A key issue in much work on ‘classical reception’ is the tendency to over-value and over-interpret classical allusions and references. We pounce on every faint echo, because it’s what we’re trained to do and because it’s what we value – without necessarily considering whether it actually matters, or matters very much, or is any more than background cultural noise. And even if the allusion is definitely present, which isn’t always the case, how much can we assume about its meaning for the audience, or its significance in the wider culture? If you regularly search for references to Thucydides on Twitter and other social media, you do get a clear sense that he is a more significant figure than, say, Polybius. But does that make him an all-pervasive influence on modern thinking about war and politics? Not so much.
But occasionally something comes along that does suggest, if not an all-pervasive influence, then at least the assumption on someone’s part that a Thucydides reference is just what’s needed to appeal to a particular audience. This is illustrated by the latest additional to my small collection of what might be called Thucydideana, a full-page advertisement from the February 15 1960 issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology, placed by Space Technology Laboratories Inc. of Los Angeles, the division of Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc. that worked on ICBM development for the US Air Force…
This is… interesting. I don’t profess to have any great knowledge of what attracts highly-qualified scientists into missile research, but until this point I would have assumed it was some combination of lab facilities, money, prospects and location. This suggests an additional concern with freedom – the ability to discuss scientific issues and publish results without having to worry about security restrictions – but that still doesn’t explain why anyone felt that the best way to present this was through a relatively complex take on Thucydides. In the original Greek. I suppose it is more striking than a couple images of rockets or mushroom clouds.
The best sense I can make of this is to assume that Thucydides, and the sentiments of the Periclean funeral oration above all, was indeed well-established as a template for thinking about the Cold War. There’s no explanation of who Thucydides is, no concern about why he should be associated with the idea of an ‘open city’ – the reader’s knowledge is taken for granted, as is their agreement that Thucydides’/Pericles’ words express the ideals of liberal democracy for which we are fighting against the totalitarian, anti-culture Spartans. The only point felt to be in need of explanation and justification is that the peril of our situation means we cannot risk the radical openness of democratic Athens. The advert doesn’t even take the trouble to serve up the predictable ‘happiness depends on freedom, freedom depends on putting your scientific training at the service of the arms race’ line…
The obvious explanation is the power of Great Books programmes in major US universities in this period, as studied by Liz Sawyer (who also makes some interesting points about the issue with which I opened this post). Unlike in the British system, where specialisation begins early, in the US not only Classics students, but any undergraduate – including science majors – might encounter an edited, carefully packaged version of Thucydides as a pillar of Western Thought with direct relevance to the present. Liz’s study starts from the contents of curricula; this advert can be taken as evidence for their reception and influence, not just individuals’ knowledge of Thucydides but the fact that others could then assume such knowledge.
Now I just need to start skimming other publications for similar adverts. Thucydides tells you why you need to subscribe to Time magazine and watch John Wayne movies. Thucydides endorses Coca-Cola as the beverage of freedom. We enjoy the best things in life without being effeminate, and that’s why Thucydides wants YOU to smoke Lucky Strike!
Sphinx 
Top scientists are often well read and with wide interests in art and culture, and I agree it’s fascinating to see an advert that seems to be actively recruiting physicists and mathematicians who would be attracted by references to ancient Greece. So reading this post leaves me with two vivid images: firstly a group of top medics singing round a piano during their lunch break which I witnessed on a visit to LSHTM (and I bet there are more grand pianos in centres of excellence for science and medicine than the humanities…); secondly the contrasting image of a classicist managing to look effeminate while smoking Lucky Stripe alone in a room filled with books relevant to his own narrow specialism.
No insult intended at all to scientists – in my experience, the cliche that scientists know more about general culture than humanities types know about science holds generally true. I’m focused on the fact that Thucydides, and a fairly specialised idea of Thucydides, is taken to be part of that “any educated person knows” culture.
Interesting. It does look like – for all their claims of openness – they weren’t in a position to say anything publicly about the nature of the work. What do you make of the fact that they’ve screwed the Greek text up?
I’ll be quite honest, I hadn’t got round to checking the Greek – I was too busy being astonished that they included it at all. What struck you? As for the nature of the work, my assumption is that it would be pretty obvious, given the firm’s association with ballistic missile development, that it would be all about weapons research, and the assumption here is – maybe it’s a widespread idea – that *any* hard science area is potentially relevant to that.
Okay, yes, the printing of zetas for sigmas is somewhat blindingly obvious…
The STL ad is a remarkable bit of Thucydideana. Thanks for sharing!
I’m curious about the English translation used in the ad.
Just took a quick look at Crawley, Warner, Charles Forster Smith and Jowett, and none matches up.
So did those enlightened STL scientists whip up their own translation (distorted Greek orthography notwithstanding), presumably over lunch?
Good question, to which the simple answer is ‘no’. That version of the extract from Pericles’ funeral oration is quoted in an 1885 volume on The Hundred Greatest Men, in the entry by J.A. Froude on Pericles. It seems entirely plausible that this is not the actual source – i.e. it’s not Froude’s translation, and STL’s copywriters found it somewhere else – not least because of the attribution to Thucydides not Pericles, but I’m not for the moment sure where.
Thanks for the reference to the Hundred Greatest Men, an antiquarian delight I had not previously encountered.
I see it also contains an entry on Thucydides, which I look forward to reading. Part of the Pericles entry is poorly copied in the Archive.org version, but Froude’s citation of this section of the Funeral Oration is clear.
I can confirm that Froude here follows Dale’s 1853 translation word for word.
Source of the STL translation snippet from the Funeral Oration thus remains a minor mystery — a bit like the RAF Bomber Command Memorial “quote” you highlighted a few years ago.
Please share if you do discover a published source of the STL translation!
I believe it came from a book of quotations. Many plunder earlier ones and are plundered in turn, but for example in the section of Greek quotations (on p. 139) of the Dictionary of Foreign Phrases and Classical Quotations, ed. Hugh Percy Jones, B.A. (New and Revised Edition, 1908), we see just this Greek (without the zetafication; sourced to Thucydides rather than Pericles) and English. And the fine footnote: “The panegyric on Athens in the fifth century B.C. is true, to some extent, of the England of to-day.” To some extent.
Thank you! I did a big search of dictionaries of quotations some years ago, for the first thing I published on the topic – but I was interested in that point simply in what passages were most commonly cited and in any misattributed quotations, so as this one was clearly perfectly genuine I didn’t make many notes on it. It s very rare to find the Greek included, so this goes to the top of the list of likely sources – then presumably with some rather careless type-setting when it came to the advert…