This is a bit of geeky/historical trivia on a misattributed quote in
Wonder Woman. I wrote it for another forum; but on this 100th anniversary of the WWI armistice, I thought I’d repost it here.
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Ludendorff: “Peace is only an armistice in an endless war.”
Diana: Thucydides.
Ludendorff: You know your Ancient Greeks.
During a recent re-watch of Wonder Woman, the above quote piqued my curiosity. So I decided to do some cursory Interwebz research. First, Thucydides: 460 to 400 BC; historian and military general; and most famous as the author of
History of the Peloponnesian War. Second, the quote: Several authorities (?) seem to agree it’s the sort of thing Thucydides
would have said - as it’s quite consistent with his overall writings and philosophy. But there’s also consensus that he
didn’t actually say it.
So the
WW writers just made it up? Well, no - not necessarily… A history prof, blogging about the
WW error, linked to a prior post wherein he discussed the misattributed Thucydides quote (which, from now on, I’ll call the “TQ”). Said post was written in 2015. So for some reason, the TQ was already in the ether - before
WW’s release. Someone else mentioned that the TQ was referenced in the game
Call of Duty 2 (2005). And apparently, the TQ was one of several quotes on a 1988 mural at the West Point Military Academy. (The quotes were allegedly provided by West Point’s history department; but where these historians sourced their TQ is unknown.)
Additionally, variations of the quote go back even further; but these are credited to (among others) Napoleon and Plato. So it’s possible that the
WW writers did a quick internet search, found all these citations and decided that the Thucydides one was most apropos for their story (even if it was suspect).
Now as fans, we’re entitled to engage in a bit of fanwankery. Thus, we might speculate that Diana was privy to certain “lost writings” of Thucydides. But that wouldn’t explain how Ludendorff knew of the quote..
On the other hand... It’s possible that Ludendorff was - “meta-textually” - quoting himself.
One source claims that the actual quote comes from an obscure memoir (‘Der Totale Kreg’) that Ludendorff wrote in 1935. (The real Erich Ludendorff lived twenty years longer than his fictional counterpart.) It’s further claimed that the
WW writers (in the course of their research) were aware of this quote, quite liked it - but decided that crediting it to a figure like Thucydides (as opposed to the future Ludendorff
) was the easier cheat.
Of course, where the original Thucydides attribution came from - as invoked by such disparate sources as
Call of Duty and West Point, and which predates
WW - remains a mystery...