On Justice Power and Human Nature

Arete is often translated as “excellence,” “valor,” or “virtue.” Woodruff notes that traditionally, and especially in Homer’s writings, arete also means “doing good to one’s friends and harm to one’s enemies” (208). In Pericles’s Funeral Oration, Woodruff translates arete as “fine character,” presumably because the soldiers who died in battle were attempting to help their city and harm Sparta.

The literal meaning of autonomia in Greek is “having your own laws.” It also translates more loosely as “independent” (205). Greek city-states could consider themselves independent when they made and subscribed to their own laws.

Dike means “justice” and is, according to Woodruff, “the principal moral concept in the History” (31). Dike is also a goddess, the personification of justice, moral order, and fair judgment—all of which apply to justice as Thucydides conceptualized it: upholding traditional laws and customs, settling disputes peacefully under the guidance of “a duly constituted authority” (31), keeping agreements even when one party decides that doing so no longer serves its interests, applying proportionate punishment only to the guilty, and avoiding outrages, tyranny, and avarice.

Woodruff notes that numerous Greek words can be understood to relate to “power.” Dunamis (strength), kratos (control), and arche (empire) correlate most closely to power, while ananke (compulsion, necessity) and bia (violence) speak to power dynamics. Central to the understanding of power in Thucydides’s writings is the element of a dynamic: Leaders, whether individuals or states like Athens and Sparta, don’t hold power in a vacuum but because they can predict how people will behave and act accordingly.