summary:

Ancient Historians often rely on arguments from silence but rarely discuss how or when such arguments can be responsibly employed. This paper addresses this methodological shortcoming by examining the circumstances and ways in which Thucydides describes violent political conflicts (staseis). It argues that Thucydides’ silence concerning the occurrence of stasis has far less value than is commonly assumed and develops a method to calculate the explanatory value of any narrative historical source’s silence concerning the occurrence of phenomena like stasis. It also shows that reading Thucydides with particular attention to stasis yields important insights into his narrative and historical methodologies.

概括：

古代历史学家经常依靠沉默而来的论据，但很少讨论如何或何时可以负责任地采用这种论据。本文通过研究修昔底德描述暴力政治冲突（情节）的情况和方式来解决这种方法论上的缺陷。它认为修昔底德对停滞发生的沉默的价值远低于通常所假设的价值，并提出了一种计算任何叙述性历史来源对停滞现象发生的沉默的解释价值的方法。这也表明，阅读修昔底德对停滞状态的特别关注，对他的叙事和历史方法学产生了重要的见解。