Reading Thucydides with Aristotle’s Rhetoric: Arguing from Justice and Expediency in the Melian Dialogue and the Speeches

Abstract

In this paper certain prescriptions laid in Aristotle’s Rhetoric are used to elucidate Thucydides’ application of arguments from justice and expediency in the Melian Dialogue and in the speeches. Their mutual relation is tested in the perspective of rhetorical theory, and the meaning of τὸ συμφέρον in the Melian Dialogue and in the Peloponnesian War as a whole is discussed.