ABSTRACT
Movements establish genealogies to legitimize themselves. To make Christianity more attractive to Jews, the New Testament traces Jesus's lineage to King David. Realists claim Thucydides as their forebear. In recent years, a number of international relations scholars have offered more subtle readings of his history that suggest realism is only one facet of his work. 1 I make a more radical assertion: Thucydides is a founding father of constructivism. The underlying purpose of his history was to explore the relationship between nomos (convention, custom, law) and phusis (nature) and its implications for the development and preservation of civilization. 2 His work shows not only how language and convention establish identities and enable power to be translated into influence but also how the exercise of power can undermine language and convention. Thucydides' understanding of these relationships was insightful and points to the possibility, indeed the necessity, of a symbiotic and productive partnership between two currently antagonistic research traditions.
