Pericles and the Plague: Civil Religion, Anomie, and Injustice in Thucydides

Abstract

This paper examines thc problems of rcligion,anfvmie, and injustice in Athenian society as presented in Thucydides's narrative of the Peloponnesian war. Thucydides juxtaposes Pericles's funsral oration, as an embodiment *)f Athenian civil with his description of Atherlian denwraliyation and during the subsequent plague. These c(mcepts are lirQd to thc problem of injustice in the which describes Athenian imperial behavior toward this small islarul people. The paper shows how Thucydides knks these ideas to the notion of Fortune in the ultimate collapse of the Athenian war effort. Thucydides is a pi(meer in the systenzatic use of these sc)ciological concepts and he is compared briefly to more recent sociologxsts, such as Durkheim, Mert(m, a7v1 Bellah. The concepts of religion and anomie are closely associated with the work of Emile Durkheim, although both have been subsequently developed in new directions by a host of writers, including Merton, Warner, Bellah, and others. From a systematic standpoint, the two concepts have a symmetrical quality. While religion points to the highest level of religio-political ritual and symbolism unifying a people, anomie reveals the fragility of social integration and asks us to examine the sources and manifestations of social dislocation and the collapse of the moral order. Indeed, the two concepts seem to work well when paired with one another. This paper examines these two concepts, along with several related ideas, as they appear in Thucydides's history of the Peloponnesian war. This text contains one of the most famous historical illustrations of religion, Pericles's funeral oration. In his discussion of the effects of the wartime plague on Athenian society, Thucydides also provides a vivid historical account of anomie as well as one of the first instances of this term's (i.e., anomia's) sys tematic use in the human sciences. Moreover, in the so-called Melian Dialogue, Thucydides presents the problem of justice and injustice in the individual as well as in the relations among Greek states, in a manner which echoes many of the themes of the funeral oration and the plague narrative.