The Language of Pericles

When K.J. Dover asserted that "There is very little individual characterization of speeches" in Thucydides (Thucydides [Oxford, 1973], p. 23), he recorded both his own position and the scholarly consensus. But Dover’s claim is open to challenge. The diction, sentence structure, and other features of Pericles’ three direct speeches (Thucydides 1.140-144, 2.35-46, 2.60-64) are distinctive, in ways that illuminate the nature of Periclean leadership. Diction: Pericles not only favors certain words, but uses them in characteristically bold ways. τόλμα, ἐλπίς, πείθω, and κίνδυνος generally given negative connotations by other speakers, play positive roles in each of Pericles’ three speeches, revealing a characteristically Athenian approach to international relations. On the other hand, Pericles never mentions, much less commends, σωφροσύνη. His repeated references to coincidence and memory (e.g. ξυμβαίνω, μεταβολή, μνήμη) are simultaneously realistic and idealistic. Persuasion, hope, and daring are all complex terms, in that they require a fusion of intellect and "will" to succeed. Pericles emphasizes the necessity of a supple and aggressive intellect in confronting the world, insisting in two different speeches that reason and daring are not antithetical but interdependent. Other features: The final two speeches are packed with ambiguity, paradox, metaphor, and relative clauses. Unlike Nicias, who also uses many relative clauses, Pericles constantly obscures his transitions, making us search for antecedents that may not exist. Pericles’ final speech is also far more gnomic than any other in Thucydides. One type of analogy, in which the middle term serves two purposes at once, may be peculiarly Periclean: men adapt their thoughts to fit events, and events proceed like thoughts (1.140.1); the virtues of our dead adorn my words, and my words honor the city (2.42.2); if we lay hold of freedom and preserve it, freedom will (in turn) easily regain our private possessions (2.62.3). Overt assertion and linguistic expression collaborate to give "meaning" to these speeches. The long scholarly tradition of insisting that Thucydides merely cloaked the "purport," "gist," or "Sinn" of an original in his own words rests on a dubious notion of form-content dualism that ignores the vital contribution of form to meaning. If verbal revision does indeed change the “meaning” of a statement, the dualistic scholarly tradition requires reconsideration just as much as Dover’s denial of individual characterization.