The “Rule of the Sea”: Thucydidean Concept or Periclean Utopia?

Abstract

The special interest in Thucydides among academics in various disciplines as well as among military practitioners and politicians around the world results from the thought that embedded in his History of the Peloponnesian War is an element of “universalism” (as Neville Morley calls it in chapter 2). Readers hope to find guidelines, draw lessons for military strategy, or extract theoretical content from his text that can be meaningfully applied beyond the historical context of the late fifth century BC. In Thucydides’s own words, his History is “a possession for all time” (ktēma es aiei, 1.22.4), which suggests that he was not only interested in the analysis and description of a single concrete historical situation, but also in modeling more general lessons. The postulated “usefulness” of his History implies that this may in fact be the approach intended by the author himself.¹ This chapter discusses a particular kind of “lesson” and “theory” ascribed to Thucydides, which relates to the issues of sea power and naval mastery. Such an approach, however, as already Robert Connor pointed out with regard to the readings prevalent in the 1940s and 1950s, brings about its own inherent difficulties:

In the same way the prevalent assumptions about the text made it easy for political philosophers and political scientists to extract from the work a series of propositions about his political views on the empire, democracy, Realpolitik, and the like… it was at least a convenient approach, one that made it possible to treat Thucydides as a thinker and to extract some useful messages from his work: that peace and freedom required power and preparedness; that great powers had to be tough and constantly alert, that sea powers ought, if properly directed, to have a great strategic advantage over continental powers. These and other inferences could be debated, of course, and none was explicitly stated by Thucydides, but it seemed fully appropriate to view his text as containing propositions that could be explicated and brought into a coherent system identified as “Thucydides’ Political Philosophy,” or even as a series of laws about the science of politics.²

I am most grateful to Seth N. Jaffe, both for his comments on the argument of this chapter and for his tireless support in transforming convoluted sentences into something roughly resembling English. For all remaining mistakes and stylistic flaws I bear all the blame.