Thucydides on the change in the relation between names and things (3.82-83)

Индоевропейское языкознание и классическая филология. 2025. Vol. XXIX. No. 1. P. 399–424.

Verlinsky A. L.

This paper discusses Thucydides’ passage on the notorious change in the use of language during the civil strife in the course of the Peloponnesian War. The author argues that today’s prevailing interpretation of the crucial sentence καὶ τὴν εἰωθυῖαν ἀξίωσιν τῶν ὀνομάτων ἐς τὰ ἔργα ἀντήλλαξαν τῇ δικαιώσει (3.82. 4) and the ensuing part of the text as referring only to moral revaluation of certain actions and human properties, but not to the change in their primary linguistic designations (J. Wilson, 1980), is incorrect. Also, the earlier understanding of the sentence as pointing to the change in the meaning of the words is not right, if one has in view what is today called ‘dictionary meaning’. The debatable sentence should be understood rather as renaming certain actions and human properties, a process in which the dictionary meaning of a word and its connotations are intact, but the understanding of things (referents) and their evaluation has changed, and the things accordingly receive designations corresponding to these new views. This mode of viewing moral degradation occurs after Thucydides in such texts as Plat. Rep. VIII. 560 d - e, and some others.  

Keywords: renaming, переименование, Thucydides, Фукидид, semantics of moral terms, семантика этической терминологии