Archidamus thucydides book
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History of the Peloponnesian War: Books 1-2
Accordingly, instead of telling us whether or not he approves of a given policy, Thucydides asks us to make our own judgments, and then to subject them to the testing that the war provides.
— History of Political Philosophy
Speeches in Book 1:
Corcyraean to Athenian: success.
Appealed to fear (Lacedaemonians are preparing for war against you guys!), honor (we are not the smart one here, you are) and interest (we have the third most powerful navy in Hellas).
Corinthian to Athenian: failure.
Asking for the return of a favor — and subsequently, exposed the "conferring favor" BS Pericles was spouting in his funeral oratory. Meanwhile unwittingly enhanced the fear that Lacedaemonians are coming for them. Accusing Corcyraean of performing unjust extrajudicial meddling is adding insult to injury because Athens is the ultimate extrajudicial meddler at that time. Just ask Megara.
But is Sparta really plotting for war? They didn't even mobilize.
Corinthian to Spartan: success in rhetoric, failure in military judgement.
The fearmongering was so effective, Spartan even excused an OK boomer. But that doesn't make up for the fundamental weakness of Corinthian casus belli and subsequently Archidamus called their bluff.
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Thucydides 1. 139-146; 2. 1-65
Translated by Richard Crawley
(as edited and adapted by Paul Swarney 2006)
139 To return to the Lacedaemonians. The history of their first embassy, the injunctions which it conveyed, and the rejoinder which it provoked, concerning the expulsion of the accursed persons, have been related already. It was followed by a second, which ordered Athens to raise the siege of Potidaea, and to respect the independence of Aegina. Above all, it gave her most distinctly to understand that war might be prevented by the revocation of the Megara decree, excluding the Megarians from the use of Athenian harbours and of the market of Athens. But Athens was not inclined either to revoke the decree, or to entertain their other proposals; she accused the Megarians of pushing their cultivation into the consecrated ground and the unenclosed land on the border, and of harbouring her runaway slaves. At last an embassy arrived with the Lacedaemonian ultimatum. The ambassadors were Ramphias, Melesippus, and Agesander. Not a word was said on any of the old subjects; there was simply this: "Lacedaemon wishes the peace to continue, and there is no reason why it s
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