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Foreign Policy for the Polis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
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Modern philhellenes often show an impatience with the relations that existed between the city-states, suicidally quarrelsome, in Perikles' or Demosthenes' day. The inability of the polis to get along with its neighbour, and of all poleis together to shape some rational permanent peace, is all too clear. But to the excuses usually offered—to fierce local pride, to the love of independence, to the divisions imposed by geography—still another consideration should be added. The foreign statesman of fifth- or fourth-century Greece had to reckon with a peculiar fact.
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References
page 118 note 1 For Spartan suppression of tyrannies, see Thuc. i. 122. 3Google Scholar; Arist. Pol.Google Scholar 1312b; C.A.H. iv. 74Google Scholar n. i; and Walker, E. M. in New Chapters in the History of Greek Literature, ed. Powell, J. U. and Barber, E. A. (2nd ed., Oxford, 1929), 65 f.Google Scholar
page 118 note 2 Thuc. i. 19.Google Scholar
page 118 note 3 See, e.g., Judeich, W., Hermes, Iviii (1923), 10.Google Scholar
page 119 note 1 Ollier, F., Le Mirage spartiate (Paris, 1933), especially pp. 50 and 180–8, gives a very full account of the Lakonizing of aristocrats in dress, hair-style, training, etc.Google Scholar
page 119 note 2 Thuc. i. 115.Google Scholar 3 and other passages cited in Meritt, B. D., Wade-Gery, H. T., and McGregor, M. F., The Athenian Tribute-Lists (Baltimore, 1939–1953), iii, 149Google Scholar f. (add, for what they are worth, Thuc. i. 144. 2 and Lysias, , Funeral Oration, 56).Google Scholar
page 119 note 3 Thuc. iv. 84. 2.Google Scholar
page 119 note 4 Cf. Arist. Pol.Google Scholar 1307b: ‘And constitutions of all forms are broken up some times from movements initiated from within themselves, but sometimes from outside, when there is an opposite form of constitution either near by or a long way off yet possessed of power. This used to happen in the days of the Athenians and the Spartans; the Athenians used to put down oligarchies everywhere and the Spartans democracies.' And Ibid. 1312a: ‘One way in which tyranny is destroyed… is from without, if some state with an opposite constitution is stronger (for the wish to destroy it will clearly be present in such a neighbour because of the opposition of principle, and all men do what they wish if they have the power).’
page 119 note 5 Thuc. iv. 86. 4.
page 119 note 6 Ibid. 105, 114.
page 119 note 7 Ibid. 106.
page 120 note 1 Thuc. iv. 108.
page 120 note 2 Ibid. 123. 2, 130. 4.
page 120 note 3 Ibid. 104. I, 4; IIIf.
page 120 note 4 Ibid. 114. 3.
page 120 note 5 Id. viii. 47 f.
page 120 note 6 Ibid. 48. 2, 53. 2f. For the prevalent distrust of states differently constituted from one's own, and for the fear that they would prove traitors to an alliance, cf. id. iii. 66. 2, v. 31. 6, vii. 57. ii, viii. 70. 2; Ar. Peace 639f.Google Scholar; Xen. Hell.ii.3.45, vii. i. 52–54Google Scholar; Arist. Const, of Athens 29. iGoogle Scholar; Isoc. Pan. 16Google Scholar, Archidamos 63 f.Google Scholar A final example is offered by Pseudo-Herodes, пερί пολιτείας (ed. E. Drerup, Paderborn, 1908), a pamphlet discussing a question of foreign policy. It is now ‘generally accepted’ as the work of a Thessalian author of c. 404. (So Westlake, H. D., Thessaly in the Fourth Century b.c. (London, 1935), 52–53Google Scholar, setting aside Adcock, F. E. and Knox, A. D., Klio, xiii (1913), 249–57Google Scholar, who would put it in the second century a.d. See more recently Morrison, J. S., Class. Quarterly, xxxvi (1942), 68 f.)Google Scholar As Adcock, says, op. cit. 253Google Scholar, the first half of the work is ‘an anthology of commonplaces’. The second half, however, if the document is genuine, offers ample confirmation of the point here argued. To sum up in Drerup, 's words, op. cit. 90Google Scholar: ‘The stasis is the over-ruling point of view for both internal and external alignments.’
page 121 note 1 17 f.
page 121 note 2 Ibid. 19 f. Compare the statement of Nikias in the debate before the Sicilian expedition of 415 (Thuc. vi. 117; cf. iii. 82. i): ‘For our struggle is not for the barbarian Egestaians in Sicily, but, if we are wise, to defend ourselves actively against a city [i.e. Sparta] that plots against us through oligarchy.’ A similar argument appears in Demosthenes, On the Chersanesos, 40–43.Google Scholar
page 122 note 1 This is the equation served up by Alkibiades to a most unlikely audience, Sparta (Thuc. vi. 92. 3; cf. Arisi. Pol. 1276b; Pusey, N. M., Harvard Studies in Class. Philology, li (1940), 222 f.).Google Scholar For the prevalence of treason, Thucydides (especially iv. 50–78), Lysias, and Aeneas Tacticus are rich sources. Pusey, , op. cit. 224–7Google Scholar, and Chroust, A. H., Journ. Hist of Ideas, xv (1954), 284 f., gather examples.Google Scholar
page 122 note 2 Isoc. Pan. 77–79Google Scholar, Arist. Const, of Athens 28. 5.Google Scholar