Georgia: The Melos Principle Again

In college, bitten in the very first semester by the writing bug, I switched from Chemistry to majoring in English and minoring in Classics. These are two subjects that have never lacked having boatloads of disdain heaped on them, for being "impractical." But, freed at last from the rigid prescriptions of Grades 1 through 12, for young people colleges are fun places filled with temptations too large to resist, some of these of an intellectual nature.

Going to a liberal arts college, after all, is not the same as attending a vocational school. Never mind that you're not preparing yourself to make a ton of money later. The thinking instead is that whatever happens, later on a person should always be able to find food and shelter regardless, especially in the warm embrace of the good ol' U.S. of A., even in a bigot-riddled good ol' U.S. of A. (Because physical troubles at that age are, if you are not too reckless, strictly confined to occasional cuts and bruises that magically heal by themselves, health costs are never any sort of a consideration.)

The irony is that a highly "impractical" curriculum like Classics turns out to offer information that is as useful as anything else, including principles that sooner or later come in handy, if not to avoid failing to heed the lessons of history, at least to understand what is happening once regimes are trapped inside those perennial pits, like the countless saber-toothed tigers that one after the other through thousands of years arrived to be sucked down whole in the La Brea tar pits -- or like the situation that we can see unfolding right now in the oil regions of Alexander the Great's old stomping grounds.

While it is indulged in far too frequently by generals and heads of state with extensive "foreign policy experience," there is one principle from Classics that stuck in my mind with special effect, and it can't be repeated too often as a classroom admonition.

I vividly remember the special delight that one of my Classics instructors, Professor W., took in imparting this gem, though I guess mainly I just liked the ring of the principle as he expressed it and which went: "The strong do what they can, while the weak do what they must."

I've come to call this "the Melos Principle," and I've taken it so much as my own that I even quibble as to whether the sharp as a razor Prof. W. expressed it correctly. To say that the strong do "what they can" suggests that they're trying to be as helpful as possible in a difficult situation. But in the case of the ancient Athenians trying to iron-ass the Melos islanders into throwing in with them in the fight against the Spartans, as described by Thucydides in his remarkable history of the Peloponesian War, the Athenians were not trying to be helpful at all, except to themselves. So the principle should instead go something like, "The strong do what they please,while the weak have no choice." Or "The strong have all the options, while the weak have few if any." Less succinct but but closer to the truth of the matter.

But you don't get the full effect of these words unless you also recollect the other chief part of what the Athenians had to tell the Melians, who nevertheless didn't listen and were duly punished by having their houses sacked and burned, their women and children sold into slavery, and the surviving men dragged off to serve in the Athenian army or rowing in the galleys anyway.

The Melians said, in effect, "You can hit us with all the jive threats that you want. We're still not siirring from here to join you or anyone else. We think staying neutral in this big mess of yours is the best way to go. You may be much bigger and tougher than us, but we put our trust in the gods, who are on our side. So bug off, suckers, and take all your glorious flags and pennons with you."

The Athenians just shrugged and answered with the utmost coolness, in more than one sense of that word: "Okay. It's all right to trust in the gods. Just to cover all the bases, we regularly offer up lambs and bulls to them, too. We even believe in them, as you do. But we can't do more than to believe. We don't know. But we do know all about men, and so what we are about to do to you if you don't come around is how it is. It's what men do, and things can never be otherwise."

You can see the same thing happening right now in and around J. Stalin's birthplace. The Georgia leader, a shaky sort, as you would expect any toady to GW Bush to be, named M. Saakashvili, seems to have trusted in phantasms (I hesitate to say "gods" even sarcastically) that reside in far-off places like D.C. and London. But the Russians, flexing their newly reactivated muscles, are not hesitating to take this opportunity to show the Georgians how things really are, at least in the immediate neighborhood. They know something about men, while having gotten out of the habit of trusting in the gods. But maybe Classics isn't a big subject in Stalin country these days. It rarely is, anywhere.