“The strong do what they can; the weak just have to suck it up.”

This is a (slightly amended) line written by ancient Greek historian Thucydides that still rings true today.

Thucydides’ aim, however, was not to resign the wider populace to this situation but to enable them to recognise and understand it, as a first step in recovering their political agency.

How do we help young people to make sense of an ever more complex, rapidly changing world? How do we combat the trend of low voter turnout and decreased political engagement, with its corrosive consequences for political culture?

We know that people do want to engage and contribute to discussions but feel marginalised, uncertain and intimidated in the face of established institutions and confident, well-drilled professional figures.

Part of the answer must be to improve political literacy through citizenship education in schools. However, the teaching of citizenship is itself often marginalised, dependent on non-specialist teachers and provided with limited resources.

The result is that such lessons tend to be focused solely on delivering factual information about the British political system, rather than engaging with broader issues and debates or inspiring and empowering students to explore political issues on their own terms.

The thinking of the ancient Greeks on such issues, in a completely different political context, may not seem an obvious place to look for an answer to this problem - especially as relatively few students in UK schools get the opportunity to study ancient history.

But the key to the work of Thucydides, who lived in the 5th century BC, was that he did not seek to teach lessons directly or just teach facts about the past. Rather, he described a specific historical situation in a way that prompted his readers to reflect critically on their own societies.

The focus of our recent research is the passage by Thucydides known as the Melian Dialogue, which takes place during the Peloponnesian War between the Athenians and Spartans - two superpowers of the time.

In 416BC, a fleet of Athenians arrived at the small, neutral city of Melos and demanded its unconditional surrender. In his account, Thucydides presents a dialogue between the Athenians and the Melian leaders, in which the former set out the rational grounds for submitting to superior power and the latter try to argue their way out of trouble.

This passage has long been a favourite of modern theorists of politics and international relations, who see it as the first ever statement of realism or realpolitik.

Our reading is more complex; it is not obvious (as the realists claim) that Thucydides intends us to identify with the powerful Athenians and their claims.

The Melian Dialogue sets up a debate between different world views, about the choice between principle and pragmatism - and it shows how both the powerful and the powerless tend to think and speak. It’s all intended to get us to consider issues of power and justice in our own lives.

The goal of our project is to draw out the essential structure of this debate, and echo Thucydides’ spirit in setting up provocative analogies with the present, in a way that is meaningful and accessible to people with no prior knowledge of ancient history.

We created two games, with the aim of engaging students through the pleasures of participation and competition before leading them to reflect on the issues raised.

The first (based on the mechanics of Rock, Paper, Scissors) introduces them to a world of conflict and conquest, in which they gradually come to realise that some players have a built-in advantage.

The second is a choose-your-own adventure version of the Melian Dialogue, in which the group has to discuss issues of power and justice in deciding which path to follow - whether as the Athenians trying to win with the least effort possible or as the Melians trying to escape.

In collaboration with the Politics Project, a community interest company dedicated to empowering young people to engage in political discussion, we incorporated these games into a set of three, one-hour workshops, which draw out the issues and encourage reflection on analogies with students’ own situations - issues of power and weakness aren’t confined to politics, after all.

These culminated in a “digital surgery” in which the students interacted with their MP, or another local political figure, with greater confidence, having thought about power and how it is used and abused.

The workshop materials provided enough information about Thucydides and ancient Greece to contextualise the activities, as the point of the setting is not to teach ancient history but to provide a concrete example to think about.

We have produced a lot more background information for teachers who want to investigate the topic further, as well as supporting video resources, such as a short animated introduction to Thucydides and a performance of the Melian Dialogue.

We trialled the activities between March and May last year with a group of about 20 Year 12 and 13 students from Queen Elizabeth’s School in Crediton, Devon.

After making some adjustments to the material, we then participated in Politics Project training sessions in Manchester and London for teachers, who have begun to deliver the workshops in their schools.

We gathered evidence on the impact of the activities through online student questionnaires before and after the sessions, and discursive feedback from teachers.

The results from the first round of sessions are promising: roughly 40 per cent of students reported significant improvement in their confidence, critical thinking, communication skills and understanding of power, with the majority of the others noting some improvement.

The proportion of students expressing an intention to vote in an election if they were allowed to do so rose from 61 per cent before the workshops to 85 per cent afterwards.

Comments from teachers identified increased confidence, critical reflection and empowerment among their students, and noted their greater ability to analyse the ways that politicians had addressed them.

It is early in the project, but results so far suggest that Thucydides is indeed helping young people to think critically about power and apply this to their own situation.

Once trained, teachers can repeat the workshops as often as they wish for different groups of students. We want to expand the project by training more teachers.

Meanwhile, we continue to explore ways of adapting Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue as a means of thinking about power, making his work accessible without losing its complexity.

Lynette Mitchell is a professor of Greek history and politics and Neville Morley is a professor of classics and ancient history. Both are based at the University of Exeter

Teachers interested in training to use the Thucydides material should contact Hattie Andrews at the Politics Project by emailing harriet.andrews@thepoliticsproject.org.uk

This article originally appeared in the 21 February 2020 issue under the headline “It’s all Greek to me: why ancient history inspires pupils to ponder political power”