Stasis in Thucydides
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Forever would the Greek world be turned on its head and upside down by the events which had passed many millennia ago on the little island of Corcyra as The People struggled against the Corcyrian Oligarchy for control. Thucydides as chronicler and historian of the period described the events as they unfolded on Corcyra as stasis or in more modern terms revolution broke out to cause civil strife for many years. As a result of the tumultuous infighting the great powers of the time, Athens and Sparta, began a great war in which the future of the Greek world would rest and ultimately fall into Macedonian control. Thucydides believed that the stasis was a disease which would spread throughout the Hellas causing massive strife and inhumane behavior in otherwise decent people, but was the Greek ideal of the virtue a cause of stasis? More specifically, did the pursuit of honor and glory greatly contributed to the inequities that would breed stasis as seen on Corcyra?
What is stasis for Thucydides? Stasis is the condition in which, within varying degrees of intensity, society undergoes a change in its social structure, but with total disregard for the law and traditional means of addressing civic disagreement. Stasis as described by Thucydides exhibits the worse aspect of human behavior in which the masses overcompensate for past misdeeds in a reckless and violent manner. Thucydides writes, "The cause of all these evils was the lust for power arising from greed and ambition; and from these passions preceded the violence of parties once engaged in contention. The leaders in the cities made the fairest professions: on the one side with the cry of political equality of The People, on the other of a moderate aristocracy; but they sought prizes for themselves in those public interests which they pretended to cherish and, stopping at nothing in their struggles for ascendancy, engaged in direct excesses" (Thucydides 3...