INTRODUCTION

Every Athenian alliance, every declaration of war, and every peace treaty was instituted by a decision of the assembly. The assembled citizens voted after listening to speeches that presented varied and often opposing arguments about the best course of action for the state to take. For this reason, the fifteen preserved assembly speeches of the mid fourth century bc provide an unparalleled body of evidence for the way that Athenians thought and felt about interstate relations in general and about issues of war and peace in particular. To understand this body of oratory, its emotional appeals, its moral and legalistic arguments, and its invocation of state interests, is to understand how the Athenians of that period made decisions about war and peace. That is the goal of this book.

No one type of argument or single factor determined Athenian decisions. Rather, various considerations could play independent and important roles. As a result no single overarching thesis about Athenian thinking unites my chapters on, for example, “Legalism,” “Household metaphors,” and “Calculations of interest.” My investigations are united rather by an attitude towards Athenian thinking, a charitable and empathetic one, and my methodological preference for the evidence of assembly speeches. This attitude and methodology are best illustrated by contrasting them first with scholarship that portrays Athenian thinking as simple and deplorable and second with unmasking methodologies, according to which the stated grounds for war – as found in assembly speeches – only mask the truth and thus need to be stripped away rather than examined.