One of the most absurd of all present day pundits is Victor Davis Hanson, whose theory that there is such a thing as a Western Way of War, which descends from Pericles to Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf, isn’t quite completely bullshit. Here’s why:
The Athenian Empire really was the root of Western civilisation, and really did behave in ways that the Shrub could be proud of. The translation, in what follows, from the paperback reprint of the Everyman Thucydides, is rather dated. But the sentiment is fresh from the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed, or the Times leaders here.
Thos is what the Athenian delegation told the oligarchs of Melos, a small Spartan colony they had decided to absorb, when the Melians protested that this was unjust and would provoke the gods. It is what our leaders would say to Rowan Williams, if they had the eloquence: “When you speak of the favour of the gods, we may as fairly hope for that as yourselves; neither our pretensions nor our conduct being in any way contrary to what men believe of the gods, or practise among themselves. Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. And it is not as if we were the first to make this law, or to act upon it when made: we found it existing before us, and shall leave it to exist for ever after us; all we do is to make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, having the same power as we have, would do the same as we do.”
The Melians were unconvinced by this, and went to war. The next year: “The Melians took another part of the Athenian lines, which were only feebly garrisoned. Reinforcements afterwards arriving from Athens in consequence, under the command of Philocrates, son of Demeas, the siege was now pressed vigorously; and some treachery taking place inside, the Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and inhabited the place themselves.”