Thucydides’ Ignorant Athenians and the Drama of the Sicilian Expedition

Abstract

Thucydides’ claim that most Athenians were ignorant of the size and inhabitants of Sicily before the Sicilian Expedition is demonstrably false. He is keenly aware that Athens has a great deal of information about Sicily, but its main sources are hearsay, gossip, and the poetic topoi that have been circulating on the dramatic stages. The historian uses this claim of ignorance as a rhetorical device to recreate in his readers, and thereby comment upon, the dangerously democratic epistemological conditions under which the Expedition was discussed and launched.