Peace
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Towards the Wars’ end, the Peloponnesian League gave way to the short-lived Hellenic League, which of necessity combined Sparta’s army and Athens’ navy to amphibiously deter Persia. When Pausanias, the new League’s Spartan military commander, was stripped of power for conspiring with the Persians (c. 478 BCE), Athens was handed the Hellenic helm and proceeded to reform the League along more isonomic than authoritarian lines. Seeing Athens’ hegemony as a threat to its power, Sparta broke away from the Hellenic League and reformed the Peloponnesian League along its original lines. In 477 BCE, city-states faithful to Athens reunited in the Delian League, so-called after the sacred polis Delos where it originally met and collected its wealth, in the tradition of the old Amphictyonic League. With Athenian wisdom, Delians called for the termination of hostilities between members, regular meetings and commensurate contributions. But Delians remained Spartan in spirit. Though early on they deployed diplomats around Greece to enlarge the League, they soon began doing so by force; its isonomic principles faded and began to favor larger members. That the Delian League had become an Athenian Empire became clear when Pericles moved its financial centre from Delos to Athens in 454 BCE, putting the golden in Athens’ golden age. An Athenian delegate, Callias, negotiated a peace treaty with the Persians on behalf of the Delian League in 449, by which “all might sail without fear and be at peace,” in Plutarch’s account.28 The operative word here is “sail,” symbolizing Athens and its naval allies. The Peace of Callias was not binding on Sparta and its continental allies, who arguably betrayed Athens in a separate peace with Persia in 387, the King’s Peace or the Treaty of Atlantidas, forfeiting centuries of Greek maritime gains.
The benefit of these Leagues, called symmachiae, offensive and defensive accords by which both friends and enemies are shared, was that Ancient Greeks explicitly agreed not to fight and to settle disputes diplomatically within them. Permanent ambassadors called proxenos represented their city’s interests abroad, acting as arbiters and tendering trade treaties. Perpetual war with Persia precludes calling these alliances peaceful, but they were nonetheless among the few ways inter-polis peace was achieved. With the Persian threat temporarily dissipated, the divergence in the Leagues’ interests, one land and the other the sea, made each the convenient common enemy the other needed to protect their respective inter-polis peace. In a vain attempt to preserve the status quo, the Leagues agreed to the Thirty Years Peace in 336 BCE to prevent an escalation in ongoing armed conflict. Within five years, however, friction between Sparta and Athens reached a boiling point, Persia sided with Sparta and diplomatic relations deteriorated. The resulting Peloponnesian War (431– 404) was a series of indecisive battles, pitting sea against land power, punctuated by brief periods of peace. Less than halfway into the war, the Athenian spokesman Nicias and Sparta’s king negotiated a truce. The events leading up to the Peace of Nicias, which historian Thucydides (c. 460–395) aptly called “hollow,” were satirically portrayed in Peace by Aristophanes, who pioneered anti-war theatre.29 Delegates from each side decided its terms, reflecting “the results of a war which neither side had won,” that is, this was more a proclamation of stalemate than peace.30 In Thucydides’ words, the Peace “cannot be reasonably defined as a real peace, since in that period they did not reciprocally return and recover all the things they pledged to do.”31 Neither party to the Peace was satisfied with the performance of the other and, as if inevitably, war flared up again five years later. In the end, downtrodden Sparta and destitute Athens both fell before the region’s rising star, Macedon and its Corinthian League. The conquests of Alexander the Great are worth noting here only insofar as they ushered in Ancient Greece’s last great territorial grab, which wholly un-peacefully paved the way for the Roman Empire and, in its footprints, medieval and modern Europe.
The sharply jagged line of political peace in Ancient Greece should not detract from the smoother though no less curved one drawn by its famous philosophers. Thucydides argued that “speaking as they do the same language, [Greeks] should end their disputes by the means of heralds and messengers, and by any way rather than fighting.”32 Philosophy proved to be one of those ways. How peace principles, if they exist, should be put in practice by individuals in society, if they can, are just a few of the questions raised and divergently answered. Philosophers before Socrates are usually grouped together for their materialist rather than mythological (as in Hesiod’s) explanations of the universe and humanity’s place within it. Thales, credited with being the first such thinker, devised a scheme to unite Greek cities into one state, keeping their autonomy but coordinated from a capital. Empedocles developed the theory of the four universal elements (water, fire, earth and air) being united by the attractive force of love and separated by the repulsive force of strife. Relations between these elements as between humans unfold in four phases. In the first love dominates, in the second love and strife compete for supremacy, in the third strife triumphs and in the last love trumps strife, an unending cycle. In Pythagoras’ theory of universal harmony, based on the study of rigorous yet mystic mathematical formulas and astronomical observations, violence and war are aberrations of a creative cosmic order he called the One, which humanity can learn about and live by. An early biographer claims “So much did he hate killing and killers that not only did he refuse to eat the meat of slaughtered animals but he avoided the company of cooks and hunters.”33 Thus Western philosophies of peace were born.
The historian Herodotus developed a similar concept of universal patterns (eike) that, when recognized and acted upon, can improve humanity’s lot. He correspondingly sees peace as a universal pattern and war its aberration: “In peace children bury their parents; war violates the universal pattern, causing parents to bury their children.”34 Heraclitus, in contrast, contended that the universe’s true being is flux and that permanence is an illusion. From his metaphoric river, which can never be stepped in twice, it can be inferred that peace and peacemaking violate universal law to the extent they resist change, while “war is the father of all things” insofar as it sires change.35 The famed Oath of the physician Hippocrates, still invoked today, did more than make medicine a profession distinct from theurgy. Swearing to work “for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment,” physicians must also promise to “keep them from harm and injustice” and “neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it,” nor “make a suggestion to this effect.”36 His medical law prescribed both a non-violent code of conduct for practicing medical professionals and collective moral guidelines – also the ethical agenda of modern organizations and conventions. Encapsulating individualistic pathos and collective ethos of pre-Socratic philosophers is Protagoras. He practiced Sophistry (“to become wise”), and was hired as a private tutor or to plead on his client’s behalf. The relativistic reasoning and rhetorical skills Protagoras engaged in could be used to argue all sides of any dispute between individuals or groups. A fellow Sophist once remarked that “Philosophy is a machine for attacking the laws,” a nonviolent alternative to weapons.37 Replacing armed conflict with debate, preventing violence by compromise, and expediting reconciliation through agreement, Sophistic abilities fetched a high price in turbulent Athens. But the open, critical dialogue Protagoras practiced has proved invaluable to peace and conflict resolution throughout history.
Socrates’ crux status in the philosophy of peace derives from the intellectual and pedagogical traditions culminating in and inaugurated by his star student, Plato. His place in the history of peace, however, derives from how he lived and faced his death. Like Protagoras, Socrates promoted open, critical dialogue, took on students and argued cases. Xenophon quotes him saying that “enmities and dangers are inseparable from violence, but persuasion produces the same results. . . who would rather take a man’s life than have a live and willing follower?”38 But unlike Protagoras, he disparaged payment and titles, living as an urban itinerant with an uncanny knack for conversation, fountainhead of his fa
me and downfall. The Socratic Method named after him consists of pointed questions and answers which aggregately reveal truths or ideas. Directed by individuals, actualized in collective collaboration, the dialectical process Socrates practiced still stands as a paradigm for studying and teaching peace, as well as for making and maintaining it. However, reducing the Method to a formula blinds us to the social significance of his way of life. Socrates’ quest for wisdom, and the “good life” lived accordingly, is radically democratic in that anyone can do likewise, regardless of their background. The Socratic paragon is also seditiously isonomic in that everyone begins on an equal footing with the same rights to wisdom and its benefits, like peace. The path Protagoras trampled, Socrates made his own: a total replacement of force with dialogue in daily affairs, used towards social-, not just self-improvement and -empowerment. Harassed but unharmed during the Thirty Tyrants’ reign, when Athenians were convicted and executed without trial, only after democracy was restored was he charged with disruptive behavior and corrupting youth. He defended his cause and was found guilty of these capital crimes. Friends tried to convince him to escape; he tried to convince them that injustice, inherently antithetical to peace, cannot be overcome by further injustice. As his final remonstration, Socrates silently drank the fabled hemlock, making the greatest irony of his life his death. Not an act of civil disobedience, nor passive or non-violent resistance, since he carried out the sentence of killing himself; rather, Socrates’ distinctive form of peaceful protest, if it can be so called, turned silence into statement, complicity into defiance, submission into rebellion and surrender into victory.
Socrates’ philosophy of peace cannot be discussed separately from that of his student, Plato. Only after meeting him did Plato embark on his own quest, the crowning achievements of which are his Dialogues, the Academy he founded and his prodigy, Aristotle. Plato’s ostensibly open Dialogues are never open-ended. Instead, Socrates, usually their main character, skillfully steers the conversation. In The Republic, for example, discussion springs from Socrates’ deceptively simple question: What is dike, the source of concord and a determinant of polis peace since mythological times? One of the “discoveries” made through the Socratic Method is that war is “derived from causes which are also the causes of almost all evils in states, private as well as public.”39 Thus, in The Laws: “every one of us should live the life of peace as long and as well as he can” and “cities are like individuals in this, for a city, if good, has a life of peace, but if evil, a life of war within and without.”40 But what are good and evil in this context? While this question has been debated ever since Plato, for our purposes they correspond to pursuing perfect and eternal Ideas, adopting them as ideals and implementing them, or not. The Republic’s famous Allegory of the Cave, in which Plato illustrates this idealism, begins with people who live confined inside one, forced to stare at its back wall from birth. A fire behind the captives casts shadows of moving statues shaped like worldly objects onto the wall, figurative of sensory perceptions that always fall short of the Ideas they represent. One breaks free, uncovers the ruse but is blinded as he makes his way past the firelight into sunlight, symbolic of rational inquiry, the pursuit of Ideas. Outside, he eventually regains sight and sees the actual world, representing Ideas. Whether he re-enters the cave to “enlighten” his people and if he does whether they embrace, ridicule or reject him are the Allegory’s closing questions, leaving the problem of implementation unresolved.
Peace fits within the Allegory’s conceptual framework in three metaphoric places. As a shadow, peace is not an Idea but an image, “in fact only a name.”41 The consequential paradox of Plato’s contribution to the philosophy and practice of peace lies in the light. As the firelight, peace is pursuable by our bodies and an implementable ideal, but is not an Idea. As the sunlight, peace is an Idea pursuable by rational inquiry, but cannot be implemented otherwise. Plato’s Cave thus construes the conditions, experience and ideals of peace inside and outside as mutually exclusive and hierarchical. Humans can adapt to and adopt both, but pursuing or implementing peace inside will a priori always fall short of doing so outside. In other words, the Idea of peace is accessible by our minds, but un-implementable with our bodies; all we can do is try. Rather than resolve this paradox, the socio-political model Socrates goes on to construct builds upon it. Placed at the apex of Plato’s ideal state is a class of philosopher-kings who, though vested with near-absolute power, are enlightened and so rule with prudent reason. Fortitude and vigor are the defining traits of the guardian class that takes and executes philosopher-kings’ orders. The laboring class under their combined control, farmers and craftsmen who provide for themselves and their rulers, is characterized as tempered by their work despite being temperamentally inclined. Plato, through Socrates, contends that in this state, the Ideas of dike and peace come closest to being enacted by the complementary qualities each of the three classes embodies in fulfilling their prescribed roles. The possibilities and limits of peace Plato congealed have shaped the history of peace and peacemaking in the West and, through the West’s influence, the world. But there can be no doubt that without Rome’s espousal of Ancient Greek culture, Plato would not have had the same influence on pacific thought and practices as he did.
One Empire, One Peace: The Rise of Rome to the Pax Romana’s Decline
Although peace and peacemaking took very on different forms and functions during the twelve centuries Rome emerged from obscurity to conquer the Mediterranean region, when they did at all, peacemakers almost always played second fiddle to warmongers. Yet, Romans left such an indelible mark on the history of peace that they cannot be ignored. The inseparability of war and Roman culture made peace and peacemaking into what Gerardo Zampaglione calls an “ideological imperative” in The Idea of Peace in Antiquity (1955), overshadowing them as bio-genetic and cultural imperatives but unable to replace them as such.42 The Roman history of peace is, in the end, more of forms than substance, in which lies its significance. The chronicles pertaining to the origin of Rome are less valuable as accurate records than they are as insights about what later Romans believed or wanted to believe about themselves and their past. Nevertheless, what we know of the violent early history of Rome is for this very reason both self-revelatory and prophetic, if a study in un-peacefulness overall.
The high esteem Romans came to hold for the Greeks who came before them is evident in that the twins Romulus and Remus, legendary descendants of the Trojan War hero Aeneas, are said to have founded their city (c. 753 BCE). Archaeologically, Rome seems to have resulted from a vicious struggle for supremacy over the northern Tiber River region between three tribes: Latins, Etruscans and Sabines. They were apparently influenced by Sparta’s Sicilian colonies, visible in their aggression towards one another as recorded in their remains as well as stories. Romulus killed Remus over who would be the namesake of what was to become Rome and went on to grant asylum to the region’s brigands and outcasts, all warlike men like him. So while the first Romans soon partially pacified the Etruscans, at one time more powerful, they also suffered a shortage of brides. The episode that ensued, called the Rape of the Sabines, brought about the first known instance of Roman peacemaking, uncharacteristic as it was. The Romans invited the rival Sabines to celebrate a festival, which they accepted in good faith. However, once their guests were inside their walls, the hosts abducted the visiting women and made them unwilling wives. The Sabines took months to prepare for war against the Romans. Just as the two armies were about to annihilate each other, the abducted women and by-now mothers rushed between them to plead for peace. They declared that death was preferable to losing both their fathers and the fathers of their children to one war. This Peace of the Sabines, often overlooked in favor of the more graphic Rape, brought about not only the immediate end of hostilities, but also lasting concord between the Sabines and the Romans. Thus, conceived and gestated in violence, Rome was born in peace. Unnecessary loss of family members remains o
ne of the most widely used anti-war pleas for peace to this day.
The first decades of the Roman Republic (c. fifth–first centuries BCE) set the tone for war- and peacemaking for the rest of its existence. The final local war of significance between Rome and its tribal rivals was the Battle of Lake Regillius (c. 496 BCE). This battle’s concluding peace terms, which formed the Latin League, marks the start of Rome’s regional consolidation and inter-regional conquests. The League was similar to Spartan predecessors in most respects, and like them was discarded when convenience outweighed necessity:
Let there be peace among the Romans and all the Latin cities as long as the heavens and the earth shall remain where they are. Let them neither make war upon one another themselves, nor bring in foreign enemies nor grant a safe passage to those who shall make war upon either. Let them assist one another when warred upon . . . and let each have an equal share of the spoils and booty taken in their common wars.43