What IS actual power by Thucydides reckoning?
Actual power is economically based: power based on access to and deployment of resources. Take for example Thucydides’ treatment of the Trojan War in contrast to Homer’s. • For Homer, what determines the progress and eventual outcome of the war? • For Thucydides, what determined the progress and eventual outcome of the Trojan War? • Thucydides offers his own method as a scientific method based on scrutinizing evidence; it argues for third person objectivity and is designed to inspire a sense of security in the reader. • Thucydides uses a grid, or set of criteria, by which he scrutinizes evidence, both ancient and contemporary (e.g., reports about the Peloponnesian War). We may observe elements of his interpretive grid in the archaeology, and will watch for it throughout the rest of his history: • what is “likely” to have happened (a Sophistic style of argumentation) • actual power = wealth • naval power inclines particularly toward accumulation of wealth and empire • human nature = acc
