Sphinx

I do it to myself, I do – but WHY can’t people provide references to their sources? I’ve just spent over half an hour tracking down a couple of Thucydides quotes which, as is often the case, weren’t immediately familiar but looked plausible. Now, if someone is citing the Melian Dialogue, it’s understandable why they might not bother to give the precise reference, since everybody already knows it – but when clearly the whole point is that this isn’t a well-known line but a newly-extracted bit of wisdom and enlightenment that others won’t have heard before..?

It started, as always, on the Twitter: “One has to behave as friend or foe according to the circumstances. Thucydides”. What’s interesting about this one is that searching for the exact quote initially yielded just three Google results, whereas normally one finds that such words of wisdom already appear on forty-odd quote sites, all obviously scraping data from one another, and an assortment of motivational posters. This at least suggested that the search for the source would be relatively short. It appears, in a discussion of diplomacy, in two editions of a textbook on World Politics, without any reference (but with Thucydides introduced as “realist theoretician”). Modern works do get referenced (and I briefly wondered whether the one cited in the same paragraph might be the source; no such luck), which perhaps suggests an interesting attitude to citation (ancient authors are dead so it doesn’t matter??) but probably just reflects the lack of references in what’s almost certainly the source: Diplomat’s Dictionary, by Chas. W. Freeman Jr., 1994 (National Defense University Press, Washington DC), which offers a selection of different quotes, all of them unreferenced, under different topic headings (this Thucydides quote is used for ‘Demeanor’).

Searching for the exact quote having reached its limit as regards trying to confirm whether or not this might be genuine Thucydides, I switched to the more laborious process of looking for combinations of key words. This did indeed confirm the authenticity of the line, from 6.85.1: “Circumstances determine who is friend and foe”, and assorted variants. It’s the Athenian ambassador speaking at Camarina, answering the arguments of the Syracusans – and so one has to say that Freeman’s implied reading is somewhat dubious, as this isn’t remotely about appearing friendly or hostile while pursuing a consistent foreign policy, but rather altering that policy according to changing circumstances. That’s something which the World Politics Book gets right, so perhaps they are not drawing on Freeman after all.

Freeman includes three other Thucydides quotes, likewise unreferenced, but likewise – as I can confirm after laborious searching – genuine. “Nothing is unreasonable if it is useful”, which gets no Google hits at all but is 6.85.1 again – and again this could do with a bit of context, given that the Athenian ambassador expressly offers this as a summary of the right policy for imperial states, perhaps not the message that Freeman intends to convey. A long quote from the Lacedaemonian ambassadors after Pylos (4.19.1, Crawley version). Finally, “He passes through life most securely who has least reason to reproach himself with complaisance toward his enemies” which does get widely cited (without reference, of course), as in the 1997 Joint Doctrine for Operations Security issued by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (which is full of gratuitous quotes from Thucydides, Sun Tzu and Machiavelli – B.A. Friedman (@BA_Freidman) tells me that this is completely typical for Joint pubs, perhaps because a common store of Ancient Wisdom helps smooth over inter-service rivalries); it’s the wordy and arguable Crawley version of 1.34.

This does strike me as a really odd selection Freeman. Thucydides is full of suitable quotes about inter-state relations, policy and the conduct of embassies, none of which (apart from the Melian Dialogue) would be obviously more or less problematic when decontextualised and offered as timeless wisdom to professional diplomats – so why these three passages, and only these three? One wonders whether there is a link to the specifically American practice of handing ambassadorial positions to people whose qualifications are limited to connections and money – in which case, given recent pronouncements from the British Foreign Secretary, maybe I need to write an equivalent UK-centric volume for ambassadors with no diplomatic experience. Still, why Camarina, where the Athenians were being even less diplomatic than they were at Melos..?

It is striking how much difference can be made by minor variations in search terms. While writing up this blog post, I did another search for the quote, but this time including only the first eight words – and this produced a fourth result, taking things in a completely different direction. In 1985, Narasingha Prosad Sil published Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra: A Comparative Study (Academic Publishers: Calcutta & New Delhi), exploring a Sanskrit treatise on statecraft and strategy that dates from some time between the 2nd century BCE and the 3rd century CE, and comparing its ideas to Plato, Aristotle and Machiavelli – not least to provide an introduction to those thinkers for Indian readers. Thucydides is mentioned in a brief discussion about Machiavelli’s classical influences: a line from Euripides, and then “The Greek historian, Thucydides, said that ‘nothing is unreasonable if it is useful’, and that ‘one has to behave as friend or foe according to circumstances’.”

Sil does give his sources; not Thucydides, but the place where he found the reference: a discussion of Hindu Politics in Italian by Benoy Kumar Sarkar, first published in installments in the Indian Historical Quarterly (1925-6) and then as a brochure (Calcutta, 1926), which surveys different Italian accounts of Indian political thought, including an article by one Giovanni Bottazzi, published in the Annali della R. Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Filosofia e Filologia 26 (1915), on ‘Precursori di Niccolo Machiavelli in India ed in Grecia: Kautilya e Tucidide’. Bottazzi’s basic argument is that allegedly ‘modern’ political arguments are in fact found in ancient texts; Kautilya is the ‘spokesman’ for ancient India, at least as far as practical affairs are concerned, in the way that Thucydides represents ancient Greece. Asarkar notes, Bottazzi doesn’t actually say much about Machiavelli; rather, he focuses on the affinities between the two ancient thinkers – without ever suggesting that Kautilya knew Thucydides – with respect to ideas of human nature, self-interest, determinism and so forth. It’s in the chapter on self-interest that Bottazzi includes 6.85.1 among many other illustrative passages, which Sarkar then highlights to emphasise the point:

To T’s idea that anybody who opposes you is your enemy and that to gain one’s ends one should even praise one’s enemy and go so far as to make alliance with him or that nothing is unreasonable if it is useful and that one has to behave as friend or foe according to circumstances (I, 43, I, 82, 1, III, 9, 1, VI, 16, 4, VI, 85, etc.) Kautilya and Kamandaki can furnish a host of parallels. One may cite the Hindu doctrine of the sadguna (six expedients) for one.

Sarkar’s account is not uninformed or uncritical; he notes that, where Bottazzi emphasises the parallels between T’s and K’s attitudes towards monarchical rule, the former was writing in a context where such rule was the exception, whereas in the world of the Arthasastra popular or democractic rule was purely theoretical speculation. But overall, while he does not offer any clear judgement, he seems to accept much of the parallels that Bottazzi puts forward. To quote the final two paragraphs of the review:

The Kautilya-Thucydidean philosophy would not be pleasant, says B., to the inert idler who under the atmosphere of Christian pessimism lives and preaches the cult of pacifism, nor to the cowardly who dare not rise against the dictates of destiny with an iron will. But it is a fountain of inspiration to the normal human beings fortifying him with the value of self-importance and moral responsibility and encouraging him to develop his immortal energies in the pursuit of his mission as padrone dell’universo (master of the world).

Bottazzi nowhere mentions Nietzsche, but it is evident that if Nietzsche had lived long enough to be acquainted with Kautilya’s vijigisu (aspirant to conquest) and caturanta or sarva-bhauma (world ruler) his crusade against the slave mentality as engendered by Christianity would have been tremendously reinforced. As it is, Nietzschism has encountered a powerful support in the ideas of this Italian scholar.

This seems to be supported by the conclusion of Sarkar’s survey of different Italian discussions of ancient Indian political thought, which gives a better sense (to an ignorant amateur like me) of his broader agenda:

The tendency is very manifest among the Italian scholars to attribute “modern” ideas to the Hindu texts.” If by “modern” they do not mean anything later than, say, 1700, or, at any rate, if they do not include the tenets and ideals of social thought as developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries their position would the main appear to be acceptable. Otherwise the trend of their writings can lead but to the formulation of a “vague universal” or “eternal human nature” in which 1925 A.C. should seem to be as simple, young and elemental as 1925 B. C. But this is an absolutely wrong sociology, failing, as it does, to give due weight to the epochal momentums in historic and philosophic experience. And although one may argue that there is nothing new under the sun such an interpretation of culture-history would remain blind to the objective progress of the world achieved cumulatively in thought and deed through the ages.

But the Leitmotif of these Indic researches in Italy militates, unconsciously, perhaps, against the Hegelian dogma of an alleged distinction in “spirit” between the East and the West. And from this standpoint Italian scholarship is to be appreciated as a great ally of Young Asia in the risorgimento of social science.

It’s another of those rabbit-holes; I don’t remotely have time to look further into the uses of Thucydides as a comparitor for Indian political thought, or to consider the possible influence of the image of Pericles as the wise ruler on Sarkar’s admiration for Nazism and call for a fascist dictatorship to be established in India.

The question remains as to why Freeman should have quoted the very same two lines from Thucydides 6.85.1 as Sarkar. Is it a coincidence that he cites Kautilya on nine occasions? It’s not clear from his bibliography where he might have found those quotes (Sarkar isn’t listed, and nor is any other work on Indian thought) – but as a career diplomat he did serve in India…

And all this to establish that some quotations genuinely came from Thucydides.