After reading Thucydides, I was fascinating by the idea of contemporaneous historians; people writing histories of times they lived through, of events they had even participated in.
When hunting for another contemporaneous history, Polybius was the first choice that seemed to come up in my searches. Polybius was a Greek hostage of the Romans, of a peculiar sort with a seemingly wide amount of freedom during his captivity that allowed him access many high tiers of Roman society; he was an active in both Greek and Roman politics in some of the times he wrote of in his history.
Despite the seeming alignment with what I was looking for, when I tried to read Polybius last time, I bounced off of him, and ended up reading Herodotus instead.
On a vacation last summer, we were in a wonderful used bookshop, and I picked up a few classical histories. Plutarch, another Xenophon (haven’t read yet) and The Rise of the Roman Empire, which is a selection of a subset Polybius’ Histories) by F. W. Walbank, that uses Polybius’ discussions of Rome to chart its growth into the super power it became.
Through this edition, I was able to get through Polybius. It required some effort, but I am glad I did it.
A forewarning; This blog post is filled with far more long quotes than any other. This is partially because in many cases, Polybius makes his case far better than any restatement I could make, and partially because I now can scan text via my phone, so I didn’t have to type out the quotes by hand.
The History
Can any one be so indifferent or idle as not to care to know by what means, and under what kind of polity, almost the whole inhabited world was conquered and brought under the dominion of the single city of Rome , and that too within a period of not quite fifty-three years? Or who again can be so completely absorbed in other subjects of contemplation or study, as to think any of them superior in importance to the accurate understanding of an event for which the past affords no precedent. -Plb 1.1.
Polybius believed that it was important to trace cause and effect through history, and so his history covers an enormous amount of ground; however to keep it tractable, Walbank focuses The Rise of the Roman Empire on the parts of Polybius’ history that talk about Rome, it’s interaction with other nations, and the story of Carthage, as told via the Barca family of Hamilcar, Hasdrubal and Hannibal, however it also interweaves some of Polybius’ own philosophy of both politics and history.
Polybius viewed history as an important education for statesmen, and saw history as valuable only insofar as it provided true stories of decision making that provides either positive or negative lessons to readers. He also thought it was critical that people who wrote history understood, by experience, the politics they would document:
There is, however, another category of authors, who appear to be justified in undertaking the writing of history, but who in fact are just like the theoretical doctors. They haunt the libraries and become thoroughly versed in memoirs and records, and then convince themselves that they are properly equipped for the task; but while they may appear to outsiders to bring everything that is needed to the writing of political history, yet in my opinion they provide no more than a part. Certainly the, study of the memoirs of the past has its value for discovering what the ancients believed and the ideas which people formerly entertained about conditions, places, nations, states and events, and also for understanding he circumstances and eventualities with which each nation in earlier times had to deal. And certainly past events are relevant in making us pay attention to the future, provided that a writer inquires in each case into the facts as they actually occurred. But to persuade oneself, as Timaeus did, that the resources of documentary research alone can equip one to write an adequate history of recent events is naive beyond words. It is as though a man were to imagine that he was a capable painter, indeed a master of the art, merely by virtue of having looked at the works of the past.
— Plb 12.25e
The narrative history was all new ground for me, covering the three Punic wars (though, the Third Punic War was not covered with much depth). Honestly, I found that Polybius did a good job of achieving exactly his goal set at the introduction: Explaining how the Romans came to rule the known world in a very short period of time.
One of the things I love about reading history is the way it reminds me that human institutions are fragile, and change is always just around the corner.
Below, I cover two small sections of the history I found interesting, sharing some block quotes.
The Cycle of History
One of the ideas that Polybius is famous for is his notion of the ‘Rotation of the Polities’. He sees political systems as following in a natural cycle of succession. In his analysis, there are six different forms of government (or constitutions):
- Kingship
- Tyranny
- Aristocracy
- Oligarchy
- Democracy
- Mob rule
Each pair of these are a ‘good’ and ‘bad’ version of the same thing:
The truth of what I have just said may be illustrated by the following arguments. We cannot say that every example of one-man rule is necessarily a kingship, but only those which are voluntarily accepted by their subjects, and which are governed by an appeal to reason rather than by fear or by force. Nor again can we say that every oligarchy is an aristocracy, but only those in which the power is exercised by the justest and wisest men, who have been selected on their merits. In the same way a state in which the mass of citizens is free to do whatever it pleases or takes into its head is not a democracy. But where it is both traditional and customary to reverence the gods, to care for our parents, to respect our elders, to obey the laws, and in such a community to ensure that the will of the majority prevails - this situation it is proper to describe as democracy. — Plb 6.4
From natural beginnings, political systems transition, Kingship to Tyranny, to Aristocracy, to Oligarchy, to Democracy, to mob rule, and then finally a new king arises from the mob, and the cycle begins again.
Living in times where democracy feels fraught across the globe, it was interesting to read Polybius’ take on the decline of democracy (emphasis mine):
At this point the only hope which remains unspoiled lies with themselves, and it is in this direction that they then turn: they convert the state into a democracy instead of an oligarchy and themselves assume the superintendence and charge of affairs. Then so long as any people survive who endured the evils of oligarchical rule, they can regard their present form of government as a blessing and treasure the privileges of equality and freedom of speech. But as soon as a new generation has succeeded and the democracy falls into the hands of the grandchildren of its founders, they have become by this time so accustomed to equality and freedom of speech that they cease to value them and seek to raise themselves above their fellow-citizens, and it is noticeable that the people most liable to this temptation are the rich. So when they begin to hanker after office, and find that they cannot achieve it through their own efforts or on their merits, they begin to seduce and corrupt the people in every possible way, and thus ruin their estates. The result is that through their senseless craving for prominence they stimulate among the masses both an appetite for bribes and the habit of receiving them, and then the rule of democracy is transformed into government by violence and strong-arm methods. By this time the people have become accustomed to feed at the expense of others, and their prospects of winning a livelihood depend upon the property of their neighbours; then as soon as they find a leader who is sufficiently ambitious and daring, but is excluded from the honours of office because of his poverty, they will introduce a regime based on violence. After this they unite their forces, and proceed to massacre, banish and despoil their opponents, and finally degenerate into a state of bestiality,’ after which they once more find a master and a despot. Such is the cycle of political revolution, the law of nature according to which constitutions change, are transformed, and finally revert to their original form. - Plb 6.9
Every kind of state, we may say, is liable to decline from two sources, the one being external, and the other due to its own internal evolution. For the first we cannot lay down any fixed principle, but the second pursues a regular sequence. I have already indicated which kind of state is the first to evolve, which succeeds it, and how each is transformed into its successor, so that those who can connect the opening propositions of my argument with its conclusion will be able to make their own forecast concerning the future. This, in my opinion, is quite clear. When a state, after warding off many great perils, achieves supremacy and uncontested sovereignty, it is evident that under the influence of long-established prosperity life will become more luxurious, and among the citizens themselves rivalry for office and in other spheres of activity will become fiercer than it should. As these symptoms become more marked, the craving for office and the sense of humiliation which obscurity imposes, together with the spread of ostentation and extravagance, will usher in a period of general deterioration. The principal authors of this change will be the masses, who at some moments will believe that they have a grievance against the greed of other members of society, and at others are made conceited by the flattery of those who aspire to office. By this stage they will have been roused to fury and their deliberations will constantly be swayed by passion, so that they will no longer consent to obey or even to be the equals of their leaders, but will demand everything or by far the greatest share for themselves. When this happens, the constitution will change its name to the one which sounds the most imposing of all, that of freedom and democracy, but its nature to that which is the worst of all, that is the rule of the mob. — Plb 6.57
History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes, feels appropriate here.
Views on Roman Superstition
I thought this passage was remarkable:
However, the sphere in which the Roman commonwealth seems to me to show its superiority most decisively is in that of religious belief.
Here we find that the very phenomenon which among other peoples is regarded as a subject for reproach, namely superstition, is actually the element which holds the Roman state together. These matters are treated with such solemnity and introduced so frequently both into public and into private life that nothing could exceed them in importance.
Many people may find this astonishing, but my own view is that the Romans have adopted these practices for the sake of the common people. This approach might not have been necessary had it ever been possible to form a state composed entirely of wise men. But as the masses are always fickle, filled with lawless desires, unreasoning anger and violent passions, they can only be restrained by mysterious terrors or other dramatizations of the subject. For this reason I believe that the ancients were by no means acting foolishly or haphazardly when they introduced to the people various notions concerning the gods and belief in the punishments of Hades, but rather that the moderns are foolish and take great risks in rejecting them. — Plb 6.56
There’s a modern-feeling cynicism about religion here; he talks about Roman religion as if it exists only as a tool, instilled in the Roman people as a means to the end by the powerful. He might even be right, and yet, in this he reminds me of a dark-version of Marx, praising the Roman opioid as a key to social control.
The Edition
I read Penguin Classics The Rise of the Roman Empire by Polybius, selected by F.W. Walbank, and translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert (the same one who translated the Plutarch I read).
The introduction was good and did an excellent job of introducing Polybius’ work, or at least the selection Walbank made. I’m not sure I would have read the book had it not been for the quality of the introduction. Each chapter lead with a good introductory note, setting the stage and providing historical context, which was very helpful.
Last time I read Polybius, I accused him (or the translation) of being stilted and awkward. This time, knowing how much I appreciated the translation of Plutarch by Scott-Kilvert, I suspect the blame lay on Polybius. (During the writing of this blog post, also used Tufts’ Perseus Digital Library, which has the Evelyn S. Shuckburgh translation, which really showed how much I appreciate Scott-Kilvert’s translation skills, and his use of a more modern vernacular).
I still found him to be stilted for the early chapters this time around, but over time I adapted, or he became a better writer and it bothered me appreciably less.
Despite the promise of the edition, it was overall one of the weakest classic history editions I’ve read:
- The Footnotes were of strongly varying quality: some useful, some clearly superfluous or misplaced and no notes to fill in the missing pieces. While I don’t think Polybius needed the very detailed notation that I had in the edition of Thucydides that I read , I was nevertheless let down often by this edition’s supplemental information.
- The maps are atrocious. They are almost entirely unusable through huge swathes of the book. Admittedly, I’m hugely spoiled from reading the Landmark Ancient Histories, which are absolutely lousy with excellent maps, but the maps in this book were just trash.
- There’s a diagram of a Roman camp, which is trying to help you visualize what Polybius describes in one chapter… but all the labels are in un-translated latin. Which makes it a pain to decipher.
