Quote of the Day (Thucydides, on the Strong and the Weak)

“You know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." ―The Athenians to the Melians, quoted in Thucydides (c. 460-c. 395 BC), History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 5, translated by Richard Crawley (1910)

Quote of the Day (Pericles, on Democracy and Obedience to the Law)

“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 putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the 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 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.”—Athenian politician and general Pericles (c. 495 – 429 BC), funeral oration, quoted by Greek historian and general Thucydides (ca. 460-404 BC), History of the Peloponnesian War, translated by Rex Warner (1916; revised edition, 1972)

We don’t know word for word what the Athenian leader Pericles said in ancient Greek—there were no speeches written down, let alone recording devices. But Thucydides provided the best sense of the occasion.

Pericles reminded his audience, in this justly famous homage to war dead, of the values present in Athenian democracy. This passage, during a week of headlines about a former American leader who violated his oath of office and “those unwritten laws which it is an acknowledged shame to break,” is especially worth keeping in mind.

But Thucydides, in narrating events after this zenith of ancient democracy, offered an equally important lesson about the fragility of that state—about how it crumbled following military reverses, the rhetoric of the demagogue Cleon (“the most violent of the citizens” and “by far the most persuasive with the people at that time”), and the corroded values produced by a plague.

One sentence from his essential history, however, rings most powerfully for me in understanding the loud and lamentable defiance of the law that lies behind the ancient and current threat to the transfer of governmental control in a democacy: “It is prestige, fear and self-interest that prevent men giving up power.”

Quote of the Day (Sarah Kendzior, on the Urgent Need to ‘Be Your Own Light’ Now)

“Write down what you value; what standards you hold for yourself and for others. Write about your dreams for the future and your hopes for your children. Write about the struggle of your ancestors and how the hardship they overcame shaped the person you are today. Write your biography, write down your memories. Because if you do not do it now, you may forget. Write a list of things you would never do. Because it is possible that in the next year, you will do them. Write a list of things you would never believe. Because it is possible that in the next year, you will either believe them or be forced to say you believe them.”— Anthropologist and journalist Sarah Kendzior, “We’re Heading Into Dark Times: This is How to be Your Own Light in the Age of Trump,” The Correspondent, Nov. 18, 2016

Four years ago, as has happened so often in the past, this warning might have seemed alarmist. But anyone following the news runs the danger of becoming inured to the nightmare scenario outlined in the last four sentences in the above quote.

What is at stake is nothing less than the same values of civilization held up in Pericles’ “Funeral Oration” to his fellow Athenians, according to Greek historian Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War:

“Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbor for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book, or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace.”

Each day brings another assault against what Pericles called “our chief safeguard.” After four years, none of us can say any longer that we do not know the threats we face: nothing less than the protection of the individual citizen, even the most disadvantaged, from harm; the notion that no man is above the law; and the fate of the republican experiment itself.

Democratic Athens did not endure. We shall see, over the next few months, if democratic America will.

Quote of the Day (Pericles, on Heroes)

“Heroes have the whole earth for their tomb.”—Athenian statesman and general Pericles (494 BC-429 BC), “Pericles’ Funeral Oration,” in Thucydides (460 BC-395 BC), The History of the Peloponnesian War  

(The image accompanying this post, Pericles’ Funeral Oration, was created by German painter Philipp Foltz.)
Heroes

 

Quote of the Day (Samuel Pepys, With a Study in Terror: London’s Great Fire)

“Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that layoff; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the water-side to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconys till they were, some of them burned, their wings, and fell down. Having staid, and in an hour’s time seen the fire: rage every way, and nobody, to my sight, endeavouring to quench it, but to remove their goods, and leave all to the fire, and having seen it get as far as the Steele-yard, and the wind mighty high and driving it into the City; and every thing, after so long a drought, proving combustible, even the very stones of churches, and among other things the poor steeple by which pretty Mrs. ———— lives, and whereof my old school-fellow Elborough is parson, taken fire in the very top, an there burned till it fell down: I to White Hall (with a gentleman with me who desired to go off from the Tower, to see the fire, in my boat); to White Hall, and there up to the Kings closett in the Chappell, where people come about me, and did give them an account dismayed them all, and word was carried in to the King.”—The Diary of Samuel Pepys, entry for Sunday, September 2, 1666

Look past the archaic spelling and long sentences that might make this quote slightly foreign to modern readers. Concentrate on the word pictures created by Samuel Pepys, midlevel 17th-century British naval bureaucrat, and you’ll find not merely a diarist with an eye for masterful detail (the sentence on the “poor pigeons” is positively unforgettable) but someone who might be our contemporary as he chronicles how a society, blessed with greater freedom than any other known up to its time, almost collapses because of unexpected stress.

Today’s historians make sure to mention the good that followed the conflagration: the comparatively low loss of life, along with the new, more fire- and plague-resistant city that arose over the ashes of the four-fifths of the urban land area consumed in the three-day blaze. Pepys will have none of that. He knows that, whatever else the Great Fire of London has done, it has already had a deleterious impact on conduct.

Pepys is shocked to discover that nobody tries to quench the fire. Instead, it’s every man for himself, as people rush “to remove their goods, and leave all to the fire.” Because of failure to act and selfishness, nothing is immune from the blaze, “even the very stones of churches.” (In fact, more than 80 churches--including old St. Paul's--would burn to the ground.)

Similarly, although he is better known for description of battles and campaigns, the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, in his classic History of the Peloponnesian War, after a highly clinical account of the plague (now believed to be typhoid fever) that took the lives of one-third of Athens in the summer of 430 B.C., describes, in equally exacting terms, the effect on the civic psyche:

“Men now coolly ventured on what they had formerly done in a corner, and not just as they pleased, seeing the rapid transitions produced by persons in prosperity suddenly dying and those who before had nothing succeeding to their property. So they resolved to spend quickly and enjoy themselves, regarding their lives and riches as alike things of a day. Perseverance in what men called honor was popular with none, it was so uncertain whether they would be spared to attain the object; but it was settled that present enjoyment, and all that contributed to it, was both honorable and useful. Fear of gods or law of man there was none to restrain them. As for the first, they judged it to be just the same whether they worshipped them or not, as they saw all alike perishing; and for the last, no one expected to live to be brought to trial for his offenses, but each felt that a far severer sentence had been already passed upon them all and hung ever over their heads, and before this fell it was only reasonable to enjoy life a little.”

We have had hundreds, maybe thousands, more journalists, historians, fiction writers, even bloggers than were present in the ages of Thucydides and Pepys, but I’m not sure any surpassed them in analyzing the moral costs involved when cracks develop in civilization. Technology might have changed over the centuries, but human beings, for better or worse, have not altered so dramatically--something we might bear in mind as we remember the reaction of our own society under the pressure of a fathomless disaster a decade ago. (As this article from my local paper, The Bergen Record, indicates, the much-vaunted civic spirit following 9/11 started to erode by mid-decade. The costs of this decline to our already-divided society are enormous.)