Money and the Corrosion of Power in Thucydides: The Sicilian Expedition and Its Aftermath

362 Pages·2002·4.934 MB·English

by  Lisa Kallet

Money and the Corrosion
of Power in Thucydides
.,!I
The Joan Palevsky Imprint in Classical Literature
In honor of beloved Virgil
"O degli altri poeti onore e lume ...
fl
-Dante, Inferno
Money and the
Corrosion of Power
in Thucydides
The Sicilian Expedition and Its Aftermath
Lisa Kallet
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley Los Angeles London
The publisher gratefully acknowledges
the generous contribution to this book provided byJ oan Palevsky.
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2001 by the Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kallet, Lisa, 1956-.
Money and the corrosion of power in Thucydides : the Sicilian expedition and its
aftermath / Lisa Kallet.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBNo -520-22984-3(cloth: alk. paper)
1.Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. 2. Greece-History-Peloponnesian
War, 431-404 B.c.-Historiography 3. Sicilian Expedition, Italy, 415-413 B.C.
Historiography. 4. Greece-History-Peloponnesian, 431-404 B.c.-Finance.
5. Sicilian Expedition, Italy, 415-413 B.c.-Finance. I. Title.
DF299.T6 K32 2001
938' .05-dc21
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01
10987654321
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-
1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper). @
An earlier version of chapter 3 appeared in the American Journal of Philology 12 0 ( 1999) under
the title "The Diseased Body Politic, Athenian Public Finance, and the Massacre at Mykalessos
(Thucydides 7.27-29)." I thank the Johns Hopkins University Press for permission to repro
duce it, with changes.
ToK.

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments 1x
Note on Translation and Transliteration x1
Abbreviations xm
Introduction 1
Prelude: The Demonstration of Power and the Ambiguity
of Expense in the Melian Dialogue 9
1. Optical Illusions: Wealth and the Display of Power in the
Beginning of the Sicilian Narrative 2 1
2. Intra- and Intertextual Patterns of Failure: Herodotos,
Homer, and Thucydides 8 5
3. Money, Disease, and Moral Responsibility: The Economic
Digression and the Massacre at Mykalessos, 7.27-30 121
4. Periousia Chrematon, Gnome, and Leadership 14 7
5. The Financing of the Sicilian Expedition and the Economic
Nature of the Arche: Thucydides and Inscriptions 183
6. The Problem of Money in the Ionian War 227
Conclusion 285
Appendix: TpO<pTµJ1, 086s, and XPTJµaTa in Book 8 295
Bibliography 309
General Index 327
Index Locorum 335

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is the product of nearly a decade of thinking and continual re
thinking about Thucydides that itself followed well over a decade of inter
est in this historian-not quite, then, but almost, the length of the Pelopon
nesian War. The project started out as a mere continuation of my first book
on money and naval power in Thucydides and grew into something differ
ent and broader, as I shall explain in the introduction: The fertility of the
subject led me down unexpected paths, and, consequently, to the hope and
expectation that, in the best of worlds, I would be opening up a discus
sion; much more on this subject remains to be explored and said. Kenneth
Dover has put it best: "It is the common experience of people who study
Thucydides intensively over a long period that one goes on indefinitely
noticing things in him which one has not noticed before ... ; in the case of
Thucydides there always seems to remain the possibility that something re
ally important is still waiting to be noticed" (Thucydides [Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1973), 44).
It is a special pleasure to acknowledge the friends, colleagues, and stu
dents who have greatly benefited my thinking. Many provided equal doses
of generosity with their time, encouragement, and stimulating criticism and
suggestions; some were guides when the book led me in directions in which
I lacked expertise. The book would not be what it is, for better, without them;
for worse, I take full responsibility. For reading and commenting on earlier
versions of individual chapters and/or for oral conversations and feedback,
I thank Thomas Figueira, Christian Habicht, Stephanie Moorhead, Robert
Morstein-Marx, Martin Ostwald, Philip Stadter, Ronald Stroud, Peter van
Alfen, and the students in my Thucydides seminar of fall 1999 not already
mentioned. I am particularly grateful to three friends who have helped
me in multiple ways in the final stages of this book over the last few years:
ix
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Jack Kroll, for his editorial acumen and encouragement; Paula Perlman,
for written comments, and for her unstinting willingness to be a sounding
board; and Emmel Robbins, especially for helping me to see the humor in
all this. Carolyn Dewald, Simon Hornblower, and Christopher Pelling read
and commented on the entire manuscript; like the Athenians at the end of
the Peloponnesian War, I shall be permanently in debt, though in my case
gratefully, to them. Needless, though necessary, to say, none of the above
should be presumed to endorse any of what follows. Finally, I thank Jessica
Miner for her research assistance; Christopher Lovell for indexing help;
and Kate Toll, classics editor suffecta, and Cindy Fulton, project editor, at
UC Press.
I am very grateful to the following institutions for their financial support
and to individuals associated with them: the Center for Hellenic Studies,
where I began this project at the end of my stay in 1991-1992, and its di
rector at the time, Zeph Stewart; the Institute for Advanced Study, where I
completed a first draft in 1994-1995, and Christian Habicht, who provided
a supportive climate there for my research; and the University of Texas for
a Dean's Fellowship in fall 1997. Finally, a University Fellowship from the
National Endowment for the Humanities in 1998-1999, supplemented by
a grant from the University of Texas the same year, allowed me to complete
the manuscript. Additional grants from the University of Texas in 1999-
2000 and 2001 enabled me to obtain further support for final preparation
for publication. I am also grateful to Dr. Charalambos Kritzas, Director of
the Epigraphical Museum in Athens, for his kind assistance and permission
to examine inscriptions on several occasions.
The bibliography on Thucydides is enormous and has grown rapidly over
the past few years. I regret that I have not been able to take account of or
incorporate fully all relevant discussions.