PHIL HOPKINSagain into the antilogy of analysis and fact presented by the text, invit-
ing and fashioning an ever more complex relation between reader and
author.
The speeches by themselves place the reader in complex relation
to the author. Thucydides presents at length obviously biased, openly
manipulative accounts without authorial comment, after chastising
most people for accepting reports without testing them (1.20). There
are necessarily falsities in these speeches, but Thucydides allows them
to stand “untested” except by each other, the larger narrative frame,
and the reader’s own judgment. A further, and Platonic, complexity is
brought about by the fact that the assessment which so favors Athenian
victory is placed, in large part, into the mouth of the clever and per-
suasive embassy from Corinth, providing some distance between it and
the authoritative voice of the historian. It also invites skepticism on the
part of the reader, due to the fact that Corinth is a biased participant in
the confl ict with designs upon Spartan intentions and a long history of
enmity with Athens.
In assigning such a prominent role to the interaction between
Corinth and Athens, and to the Corinthian speeches, Thucydides dis-
plays fairly straightforwardly the grievances and hostilities between
Corinth and Athens as a primary reason for the war.^22 Thus, another
level of antilogy develops between this dramatic depiction of the long-
standing hostility between Corinth and Athens as a major cause of the
war and Thucydides’ own offer of the “truest reason.” Thucydides’ se-
lection and arrangement accomplishes this complexity, which prompts
the reader to question not only the assessment of the Corinthians, but
also the larger assessment we have noted building in book 1; if only
because the Corinthian argument is echoed by the analysis of the two
most trustworthy speakers of book 1, Pericles and Archidamus, as well
as the analysis of the “Archaeology” and the “Pentecontaetia,” and even
Thucydides’ own conclusions, presented as the result of careful and dif-
fi cult investigation.
The conclusions of these analyses are also played against the nar-
rative unfolding of events reported not long after these various assess-
ments, which refute the Corinthian generalizations and call attention
to their partial nature. One of the fi rst characterizations of Athens,
offered by the Corinthian embassy as evidence of the need for quick
action, is that she is “quick to invent a plan and then to carry it out
in action” (1.70). However, Athenian deliberations concerning the war
are presented as hesitant.^23 Many of Pericles’ assessments are also soon
shown to be mistaken, such as the manner in which the relative wealth
of Athens and Sparta would affect the outcome of the war, and which