Cicero's Thucydides The Melian Dialogue

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Thucydides, who was a Greek General, wrote The Melian Dialogue which is a meeting between the Island of Melos and Athens for control of the island. Melos who is much smaller in size and in numbers does not have that much to offer to Athens, but Athens wants control of as many territories as it can to continually grow its empire. Melos being reluctant to surrender opts to stay neutral between the much larger conflict of Sparta and Athens. Over in Rome a few centuries later, Cicero writes The Republic, which discusses the perfecting of their new governmental system of the republic. Cicero writes that Scipio discusses 3 governments Democracy, Monarchy and Aristocracy. Later, we see that Philus, a character that Cicero created is explaining his …show more content…

He makes this argument by stating “For the justice which we are considering is a political phenomenon, not an element of nature. If it were part of nature, like hot and cold, and bitter and sweet, then just and unjust would be the same for everyone” . Philus gives us the impression that he is very firm on this belief even though having a tendency to not believe his own arguments. Philus furthers his point of justice being relative to the individual by an example based on country law. He states “(If nature) had laid down our system of justice… nature forbids variation; and anyhow laws are enforced by penalties, not by our sense of justice” . Philus is saying here that every country has a different justice system with different penalties making their laws relative in relation to another. Thucydides has the exact opposite view of justice then that of Philus, being natural for the Athenians. He states “the standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel and that in fact the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept” . These views of justice are very different, one being attributed to everything in society and hopefully being lucky enough to be on the stronger end of the spectrum. While the other view of justice being attributed to the political and governmental world that has a rightful place to be decided on and not attributed to any other aspects of

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