© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi �0.��63/ �05� �996- � �3400�� polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought 3� ( �0 �4) 387-4 �4 brill.com/polis Hobbes and Dionysius of Halicarnassus on Thucydides, Rhetoric and Political Life Timothy W. Burns Department of Political Science, Baylor University, 1 Bear Place, 97276, Waco, TX 76798, USA Timothy_Burns@baylor.edu Abstract Thomas Hobbes’ dispute with Dionysius of Halicarnassus over the study of Thucydides’ history allows us to understand both the ancient case for an ennobled public rhetoric and Hobbes’ case against it. Dionysius, concerned with cultivating healthy civic ora- tory, faced a situation in which Roman rhetoricians were emulating shocking attacks on divine justice such as that found in Thucydides’ Melian dialogue; he attempted to steer orators away from such arguments even as he acknowledged their truth. Hobbes, however, recommends the study of Thucydides’ work for a new kind of political educa- tion, one that will benefit from Thucydides’ private, even ‘secret’, instruction, which permits the reader to admit to himself what vanity would otherwise hide from him.  Keywords Dionysius of Halicarnassus – Thucydides – Hobbes – rhetoric Liberal democracies rest squarely on the doctrine of individual rights, which elevates the freedom of the individual to determine and pursue his own under- standing of what is good, constrained only by the necessity of allowing others the same freedom. The elevation of the individual and his freedom, over any call to devote and sacrifice himself to an alleged high common good, required and received at its inception a public critique, a destructive analysis, of the notion of the noble and of a genuinely knowable or objective common good, which might otherwise legitimately call one to such devotion. Liberal regimes have for this reason always been characterized by an uneasiness and even