Fear, Honor, and Interest

When the Athenians at Sparta defended their empire before the war, they offered a candid account of why they held it. They had been compelled to advance it, they said, principally by three motives: fear, honor, and interest. They had done nothing surprising or contrary to human nature in declining to give up an empire, since it had always been the way of the world that the weaker should be subject to the stronger. Thucydides put this formulation in their mouths—and it is the most condensed statement of his theory of human behavior in the entire History. He believed these three motives were not particular to Athens or to the fifth century BCE. They were constants of human nature, operating in every age because they belong to the creature itself, not to any particular historical configuration. The claim that makes him a possession for all time is this claim: the technology changes, the weapons change, the institutions change, but fear, honor, and interest