“For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretenses—either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong you have done us—and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Spartans, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

– The Athenians in the “Melian Dialogue” in Thucydides 5.89 (from Robert Strassler’s The Landmark Thucydides, an edition I highly recommend.)

Lots of ink has been spilled over this event and over this passage. That last line continues to hit hard:

“the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”

The same idea has been repeated again and again. Thucydides knew it was important to write it down 25 centuries ago, as he knew that the Pelopponesian War was a war full of lessons. So he wrote its history as a ktema es aei, a heritage unto the ages.

And when we read it today, we are struck by the fact that a war that took place so long ago and (for most of us) so far away still sounds like it was full of very human words, and very human acts.

These words are on my mind today as my nation makes sundry choices about where and whether and how to become involved in conflicts around the world. Too often we say things like “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” because it makes a kind of sense.

The question is: does it make the best kind of sense, or merely a convenient and lesser kind?