Toynbee: Ancient Greek History and the West

Page 21

(iii. 83) 'Thus the class-war plunged Greek society into every kind of moral evil, and honesty, which is the chief constituent of idealism, was laughed out of existence in the prevailing atmosphere of hostility and suspicion. No argument was cogent enough and no pledge solemn enough to reconcile opponents. The only argument that appealed to the party momentarily in power was the unlikelihood of their remaining there long and the consequent advisability of taking no risks with their enemies. And the stupider the combatants, the greater their chances of survival, just because they were terrified at their deficiencies, expected to be outwitted and outmanœuvred, and therefore plunged recklessly into action, while their superiors in intellect, who trusted to their wits to protect them and disdained practical precautions, were often caught defenceless and brought to destruction.'

There is the effect of the great Greek war upon the first generation. Thucydides, of course, had a sensitive and emotional temperament. He is always controlling himself and reining himself in. But one is struck by an outburst of the same feeling in a younger man, Xenophon, who was ordinarily in harmony with his age and was probably rather unimaginative and self-complacent by nature. The war had given Xenophon his opportunity as a soldier and a writer. He was not inclined to quarrel with the 'envious and disordering' powers that had ruined Greek civilization. But in the last paragraph of the History of his Own Times he is carried away, for he has just been describing the battle of Mantinea (362 B. C.), in which he had lost his son.

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Arnold Toynbee
Ancient Greek History and the West

Learned Freeware

Arnold Toynbee Ancient Greek History and the West

Learned Freeware

Arnold Toynbee
Ancient Greek History and the West