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

Abstract

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.     

修昔底德选用史料方法刍议

修昔底德的史著以叙述伯罗奔尼撒战争为主要内容,涉及希腊世界主要城邦的政治、军事、经济、外交以及海陆交通等方面丰富多样的史料。修昔底德按照自己处理史料的原则,对于战前史和战争史本身的史料分别采取了不同的处理方法。对于战前史料的选择和考信方法主要采用比较考异法和反溯法;对于当代史料的选用及考信方法主要采取实录法、辨异法、推测法、纠错法、隐微法等五种。修昔底德貌似如实直书的表象背后,隐含着名副其实的“修昔底德陷阱”。     

《伯罗奔尼撒战争史》是如何写出来的？--“修昔底德问题”研究的回顾与思考

修昔底德创作《伯罗奔尼撒战争史》花费了毕生精力,全书各个部分的写作次序和时间如何迄今悬而未决。从1846年这个问题提出到20世纪80年代初,大体有两派观点:"分离论"和"一体论"。前者认为,修昔底德的著作是分阶段写成的,这不仅表现在时间上,还表现在作者的思想上;后者则认为,尽管这部书是未完之作,且有一些不完善地方,但全书一以贯之,因此主要在一个时间段写成。两派各执一词,探讨逐步深入。1984年美国学者康纳提出修昔底德文本的同质性问题,即作者有意带领读者一起面对事件,其思想认识和叙事形式都发生了变化,故其文本不是同质的。这对"分离论"起到了纠偏的作用,也超越了"一体论"。在康纳观点指引下,英国学者鲁德和美国学者德沃尔德研究了修昔底德的叙事方式。鲁德认为"修昔底德问题"是一个"无法回答的问题";德沃尔德则证明其叙事的组织形式发生了变化。"修昔底德问题"将激发学者们的研究热情,砥砺他们的才智,推动着学术界不断深化对于史学的认识。     

“赫尔墨斯神像案”与修昔底德的史学思想

修昔底德的《伯罗奔尼撒战争史》记载公元前五世纪下半叶雅典城邦发生的重大事件——赫尔墨斯神像案。在案件真相难以确定的情况下,修氏将案件和由此案牵扯出的亚西比德渎神案置于雅典政治斗争的大背景下作考察,表述了自己的认识。他的认识反映出从特殊(案件具体内容)到一般(案件性质的判断),又从一般到特殊的思维过程。修氏对此两案的记载,表明史料能成为史家的证据,史实能被认识最终取决于史家独立的历史思维。这种史学思想的自主性是修氏史学理论的最深刻之处。     

The Cyclical Views of Human History in Thucydides’ Archaeology and Sima Qian’s Historical Records

Many previous thinkers have imagined that there was a glorious or harmonious period in the past better than the world of their own time, but Thucydides and Sima Qian do not describe the early stages of human society as a Golden Age. I suggest that Sima Qian marks a separation between the mythical stories and the historical spirit in China, just as Thucydides did in Greece. Further, they both presented a modified cyclical view of human history. For a better understanding of the basic characteristics of Greek and Chinese historiographies, this paper discusses the cyclical views of human history underlying ancient Greek and early Chinese historiographies through a comparative study of Thucydides’ and Sima Qian’s texts. I analyze some similarities and differences between the two great historians’ conceptions of historical process, and I conclude that Thucydides believes human intelligence develops through a historical spiral, while Sima Qian focuses on dynastic cycles with a strong moral concern.     

Juan Fernández de Heredia's History of Greece

Abstract

The Aragonese Hospitaller Juan Fernández de Heredia, Master of Rhodes from 1377 to 1396, was an outstanding patron of historical compilations, all of them translated into Aragonese. He promoted the earliest translations into any western language of Plutarch's Lives, of parts of Thucydides and of Zonaras' Epitome of Byzantine history; he also produced a version of the Chronicle of the Morea with an entirely original section which covered much of the fourteenth century. These and other sources in his corpus formed the basis for a unique initiative, a continuous history of Greece.     

Comments on Robert Howse,Leo Strauss: Man of Peace

Robert Howse's book does a good and welcome job of showing a Leo Strauss who is far from the bloodstained “neoconservative” caricature that is so commonly presented. He rightly emphasizes Strauss's concern for decency and the keeping of peace where possible. Especially telling is his account of Strauss's view of Thucydides's alleged “realism.” He does a good job of showing how Strauss, like Thucydides, balances the claims of necessity with the substantive and practically important claims of justice. However, Howse pushes Strauss a little too far when it comes to his faith in permanently peaceful large federations and goes to excess in distancing himself from Strauss's neoconservative followers, at one point even falling into mischaracterization in doing so. If the purpose of this distancing was to make Strauss more acceptable to leftist critics, it is doubtful that this will succeed; if the purpose was less strategic and more personal, it seems an excessive response.     

The Third Man; Or, Agency in History; Or, Rationality in Revolution

Theories of revolution invoke human agency to commit the violence that revolution entails, yet theorists of revolution often denounce the general theory of human agency called rational choice because (they say) it does not explain macrosocial facts like revolution and also leaves out culture. Actually, however, rational choice is the major premise of any cogent explanation of revolution, and it includes culture as a factual premise. Rational-choice theory applied to explaining revolution dates back to Thucydides, whose method of explanation is sound and whose theory of revolution is true. Thucydides explains the macrosocial fact of revolution by way of models whose elements are people doing what they hope will succeed, that is, acting on opinion alias culture. Theorists of revolution who make sense of it all rehearse Thucydides: they analyze the narrative history into strategic actions and reactions, explain these actions and reactions by rational choice, and document the explanation with direct and circumstantial evidence for hope of success, though they seldom own up on theory and method or preach what they practice.     

Thucydides and 'Chalkidic' Torone (IV.110.1)

This article is a reply to the Thucydidean part of J.K. Papadopoulos in OJA 15 (1996) 151–81 and is concerned with the meaning of 'Chalkidic Torone' at Thucydides IV.110.1 (and of 'Chalkidic Olynthos' at IV.123). Various meanings, canvassed in previous scholarship, are considered. Sense (1) is geographical, 'Torone in Chalkidike' sense (2) is political, 'Torone the member of the Chalkidic State or League'. Both these are rejected in favour of some translation of 'Chalkidic' which implies either colonial descent from Euboian Chalkis (sense (3)) or ethnic affiliation to a local and non-Euboian 'Chalkidic genos' (sense (4)). It is argued, contrary to Papadopoulos, that Thucydides in the fifth century, and perhaps Ephorus in the fourth, did after all think in terms of sense (3), but that non-Euboian Chalkidians, if any, may have appropriated Euboian origins to themselves, partly for imperialistic reasons and partly to assert their hellenism, surrounded as they were by non-Greek neighbours. (Analogies are suggested for such 'propagandistic' behaviour.) That is, senses (3) and (4) can be reconciled.     

A CARIAN WILD GOAT WORKSHOP

Summary: A number of Carian pots from the neighbourhood of Mylasa are attributed to one painter and his workshop. Their decoration is in a Wild Goat style and, presumably later, a Fikellura style. Their date therefore can hardly be earlier than the second quarter of the sixth century. Miletus was the leading producer of Wild Goat pottery in the seventh century and of Fikellura from the mid sixth, and it was the nearest important Greek city to Mylasa. Since the painter's predecessors and he himself in his Fikellura work used Milesian models, it is likely that he had Milesian models too for his Wild Goat style (which is not North Ionian). This implies that a Middle Wild Goat style survived at Miletus into the second quarter of the sixth century, when it was succeeded by Fikellura.     

Some Karamanlidika Inscriptions from the Monastery of the Zoodokhos Pigi,Balıklı, Istanbul

Abstract

‘Few scholars so equipped are disposed to abandon Homer and Sophocles, Thucydides and Plato, for George of Pisidia, Paul the Silentiary, Procopius of Caesarea and Michael Psellus.’ So Romilly Jenkins explained the late development of Byzantine studies. One might add that fewer still are prepared to forsake George of Pisidia, Paul the Silentiary, Procopius of Caesarea and Michael Psellus for Kaisarios Dapontes, Sergios Makraios, Nikodimos Agioreitis and Athanasios Komninos Ypsilantis. Not so Sir Steven Runciman who, in addition to his manifold contributions to the development of Byzantine studies stretching over a period of almost fifty years, has also found the time to make important forays into the as yet largely uncharted seas of what Nicolae Iorga termed Byzance après Byzance. The ethnic complexity of the Ottoman Empire in its prime is strikingly illuminated in Sir Steven's The Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence. One of the lesser known features of this great agglomeration of races and cultures was the confusion of alphabets employed by the minorities of the Empire.     

宋徽宗墨笔花鸟画初探

一个画家艺术风格的形成离不开他所处的时代环境及其本人的气质。作者认为,宋徽宗墨笔花鸟画的渊源,一为五代兴起的以徐熙为代表的江南花鸟画派,一为宋代中叶兴起的文人士大夫画风。因此,宋徽宗以特有的文人情怀致力于其他文人画家所追求的江湖之思、林泉之趣,但又因其特定的帝王身份,其墨笔花鸟作品仍带有雍容的气貌而缺少荒远之境。值得注意的是,徽宗将文人情趣引入宫廷绘画,改变了宫廷绘画历来的富丽倾向,其墨花开元代之先河。     

马塞里努斯的撰史风格——兼与塔西佗比较

马塞里努斯是晚期罗马帝国最重要的史学家。他继承和融汇古希腊与古罗马的伟大史学传统,尤其是塔西佗的史学思想,并力图有所发展和超越。马塞里努斯独特的撰史手法主要表现在其希腊式的文法风格、对古典传统叙述体裁的突破以及对人性与世界的深刻体察。马塞里努斯这些特点为其独特的家庭文化背景及人生经历所铸就。     

Muhammad Ghaffari: The Persian Painter of Modern Life

In the late nineteenth century, Qajar Iran, like its neighbor the Ottoman Empire, faced the dual challenges of colonialism and modernity. This paper considers the role of art education and art production in its response to these forces, focusing on the leading court painter of the late Qajar period, Mirza Muhammad Ghaffari, Kamal al-Mulk (1848–1941), whose career bridged the late Qajar period and the early twentieth century. Early in his career, Ghaffari was recognized as the leading exponent of academic painting, yet by the constitutional period his art had evolved into a style representing contemporary Persian life, a style which was informed by nationalistic discourses current in intellectual and political circles. This paper's consideration of the evolution of his style from a European modernism to an authentic Iranian modernism includes Ghaffari's training as a painter, the role of photography in the development of his style, his travel to Europe, and parallels with the art and career of the Ottoman painter Osman Hamdi.     

《南山集》案与清代士人的心路历程--以戴名世、方苞为例

清人主中原后,针对激烈的反清情绪,对士人采取严密的钳束政策,康熙五十年,戴名世因其《南山集》的锋芒而致大狱,与戴氏有文字交的方苞也因作序而罹罪,虽幸免于死,但精神受到重创,为文风格遂变得迂回盘折。此案前后文风的转变,体现了清初士人由狂悖不驯到敛性皈依的心路历程。     

成也萧何 败也萧何——解读盛懋及其绘画

Sheng Mao was an important landscape painter in the late period of Yuan Dynasty, learning from Dong and Ju. His style was minute and delicate, gaining great reputation at that time. However, his position was shaken since four maters of Yuan Dynasty grew up later. Anyway he is a great painter with unique style. The author draws an instructive opinion on his painting.     

Imperialist democracy,ancient Athenians and the US presence in Iraq

This article speculates about possible parallels between the experience of the Athenian empire and the Americans’ rationale for their presence in Iraq. Leaders in both countries sought to make their worlds safe for democracy by military invasion. The Athenian experience is described, drawing on Thucydides and other primary and secondary sources. Then there is a sketch of the scholarly treatment accorded the Athenian empire by writers through to the present day. Finally, allusions to the classical experience by several contemporary writers are examined. These writers articulate a common pessimism about the future prospects for the American presence in Iraq.     

A List of Carian Orientalizing Pottery

This paper lists over a hundred Carian pots. It is suggested that in Caria, Subgeometric was dominant till about the end of the seventh century BC, that a tentative Wild Goat style emerged towards the end of that century, that about the 570s the Bochum painter established a coherent version of that style and eventually experimented with the Fikellura style, and that his successors relapsed into incoherence.     

任薰与他的《麻姑献寿图》

具有近代人理念,又具民间气息的任薰的绘画,清新活泛雅俗共赏,无媚俗之态,蕴天然气韵,《麻姑献寿图》即属一代名家之范本。