The Thucydides virus continues to spread through British political culture, and has inevitably made the jump from the naturally-susceptible Conservatives (cf. the statistics on the number of MPs with classical degrees) to the wider population. On Monday, Ian Blackford of the SNP came out with a bit of Pericles in the House of Commons: “Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it” – no, not the most exciting or original quote, but it’s normally the preserve of the E”R”G Sparts, not least because of its association with the Bomber Command Memorial, and a few years ago any sort of classical reference in the House of Commons would have been greeted with mockery. And yesterday Nick Clegg read a substantial portion of the same Funeral Oration as part of the memorial service for Paddy Ashdown in Westminster Abbey. I fear that my new paper for History & Policy on the use and abuse of Thucydides in political commentary has come too late to serve as any sort of vaccine…
The obvious reason for including Pericles in Ashdown’s commemoration is his own fondness for it; he included it as one of his choices for With Great Pleasure in 2015 (programme not currently available, but here’s the link for completeness’ sake) and it also appears in a blog post of his favourite quotations from 2016. Interestingly, he read it at the memorial service for the Lib Dem politician Lord Holme of Cheltenham back in 2008. Google hasn’t thrown up an older reference yet, but the jury’s out on whether that is where Ashdown first encountered the text, or whether it was actually his suggestion. It is notable that the version read by Clegg yesterday, an edited version of Rex Warner’s 1954 translation, is identical in every respect to the version from Paddy Ashdown’s Quote Book, except that Ashdown listed it as ‘Pericles’ Funeral Oration’ under ‘Thucydides’, whereas the order of service has it as ‘Funeral oration attributed to Pericles (c 495–29 BC)’ with no mention of Thucydides, simultaneously raising doubt as to whether these really are the words of Pericles and obscuring the identity of the alternative author. Odd.
Of course, it’s not just that Ashdown was fond of the piece; it is also, clearly, a suitable text for a memorial service, prompting listeners to associate Pericles’ praise of Athens with the political values of the man being commemorated: democracy, liberality and tolerance, generosity, public service. It’s entirely understandable also that the text should be edited, to reduce it to a manageable length for the purpose, and to remove the bits that are irrelevant (discussion of Athenian empire isn’t really to the point) or potentially disturbing (the whole ‘lovers of the city’ thing). As you’ll see below, I’ve added the missing text (in bold) to the version as delivered; the first paragraph is a decent example of how to extract a usable personal eulogy out of a historical document produced in a very different context.
However… De mortuis nil nisi bonum and all that, but some of the other excisions are more puzzling, if not revealing; the crucial question, for which further research will be required, is whether this version is the only one that Ashdown knew (having perhaps first encountered it at Lord Holme’s funeral, prepared for the purpose by someone else) or whether he actually produced it himself from the full Warner text. In other words, whose political values are these? I don’t have time to go through the whole thing – as I said, it’s all here for anyone who fancies it – but a couple of things immediately struck me: the removal of all the references to poverty being no bar to serving the state, wealth as something to be properly used rather than boasted about, people staying out of politics regarded as having no business here rather than minding their own business, and the need for prudent thought before action.
Those who will never forgive the Lib Dems for their participation in the coalition government may at this point start muttering about the neoliberal reading of Pericles, with all that social justice and equality stuff removed; and certainly, in the unlikely event of a Labour grandee following through on the ‘for the many not the few’ stuff and choosing to have a bit of Thucydides at their funeral, many of the bits edited out here are precisely those that you’d want to emphasise. But even if you buy that, some of these choices just seem odd; why would a man whose career was devoted to public service, first in the army and then in politics, not want to have a dig at those who just carp from the sidelines? It does incline me to think that this bowdlerisation may not be the work of Ashdown himself…
But given that Thucydides/Pericles is now being quoted with equal fervour by those who want to defend parliamentary sovereignty and those who want to defend parliamentary sovereignty in the abstract so long as parliament doesn’t try to do anything they don’t like, this is perhaps one more bit of evidence for the endless malleability of the work.
***
Pericles’ Funeral Oration (extracts), as read at Lord Ashdown’s memorial service (see https://www.westminster-abbey.org/media/12649/paddy-ashdown-service.pdf):
I have no wish to make a long speech on subjects familiar to you all so I shall say nothing about the warlike deeds by which we acquired our power or the battles in which we or our fathers gallantly resisted our enemies, Greek or foreign. What I want to do is, in the first place, to discuss the spirit in which we faced our trials and also our constitution and the way of life which has made us great. After that I shall speak in praise of the dead, believing that this kind of speech is not inappropriate to the present occasion, and that this whole assembly, of citizens and foreigners, may listen to it with advantage.
Let me say that our system of Government does not copy the institutions of our neighbours. It is more the case of our being a model to others, than of our imitating anyone else. Our constitution is called a democracy, because power is in the hands, not of a minority, but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it is a question of responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability that a man possesses. No one, so long as he has it in him to be of service to the state, is kept in political obscurity because of poverty. And just as our political life is free and open, so is our day-to-day life in our relations with each other. We do not get into a state with our next-door neighbour if he enjoys himself in his own way, nor do we give him the kind of black looks which, though they do no real harm, still do hurt people’s feelings. We are free and tolerant in our private lives; but in public affairs, we keep to the law. This is because it commands our deep respect. We give our obedience to those whom we put in positions of authority, and we obey the laws themselves, especially those which are for the protection of the oppressed and those unwritten laws which it is an acknowledged shame to break.
Omits two entire sections, 2.38-9, which continue the theme of the exemplary private lives of the Athenians followed by a eulogy to their open society, and argues that their full strength has never yet been tested.
Our love of what is beautiful does not lead to extravagance; our love of the things of the mind does not make us soft.
Omits a substantial amount from this section, including: We regard wealth as something to be properly used, rather than as something to boast about. As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it: the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it. Here each individual is interested not only in his own affairs but in the affairs of the state as well: even those who are mostly occupied with their own business are extremely well-informed on general politics – this is a peculiarity of ours: we do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all… We do not think there is an incompatibility between words and deeds; the worst thing is to rush into action before the consequences have been properly debated… Others are brave out of ignorance; and, when they stop to think, they begin to fear. But the man who can most be accounted brave is he who best knows the meaning of what is sweet in life and what is terrible, and then goes out undeterred to meet what is to come.
Again, in questions of general good feeling there is a great contrast between us and most other people. We make friends by doing good to others, not by receiving good from them. This makes our friendship all the more reliable, since we want to keep alive the gratitude of those who are in our debt by showing continued goodwill to them; whereas the feelings of one who owes us something lack the same enthusiasm, since he knows that, when he repays our kindness, it will be more like paying back a debt than giving something spontaneously. We are unique in this. When we do kindnesses to others, we do not do them out of any calculation of profit or loss; we do them without afterthought, relying on our free liberality. Taking everything together then, I declare that our city is an education to Greece, and I declare that in my opinion, each single one of our citizens, in all the manifold aspects of life, is able to show himself the rightful lord and owner of his own person, and do this, moreover, with exceptional grace and exceptional versatility.
Stops here, in the middle of 2.41.
Funeral oration attributed to Pericles (c 495–29 BC). Rex Warner’s version
Sphinx 
Your History and Policy paper was very stimulating, something to be learnt in each section of Thucydides that you discuss.
Since the Melian dialogue often gets excess attention I was pleased that you gave equal billing to the Mytilene policy debate.
Introducing the protagonists to that debate, you observe “It is notable that neither speaker offers any arguments grounded in ethics, only pragmatism.” And it seems quite evident that the discussion largely focusses on the expected impact of the decision on the power and influence of Athens. This is no debate around ethical nuance.
But I wanted to ask if I was mistaken in detecting a clear ethical assumption behind this incident. Both speakers seem to accept that a notion of fairness should be taken into account when deciding state policy. In fact, when introducing the circumstances of the debate, Thucydides states explicitly that people were concerned that ” a decree which doomed the destruction not only of the guilty but a whole city, was cruel and monstrous”. (3:36:4 ). I don’t have access to your preferred translation, so I’m using Jowett. I take it that a key term here is ‘aitious’ and translators and dictionary seem to agree that this has an ethical weight
Even the more bloodthirsty Cleon accepts that “mercy should be reserved for the merciful” (3:40:3); and Diodotus specifically rejects the idea that people who did not take part in the rebellion should be killed: to do so “would be a crime” (3:47:3).
Again, I don’t want to argue that the ethics of the killing is the main focus; indeed much of the interest in the debate lies in the fact that so called “pragmatic” argument can lead to quite different policy prescriptions. But reading it I did get the strong impression that everyone shared an assumption that fairness should not be violated. Differing interpretations of what was fair under the circumstances, were of course, very much in dispute.
Many thanks for such a substantial and thoughtful comment. Obviously the constraints of the format – the whole of Thucydides and his reception in 3,000 words! – meant that arguments had to be very compressed and nuance tended to go out of the window. In general, I tend to follow Clifford Orwin’s reading of the Mytilene Debate, at least in its broad outline, and so that’s the core of what I presented here; his reading is of course much more complex than the simple insistence on the absence of ethical grounding, and given more space so would mine be…
I think the critical point about 3.36.4 is that this is about the Athenians in general, not the speakers; I tend to rely on Mynott, who has “savage and extreme decision”, but in any translation it’s clear that the citizens are having second thoughts about whether they’ve over-reacted, because the nature of the punishment they’ve decreed starts to seem too harsh and unjust. So, clearly this *is* an ethical question (as well as an emotional one), and I would see that line as Thucydides emphasising how he is framing the episode.
Because, of course, that contrasts sharply with the way both speakers go about their arguments. The fact that Cleon is a hard-headed pragmatist is familiar enough, expressly urging the Athenians to “put aside questions of fairness” (3.40.4), and offering the specious consequentialist line that if they don’t punish those who revolt, it suggests that they were right to revolt and hence Athenian rule is unjust. There is, as ever, a translation issue with 3.40.3 – Mynott has “It is right to show pity to the like-minded” – but the real kicker is the rest of the sentence: “not to those who cannot return it but are always and inevitably our enemies”. In other words, *at best* we have an ethics based on whether or not the other person involved is our friend and/or can benefit us, which takes us back to pragmatism.
Diodotus is the interesting case, as Orwin argues, because this is where we *would* expect ethical arguments in favour of sparing the Mytileneans, but we don’t really get them. Translation questions again; 3.47.3 is “you will be guilty of killing your benefactors” in Mynott, which looks more like Cleon’s pragmatism than anything else, and the rest of the sentence and the following ones is all about the practical disadvantages of massacring everyone. The concluding sentence of 3.47.5: “Cleon’s claim that this particular punishment is both just and expedient is invalidated because the combination is in this case impossible”. That is, Diodotus agrees (or says he agrees) that it is perfectly just to kill all rebels; he simply doesn’t think it is expedient…
Many thanks: that’s great. I’ll try and get through the gauntlet of gatekeepers and read Orwin.
For the moment, on Cleon, I’d simply add the impression that tho’ he would “like” to make a purely utilitarian argument, he appears to understand that his audience won’t accept a proposal wholly divorced from a sense of fairness.
And for Diodotus, you are quite right to point to 3.47.5 as a difficulty; from my perspective he could have claimed that only killing the guilty was indeed both just and expedient. More broadly his speech reinforces a suspicion that as an argument gets more granular, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between “enlightened self interest” and “genuine benevolence”.