{"id":39849,"date":"2017-08-20T03:00:58","date_gmt":"2017-08-20T07:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=39849"},"modified":"2025-01-12T12:51:14","modified_gmt":"2025-01-12T17:51:14","slug":"thucydides-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/08\/20\/thucydides-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Thucydides again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidwarrenonline.com\/2017\/08\/19\/the-longer-game\/\" target=\"_blank\">David Warren<\/a> found a dip into Thucydides was at least as informative on political issues today as any current &#8220;reporting&#8221;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What a week it has been, at least in the yellow world of journalism and politics. I have had nothing new to say on anything \u2014 at least I hope to have said nothing new, for my intention in commenting on passing events is simply to repeat the old gnomes which they freshly illustrate. Thucydides, into whose works I privately dipped last Tuesday, was as up-to-date as anything I found \u201cbreaking\u201d on the Internet.<\/p>\n<p>Consider, for instance, the career of the Athenian general (then Spartan, then Persian, then Athenian again), Alcibiades \u2014 more sinned against than sinning, and more sinning than sinned against, by turns. A large man, persistently underridden by the mean and small; a hero and no saint. Loved to the point of worship by the crowds; hated by the umbrous, to the point of madness; and always \u201cin the news.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A polarizing figure, as we\u2019d say today; who, for his impieties, was finally run down by a mob. They set fire to the cottage where he\u2019d retired with his mistress. (The Spartans commissioned the mob by one account; the young lady\u2019s parents by another.) Boldly emerging from the flames to confront the whole tribe of his adversaries, he died in a hail of arrows. The gods let only Stalin die in his sleep. (Or so we thought until we got more information.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Warren found a dip into Thucydides was at least as informative on political issues today as any current &#8220;reporting&#8221;: What a week it has been, at least in the yellow world of journalism and politics. I have had nothing new to say on anything \u2014 at least I hope to have said nothing new, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1526,7,53],"tags":[732,1152,1151,1582],"class_list":["post-39849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-greece","category-history","category-politics","tag-athens","tag-peloponnesianwar","tag-sparta","tag-thucydides"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-amJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39849"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39850,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39849\/revisions\/39850"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}