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Chris Jones (1999)
Kinship diplomacy in the ancient world
P. Veyne (1988)
Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths?: An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination
Page 132 Christopher Jones Everyone knows the aphorism that truth is the ï¬rst casualty of war. But in all relations between states (and war is, in one sense, only a phase of such relations), truth usually takes second place to belief. To put it another way, what two states believe about each other (the other sideâs intentions, military preparedness, resources, and so on) can matter more than what the truth is, since it is on its beliefs that each side will base its course of action. Truth is the business of espionage, whereas the business of diplomacy is belief. Diplomacy is concerned with creating beliefs for the other party to hold, while espionage is concerned with ascertaining facts about the other side. Diplomacy as it was practiced in ancient Greece and Rome differs from its modern counterpart in many ways, but no aspect of it appears so strange as its use of arguments that we think of as âmythical.â A well-known book by Paul Veyne questions whether the Greeks really believed in their myths at all.1 How then, it might be asked, could ancient ambassadors (to use a term less anachronistic than diplomats) have hoped to ï¬nd allies
Common Knowledge – Duke University Press
Published: Jan 1, 2003
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