As a historian,
Thucydides’ job is to gather the truth. Then he has to make sense of it, then
he has to order it, and then he has to present it. In Thucydides’ introduction,
he explicitly states that he has “…described nothing but what I either saw
myself, or learned from others of whom I made the most careful and particular
inquiry.” Despite his dedication to the truth, what one speaks or recounts can
only ever be a translation of what actually happened. Personal bias is bound to
creep in. Thucydides’ statement demonstrates that he discriminated between
potential sources, thus tacitly admitting his own bias. History, then, is
irrational because it is subject to the pulling and tugging of persuasion, and
thus it is also rhetorical. If rhetoric were a three-legged stool built on the
three major persuasive appeals, it would not be able to stand on anything less
than all three legs; history happens to rely on all three: fact (logos),
credibility (ethos), and the human element (pathos).
In this same
vein, Pericles’ funeral oration, which acts as both a history and a eulogy, is
simply a translation of the truth, and thus rhetorical. At the heart of his
epideictic speech is this message: Athens is great, the fallen warriors fought
for Athens, thus they are great. But in order to relay this message, Pericles
spends more time talking about Athens than he does the soldiers. Dispositio, or arrangement, is his major
rhetorical tool. By speaking first to kairos (i.e. this a funeral speech and a
red-blooded Athenian patriotic speech), Pericles distances himself from
speeches that either praise too little or praise too much, engendering himself
to the audience. Pericles then stops himself and starts to talk extensively
about the virtues of Athens’ forefathers and Athens itself. Like what Spencer M
said in his 2014 post, Pericles extols their democratic tradition, meritocratic
society, and above all, the personal courage of Athenian citizens, building his
own ethos through patriotic rhetoric. The only time Pericles concedes Athenian
imperfection is when he talks about the soldiers themselves. But Pericles’
oration is still a translation of the truth. The entirety of the speech must be
taken within the context of Thucydides’ belief that the Peloponnesian War was
started because the Spartans were jealous of the Athenians. No doubt Pericles
thought the same.
I agree with the bias of Thucydides. If I was only to read his view of the war, I definitely would have felt only negativity toward Sparta. He seems to personify Athens and make everyone want to be a proud part of it.
ReplyDeleteI'd personally been struggling to verbalize how history can be rhetoric, so I greatly appreciated your "three-legged stool" analogy! Interesting how the "human element," as you put it, can be so important to history. As much as I wish there was a perfectly round version of history, adding the pathetic element definitely gives enough of a twist to keep it interesting.
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