Peloponnesian War Research Articles

The Effectiveness of Economic Sanctions Implementation Against the Apartheid Regime in South Africa

The article covers history and practice of the development of economic sanctions as a mechanism of influence on countries that do not comply with the norms of international law. The objectives of the sanctions may include preventing wars, promoting freedom and democracy, combating environmental pollution, protecting human and labor rights, ensuring non-proliferation of weapons, releasing captured citizens, and countering land grab. Everything connected with sanctions (e.g. size, form, etc.) is determined by their acceptability by the community, and they are influenced by technology and the existing relations of power between social groups within countries. However, unlike well-defined rules concerning declared war and blockade of wartime, international law doesn’t establish any legal or formal restrictions on coercive measures with the exception of war. The first written economic sanctions were imposed in 432 BC by the Athens Maritime Union on the city of Megara. Sanctions were aimed at stopping the Megara’s practice of accepting runaway Athenian slaves and plowing sacred border territories. Sanctions were ineffective, due to which the Peloponnesian War began. Athens suffered a crushing defeat, and the Athenian union was destroyed. In the 19th century sanctions generally took the form of sea blockades. The question of the international legitimacy of sea blockades did not arise until the formation of the League of Nations in the 20th century. Article 16 of the Charter of the League of Nations allowed collective economic and military action against a state that turned to war in disregard of the League Agreement, which required states to settle disputes peacefully. In the Charter of the United Nations, the right to apply sanctions is enshrined in Articles 2 (4), 39, 41, 42, 43 and 46 of the Charter of this organization and in the “Unification for Peace resolution” 1950. In the period between 1946 and 1990 the UN imposed sanctions on North Korea, South Africa, Portugal, Rhodesia and Iraq. In the subsequent period, the UN began to apply sanctions more actively, especially against African states. Effectiveness of the implemented economic sanctions in most cases was dubious, since the desired results were not achieved or at least deviated from the initial purpose. After the massacre in Sharpeville, where civilians who protested against the apartheid became victims of inhuman police crimes, the problem of South African racist politics became a hot topic on the world agenda. Some countries led by India in the following years began to actively raise this issue with the UN Security Council. Western countries did their best to prevent the use of sanctions against South Africa, because of the country’s important role for NATO in advancing its strategic goals. After the Soweto Uprising, on November 4, 1977, when the photographs of young people killed by the police appeared in major newspapers worldwide, the UN Security Council finally adopted mandatory sanction measures. Nevertheless, governments of some of the Western powers sought to maintain their traditional tolerance for the apartheid regime, counting on South Africa to counter the Soviet-Cuban intervention in the civil wars of Angola and Mozambique. Since 1977 till 1994 The UN Security Council had repeatedly demanded that all states comply with the sanctions restrictions, which throughout this time gradually tightened and comprehensively affected all spheres of life of the South African society.

The General as Statesman: The Virtues of Measuredness and Daring in Thucydides’ Account of Brasidas

This article explores the virtues of daring and measuredness in the character of Brasidas in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. These two virtues prove to be necessary for Brasidas to fulfill his role as a general. However, they are incomplete for a statesman concerned with the domestic affairs of a regime. In emphasizing these two virtues and displaying Brasidas only in his position as a general, Thucydides makes an important statement about the relationship between generalship and statesmanship, and to what degree the former is subordinated to the latter. Brasidas’ virtues become especially clear when contrasted with two other generals from the Peloponnesian War, Pausanias and Nicias.

Rehumanizing the migrant: the translated past as a resource for refashioning the contemporary discourse of the (radical) left

This study examines conceptions of outsiders to the polity, focusing on the lexical items migrant(s), refugee(s), and exile(s) in both internet- and print-based sources. Drawing primarily on a subsection of the Genealogies Internet Corpus consisting of left-wing sources, I argue that left-wing politics is currently caught up in the rhetoric of the right and of mainstream institutions in society, largely reproducing the same discursive patterns even as it sets out to challenge them. Dominant patterns in left-wing Internet sources reveal, for example, that the economic migrant vs. political refugee distinction enforced by mainstream institutions remains largely intact, that the assumption of a “refugee crisis” unfolding in Europe is accepted at face value, and that the left is entangled in the same politics of labeling imposed by the right, reproducing designations such as “undocumented migrants” uncritically. Refugees and migrants, moreover, are represented as victims with no agency, are discussed in legal terms that serve to dehumanize them, and are repeatedly “quantified” as a homogenous and potentially problematic category. Acknowledging the contagious nature of dominant discourses and the difficulty of finding an alternative language with which to argue against established institutional rhetoric, the study further explores historical models that appear more consistent with the values espoused by left-wing politics today. It examines a subcorpus of modern English translations of ancient Greek texts such as Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War and Herodotus’s Histories to demonstrate the viability of adopting a different conceptualization of refugees and other outsiders to the polity that may be drawn from classical antiquity—and/or from nineteenth- and early twentieth-century receptions of texts originating in classical antiquity—and the possibility of developing an alternative discourse with which to speak about migrants in the present.

Sea powers and land powers

In the view of Thucydides, the war between Athens and Sparta was caused by the difference between the land and the sea. Sea powers and land powers differ in terms of their economic and social basis and with regard to their political order. They also pursue different military and strategic goals. The Peloponnesian War is the template for a hegemonial conflict between the open trading city and the closed barracks, between democracy and oligarchy, between sea and land. This conflict pattern has dominated the history of international relations right up until today. Even current hotspots such as the annexation of Ukrainian Crimea by Russia, the escalating conflict between the USA and China and an apparently economic macroproject such as China’s “One Belt, One Road Initiative” can be explained by way of strategic categories.

Mitford on the formation of control systems in Athens and Sparta before the Peloponnesian war

The paper, historiographical by its nature, aims at examining the existing assessments of William Mitford's work and clarifying his interpretations of the particularities of the formation of political systems in Athens and Sparta before the start of the Peloponnesian War. The paper concludes that W. Mitford’s interpretations of the causes and characteristics of the formation of political systems and his description of the domestic political situation in Athens and Sparta are based on taking into account the objective, and above all, the material interests of various social strata of the population. An analysis of the work of W. Mitford revealed no distortions, arbitrary interpretation or preferences when choosing the text of ancient authors used by W. Mitford as sources. The main conclusion is that it was the democratic system of government founded by Solon, being itself a consequence of inequality of ownership that predetermined further upheavals and the expansion of the political struggle, while in Sparta the involvement in the political struggle decreased during the wars. Revision of assessments of interpretations and ideas of W. Mitford suggests the need to clarify the features of English historiography of the Enlightenment.

"АФІНСЬКИЙ СЮЖЕТ" В АНТИЧНИХ БІОГРАФІЯХ АНАХАРСІСА

The paper analyses the "Athenian plot" in the ancient biographies of Anacharsis. The main objective of the paper is to date the emergence of stories about Anacharsis’ meeting with Solon in Athens. It is analysing written reports of ancient authors of from the 8th century BC to 3rd century AD. The first mention of Anacharsis we find in "The History" of Herodotus (5th century BC). It is spoken in detail about Diogenes Laërtius and the primary source of his «Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers». The fact that Diogenes Laërtius uses the works of Sosicrates of Rhodes and Hermippus of Smyrna, who are the ancient authors of the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, is stressed. This makes it possible to date the appearance of the «Athenian plot» in ancient biographies of Anacharsis precisely this period. The author described in short, the political and economic situation in Greece and Rome of this period. It is shown that Anacharsis became an ideal image of a noble barbarian for the ancient world. The Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) and the crisis of the post-war period made philosophers to think a place of a man in this world. The noble barbarian became the new ideal of ancient philosophy. It is concluded that the popularity of Anacharsis and the wise barbarian is a reaction of ancient authors to crises in ancient times. He was a sample of wisdom and purity. Anacharsis became famous for the simplicity of his way of life and his acute observations on the institutions and customs of the Greeks. None of the works ascribed to him in ancient times, if indeed they were written by him, have survived.

Non-Spartans in the Lakedaimonian Army: the Evidence from Laconia

It is widely attested that the perioikoi and helots were an important component of the Lakedaimonian army and fought alongside the Spartans especially during the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars. The current study offers a new perspective on the importance of non-Spartans in the Lakedaimonian army by examining the weapon dedications from Laconian sanctuaries and by reviewing the location and importance of forts and fortifications near or at perioikic poleis. It argues that on the basis of finds from Laconian sanctuaries and of the military realities, the use and presence of archers in the Lakedaimonian army should be re-evaluated.

Plato’s queer time: dialogic moments in the life and death of Socrates

AbstractCritics, from Athenaeus in the second century CE and Eduard Zeller in the nineteenth, to the present day, have been concerned with problems of authenticity and the dating of Plato’s work, including the inconsistent internal dramatic dates of the dialogues and other anachronisms within them. This article examines the relationship between the imaginary time of the dialogues and Plato’s own context, between the blurring of time and temporal relationships in the dialogues and the arguments that they contain, the construction of anachronistic communities and genealogies within them, through which Plato negotiates his own relationship with Socrates, and the deconstruction and re-negotiation of familial relationships, particularly those between fathers and sons. It uses insights from recent explorations of temporality in queer theory to generate a historicist reading that emphasizes the affective role of time within Plato’s writing. It argues that Plato uses the temporal setting of dialogues to underscore themes of their arguments, and that these anachronic settings can be read as an artefact of Plato’s own reception of Socrates’ life and death, and its context in the turmoil of the Peloponnesian War and the loss and restoration of democracy.

What's Behind Rising Authoritarianism: Answers from Political Psychology & the Third Reich

Liberty is never more precarious than in uncertain times. From the Great Depression to the Great Recession, from the Peloponnesian War to the so-called War on Terror, harsh times attract harsh measures. Sufficiently frightened, humans become quite willing to trade liberty for security, citizenship for slavery. Although preferring security to liberty makes psychological sense, in our modern world it can backfire. The evolutionary rationale for fear-based traditionalism, the search for certainty in a world fundamentally defined by uncertainty, rebounds — mutates — injecting into the populous what political psychologists call the “authoritarian personality.” This paper examines the rise of the Third Reich to show how economic and political uncertainty can undermine liberal democracy.

Thucydides Trap in the Business World: Corporate Strategy for a New Geopolitical Reality

When a rising power threatens the position of an incumbent power, historically the result has been war. This conjecture derived from the analysis of the Peloponnesian War by Greek historian Thucydides (460-400 BC) has borne out up to modern times. Statistically, three out of four such situations ended in war according to Graham Allison who has characterized observations of this type of conflict and their underlying dynamics as Thucydides’ Trap. This concept is of primary relevance today for policymakers worldwide, as China and the United States intensify their rivalry. In the present paper, we extend Thucydides’ Trap to the world of business. First, we explain that the underlying dynamics of the trap are at play in the business world as well. Rising companies constantly threaten the position of incumbent market leaders. Unlike politicians, however, managers have several strategic options to avoid falling into Thucydides’ Trap. Nevertheless, this changes in the new geopolitical landscape which is characterized by the Sino-American rivalry as well as intensified nationalism and de-globalization. We point out how the managerial strategy space is narrowed by a new geopolitical reality: aggressive corporate responses are more likely in world dominated by two superpowers caught in Thucydides’ Trap. We discuss the implications of this new contextual reality for the strategy of multinational firms.

D. Graham J. Shipley, The Early Hellenistic Peloponnese: Politics, Economies, and Networks 338-197 BC. pp. xxxii+355, 1 ill., 9 maps, 7 tables. 2018. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 2018978-0-521-87369-7, hardback $120.

The ‘decline’ of the polis in the late Classical and early Hellenistic periods numbers among the stock elements of historical narratives of ancient Greece. In the conventional rendition baked into old textbook descriptions of Greek civilization, the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War marked the end of a golden age as city-states devolved into a downward cycle of power play, hegemonic contest, and warfare that ended only with the conquests of Philip II and Alexander. The polis thereafter lost its autonomy, political directive, and ideological essence. As one popular textbook of western civilization put it recently: ‘With the advent of Macedonian control, once-independent poleis became subject cities whose proud political traditions were no longer relevant.’ This picture of decline, decay, and irrelevance remains common today despite a range of recent scholarship reappraising the early Hellenistic period in Greece.

Le leggi del diritto attico su eredità e cittadinanza negli Uccelli di Aristofane

This paper aims to shed light on the interaction between the comic text of Aristophanes’ Birds and the underlying juridical situation. The analysis of lines 1642-1670 shows how the poet managed to obtain certain comic effects by framing Solon’s law regarding the inheritance rights of illegitimate children and Pericles’ law of citizenship within the fantastic city of Nubicuculia. Lines 30-38 and 761-779 are adduced as vivid evidence for the discontent of the Athenian citizens concerning the illegal introduction of ‘false citizens’ into the civic body at the time of the Peloponnesian War.

The Plague of War: Athens, Sparta, and the Struggle for Ancient Greece by Jennifer T. Roberts

Reviewed by: The Plague of War: Athens, Sparta, and the Struggle for Ancient Greece by Jennifer T. Roberts Seth Kendall Jennifer T. Roberts. The Plague of War: Athens, Sparta, and the Struggle for Ancient Greece. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xxviii, 416. $19.95 (pb.). ISBN 978-0-19-094088-1. Publishers are invited to submit new books to be reviewed to Professor Michael Arnush, Skidmore College, 53 Warren Street, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866; email: marnush@skidmore.edu. On its surface, The Plague of War is a narrative of the Peloponnesian War, but such a simple description does not quite do its author’s achievement complete justice. By her own admission, Jennifer Roberts has slightly larger ambitions for her book; having observed that “(g)reat thinker that he was, it is time that Thucydides was uncoupled from the history of the Peloponnesian War” (xiv), Roberts proceeds to attempt this very thing. This is not, of course, to say that she wishes to dismiss Thucydides, whose work provides a substantial part of the scaffolding on which Roberts builds. Rather, she aims to go beyond him. This first and foremost means adopting a different ending for the war that is their shared subject: rather than concluding with Aegospotomi (where Thucydides suggests the war ended: 5.26.1), Roberts extends her narrative past that point and discusses its aftermath, including “the bloody Thirty, the persistent Conon, the inexorable Agesilaus, the shifting alliances of the Greek city-states, the brilliant Epaminondas, and the final blow dealt the Spartans on the field of Leuctra” (xiv). Indeed, she stretches further still to Mantineia in 362. Nor are these later years given cursory treatment restricted to a brief epilogue. Instead, close to a quarter of her book deals with these developments, seamlessly and fully integrating them into her overall account. But in addition to extending her analysis past 404, Roberts also adopts a broader field of vision, accomplished by looking—and in a fair amount of depth—at the art, architecture, and literature produced during this turbulent six decades. Including her discussion of the years following Salamis and the earlier war between Athens and Sparta, Roberts essentially brings over a century of Greek history under her gaze, and furnishes a comprehensive account of the Hellenic world during what is perhaps its most significant epoch. At the heart of The Plague of War is a recounting of the military operations with which the Greek world was riven, and in this Roberts is singularly successful. Her descriptions of the actual combat on both land and sea are clear and vivid, enabling the reader to get a sharp understanding of the operations. Her use of maps, which are well executed (albeit occasionally slightly too small), is of definite aid in this endeavor. But whether elaborating on the conduct of battle, on the impact of the war on dramatic composition, or on deliberations in the Athenian Agora, Roberts is able to command a style that is truly admirable: wholly academic without ever approaching pedantic, she demonstrates all the engaging prose powers of a Barbara Tuchman, illustrating once again that authors need not sacrifice comprehensive annotation and engagement with scholarship in the interest of attaining readability and clarity. Roberts almost never resorts to academic jargon, although she will at appropriate moments employ technical terms (typically in transliterated Greek), as it would be nigh on impossible to handle [End Page 99] this period without them. Nevertheless, these terms are invariably defined and explained thoroughly but succinctly: readers unfamiliar with the subtleties of Greek political and military terminology will grasp them immediately, while those who do have such experience will not find her explications tiresome. There is, admittedly, little which is controversial or groundbreaking in her chronicle, though Roberts does not shrink from making use of interpretations that are conjectural or at slight variance with received historiographical wisdom. These departures are handled in the footnotes, which are frequent but never obtrusive. In sum, The Plague of War definitely offers a valuable contribution to the scholarship of Greek history. It is a decidedly worthwhile read for all levels of expertise: classicists and professional historians will find what is familiar engagingly retold and enlivened...

The wars, epidemics and destiny of Empires of Ancient World

The article considers the features of the impact of epidemics on the course of hostilities and the fate of the states of Antiquity. Three cases are presented as examples. The first one is related to the invasion of the Assyrian King Sennacherib in Judea and the attempt of his troops to take Jerusalem. The second case is related to the epidemic in Athens in the early years of the Peloponnesian war. The third one - with the epidemic in the Roman Empire in the 2nd half of the 2nd century AD. The analysis, based on information from extant sources, permitted to conclude that the intensity and destructive effect of epidemics in the Ancient World increased gradually. To this fact is attributed the effect of "closing" the Oikumena into a single whole. However, the degree of influence of epidemics on the fate of ancient states is greatly exaggerated by the historical tradition, which developed under the influence of emotional descriptions of the tragedies and mass deaths of people.

Celebrating victory: art and war booty in Classical GrCelebrating victory: art and war booty in Classical Greeceeece

The celebration of victory, along with the demonstration of power and invincibility, was one of the key elements of public art in advanced ancient civilizations. Ancient Greece was no exception. Classical Athenian art was largely funded by the Athenians’ military booty and the members of the Delian League. Every piece of work was designed to make the unity and power of the Greek world visible, led by Athens, to emphasize the difference between Greeks and those they called barbarians. Permanent monuments, tropaia , served to constantly remind people of the great triumphs of the Hellenes over defeated enemies. They began to appear during the Greco-Persian Wars. These were community works that later became a model for the propaganda repertoire of the Romans and other nations. However, there were not the only Greek memorials celebrating victory. In individual city-states and temple districts were buildings, sculptures and paintings celebrating the power of Hellenes that were complemented by literary works of poets and playwrights. The effort to make military power and superiority more visible in art was also characterized by the fratricidal battles of the Greeks during the Peloponnesian Wars.

Andrômaca, de Eurípides. Tradução.


 
 
 Apresento aqui uma nova tradução da AndroÌ‚maca, de Eurípides, tragédia apresentada entre 430 e 420 a. C., na época da Guerra do Peloponeso. Nessa peça temas como matrimoÌ‚nio, maternidade e misoginia são abordados de maneira tradicional, o que nos permite fazer interessantes comparações entre ela e outras tragédias relacionadas ao Ciclo Troiano, do próprio Eurípides e de Ésquilo e Sófocles. Espero, com esta tradução, estimular mais estudos sobre essa peça.
 
 

The Ancient Knowledge of Sais or See Yourselves in the Xenoi: Plato’s Message to the Greeks

It is easier to criticize others and their foreign way of life, than to turn the mirror of critical reflection upon one’s own customs and laws. I argue that Plato follows this basic premise in the Timaeus when he constructs a story about Atlantis, which Solon, the Athenian, learns during his travels to Egypt. The reason why Plato appeals to the distinction that his Greek audience makes between themselves and the ξένοι is pedagogical. On the example of the conflict between Atlantis—a mythical and, therefore, a foreign polis— and ancient Athens, Plato seeks to remind the Greeks what even a mighty polis stands to lose if it pursues expansionist war. On the example of the failure that befalls the mythical Atlantis, and on the basis of the religious similarity between ancient Athens and ancient Sais (21e), Plato bridges the distance between the Greeks and the Egyptians, who would have been seen as actual (as opposed to mythical) ξένοι. The next step that Plato encourages his contemporaries to take is this: look at the history of Egypt (8 – 7BC) and the internal conflicts that led to the demise of the last bastion of Egyptian power—Sais—and recognize in the internal political intrigues of the “Athens-loving” (21e) ξένοι the pattern of the destructive actions of the Greeks. Plato moves from the less to the more familiar—from the story about a mythic past and Atlantis, to ancient Athenians, to ancient Egyptians, to the Egyptians and Athenians of Solon’s time. The meeting between the ξένοι—the Egyptians at Sais—and the quintessentially Athenian Greek, Solon (7BC – 6BC), undeniably problematizes the customs, national identity, and political dealings of Plato’s contemporaries, the Greeks in the 5BC – 4BC.
 By the time that Plato writes the Timaeus, circa 360BC, in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War, Athens is all but undone. However, the fate of Greece is not yet sealed. Why turn to Egypt? Toby Wilkinson’s (2013) description of the Egyptian kingdom offers a clue: “The monarchy had sunk to an all-time low. Devoid of respect and stripped of mystique, it was but a pale imitation of past pharaonic glories” (The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt 431). The Greeks face that same prospect, but how to make them see? Direct criticism (the Philippic addresses of Demosthenes, for example) fails. Plato devises a decoy—make Greeks reflect on the repercussions of their poor political decisions by seeing them reflected in the actions and the history of the Egyptians—the Greek-loving and, by Plato’s time, defeated ξένοι.

Retranslating Thucydides as a scientific historian

Abstract The nineteenth century was a period of dramatic change in Europe for the idea of history. While from antiquity through to the eighteenth century, historiography had broadly been considered an artistic and rhetorical activity, this view gradually lost ground in the nineteenth century to an understanding of history as a science. This case study aims to explore how these shifts in attitudes towards the proper aims and methods of history writing might have shaped the interpretation and translation into English of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, a work first written in classical Greek in the fifth century BCE. The analysis is carried out by means of a corpus-based methodology which, I argue, can better enable researchers to engage with each (re)translator’s overall presentation of the source through the production and interrogation of concordances listing every instance of a given search item as it occurs within digitised versions of the target texts. This is demonstrated through an investigation of the use of the term ‘fact(s)’ which reveals a striking divergence in interpretation between the six translations, with Crawley’s (1874) History in particular appearing to lend a significantly more objective and empirical tone to Thucydides in English.

Shifting characterizations of the \u2018Common People\u2019 in modern English retranslations of Thucydides\u2019 History of the Peloponnesian War: a corpus-based analysis

Little research has yet explored the impact of (re)translation on narrative characterization, that is, on the process through which the various actors depicted in a narrative are attributed particular traits and qualities. Moreover, the few studies that have been published on this topic are either rather more anecdotal than systematic, or their focus is primarily on the losses in character information that inevitably occur when a narrative is retold for a new audience in a new linguistic context. They do not explore how the translator’s own background knowledge and ideological beliefs might affect the characterization process for readers of their target-language text. Consequently, this paper seeks to make two contributions to the field: first, it presents a corpus-based methodology developed as part of the Genealogies of Knowledge project for the comparative analysis of characterization patterns in multiple retranslations of a single source text. Such an approach is valuable, it is argued, because it can enhance our ability to engage in a more systematic manner with the accumulation of characterization cues spread throughout a narrative. Second, the paper seeks to move discussions of the effects of translation on narrative characterization away from a paradigm of loss, deficiency and failure, promoting instead a perspective which embraces the productive role translators often play in reconfiguring the countless narratives through which we come to know, imagine and make sense of the past, our present and imagined futures. The potential of this methodology and theoretical standpoint is illustrated through a case study exploring changes in the characterization of ‘the common people’ in two English-language versions of classical Greek historian Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, the first produced by Samuel Bloomfield in 1829 and the second by Steven Lattimore in 1998. Particular attention is paid to the referring expressions used by each translator—such as the multitude vs. the common people—as well as the specific attributes assigned to this narrative actor. In this way, the study attempts to gain deeper insight into the ways in which these translations reflect important shifts in attitudes within key political debates concerning the benefits and dangers of democracy.

Вплив кризи полісної системи на характер і напрямок економіки давньогрецьких полісів V-IV ст. до н.е.

У статті проаналізована криза полісної системи внаслідок греко-перських і Пелопоннеської війн, наслідки якої проявилися майже у всіх сферах життя давньогрецького суспільства. Доведено, що попри занепад певних галузей економіки, у цілому, дохід на душу населення виріс, покращилися й умови проживання, збільшилося кількість населення, яке стало більш урбаністичним, що, у свою чергу, вплинуло на розвиток торгівлі, особливо зовнішньої. Отже можемо стверджувати, що в Елладі у V-IV ст. до н.е. відбувається загальний економічний підйом.