“TO SAY WHAT IS MOST NECESSARY”side would fi nd themselves resorting to forced contributions—one of
the fi rst points in his argument for war and largely overturned as early
as the siege of Mytilene. In addition, the History in sum serves as a bal-
ancing counterargument to the high appraisal of naval power in the
analysis of book 1.
Thucydides places the analyses he offers in tension with the events
that he relates in a deceptively simple fashion. In recounting events,
Thucydides as author most recedes from view, but in doing so he allows
the “events” to “speak against” his own analytic authority. The attentive
reader, here as in Plato, is brought into some tension with the narrative,
such that as the author recedes from view while the tensions mount,
the question of authority is brought to the fore. In many of Plato’s dia-
logues, the reader encounters a similar subtle engagement with bias,
a similar ironic construction through which, if he is attentive to what
Mitchell Miller calls the mimetic mirror that the dialogues are crafted
to present, he is led to perform a critical refl ection upon his own com-
mitments that results in a similar complex displacement of authority on
to the reader.^24
One of the most impressive aspects of this construction, however,
is that even if a reader does not attend to these complexities, he still con-
fronts a nagging question that leads to much the same outcome. Why
does the examination of the origins of the confl ict in book 1, in both its
narrative analysis and in the carefully crafted and paired speeches, so
favor the probability of Athenian victory against the almost unanimous
conviction of the time?^25 A ready and simple answer is that Thucydides
thought that Athens should have won the war, but her own foolishness
undid her. Armed with this conclusion and facing similar circum-
stances, a state fi nding itself similarly fortunate in a balance of power
might suppose that were it only to avoid the same mistakes, it could not
help but have every confi dence of victory. Such an attitude would be
reckless in precisely the way the History seeks to educate. Furthermore,
observing in great detail how a powerful state fritters away its resources
is of quite limited value for the ages, unless one supposes that general
lessons serve all or most particular cases. Not only do many voices in the
History explicitly caution that the outcome of war cannot be determined
by the best and most careful divination, but such a supposition exhibits
the eijkov~ reasoning that ultimately ranks as the main cause for both
parties’ decision to go to war.^26
Many times in the History this kind of supposition leads to disas-
trous results, and Plato clearly and repeatedly demonstrates its prob-
lems in the dialogues. Both authors depict eijkov~ reasoning as problem-
atic when those exercising it make inadequate attempts to assess the