Rhetoric, Trust, and Democratic Politics: A Thucydidean Account

This article contends that Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War warrants attention in the “rhetoric revival” in political theory for its presentation of how rhetoric instills trust in democratic bodies, an issue of crucial importance in an era of American politics marked by what some onlookers have called a crisis of democracy. I argue that Thucydides’ inquiry into the events of the war provides a textbook for judging rhetoric, not by the strength of arguments, as in the Aristotelian tradition, but by comparing a speaker’s words to their deeds. Evaluating the speeches and deeds of Pericles, the “leading man” in Athens in the early years of the war, I show how this Thucydidean formulation determines whether leaders are deserving of popular trust.