Sphinx

A country divided; politics becoming ever more partisan and extreme; increasingly violent rhetoric, with knee-jerk defence of your own side and a refusal to accept the slightest possibility that your opponents – now branded as ‘enemies’ or ‘traitors’ – might be speaking or acting in good faith. Not (only) Britain in 2019, or 1930s Germany, but ancient Greece.

In 427 BCE, in the early years of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, civil unrest broke out in Corcyra, on modern Corfu. The ruling party there was happy to be allied to the Athenians, but another group – bribed by foreign powers, according to some accounts – claimed this alliance was effectively slavery, and sought to seize power for themselves. Thucydides, in the third book of his account of the war, describes how legal disputes between the two sides escalated into threats and intimidation, and then violence.

This is one of the less familiar sections of Thucydides, who has lately become an unavoidable presence in British political discourse. It lacks resonant quotations like “For the many, not the few” (the fact that the Labour party got this from Shelley, who may or may not have drawn on Thucydides, doesn’t stop people evoking Thucydides anyway), “Freedom is the sure possession of those who have the courage to defend it” (the Bomber Command Memorial version of the line from Pericles’ Funeral Oration, which is why the ‘Spartans’ of the European Research Group like it), or “The strong do what they want, the weak endure what they must” (timeless, especially since there’s already the example of Yanis Varoufakis using it to characterise dealings with the EU27).

The Corcyrean stasis narrative doesn’t offer an analysis of unbalanced power relations like the Melian Dialogue, equally applicable to the UK negotiating with Europe or Johnson dealing with moderates in his own party, nor does it offer a precedent for legitimately reversing a democratic decision (the Mytilene Debate). There is no powerfully-drawn figure to be claimed as a political hero, like Pericles, and none of the powerful examples of manipulative, populist rhetoric from the likes of Pericles, Cleon and Alcibiades that foreshadow 20^th-century dictators and the present crisis of western democracies.

But this is arguably the most disturbing section of Thucydides’ work, as it shows how political crisis takes on its own dynamic, beyond any individual’s control. The ‘stasis’ at Corcyra is not a one-off event; Thucydides presents it as a case study, the first example of what would become a recurring pattern as the war continued, with even Athens collapsing into self-destructive factionalism in the aftermath of its disastrous expedition against Syracuse. And the episode transcends its immediate historical context, just as Thucydides claimed people would find his work useful because “the human thing” meant that present and future events would resemble those of the past. Later readers have repeatedly felt that they recognised in Corcyra their own situation, from early modern religious and civil conflicts to the French Revolution to the rise of Hitler.

This is the heart of Thucydides’ method, his claim to have written “a possession for ever”. He does not offer a theory of political fragmentation, just as he never offered a theory of international relations or democratic deliberation or war. There is never a suggestion that the Peloponnesian War will offer perfect analogies that explain the present and predict the past; the past remains past, but he offers powerful, multi-layered descriptions of these things, that invite reflection and comparison between past and present.

There had always been divisions in Corcyra, as in any society; between rich and poor and those who claimed to represent them. The wider war in the Greek world brought these divisions to the surface, as Corcyreans argued over whether to ally with different sides, and sought external aid against their enemies. Their motives were as ever mixed: some were driven by ambition, some by personal feuds; some were bribed by a foreign power, or simply saw an opportunity for profit.

The escalating conflict set families against one another; loyalty to one’s own faction trumped any other social tie, and justified any action so long as it harmed the enemy. Corcyra entered a state of what we would now call ‘post-truth’, in which all common ground was lost and everything was judged in partisan terms; “reckless audacity was now thought of as comradely courage, while far-sighted hesitation became well-disguised cowardice”. Leaders adopted slogans like ‘equality for the masses!’ or ‘government of moderation!’, claiming to be working for the public good, while actually rousing people against their enemies.

Most alarming is the fate of those caught in between these ever more extreme, fanatical groups, still seeking compromise or just hoping to keep their heads down – the original Centrist Dads. “Moderation,” Thucydides noted, “was seen as a front for unmanliness, and to understand everything was to accomplish nothing”. The most successful were those who pre-empted their opponents in outrageous acts and found a plausible justification for their actions in the eyes of their group. “The citizens who were in the middle fell prey to both parties, either because they would not take sides or because their very survival was resented”.

Peace returned to Corcyra only with the bloody victory of the populist party and the death or exile of its opponents. The example of Athens, which endured similar elite coups in 411 and 404, shows that democracy could be restored without too much bloodshed – but the after-effects of that experience reverberated for decades, arguably including setting the scene for the trial of Socrates, teacher of some of the leading anti-democratic figures from 404.

We don’t usually turn to Thucydides for optimism or reassurance, however, but for a clear-eyed view of the real state of things; a warning of how easily the shared values, civility and basic good faith of a political community can collapse under pressure. Corcyrean themes find their echo today within both major political parties, as the currently dominant factions seek to silence or drive out their less determined or fanatical opponents, as well as at the national level.

But what if Corcyra is taken not as a warning but a playbook? The most alarming aspect of Dominic Cummings’ well-established admiration for the work – “[I] do not think there is a better book to study than Thucydides as training for politics” – is the possibility that he is pursuing, through Boris Johnson, a Corcyrean strategy of accentuating the divisions in British society. Repetition of populist slogans, attacking the opposition as enemies and traitors, refusing to moderate language, rejecting all criticism as mere partisan carping, disseminating obvious untruths that will nevertheless be repeated by allies and opponents alike, heightening tensions – all with the aim of hollowing out the centre and firing up his faction. As W.H. Auden observed at the outbreak of the Second World War, ‘exiled Thucydides knew…’