On Justice Power and Human Nature

On Corcyra, fighting broke out between the island’s oligarchs and democrats, with the former accusing the latter of allowing Athens to enslave them. Initially, the oligarchs gained control and declared the island neutral, but fighting continued. Athens secured a truce that was quickly broken, and Sparta sent a fleet to support the oligarchs. After the Spartans departed, democratic factions regained control and slaughtered their enemies, plunging Corcyra into instability and violence.

Woodruff includes excerpts from a disputed section that he believes reflects Thucydides’s concerns about civil war, even if it wasn’t written by his own hand. The section reflects on how civil conflicts broke out across the Greek-speaking world, resulting in the perversion of laws and overturning of traditional moral values. Both were manipulated to serve the needs of individuals in the moment. When the Corcyrean revolution eventually reached an end, both sides had been decimated.

In 424, invited by oligarchic factions in the region, Spartan general Brasidas marched across Thrace, helping cities that wanted to revolt or already had revolted from Athens. Thucydides notes that Brasidas’s virtue and character won admiration and friendship for him and Sparta. At Acanthus, he addressed a divided assembly, who agreed to hear him because they feared for their crops outside the city walls.