Constructive Conflict as a Rhetorical Tool
in Thucydides’ History

C. Sydnor Roy (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

When Hesiod describes the two Erides in the Works and Days, he distinguishes between destructive conflict (war or stasis) and constructive conflict (envy or emulation [zelos]). Loraux (2002) discusses the nature of conflict within the democratic city and shows how it is both regarded as necessary and feared, for constructive conflict runs the risk of transforming into destructive conflict. She argues that the city resolves its fear of conflict by reinforcing the feeling of unanimity within the city after the conflict is settled. I argue that, in many of the speeches in Thucydides’ History, the speakers exploit the audience’s desire for unanimity as a means of persuasion. They do so by diverting attention away from other, potentially destructive, conflicts – such as conflicts with an external enemy, an opposing faction, or even conflict with the speaker himself – towards a unifying and constructive conflict: that of the audience with itself. The speaker describes the audience to itself; the audience responds to its image in a competitive manner – it wants to emulate the description or resist it. Individual audience members respond to a collective image, and thus, in the similarity of their response, are unified in their conflict with the idealized audience. This situation creates a space for the speaker to guide the audience as he guides their conflict. To show this rhetorical process at work, I will focus upon two major examples in speeches by Pericles and Cleon.

In the Funeral Oration (2.35-46), Pericles describes an idealized Athens. The Athenians are expected to respond as a whole to the ideal image by striving to emulate it. By setting up this kind of constructive conflict for his audience, Pericles shields them from other sources of division, both internal and external, and attempts to give them the strength to persist throughout the war. Yunis (1996) argues that the Funeral Oration is epideictic yet also deliberative; the ideal image furthers Pericles’ policy aims. I agree, but would add that the mechanism by which this is attained is the creation of constructive conflict.

As Pericles constructs a positive image of Athens, so Cleon constructs a negative one in the Mytilinean debate (3.37-40). Cleon’s construction of the negative ideal is a rhetorical tool, for Cleon uses the ideal in an attempt to win the debate over the punishment of the Mytilineans. Cleon berates the Athenians for being foolish, uninterested in investigation, obsessed with new things, and slaves. He hopes his audience will feel indignation at his description and strive to show that it is not the negative image. Cleon aims to unify his audience in its need to fight the negative image and thus, by association, be unified in its support of him. The overall success or failure of this speech is debated (see Wohl, 2002), for Cleon, despite losing the debate, is able to maintain his influence in Athens.

Pericles praises his audience in the Funeral Oration; Cleon blames them in his speech. Both speakers, however, create a constructive conflict that enhances the persuasive force of their position. Thus, I argue, we can expand Aristotle’s argument in the Rhetoric that “praise and counsels have a common aspect; for what you might suggest in counseling becomes encomium by a change in phrase” (I.ix.35) to include blame, for – to Aristotle, among others – praise and blame are opposite sides of the same coin. I will end my paper by arguing that we need to appreciate the role of conflict in these speeches in order to understand the full force of the rhetorical practice. The eristic interaction of the audience with its positive or negative ideal deflects their attention from the deliberations going on around them and inclines them to follow the will of the speaker who created the internal conflict.