ABSTRACT
The essential backdrop to this chapter is provided by Thucydides’ comment on the stasis or civil strife at Kerkyra in the 420s (3.82.1): ‘thereafter practically the whole Greek world was similarly convulsed, the democratic leaders calling in the Athenians, their oligarchic opponents the Spartans.’ So far as ‘the’ Peloponnesian War is concerned, the comment applies particularly to its final phase, in which stasis was a major contributory cause of Athens’ defeat. Stasis, however, did not subside with the conclusion of the war. Rather, it burst out anew, the rule of the ‘Thirty Tyrants’ at Athens being but the best-known instance. Indeed, the history of the whole period spanned by the long adult life of the Athenian publicist Isokrates (436-338) can be written largely in terms of what might be called the Greek disease (Fuks 1972).
