Power Politics: Thucydides to Trump
A Hellenic Society panel asking whether the Melian Dialogue still describes how power works, with Paul Cartledge among the speakers and Margaret Mountford in the chair.
Add to calendar
The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies takes the bluntest sentence in Thucydides — that the strong do what they have the power to do, and the weak fall into line — and asks how much of international life it still accounts for. The panel works forward from the ancient evidence: Paul Cartledge of Clare College, Cambridge and Polly Low of Durham on whether that view in fact governed antiquity, Valentina Arena of Brasenose College, Oxford on the Roman inheritance, and Patrick Porter of Birmingham with Chris Preble of the Stimson Center on the constraints — legal, ethical, institutional — that later ages have tried to place on raw power. Michael Cox of the LSE completes the table, and Margaret Mountford chairs.
Admission is free, but the evening is booked through the Society rather than through the venue, and it is the first date in the Hellenic Centre’s autumn programme.