CAUSES

The causes of this great conflict already appear to have been controversial in Thucydides’ time, judging by what he says (1.23.5-6), and controversy almost invariably surrounds the causes of any war. Apart from anything else, it all depends on what one means by ‘causes’. One has only to think of the continuing arguments about more recent conflicts to realize that we are never going to be quite certain about all the factors that led to the Peloponnesian War. Here, we do not even know precisely what was said by the various parties to the debates at Athens and Sparta, or the actual terms of diplomatic exchanges, let alone what was said behind closed doors, or what was in the minds of participants. The difficulties have also been compounded by attempts to pin the blame on one side or the other. Thucydides at least avoids this, but when he says that his object in discussing the causes of the war was that ‘no one should ever have to enquire why so great a war arose among the Hellenes’ (1.23.5), he should have known he was doomed to frustration.1