ABSTRACT
While at times elements of the speeches seem to reflect the mind of Thucydides, there is also much which corresponds interestingly with the various characters of the speakers, in so far as those characters are known from other parts of the historian’s work. Nikias, whom Thucydides describes as much given to divination, is shown employing religious prophecy when speaking at the end of the Sicilian expedition.25 Alkibiades, who – to judge by his political success first at Athens, then at Sparta, then with Persian nobility – was evidently a moral chameleon, is shown by Thucydides speaking at Athens in a way which echoed the charismatic democrat Perikles (Alkibiades’ guardian), and subsequently dismissing dēmokratia before a Spartan audience with a phrase of terse, Lakonic confidence (“admitted folly”).26 It will be argued below that the words of the Athenian side in the Melian Debate of 416, which many have thought out of character for the speakers and likely to reflect Thucydides’ own ideas, may in fact be realistic and well attuned to the circumstances of the debate. And the Spartan Brasidas is represented by Thucydides as lying27 to an audience of non-Spartans, consistently with the picture of Spartan mendacity which we derive from other contexts.28 The whole topic of misrepresentation in the speeches is an important and somewhat neglected one.29 Not only is public lying very common in modern experience of war; more significantly, we have abundant evidence of it as carried on both by Spartans and (in law-court speeches of the fourth century) by Athenians.30 The speeches reported by Thucydides contain much that is slanted.31 But the lie of Brasidas, identified as a falsehood by Thucydides, is unusual.32 The evident scarcity of outright untruth in the speeches may be seen as evidence of editorial intervention by Thucydides. We may guess that, with his love of the didactic general truth and a desire to use the speeches in part as accurate scenesetting, he feared that the thorough reporting of lies would mislead his readers.33 To summarise: the speeches should not be regarded as an accurate record of what the various speakers said; on the other hand, they are likely to contain much that was said, or which closely resembles what was said, and they are valuable besides as evidence of the very existence of certain ideas at our period.
