Thursday, February 5, 2015
Peloponnesian War vs World War I
I just wanted to mention something that is bugging me about Thucydides. When they're discussing the conflict with Corcyra and Corinth it reminded me a lot about World War I. The entire Greek world is dragged into a conflict that only involved Corinth and a troublesome colony. While it does not exactly match up with World War I, the fact that all of these other city-states enter into this conflict due to a system of alliances seemed very similar. I also found it interesting how Corcyra believed that an Athenian-Spartan conflict was inevitable, which is the way that most historians viewed World War I.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think that's an excellent point, and something worthy of exploration tomorrow -- the way in which the war (at least in Thucydides telling) seems almost inevitable, and how Athens, Sparta and their allies are operating with a logic of preemption. In exploring this, I suppose we should try to drill down as much as possible into the supposed causes of the conflict. It will be interesting to see whether you think Thucydides gives a fair account of the causes, or if you think there is something more/different going on. If not, would we even be able to access that, or are we more or less imprisoned by his interpretative framework? The speeches delivered during the gathering of the Peloponnesian Allies will be a good place to examine to test all of this.
ReplyDelete