A Hellenic Society panel asked whether the Melian Dialogue still describes how power works, with Paul Cartledge among the speakers and Margaret Mountford in the chair.
The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies brought a panel on power, from Thucydides to the present, to The Hellenic Centre in Marylebone on Tuesday 22 September 2026. Margaret Mountford chaired.
The Society was founded in 1879 to advance the study of Greek language, literature, history, art and archaeology, across the ancient, Byzantine and modern periods. It publishes, funds fieldwork and takes the subject to people outside universities.
The bluntest sentence in Thucydides, from the Melian Dialogue, holds that the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak fall into line. The panel asked how much of international life that still explains.
Paul Cartledge of Clare College, Cambridge, and Polly Low of Durham asked whether the view in fact governed antiquity. Valentina Arena of Brasenose College, Oxford, took the Roman inheritance.
Patrick Porter of Birmingham and Chris Preble of the Stimson Center took the legal, ethical and institutional limits later ages tried to place on raw power. Michael Cox of the LSE completed the table.
The evening was the first date in the Centre’s autumn season.