Orwin, Clifford, "Stasis and plague: Thucydides on the dissolution of society,” Journal of Politics, vol. 50, no. 4, 1988.

We think of Thucydides as an analyst of war and so primarily of international politics. He is equally concerned, however, with the consequences of war for domestic politics, and there is one aspect of his treatment of the latter which remains unsurpassed in the whole history of political thought—his analysis of the disintegration of society under unbearable stress. Here I attempt a detailed interpretation and comparison of his treatments of two phenomena, the stasis or civil strife bred by the war which raged throughout the Hellenic world, and the more local but no less lethal plague of Athens. Stasis displays the consequences of the radical “politicization” of life; the plague, those of its depoliticization. As the extremes between which all normal politics lies, these help us to grasp its conditions and limits.

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