Bret Devereaux

@BretDevereaux You write that "Thucydides [was an] aristocratic Athenian[]… frustrated that democracy – in [his] view – let the fickle, uneducated and poor ‘masses’ make decisions that ought to have been left to their ‘betters.’" What in his History do you infer that from?

PS: Quote is from Sparta I, tried to leave a comment but the page wouldn't let me.

He says the latter - the 'always grasping for more' of the Athenians and the contrast between wise Pericles and the imprudent decisions of the Athenian assembly (e.g. Sicily) subsequently.

But Pericles was part of the democracy. The democracy put him in positions of leadership until he died of the plague. Pericles isn't a counterpoint to democracy.

What Thucydides says re democracy is that they need good leaders, who put the polis first, and don't appeal to the absolute fucking worst instincts of the people in the service of their own aggrandizement. Might I suggest that we Americans should keenly appreciate that insight?

And -- with all respect and deference, as this is your profession, not mine -- Thucydides doesn't present oligarchy or monarchy as superior. He stresses that the people who inflicted on Athens their greatest military disaster by far -- Syracuse -- were a fellow democracy.

He reports how the perpetrators of the oligarchic coup at Athens thought it would help them win the war, but clearly conveys that it hastened their downfall.