Polybius

Another way in which Rome changed everything, as Polybius again says in his proem, was that the new shape of power invited a particular shape of narrative. Hitherto ‘‘the events of the world had been, as it were, scattered’’ (1.3.3), and so what Polybius calls kata meros historiography - ‘‘bitty’’ or ‘‘piecemeal,’’ focusing on a particular locality or topic - was not unnatural, despite its deficiencies. But now everything had been brought together into a single, ‘‘body-like’’ whole (1.3.4, etc.), and history should become universal too. If the worldwide success of Augustus gave momentum to universal history (Clarke 1999b), that was only replaying a phenomenon that had already happened 150 years earlier, as literary form accommodated itself to the molding of reality.

Not merely did Rome allow a tighter, more coherent story to be told. It was also a different sort of story. Polybius’ survey of earlier empires - Persia, Sparta, Macedon (1.2) - immediately gestures towards the literary accounts of these empires, those of Herodotus, Xenophon, and the Alexander historians. All had dealt with empires that had not merely risen but also faltered. The transience of empire is indeed Polybius’ point in that passage; it recurs later (6.43-44, 48-50; 36.9.5-8; 38.2: Alonso-Niinez 1983), in particular when he muses on the fall of Macedon and recalls the reflections of Demetrius of Phalerum 150 years earlier on the fate of Persia (29.21). A rise-and-fall story has a different shape from one of success, such as Rome’s: it has closure, and it needs to explain collapse as well as triumph, frailty as well as brilliance. True, those explanations may not be so different: it was a recurrent Greek insight that strengths of character often linked intimately with weaknesses, that Persia’s autocratic cohesion or Athens’ self-confidence or Sparta’s militarism or Alexander’s charisma could come to destroy the achievement they had generated. But the explanatory agenda still tends to be more complex when failure needs to be explained as well as success.

Polybius too is interested in character: he comments explicitly on the great impact a single individual can have, for good or, as in the case of the Aetolian Lyciscus, for ill (32.4). But - at least where Roman individuals are concerned - his characterizing palette is more limited than his predecessors’, just as he has a narrower range of questions to ask. Even the most developed Roman figures, the two Scipios and Flamininus, tend towards idealized stereotypings. It is the characters who have falls as well as rises, especially Philip (Walbank 1938), Hannibal, and Antiochus III and IV, who are the more ambivalent and shaded, with their falls explained by a combination of internal failings and external circumstances (Walbank 1972: 96; Eckstein 1995a: 240): just as we shall later see that it is characters who operate from weakness and make decisions that can go wrong, like Aratus or Philopoemen, who raise particularly thought-provoking issues.

Rome’s collective character matters too, and matters more. Here Polybius echoes Thucydides’ explanatory schemes, but again his variations link with this different shape of story. Polybius explains that he has written his first two books (1.3.9):

So that no one, on coming to the narrative, should be at a loss and inquire what were the Romans’ motives and what their powers and resources for launching themselves on these enterprises that made them masters of all land and sea in our part of the world...

Motives, powers, resources: these are the tools of success - even ‘‘motives,’’ for these will include the Romans’ ambitious cast of mind (e. g., 1.57.1-4; 8.1(3); 9.8.1) as well as their intentions at particular moments (especially 36.2, below, p. 248). In the passage on which this is modeled, Thucydides had simply said, ‘‘so that no one should have to look for what led to so great a war among the Greeks’’ (1.23.5), a formulation that asks as much for narrative as for analysis, and is not geared to success. ‘‘Power and resources’’ also answers to a Thucydidean preoccupation, but Thucydides addresses that question at several points some way into his narrative, when exploring the reasons for each side’s confidence when the war is breaking out, and the thoughtful reader will at each point wonder whether these resources will really suffice, whether the confidence is justified (1.121-122, 1.140-144, 2.13). In Polybius we know from the beginning that they will be enough. That affects the tone in which the catalogue of Italian manpower is introduced, explaining how Hannibal was outnumbered by something like forty to one (2.24.1):

So that the facts themselves may make clear [another Thucydidean echo, this time of 1.21.2] how great was the power that Hannibal dared to attack and how mighty the empire that he eyed so courageously; and he came so near to success that he inflicted the greatest catastrophes on the Romans. . .

Hannibal will be a formidable enemy, but he will also fail (‘‘he came so near to success’’). The Italian resources will be enough, just as they are enough to see off the Gauls in the fighting that the catalogue itself introduces. The fertility of Italy, again introduced during the Gallic fighting (2.15), suggests something similar. No wonder Rome wins.

Both points - the closeness of the conflict and the underlying Roman strength - explain why the long treatment of the constitution in Book 6 comes when Rome’s fortunes are at their lowest after the battle of Cannae, for that constitution gives resilience as well as triumph, enabling Rome to stand this toughest of tests before going on to conquer the world. Or rather their ‘‘institutions’’ as well as ‘‘constitution,’’ as Polybius dwells on Roman military practices and religion, just as he later focuses on various features of Roman military superiority (18.18, Roman stakes; 18.28-32, the comparison of phalanx and legion; 28.11, the testudo). Moral strengths count too (that ‘‘collective character’’ again): Roman institutions inspire moral excellence and mental courage (6.55, with the tale of Horatius Cocles). And fame, especially, is the Roman spur, that respect for eternal glory that is embedded in the institution of the funeral oration (6.52-54).

Particularly important, though, is Rome’s ‘‘mixed constitution,’’ welding elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon had already investigated the ways in which a state’s institutions could bring success (though again their agenda extended to the dangers as well); but Herodotus and Xenophon had also explored characteristics of other peoples, particularly Persia, in tandem with those of Greece. Polybius’ spectacles are more firmly fixed to look outwards, and for him the characteristics of Greece are more interesting for what they clarify about Rome. When Polybius compares Rome not merely with Carthage but also with particular Greek states (Athens, Thebes, Crete, Sparta, even Plato’s Republic, 6.43-56), that brings to the surface a sunkrisis that has been implicit throughout. Even the conceptual scheme is Greek, exploiting the Platonic idea of a cycle as monarchy decays into tyranny, tyranny into oligarchy, and oligarchy into democracy. Yet Rome does not fit the simplest form of that cycle ( anakuklosis), as it is already combining the best elements of each, and that is one reason for its stability. (So this is an elaborate form of the common Greek presentational strategy of beginning with an over-simple generalization, then revising it in stride by showing how the ‘‘cycle’’ only fits Rome in a refined and qualified way.)

Still, no constitution is proofagainst total change, not the Spartan constitution that came closest to stability through being ‘‘mixed’’ (6.48-50); not Carthage, that once had similar strengths (6.51); and not now Rome itself, where there are also clear pointers of a constitutional development that will eventually lead to mob-rule (6.57). Later passages suggest that decline has already started: Romans used to be impervious to bribery, but no longer (18.35.1-2), with the exception of the incorruptible Aemilius Paullus and Scipio Aemilianus. The young men of Rome are now licentious, corrupt, and cowardly (31.25, 35.4), though again with the exception of Scipio. Rome’s constitutional strengths may be a bulwark to slow the turn of the cycle, but there may come a day when Rome is in danger too: Scipio Aemilianus senses as much, for rather different reasons, when he weeps at the fall of Carthage (38.21-22: below, p. 248).

Is this then to be seen as a warning to Rome as well as a celebration of their success? Polybius’ change of writing plan may be important here. He had originally intended to cover events up to 168/7 bce, but then decided to include additional books in the light of events between 168/7 and 146 (3.4-5), a period that culminated in the destruction of Carthage and of Corinth. And this change of plan is to enable contemporaries to judge if Roman rule is acceptable and future generations to pass moral judgment (3.4.7).

Such evaluation is certainly a function of history for Polybius (16.22a, 28 etc.), but even when he is at his most morally condemnatory, as for instance with Philip V, he also stresses the practical disadvantages of ill-repute and oppression (7.11.10-11; 7.14.5; 15.22-23, 23.10, etc.: Eckstein 1995a: 246-247). The same goes for his verdicts on Rome, and morality is often shown to be prudentially a good idea. When Rome plunders artworks from Syracuse, Polybius is realistic about the ruthlessness of an aspiring world power: it is no surprise that a conqueror should take away wealth from the vanquished (9.10.11). But it is prudentially ill-judged to increase your unpopularity at the same time as adopting the most enfeebling habits of those you have defeated (9.11); and it is prudentially wise to treat a conquered state with moderation, as Scipio Africanus did at New Carthage, however uncompromising the lesson taught in the initial massacre (10.15-18). The wise statesman is a moral statesman; he just makes sure that everyone knows he is.

When he comes to events of his own generation, Polybius makes no bones about the way Romans neglect justice in their own interest. They retain Demetrius at Rome despite his pleas, ‘‘not because he was not speaking justly, but because it was in their interests’’ (31.11.11); they repeatedly arbitrate against the Carthaginians ‘‘not because they did not have right on their side, but because the judges were convinced that it was in the Romans’ own interest to decide in this way’’ (31.21.6-8). He stresses the long period he himself spent at Rome as one of the Achaean internees, and leaves no doubt that the Senate had not responded as fairly as they might to the repeated requests for their release (30.32; 32.3.17; 33.1.3-8; 35.6). And, if we adopt the practical concern with consequences that Polybius favors himself, we can certainly understand why there might be two views about the merits of Roman control, even if Polybius passes no view himself: thus with Glabrio’s or Vulso’s tough talking (20.10, 21.34), or Fulvius’ removal of artworks (21.30.9). We can understand too how Perseus, however reprehensible his war-mongering, could appeal to the Rhodians in the name of Greek freedom (27.4.7), and call on Eumenes to be on his guard against Roman ‘‘arrogance and oppression’’ (29.4.9).

Here there is no great difference in texture between the main body and the additional final books. The Romans had long decided on the Third Punic War, and were waiting for a plausible pretext that would tell to their advantage with international public opinion (36.2): that is the same eye for expediency that we have seen before. Nor is the picture of Roman soldiers playing dice on priceless works of art after the fall of Corinth (39.2) very different from the ruthlessness we have seen in events thirty or forty years earlier.

The difference may come in the more elaborate way the moral question is treated, even if it remains delicately inexplicit. The fragmentary nature of the text means that we cannot tell what tones he used for describing the destruction of Carthage (if ever there was a candidate for ‘‘tragic history’’ it was that), but we do have the long chapter setting out the different views that were held ‘‘in Greece’’ - an interesting focalization (36.9). Some adopted the perspective that had prevailed in Rome, the

Catonian view that Carthage would be a perpetual threat unless removed; some thought rather in Greek terms, arguing that Rome was falling into the pattern set by Athens and Sparta and risked coming to a similar end (the ‘‘sequence of empires’’ again); some felt the Romans had acted out of character in their deceitfulness towards Carthage; others repudiated any charge of impiety, treachery, or injustice. Modern critics take this chapter in very different ways (contrast, e. g., Musti 1978: 55-56 and Ferrary 1988: 327-334 with Walbank 1972: 174-181 and 1985: 338-340), for Polybius has discreetly avoided making his own verdict explicit. Certainly, the proRoman arguments are given more space and are allowed the last word, often a pointer to the winner in a formal debate. Yet the moral arguments are still excuses, possibly good ones but still pointers to the charges that need to be answered as much as to the answers themselves; and they sit uncomfortably too with that earlier emphasis that Rome had taken the decision long before (36.2, above). But some at least of his first readers will have shared modern doubts whether the strength of the anti-Roman arguments, both prudential and moral, can be waved away.

There is a further question: if there are lessons here, who are to be the learners? The Romans themselves, warned by Polybius to lighten their burden? Or - given the indications that he has both Greek and Roman, but particularly Greek, readers in mind (Walbank 1972: 3-6) - is this aimed at the oppressed rather than the oppressors, an indication that Roman ruthlessness is a fact of life, and one has to deal with it as best one can? Or is it a bit of both?

The issues in Greek politics are indeed anything but straightforward. That is reflected in the way that so many more speeches, especially in the later books, are given to Greeks than to Romans (Walbank 1972: 45-46). At Naupactus in 217 the Aetolian Agelaus warns of that ‘‘cloud from the West’’ that would break over the Greeks unless they set their disagreements aside (5.104); then at 9.28-39 an Aetolian speaker stigmatizes the Macedonian kings as the oppressors of Greek liberty, while an Acarnanian praises the young Philip V as the firewall of the Greeks against the new barbarian menace. Later the dilemmas recur as Polybius analyzes the differences between the policies of Aristaenus and Philopoemen (24.11-14), both contrasting with the double-dealing Callicrates (24.10). Philopoemen’s way of putting it - there will come a day when Greece needs to do all Rome’s bidding, but should we hasten that day or put it off as long as possible? - leaves him with the higher moral ground; but Aristaenus is clearly responding to realities as well, ones that do not sit comfortably with the proclamation of Greek freedom by Flamininus a few years earlier (18.46). The line taken by Polybius himself as a character in the later books, stressing the dangers of opposing Rome and his own role in 146/5 in advancing Greece’s interests with dignified acquiescence in Rome’s wishes, is closer to Aristaenus than to the venerated Philopoemen. Perhaps, indeed, that grim time that Philopoemen had foreseen had now arrived, and the Greeks could do nothing but accept and obey.

Yet there are surely lessons there for Romans too. There have to be, given that stress on the practical advantages to a ruling power of being seen to treat its subjects well (1.72, cf. 1.88.3, 10.36, and Flamininus’ speech at 18.37). So here too there are hints of the perils of success, just as we saw earlier, in a different register, with the Roman constitution (p. 247): a famous passage describes Scipio’s tears as he contemplated the fall of Carthage, as Rome too would one day fall (38.21-22: for the implied sensibility, Hornblower 1981: 102-106). Still, none of this need be subversive, not Scipio’s tears, not even the reservations that readers might feel over the treatment of Carthage: no more than Pindar is subversive when dwelling in an ode to Hiero on the dangers of success. The implication is that Romans, like Hiero, are so successful that these are the appropriate lessons to learn, and so wise that they, unlike other peoples, will be able to do so. And Romans, as we see them in the History, do indeed learn. They have learnt from the Greeks on matters of warfare (6.25); they have learnt from the Carthaginians on ship-design (1.20.15). They learn on the wider scale as well: that strength of the constitution came about, not through the once-for-all theorizing of a visionary Lycurgus, but through a constant learning from experience (6.6.12-14).

If there are lessons to learn, then Polybius is the person to teach them. The historian, so insistent that he is different from his predecessors, matches the theme and the city, different as they too are from anything that has gone before. A can-do, practical nation provides the template that a practical historian can adopt for teaching can-do lessons. Polybius’ predecessors were sloppy, sensationalist, captious, and parochial: they were not pragmatikoi, men who understand political and military action, do their preparation properly, and analyze causes in a way that allows future statesmen to avoid making the same mistakes (Meister 1975; Walbank 1972: 32-96; 1985: 262-279). Rome both makes a historian like Polybius possible and deserves the sort of treatment that only a historian like Polybius can give.