The Peloponnesian War was in its fifth year when Corcyraean oligarchs massacred Peithias and sixty members of his party. The conspirators justified this bloodshed with the explanation of Peithias’s betrayal of Corcycra. Peithias, who opposed neutrality and wished to serve Athens, had attempted to persecute his political opponents. In failing to do so, those he betrayed launched themselves at him and his companions (the head of the democratic faction in Corcyra) and revenge was answered by revenge. Then the conspirators called for an assembly among all the citizens, and the city-state was declared neutral. However, the betrayal had spread the seed of suspicion and when a Corinthian trireme arrived with Spartan envoys, the leaders of Corcyra attack those incorporated with the Democratic Party with allegiance with Athens, referred to by Thucydides as “The People”. The Corcyran oligarchs were able to defeat The People in the first battle of the revolution; however, the stage was set for the next, more decisive battle when The

People retreated to the higher ground of the Acropolis, and the oligarchs settled in the agora.

After a day filled with minor skirmishes, The People received the support of a majority of the slaves and were reinforced by eight hundred mercenaries. Once the second battle commenced, the supporters of the democratic party were named the victors of the day. The original instigators found themselves with the tables turned and were now in the hands of their own betrayed victims. This passage is one of the many areas through out The Peloponnesian War which Thucydides compels his reader to contemplate the many aspects of human nature. Here he explores how greed and ambition repeatedly turn the inhabitants of Corcyra against one another. The victors of this last battle desired to deliver an even more devastating blow to their opponents. The members of The People asked the Athenian general, Nicostratus, to leave five hundred of his men there and they would replace his Athenian soldiers with five hundred Corcyraeans. This would ensure the defeated remained compliant. However The People’s agenda was revealed when they demanded that their betrayers be the men to serve on the Athenian ships heading to Athens. Now a new wave of revenge, greed, and betrayal ravaged the citizens yet again.

The chaos enshrouding the city-state was transferred to their military too; the Corcyaean soldiers were easily defeated in the naval encounter with Sparta. This induced enough fear into the supporters of The People to call for an effort to save the city and arrange a parley with their captives. However, when the Peloponnesians failed to exploit their victory, and news arrived of a large Athenian fleet approaching, peace gave way to greed and ambition, yet again. For seven days the citizens of Corcyra slew their foes, “and although the crime imputed was that of attempting to put down the democracy, some were slain also for private hatred, others by their debtors because of the moneys owed to them.” Those who knew their death was eminent took their own lives. Not only did the path of suicide avoid the promised torture yet to come, but also outraged their enemies who were seeking revenge.

What causes a human being to perform such audacities? Thucydides primarily attributed it to greed and ambition, given the correct circumstances, “… [It] was the lust for power arising from greed and ambition; and from these passions preceded the violence of parties once engaged in contention.” He also included an elaborate examination on the evils which revolution necessitates. The war between Athens and Sparta had placed the Hellenic world on the slippery slope of revolution. Now any faction with rebellion on the mind could call upon the corresponding military alliance, develop a convincing argument, and wait for a coup to ensue.

While Thucydides prepared to elaborate on the sufferings inflicted on a population by revolution, he offered a proviso of sorts: “such as have occurred and always will occur as long as the nature of mankind remains the same; though in a severer or milder form, and varying in their symptoms, according to the variety of the particular cases.” Observations on the nature of mankind and the nature of events can be found throughout Thucydides’s work, such as the above excerpt. In the opening pages, Thucydides explained his purposes in writing such an elaborate work, the likes of which had not been seen in the world as of yet. One of his purposes was to provide a record which could be drawn upon for guidance for future generations. A couple of millennia have passed and the great minds of the future still have yet to guide the human race away from events and sufferings caused by the flaws of human nature.

An odd social phenomenon occurs in the presence of revolutions. The accepted behavior of the human character undergoes a transformation and actions attributed to evil, which in times of peace are socially unacceptable, are received and even viewed as strength. “Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal supporter… Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting a justifiable means of self-defense.” Although Greece was an ancient civilization, many of its morals were similar to modern morals (just without the Christian undertones); however, these morals are the first thing compromised in the presence of a revolution. In a revolution, one is pitted against his neighbor, brother, and father, “until even blood became a weaker tie than party.” Another revelation is how the concept of self preservation is overpowered by an element as petty as revenge.

The writing elements of this section are distinct from the remainder of the book. The majority of the Peloponnesian War has a distinct structure; primarily it is written in a chronological narrative. Scattered throughout the work are long speeches given by the primary role players of each of the events. These speeches are Thucydides’ equivalent to modern sources. The ancient scholars realized the importance of the burden of proof. However, there are no speeches concerning revolution. Either Thucydides had not been able to obtain a personal account of the events in Corcyra, which is understandable since many casualties befell the majority of the population; or perhaps he felt his theoretical analysis was a more appropriate method. He approaches the plague in the same fashion.

Many parallels can be drawn between the episodes of the plague and of the revolution. As explained, their structure is very comparable, but the language used in the two excerpts is also very similar. When compared side by side, terms like “symptoms,” are used to signal the reader to what they should keep an eye on in their own era. However, knowledge is not so contagious. There have been numerous occasions of plague and revolution leading to famine and pestilence throughout history. If Thucydides wrote the solution for evading these horrors then the lessons still have not been absorbed.

Another paralleling characteristic of the section about the plague and that of the revolution is the similarity of their writing style. The majority of Thucydides’s work is written in a very straight forward manner, with few descriptive passages. However in the two passages, he goes to great lengths to impress upon his audience all the evils attributed to these events. Everything is turned upside down during the civil strife of a revolution. The traditional morals and values upheld by society, qualities such as compassion, loyalty, rational thinking, were now seen as weakness and betrayal. In the middle of this chaos, the strong and favorable temptations of greed and ambition for money and power enticed the inhabitants of Corcyra to turn against one another. Corcyra had several opportunities to make a lasting peace, however the suspicions of its citizens were overwhelming. “Oaths of reconciliation being only offered on either side to meet an immediate difficulty, only held good so long as no other weapon was at hand; but when opportunity arose, he who first ventured to seize it and take his enemy off his guard…”

This leads to the question, why does Thucydides only discuss the first revolution and the first plague? The whole Hellenic world revolted against the established government at one point in the war, so why was not each revolution significant enough to be described? He attributed the plague to have surfaced in Egypt before ravaging Athens; however he does not elaborate on the spread to the remainder of the Hellenic world. Also he only mentions the second plague that ravaged Athens in passing. Perhaps his revelations from studying the first two occurrences resulted on such a dismal note, death, and he no longer desired to rationalize on the matters any further.

The theme and the lesson that Thucydides desires to pass onto his reader are the same: Revolution induces men to turn on their brothers, fathers, and neighbors; human characteristics morph in ways which embrace the evils induced by revolution. The significance of this subject is personified in Thucydides’ use of the writing elements of style, language, and structure. These elements are used in a similar way as the passage concerning the plague; however, they contrast sharply with the remaining of the text. This could be viewed as a form of symbolism: revolution alters human nature so deeply that even Thucydides was compelled to alter his writing to further impress upon his reader to proceed with caution when in the midst of revolution.

Liberty, Equality and Fraternity were a heady mixture of ideas. These escaped, as from a Pandora’s box that, once opened, could not be closed again. The French had let loose, on an astonished Europe, a host of thoughts which gave rise to revolutions, to counter-revolutions and to wars on a grand scale. The idea of Freedom gave rise to some of the worst tyrannies of the modern era. The idea of equality has tended to force everyone down to the cultural level of garden gnomes and the idea of brotherly kindness has led to a century of war and cruelty, of repression and fear and of betrayal of all human feelings on a grand scale.

Intoxicated with the idea of freedom and the, illusion of the unity of the nation, they decided that all must be free, and set about putting the idea into effect. People who did not want to be “free” were judged, before revolutionary tribunals, as “aristocrats” and were strung up to the lampposts or carted off to public execution by means of the curious machine invented by the ingenious Dr. Guillotine.

Of course to be “free” actually meant to support the republic, enthusiastically singing the Marseillaise and cheering as the blade of the guillotine fell on another aristocratic neck. To show less than wild support for these “patriotic” activities as to be labeled a traitor and an aristocrat, with painful and, usually terminal, results. Meanwhile revolutionary armies carried their brand of freedom, mostly death, rape and pillage across the rest of the continent.

After a few years of disorder, a succession of increasingly radical and extremist governments, Napoleon, with a “whiff of grapeshot, made himself Emperor and led France on the road of war against every other major state in Europe and beyond. There followed wars, nationalistic movements and revolutions and other disorders on a smaller scale all over Europe, also involving its overseas possessions.

Just over a hundred years after the allied forces of Europe disposed of the French emperor, another violent upsurge of unrest led to similar but worse changes in Russia. The ineffectual and decadent monarchy there, bogged down by its corrupt and inefficient civil service, collapsed under the additional strains imposed upon it by the First World War. There was massive disillusionment and discontent among the ranks of its peasant soldiers and the vast numbers who had flocked to the cities for work in the factories. People voted with their feet. Soldiers simply walked off home, some kept their guns, some, depending on their temperament, threw them away. Officers, who tried to stop the mass walk out from the war, were simply killed or, if they were sensible, joined their troops.

The popular movement of February, or March 1917, depending which calendar you use,led to the overthrow of the monarchy and a government put in place, by the more liberal of the political classes. This government showed itself just as inept as the one of the Tsar. It, in its turn, was overthrown by a much more sinister and organised political grouping which again used a slogan to energize the workers and peasants in its support. Karl Marx”s 1848 Manifesto of the Communist Party concluded with the stirring wprds, “Workers of the world unite you have nothing to lose but your chains, you have a world to gain.” Once more liberty, the losing of chains, and unity, this time of class rather than of nation, persuaded the people to put a party of monsters in power. The elections scheduled for early 1918 were canceled. The Tsarist secret police was replaced by a much more ruthless and efficient organ of “public safety” controlled by Felix Dzershinsky who died, not too long after, of stress from overwork.

Lenin too succumbed to his success and his last years were to see the increasing power of his “monster in waiting”, the “Man of Steel” Joseph Djgashvili. There followed a reign of terror in Russia far surpassing that brought about by the French revolutionaries. It rivalled in bloody cruelty the worst excesses of Attilla the Hun, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane put together. It made Ivan the Terrible look like a benefactor, or a disciple of Mother Theresa, by contrast.

This was not the end. Things could not get much worse in Europe though revolutionary ideas spread. Thus caused a certain amount of consternation in other places among people dedicated to the status quo. In another European nation, renowned for its high civilization and culture, another monster was waiting in the wings. An ex-corporal was to take over the German state and to make himself the super hero eulogized by Nietzsche. In prison, after a failed coup attempt, which left some of his followers dead, besotted supporters persuaded him that he was the coming hero. With great glee the German generals were told that the German army was “stabbed in the back,” in 1918. shortly after Hitler’s accession to power the nation put on uniform and began goose-stepping while the bands played Deutschland Uber Alles and the Horst Wessell Lied.

All these had several things in common. All these we, if we know what is good for us, want to avoid happening in the future. Let us look at those things they shared so we know why they came about. It may be that, given the intelligence and the will, we could make the future a better one. But I doubt it. One thing we learn from History is that we do not learn from History. A verse by Steve Turner sums this up nicely, cynically but realistically.

“History repeats itself.
It has to,
Nobody listens.”

All these movements arose out of social and political breakdown or defeat in war, or both. They all held out a bright future and some sort of victory if only you supported their movements. When they did get into power they continued the violence that had characterised them during their time on the streets. They ruled by fear and by the intimidation of their enemies and perceived enemies. They had slogans which promised peace, prosperity and a glorious future to all classes of society except to those they saw as the enemies of their movement. Enemies, of course, as with all authoritarian systems were those who did not agree with them. These, in all the above horrible examples, were sniffed out and rooted out by secret policemen and women and executed or incarcerated. Judges passed their judgments not according to an absolute code of justice but on a relativistic one whereby justice became what was best for party and nation.

Their regimes are presented as omni competent and have a way of showing the masses an enemy in which they can believe. For the Nazis it was Bolshevism and threats to their racial purity both taken to be the ploy of Zionism and the Jews in general. The Bolsheviks, however believed that Marx’s interpretation of History was a self-evident truth and it was capitalism which was the “class enemy”. That the Bolshevik leaders took on Middle class lifestyles is not surprising since any such group can convince themselves that they are entitled to at least a few “little luxuries”. Orwell in his Animal Farm, demonstrates this principle perfectly.

Without exception they were militaristic but controlled the military and made it an arm of their policy. They were also racist in some form or another. Their leaders managed to be seen both as “men of the people” and a political elite who had true political and social wisdom and who therefore were most fitted to be the spear head of nation, or class, or race. All these ideas had some sort of philosophical basis. This was usually a form of Platonic thought, where an elite ruled and guided the people and opened up careers in the service of nation, class or people for aspiring members of that elite. As with all authoritarian movements, the Leader was eulogised, admired and, most important, obeyed.

The elite always saw themselves, their founder, or their leader as absolutely right. Their ideology preyed upon people’s longing for certainties and gave them pseudo-certainties which to doubt was heresy, as in the Roman church of the middle Ages, and which carried similar penalties. Voltaire and Rousseau for the French revolution served the same purpose as Marx for the Russian and Mein Kampf for Nazi Germany.

It can probably be argued that all successful revolutions share all or most of these features. Not to have them means that a would-be revolutionary must fail or only have short-lived and partial success.

In contrast to these, though most of the democracies had small Fascist and Communist parties, these were never taken very seriously. The democracies were relatively were law abiding but did not reverence their leaders, nor their legislators. Instead they revered the law itself and generally held it in awe and so obeyed it. There is a difference between being under law and being under the arbitrary rule of a party, a committee or a leader. In the one party state not only is dissent not allowed, but no opposition is tolerated. It is the feature of authoritarian systems that they believe themselves to be absolutely right and that gives them the right to indoctrinate others.

To see these systems in action, as they really are, one could not do better than to read George Orwell, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Hans Peter Richter. These authors have had experience of the fascists of the left and also of the right and they write from out of their painful memories.

Someone has said that the price of freedom is to be forever watchful. It is not, however as simple as this. To resist the authoritarian one needs to be independent, rational, to have a certain amount of moral courage and to be imaginative with skills of empathy and interpersonal relations. The authoritarian as Adorno and his associates have shown, needs someone to prop him up. He needs a leader to tell him what to do. He needs easy solutions and he is suspicious of what is new, different, strange or in any way threatening. To the authoritarian most things are threatening. He is the sort of person who does not like questioning and who says to his children, “because I say so”, without wanting to or being able to give an explanation for his beliefs. He is the sort of person who will say “That was not the way I was brought up,” as if the way he was brought up was the ideal child rearing method. Most of us find that our children somehow grow up in spite of our mistakes, as my own are constantly reminding me.

If you are still reading this you are not likely to be an authoritarian therefore I suggest you do as Solomon did which was to ask God for wisdom as the best possible gift one could ever have. We need to challenge out fellow citizens as did the Lord Jesus and as did Socrates. We do well also to bear in mind what happened to them. The price of being free in our minds might well be one of suffering.

It is right that we should support our government but to be critical of it as well. Governments tend towards the authoritarian and they do not like to be criticised. Criticism, however is good for them and, as good citizens we are responsible to want the best for our government and our fellow citizens.

Governments are required to protect the people they rule over. The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans explains that they are there to deal with evildoers and to enable the people to go about their legitimate business without interference or molestation. For this reason governments are allowed some sort of military and police force. Thomas Hobbes the English Philosopher of troubled times argued for an absolute monarch. Since no one, he argued, acted against his own interests, and the interests of the monarch, if he was to prosper, were the interests of the state, then clearly an absolute monarch was the answer.

Later developments and later thinking have changed things and the British Head of State is a constitutional monarch, while government is conducted by a Prime Minister aided by ministers chosen from senior elected representatives of the people. This gives a democratic check on the legislators and the executive, as well as the check supplied by the judiciary, as the judges interpret and apply the law.

The Social Contract is the idea that we all have to give up a little of our freedom to the law and to the government in order that the government may enforce the law and we can go about our business freely. In his Second Treatise of Government John Locke argues for a form of social contract. He says: “Secondly, political power is that power which every man, having in the state of nature, has given up into the hands of society, and therein to the governor whom the society hath set over itself, with this express or tacit trust, that it shall be employed for their good and the preservation of their property.”

The above does not differ from the instruction of the Apostle in the letter to the Romans, but agrees with it. The Apostle, however, words his argument to agree with his point that Christians ought to seek the well being of any ruler who is set over them whether they be a democratically elected government or a Nero. Where contracts, however, are broken as when conditions of anarchy are not dealt with and disorder and lawlessness are not corrected, only more disorder results. To rebel against an ineffective government is to encourage the disorder. We must at all times seek the best for out government even if it is a bad one since, by anarchy, a bad government may become a worse one.

Finally a quote from a famous speech on democracy is appropriate here. The funeral oration by Pericles, the Athenian statesman, is perhaps the finest piece of oratory up to Martin Luther King’s oration for equality and justice. These are not rivals but stand together, one from the ancient world and one from the modern. We might do well to learn them by heart.

“Let me say that our system of government does not copy the institutions of our neighbours. It is more the case of our being a model to others,… 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…. We do not get into a state with our next-door neighbour if he enjoys himself in his own way…
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.” (Thcydides, p145)