I'm much more willing to accept Prof. Hanson's interpretation of the Peloponnesian War than yours Peter. VDH has spent much of the last twenty-five years lecturing on Thucydides (which is where I first ran into him back when I thought I was going to go into graduate school and study classics).
> In the text of the event surrounding
> the massacre, it is the thracians who are storming the city. When
> the Thebans catch up to them to exact revenge, it is only the Thracians
> that suffer. If the Athenians were overseeing the massacre, Thucydides
> would be writing about the punishment meted out to Diitrephes. But
> in the death toll of the battle, Thucydides lists only Thebans,
Thracians
> and Boetians.
Why, the Athenian Assembly clearly did not give a damn about massacres by their generals. Indeed, the Assembly routinely insisted that their generals massacre the civilian population.
Jeff
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