and conflict.
To be honest, that Latin attribution to Thucydides comes from something a Latin teacher said 40+ years ago in explaining popularity of the slogan in military services across many countries. He seemed to think it was ‘made for export’ Thucydides. I crafted the sentence you highlighted to make a striking point, which I notice your original interlocutor on Twitter understood. I didn’t anticipate that a Thucydides scholar like you would also find it interesting! My book on post-truth doesn’t deal with Thucydides any further, but now that you mention it, I do wonder whether his own works might not be regarded as ‘fake news’ in terms of their empirical content…
There are readings of Thucydides that see him twisting facts to support his own agenda, namely defending Pericles from accusations that he was ultimately to blame for Athens’ defeat. I’m more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, and to see him as someone who sought to understand phenomena like populism, the crisis of democratic deliberation and post-truth.
If anybody told me yesterday that my little tweet would spark a discussion between two respected scholars (and get them to know each other) and a change in a Steve Fuller book, I would not have believed it. My apologies to both of you. To Professor Morley for the tone of my first reply, I really thought I was responding to a random bot; to Professor Fuller for my “not really a fan” remark. Please consider that I sent the tweet at 2 a.m, half asleep. This exchange between you really made my day. Finally, yes, the phrase was great and I hope Professor Fuller can find a way to rewrite it for his book in a way that keeps the original spirit.
Well, @thucydiocy isn’t exactly a Bot, not least because I lack the skill to programme one properly, but it isn’t a proper twitter account account as it’s simply dedicated to correcting Thucydides misquotations – so your reaction was entirely understandable.
I seem to recall, from school days in the 70s, reading Thucydides in translation, encountering the notion that Fortune favours the bold, in relation to the dazzling, harum-scarum, ex tempore military exploits of Brasidas, Spartan captain and field commander extraordinaire. Where I went to school, if you did not include, in the bonus marks section of our internal examinations in Ancient History, (in your selection of the 1st XV of the Ancient Greek world) Brasidas as open-side flanker, no bonus marks would be awarded at all. Either of Demosthenes the orator or Demosthenes the general were acceptable in the front row, while it was more or less mandatory to pick a tricky little bastard like Alcibiades or Ulysses at 5/8. Each selection had to be accompanied by a brief justification with reference to earlier form.
Perhaps I misremember a supposed reference to Fortune and her attitude regarding boldness in Thucydides. Rather than relying upon the attitude of a deity, I much prefer to rely on the analysis offered by Machiavelli as to the reality of the practical benefit achieved by seizing the initiative. The two ideas are certainly related, but by no means identical.
Many thanks for this. The idea certainly fits Brasidas, and I can easily I shine someone paraphrasing those sections of Thucydides and using the phrase. I haven’t found it in any translation yet – I don’t suppose you recall which one you used? – and certainly I can’t find the Greek phrase that supposedly comes from Thucydides anywhere. So it’s possible that the idea *does* come from Thucydides (or at least is found there), but the main tradition is Latin, and then more recently someone decided to produce their own Thucydidean version by translating back into Greek… But proving a negative is basically impossible, and I’m still open to someone identifying an actual line in the text which would fit this.
Well, now that I have spent a good part of Saturday afternoon shuffling through internet pages by (at Project Gutenberg) or about Thucydides, and fruitlessly trying to find archives or listings of old reading lists, I can readily see that my vague recollections cited above are more than likely vague for the good reason that Th. was not the source after all.
Firstly, I found discussion of Thucydides’ claims to being impartial, and, to put it in our terms, naturalistic, in his account. References to deities don’t fit so well with such an approach. Even metaphorical references to lesser and probably inchoate divine personalities such as Fortune seem unlikely.
Secondly, it seems quite likely that the source of my likely mis-recollection lies somewhere in the nexus of education at the hands of the Marist Brothers, a French Catholic order (even the most rough and ready of whom, as some of them were, at the very least had Latin), and the culture of a boys’ boarding school where classical notions of virtue, civic and martial, were frequently invoked to inspire achievement and the development of character, with a particular emphasis on efforts on the rugby pitch. A couple of them made frequent reference to classical example. One especially valued any reference to the mental and physical toughness expected not only in the ranks, but also by the best leaders of themselves. I now think it likely the line first came to me from him. Your Latin versions ring bells with me, but the Greek version you cite does not.
I only read the earliest part of the text today, regarding the early history of the Athenians and others in Attica and the region. He seems very concerned to take a comprehensive approach to traditions and received understandings about the development of the region. His tone seems not at all fanciful, but self-consciously concerned to provide a sensible account. I can readily believe he did not lapse into telling a colourful tale involving deities or gratuitously extemporising on moral themes.
Anyway, I’ll leave you experts to your business. Sorry to butt in…
It’s not “butting in” at all – one of the reasons I write this blog is the hope of engaging with people, and I’m always very happy when someone troubles to comment. I was also interested to hear about your education, and the role of improving classical maxims. My grandmother was always very fond of the story of the Spartan boy and the fox, mainly as reinforcing the principle of children being seen but not heard…
You’re right that Thucydides himself would probably not invoke supernatural forces – though “fortune favours the bold” doesn’t necessarily imply the existence of the goddess, as it could be understood in naturalistic terms. But I still wouldn’t absolutely rule out the possibility that something like this quote has a Thucydidean connection; one of the striking features of his account is the inclusion of speeches, where he more or less puts words into the mouths of key characters – and “fortune favours the bold” is precisely the sort of thing that Brasidas or the like might say when addressing their troops. What then happens with such quotable lines is that they get attributed to Thucydides himself, ignoring the possibility of irony or scepticism.