Polybius: The Histories. Robin Waterfield translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
With Book III, the central book of this pentad, Polybius begins his history proper—his narrative and political analysis of the course of events in and around the Mediterranean between 220 and 167 BC, when Rome acquired empire over “the known world.” By 220, Rome had defeated Carthage in the struggle over Sicily, acquiring Sardinia too while Carthage fought its civil war against barbarian mercenaries. Seemingly poised to dominate the western Mediterranean at least, the Romans didn’t anticipate the brilliance of Carthage’s great general, Hannibal, who led his forces into Italy, “end[ing] Roman supremacy in Italy” for a time and bringing “the Romans to the point where they fearfully expected to lose their very lives and the soil of their homeland” (III.ii). That they survived this crisis and eventually went on to conquer and rule their rivals bespeaks (in Polybius’ judgment) “the peculiar virtues of their regime” (III.ii).
It is the political dimension of this course of events that Polybius insists we appreciate. “A final assessment of the winners and losers cannot depend merely on the outcome of their struggles,” the results of military actions. “For apparently overwhelming success often proves utterly disastrous, if people fail to make proper use of it, and it is not uncommon for devastating catastrophes, if accepted with fortitude, to turn out to people’s advantage” (III.iv). Therefore, “my account of events would be incomplete if I failed to go on to describe, first, the attitude of the winners after their victory and how they ruled the world; second, how acceptable others found their rule and what they thought of the rulers; and, third, the aims and ambitions of all concerned, which governed their private lives and guided their policy-making” (III.iv). Such considerations had immediate and intense interest for Polybius and his native polis, Megalopolis, in Arcadia. His father had advocated a policy of Achaean independence from Rome; the city resisted Roman rule until 147. Although he had left Megalopolis for Rome when he saw the pro-Roman faction gaining ascendency, Polybius continued to uphold an Aristotelian appreciation for political life understood as reciprocal rule, intending to leave open the question of empire even as the Roman empire prevailed. “Such an account” as this “will enable the present generation to see whether Roman dominion is something they should seek out or shun, and will show future generations whether they should praise and admire the Roman empire, or find it abhorrent” (III.iv).
All of this for good, Aristotelian reasons: “Educationally speaking, this will prove to be the most important aspect of my work, now and in the future. For neither rulers nor those who express opinion about them should think of victory and overall dominion as the goal of military action. It makes as little sense for a man to fight others just to crush them as it does for a man to take to the open sea just to cross it. No one gains expertise either, or learns a skill, just in order to master it; every action is only ever done for the sake of the future pleasure or good or profit it will bring the agent. So my work will be complete when it has clarified how all the various peoples felt from the time when the Romans’ victories had brought them worldwide dominion, up to the disturbed and troubled period that came afterwards.” (III.iv).
But first, the Hannibalic wars. Again following Aristotle, Polybius distinguishes between events that started the wars (the ‘efficient causes’ or archē, in Aristotelian vocabulary) and the ‘final’ or teleological causes: “I take it that the starting point of anything consists of the first application in the real world of a course of action that has already been decided upon, while the cause is what first influences one’s judgments and decisions, or, in other words, what first influences one’s idea, feelings, reasoning about the matter, and all one’s decision-making and deliberative faculties” (III.vi). The final or underlying cause of the Hannibalic wars “was surely the anger of Hamilcar Barca, the father of Hannibal,” whose “spirit remained unbowed after the Sicilian War” and therefore “kept his forces…in a state of unimpaired readiness to achieve his objectives,” watching for “a chance to attack” (III.ix). He never saw that chance but nonetheless “devoted himself to subduing Iberia, with the intention of using it as a springboard for war against Rome” (III.x). He transmitted his anger (as a sort of psychic inheritance) to his son, Hannibal, who “led him by the right hand up to the altar” at a Carthaginian military outpost in Iberia, “told him to place his hand on the [sacrificial] victim and swear unremitting hatred for the Romans” (III.xi). Hannibal thus became a “lifelong, fanatical” enemy of Rome, driven by familial and religious piety (III.xii).
Polybius draws the lesson: “When old enemies are patched up or new friendships formed, statesmen need to make it their primary concern to discover the motives of the people involved. They need to know when people come to terms because circumstances leave them no choice, and when they do so because their spirits have been broken. They should regard the first lot as biding their time and should deal cautiously with them, but they may trust the latter, who have submitted to them, as true friends, and need not hesitate before summoning their help under any circumstances” (III.xii). Hannibal unquestionably numbered among those who bide their time, “gripped by irrational and uncontrollable anger” toward Rome (III.xv); after waiting his chance, he seized on a pretext to attack. For their part, the Romans foresaw “a major, prolonged war with Carthage”—but not then (III.xvi). Supposing they had more time, they had moved to secure their eastern flank in Illyria as a buffer against the “flourishing” Macedonian dynasty”; Hannibal “pre-empted them,” besieging and capturing the city of Saguntum, a Roman stronghold in northeastern Iberia that would have impeded his movement towards the Alps (III.xvi). “This is why the war took place all over Italy, even close to Rome itself, rather than in Iberia” (III.xvi). Subsequent Roman protests and treaties had no effect on Hannibal’s plans.
The lesson for readers: “If there is anyone who is sure that he can cope entirely on his own with every eventuality, I might agree that for him knowledge of the past is unnecessary. It would still be a good thing for such a person, but not necessary. But no mortal man is so rash as to make such a claim. Whether he is acting as a private individual or as a public official, even if things are currently going well, no one of any sense that takes that as a reliable harbinger of what will happen in the future. And so knowledge of the past is, in my opinion, necessary as well as good.” (III.xxxi). And not only bits and pieces of the past. The Second Punic War arose out of a series of events that occurred not only in Rome, Carthage, and Iberia but in Macedon and Greece. A ‘history of Rome’ or a ‘history of Carthage’ will not suffice. “I would say that the difference between partial accounts and my history is as great as the difference between hearing and understanding” (III.xxxii). “In our times…almost everything can be reached by sea or by land”; more, “men who are capable of being effective in the world have been freed of the obligation to devote themselves to warfare and statesmanship, and therefore have the perfect opportunity to investigate and study these matters”(III.lix); what they have lost in experience they can grasp by study, so that they will at least understand warcraft and statecraft, view them with a knowledgeable eye, not give themselves over to fantasies or, as much later generations would say, ideology.
Hannibal planned meticulously for his invasion. He understood that he could only get at the Romans in Italy with the cooperation of the Italian Celtic chieftains who controlled the Alps and the lands immediately to the south of them. “He made sure that he was fully informed about the fertility of the land below the Alps and in the Po plain, the size of the population there, the fearlessness of the men in battle, and most importantly, the hatred they bore the Romans,” with whom they had clashed many times (III.xxxiv). He sent “carefully crafted messages” to the chieftains, making “extravagant promises” of future benefits in exchange for present assistance (III.xxxiv). (As for the Celts on the near side of the mountains, he would simply smash through them.) In 218 BC he ordered his troops to move, first across the Pyrenees, then the Alps; the Roman general who landed in Iberia to intercept him arrived after he’d left.
Polybius takes care to say that writers “who have written about Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps” in order “to astound their readers with the extraordinary nature of the mountains” merely “perpetuate falsehoods” and “contradict themselves” (III.xlvii). The Alps, he assures us, are eminently ‘crossable,’ as the Celts had demonstrated on several occasions; the mountains are in fact “heavily populated,” and Hannibal’s march was “highly practical,” so long as the Celts who lived there had no objection to his plans (III.xlvii) or, in some cases, were overawed by the 50,000 foot soldiers, 9,000 Numidian cavalrymen, and the never-before-seen elephants he brought with him. One Celtic tribe nonetheless surprised him with an attack, causing some losses, but even this was only a raid, not part of any sustained and coordinated resistance. The march from his Iberian headquarters to Italy took five months, the actual Alpine crossing fifteen days. His worst enemy was the winter; by the time he reached the Po valley he had lost nearly half of his men, and “the constant suffering had reduced all the survivors to a state in which they resembled wild beasts” (III.lx). After they had rested sufficiently, Hannibal took advantage of their hardships by telling them that it was now a matter of winning or dying; the Roman general Scipio’s troops were advancing, having returned to Italy from Iberia, so the only thing to do was to meet them head on. “The reward for the victors, however, would not be mere horses and cloaks,” the usual spoils of war, “but the riches of Rome, with which they would make themselves the wealthiest men in the world” (III.lxiii). “None of them, he went on, was so foolish or stupid as to believe that he would make it home if he turned to flight” (III.lxiii). By contrast, Scipio’s speech was a rather complacent account of the glories of Rome and of the supposed weakness of the Carthaginian invaders.
Just as he had planned the invasion itself with care and prudence, so Hannibal planned his battles. “Anyone who claims that any aspect of generalship is more important than knowing the character and temperament of the enemy commander certainly does not know what he is talking about,” and Hannibal studied the flaws of the enemy generals (III.lxxx). More often than not, his troops mauled the Romans, who were also betrayed by their remaining Celtic allies. Still, “the Romans are at their most formidable, as a state or as individuals, when they are genuinely threatened” (III.lxxv); knowing this, Hannibal advanced not so much via head-to-head battles but by ambushes and other stratagems designed to induce unforced errors by the defenders. But although the Roman generals were thrown into confusion and defeat, the Roman Senate “stayed suitably calm as they debated the future,” even as the Roman people failed to react “with moderation and restraint” (III.lxxxv). Even as its military leaders faltered, the regime itself held fast. They knew that Rome retained two “strengths”: “an inexhaustible supply of provisions and plenty of men,” neither of which the Carthaginian forces commanded (III.xc). And although they no longer had substantial land forces in Iberia, the Romans took the precaution of interrupting Hannibal’s supply lines and tying down the Carthaginian troops remaining in Iberia by ordering naval attacks along the coast. This resulted in some of the cities and towns there turning against the Carthaginians, even as the Carthaginians had succeeded in turning many of the Celts against Rome.
And so Hannibal decided to force the issue. At the town of Cannae, he was outnumbered by the Romans. He won that justly celebrated battle because his cavalry forces outmaneuvered the Roman foot soldiers—a lesson taken by military tacticians ever since, down to the twentieth century, when horse cavalry were replaced by the mechanized cavalry of tanks. [1] As Polybius writes, “the battle taught later generations that in wartime it is better to have half as many infantry as the enemy, and overwhelming cavalry superiority, than to have exactly the same numbers as the enemy in all respects” (III.cxviii).
“Nevertheless, the Senate continued to do their best; they tried to alleviate the general gloom, they secured the city, and they did not let fear get the better of them as they debated the crisis. And subsequent events showed that they were right…. Although their military supremacy had passed into other hands, the peculiar virtues of their constitution and their sound deliberation not only enabled them to regain dominion over Italy and then to beat the Carthaginians, but within a few years they had made themselves masters of the entire known world.” (III.cxviii).
Keeping with his own plan of giving his readers a comprehensive understanding of the Mediterranean as a geopolitical whole, Polybius doesn’t move immediately to a discussion of the Roman regime, turning away from Italy and Iberia altogether and discussing events in the east. The year 220 makes sense as a beginning point of the main narrative of his history because by then “Fortune” had effected “the complete renewal of the known world.” New rulers were poised to make their mark: Philip V in Macedon; Antiochus III in Syria; Ariarthes IV in Cappadocia; Ptolemy IV in Egypt; Lycurgus in Sparta. Additionally, Achaeus “had both the authority and the resources of a king in Asia Minor” and Hannibal now led Carthaginian troops in Italy. With these accessions came new wars: the Hannibalic War, the war for rule over Coele Syria between Antiochus and Ptolemy; and the war between the Achaean-Macedonian alliance and the Aetolian-Spartan alliance.
Polybius begins with Greece. He holds the Aetolians responsible for that war. “Their habitual bluster is expensive to maintain, and because they are completely ruled by it, they always live like rapacious beasts, and view the whole world as a hostile, uncongenial place” (IV.3). Now that “the boy-king Philip V” had inherited the Macedonian throne, they believed they saw their chance “to interfere in Peloponnesian affairs” (IV.3). They sent Dorimachus of Trichonium, a young man “who shared the aggression and rapaciousness that characterize Aetolians,” to an area bordering on Messene, an ally of the Aetolian League (IV.4). That didn’t stop Dorimachus from allowing his men to plunder the Messenians, to whom he resentfully agreed to pay restitution, while scheming to foment a war to avenge this perceived humiliation.
This alarmed and infuriated the Achaeans, who sent their best general, Aratus to assist the Messenians. This “extraordinary man” was “perfectly suited for a career as a statesman: he was a good speaker and a clear thinker, and had the ability to keep his ideas to himself; his calmness in the face of political disputes, and his ability to retain friends and gain allies, were unrivalled; he was also outstandingly good at devising ways of getting at his enemies by personal action, stealth, or cunning, and he had the patience and boldness to see these plans through to completion” (IV.viii). As a military commander his one weakness was battle in open countryside; in such circumstances he was uncharacteristically “slow-witted, hesitant, and apparently reluctant to face danger” (IV.viii). Polybius muses, “the fact is that people’s minds vary as much as their bodies”; “the same man may be talented at certain activities and backward at others,” exhibiting “extremes of intelligence and stupidity, or of daring and timidity” (IV.viii). What is true of individuals is also true of peoples. The Cretans, “unbeatable at ambushes, raids, deceiving the enemy, night attacks, and every kind of small-scale operation requiring cunning,” prove “cowardly and timid” in “a formal, face-to-face, mass assault,” whereas the Achaeans and Macedonians are usually (with the exception of Aratus) just the opposite (IV.viii).
Outmaneuvered by the Aetolians, Aratus lost his first battle against them and the ‘Social War’ was on. Facing a hostile assembly at home, Aratus prudently “asked to be forgiven for any mistakes he had made during the battle” while reminding the Achaeans of his many previous accomplishments on their behalf. “His words changed the mood of the assembly so rapidly and decisively that those of his political enemies who had attacked him completely fell from favor and from then on the Achaeans adopted Aratus’ policies in everything” (IV.xii). On his recommendation, they appealed to Philip of Macedon, the Messenians, and the Spartans for troops. Unsurprised by Aetolian aggression—it “was, after all, normal Aetolian behavior”—Philip for the time did nothing; “unremitting wrongdoing is more likely to be pardoned than occasional, abnormal iniquity” (IV.xvi). The Spartans responded by secretly allying themselves with the Aetolians. They promised support to the Achaeans, then sent many fewer men than promised.
With its numerous city-states, Greece offers Polybius excellent opportunities for the study of ‘comparative politics.’ He doesn’t neglect them. Why, for example, are the Arcadian people generally so good and the Cynaetheans—ruling a city in the region, ethnically identical to their neighbors—the “most brutal and lawless people in Greece at that time,” even worse than the Aetolians? “The Arcadian people as a whole have a reputation throughout the Greek world for moral virtue. They are polite and friendly by disposition and upbringing, and above all they revere the gods. The savagery of the Cynaetheans is therefore puzzling.” (IV.xx). Polybius suggests that they were missing a crucial regime element, “the first and only Arcadians to abandon an excellent practice that had been instituted by their forebears, a practice which took into consideration the natural characteristics of the people there”: the practice of music, which the Arcadians had made the “constant companion” of children and young men, up to the age of thirty (IV.xx). The young sing “the traditional songs and paeans with which each community hymns its local heroes and gods”; “every year they put on a keenly contested dance competition in their theaters” and throughout the year they sing at home parties (IV.xx). “The men of old who introduced these practices had a very good reason for doing so” (IV.xxi). Far from considering music “a superfluous luxury,” they understood that most Arcadians were peasants; “life is a hard grind for them” (IV.xi). In addition, the climate of Arcadia is cold and dank; since “all over the world people inevitably come to resemble the prevailing climatic conditions,” Arcadians “tend towards dourness”—the Scotsmen of Greek antiquity (IV.xxi). “It was because they wanted to soften and temper the inflexibility and insensitivity of the Arcadian character that they introduced al these practices, and for the same reason they also instituted the custom, for both men and women, of shared public meetings and sacrificial festivals, of which there are very many in Arcadia, and also festivals at which girls and boys dance together. In short, the sole purpose for which they were striving was to introduce practices that tamed and mitigated Arcadian obduracy.” (IV.xxi).
The Cynaetheans, however, were having none of it. They “utterly neglected these practices, despite the fact that, because their climate and landscape are by far the most severe in Arcadia, they had more need of this kind of help than anyone else” (IV.xxi). As a consequence, “there is no Greek city anywhere in the world where worse and more constant crimes have been committed” (IV.xxi). That great student of the interplay between climate, political regimes, and character, Montesquieu, knew his Polybius.
Polybius also considers the Spartan regime, which had just changed from their traditional monarchy, with “unquestioning obedience” to kings as the way of life, to democracy (IV.xxii). They weren’t ready for self-government, however. “Now that they had no kings, no one wanted anyone else to have more political power than himself, and the in-fighting began” (IV.xxii); as a much later political observer put it, faction is to republics as fire is to air. When one of the ephors made a speech advocating continued alliance with the Macedonians, who had liberated them from monarchy, he was assassinated by his rivals, unreconstructed monarchists who had made alliance with some military officers. With Sparta now surreptitiously on their side, the Aetolians prepared for war against the Achaean League and its new ally, Philip of Macedon, who rightly felt betrayed by the ruling faction in Sparta—the city his father had helped to liberate. Polybius draws the lesson, with respect to the Spartans and the Aetolian League with whom they allied themselves: “There is never any difference between crimes committed against individuals and political crimes, except that the latter involve more and larger consequences. Small-scale swindlers and thieves fail above all because they do not treat one another fairly, or, in general, because they cheat one another, and this is exactly what the Aetolians had done.” (IV.xxix). After another coup in 219, “the Spartans, who had enjoyed the finest regime in Greece ever since the legislation of Lycurgus, and who had been the most powerful military presence in Greece until the battle of Leuctra, went into decline when Fortune changed and turned against them. Their regime gradually deteriorated, and in the end no polis was more plagued by trouble and strife, no polis more racked by land reforms and political banishments”; “they came to experience a harsher form of servitude than anyone else in Greece”—all owing to the “thorough subversion of the ancestral regime,” beginning with the tyranny of Cleomenes. (IV.lxxxi).
The many Greek city-states also offers a field for considering geopolitics. The Messenians live between the more powerful Arcadians and Spartans. Because the Spartans “have always been their implacable enemies” they have allied themselves with the genial, virtuous Arcadians (IV.xxxii). “Whenever the Spartans were distracted by internal or external warfare, the Messenians were all right,” but “whenever the Spartans had time on their hands and nothing better to do, they fell back on injuring the Messenians” (IV.xxxii). Polybius recommends that the Messenians federate with the equally beleaguered Megalopolitans, which would give each polis the strength to resist military incursions.
After several more assassinations of democrats, the Spartan monarchists restored their preferred regime and made open alliance with the Aetolians. The Social War began. Macedon’s Philip (only seventeen years old when the war began) faced a geopolitical complication. At the same time the Greeks were preparing for war to his south, to his northeast the Rhodians attacked Byzantium, the gateway to the Black Sea, where Greeks traded for livestock, slaves, and luxury items. Thus “the people of Byzantium are the benefactors of all of us in common,” protecting Greek shipping from ever-encroaching barbarian chieftains (especially the Thracians) and properly expecting united Greek assistance “whenever the barbarian menace becomes critical,” as indeed it did when the equally barbaric Gauls arrived on the scene (IV.xxxviii). But the Greeks, preoccupied with their own struggles, ignored their pleas for help; desperate for revenues need to fund their resistance to the barbarians, the Byzantines put a tax on Black Sea shipping. “the affronted traders unanimously turned for help to the Rhodians, who were considered to be pre-eminent at sea” (IV.xlvii).
Both sides brought in allies. The Rhodians successfully appealed to Prusias I, king of Bithynia, who coveted Byzantine territory in Asia Minor. The Byzantines sent embassies to Attalus I, king of Pergamon, a Greek polis in Asia Minor, and to Achaeus, the military commander of Asia Minor, who had been appointed by the Greek Seleucid emperor, Antiochus III. Intimidated by the Byzantine alliance system, the Rhodians and Bithynians quickly made peace with Byzantium, so long as the Byzantines agreed not to tax Black Sea shipping. This freed Philip to turn his full attention to the south, to the Aetolians.
Reaching Olympia, he sacrificed to the god before proceeding to Elis, an important ally of the Aetolians. The Elean regime consisted of an assembly that took care to serve the interests of the farmers, obviating the farmers’ need to participate in politics; on the other hand, the courts remained local, so that justice was readily preserved in the countryside as well as in the city. “It seems to me that all these measures and regulations, which were put in place long ago, owe their existence not just to the size of the territory, but above all to the sacrosanct life they once led”; “because of the Olympic Games, their land was to be sacrosanct and unviolated, so that they never knew fear or warfare” (IV.lxxiii). By the time of Philip’s invasion, however, they had changed their regime. Responding to territorial aggression from the Arcadians, “they were forced to defend their and change their way of life,” attempting to defend themselves without waiting for assistance from the other Greeks (IV.lxxiv). After that crisis, “they stayed with the status quo, which I think was misguided of them, and showed a distinct lack of forethought. What is it, after all, that all men pray that the gods will grant them? What is that we desire so much that we are prepared to endure anything to get it? What is it that is the only unquestionable good among all the things that men consider good? It is peace.” (IV.lxxiv). To the objection that a return to their pacific ways “would make them vulnerable to attack by an enemy who deliberately set out to make war on them, despite their sacred inviolability”—as the Aetolians had done—Polybius judges this “unlikely to happen” with forces sufficient to destroy the polis itself (IV.lxxiv). For such “minor acts of aggression” as that of the Arcadians, they could hire auxiliaries or mercenaries (IV.lxxiv). “But as things stand at the moment, they embroil themselves and their land in war after destructive war out of fear of a rare and unlikely occurrence” (IV.lxxiv). Their alliance with the Aetolians and the Spartans is a case in point. Warlike in their policy but peaceful in their way of life, they quickly succumbed to the experienced soldiers of Macedon, who captured some 5,000 prisoners and a huge quantity of spoils from this large, prosperous, yet inadequately defended polis.
In later years, Philip would turn tyrant. But in his youth, he readily “won friends throughout the Peloponnese” (IV.lxxvii). “It is hard to think of a king who was more richly endowed with the temperament necessary for the possession of power. He was outstandingly quick-witted, had an exceptional memory, and was extremely charismatic; he had the majesty and authority you would expect of a king; and above all he was an able and courageous soldier” (IV.lxxvii). His main difficulty during this campaign issued from the ambitions of his ambitious officer, Apelles, who pushed for a long-term strategy of subjugating the Achaeans, not the Aetolians. Apelles accused another officer, Aratus, of disloyalty. However, Philip weighed the evidence carefully and discovered the fraud. He kept Apelles in his entourage while now favoring Aratus. Undaunted, Apelles continued his attempts to aggrandize himself and undermine his rivals. He even began to interfere with the conduct of the war.
Seeing firsthand the geography of Greece, with its innumerable inlets and bays, Philip decided to “make the sea the main theater of war,” which would enable him to transport his army more rapidly—effectively turning them into ‘marines’ who could disembark to attack key poleis ruled by the enemy (V.i). As it happened, the Macedonians “were not only superb fighters in formal land battles, but they were also perfectly ready to serve at sea in an emergency” (V.i).
In what may have been a hint of the underlying tyrannical cast of his soul, Philip violated the rules of war at the city of Thermum, where he burnt buildings associated with divine worship and toppled some 2,000 statues of the gods. Philip and his officers “were convinced that what they were doing was just and fitting”—retaliation for the Aetolians “sacrilegious crimes” elsewhere (V.ix). Polybius strongly disagrees. When Antigonous Doson overthrew the tyrant Cleomenes, he restored (however temporarily, as things turned out) the ancient regime of the Spartans “and their liberty” (V.ix); when Philip II, “the man who originally made Macedon great and first gave his house its high dignity,” defeated the Athenians in the battle of Chaeronea, “he achieved more through equity and kindness than he had through force of arms” (V.x). “Warfare and military might have brought him only the defeat and subjugation of his immediate opponents, but thanks to his tact and fairness he gained the submission of the entire population of Athens and the surrender of the city (V.x). He did not prolong the war out of anger, but fought and strived for victory only until it won him the opportunity to demonstrate his leniency and generosity”; indeed, “his magnanimity,” his greatness of soul, “cowed Athenian pride and changed them from enemies to willing allies in all his ventures” (V.x). Even his son, Alexander, while angrily razing Thebes to the ground and selling the Thebans into slavery, “never forgot the respect and reverence due to the gods” and left their temples and statues intact” (V.x). With such examples before him, Philip V “should have shown himself to have inherited and taken over from these men not just their throne, but, more importantly, their principles and magnanimity”; instead, “he never made the slightest effort to imitate them,” letting “anger get the better of him and act[ing] just as impiously as the Aetolians” (V.xi). “Even in wartime gratuitous damage to temples and statues and other works of art,” “valuable works that had been made with great skill from costly materials” (V.ix)—when “there is not the slightest chance that this will either help one’s own cause or weaken the enemy, is a sure sign of a fanatic in a rage” (V.xi).
“After all, a good man does not make war on wrongdoers to destroy and annihilate them, but to improve them and correct the error of their ways. And rather than eliminate the guiltless along with the guilty, he spares and saves both those whom he judges to have done wrong and those who are innocent. For injuring peoples and using fear to rule them against their will are sure signs of tyranny, but benefiting everyone, and leading and ruling people with their consent, are the marks of a king. Hating their subjects, tyrants become objects of hatred, whereas kings are loved for their benevolence and clemency.” (V.xi). Polybius ventures what we now call a ‘counterfactual’: “The best way to understand Philip’s mistake is to imagine what the Aetolians would probably have thought of him if he had done the opposite” (V.xi). “I am sure they would have regarded him as a man of the greatest integrity and clemency,” admirable for “the kingly and magnanimous way in which he demonstrated his piety towards the gods and restrained his anger towards them,” in contrast to the shameful behavior of the Aetolian League after their recent conquests (V.xi). Polybius thinks so for three reasons: “first, from the loser’s perspective, it is the difference between yielding of his own free will and yielding because he has no choice”; “second, for the victor, chastising the enemy by force of arms comes at a high price, whereas getting the enemy to see the error of his ways by the other method costs nothing”; “third, and most importantly, victory on the battlefield is due largely to subordinates, whereas the other kind of victory is due wholly to the commanding officer” (V.xii).
All this notwithstanding, Philip proved eminently capable as a warrior if not as a statesman, surprising the Spartans by rapidly advancing his troops by sea and by land. In the meantime, the officers who had been conspiring against him understood that their plot was detected and either killed themselves or died by execution. Leaving the outcome of Philip’s Grecian foray in suspense, Polybius turns to the war in Asia—specifically, the conflict over control of Coele Syria between the Seleucid emperor, Antiochus III, and Ptolomy IV of Egypt.
Ptolemy had inherited rule over Egypt. The country was secure; the young king became complacent, inattentive, decadent. His father and grandfather had paid close attention to foreign policy. “It was their possession of Coele Syria and Cyprus that had enabled them to threaten the kings of Syria on land and sea; their mastery of the most notable cities, regions, and ports along the entire coastline from Pamphylia to the Hellespont and the district of Lysimacheia had allowed them to influence the Asiatic princelings and the islands as well; and their possession of Aenus, Maroneia, and even more remote cities had enabled them also to watch over Thrace and Macedon” (V.xxxiv). Using these provinces as buffers and lookout stations against all possible rivals, they governed them assiduously. “But the administration of all these foreign possessions was a matter of indifference to Ptolemy IV, who was distracted by unsuitable love affairs and stupefied by non-stop carousing” (V.xxxiv).
The first foreigner to take advantage of this was Cleomenes of Sparta, exiled to Egypt after his dethronement. He petitioned to be placed at the head of an expeditionary force, so that he could return to Greece and the fight in the war. Although Ptolemy didn’t care, his head of state, Sosibius, and the Egyptian royal council worried that Cleomenes might succeed all too well, conquer all of Greece and return to threaten Egypt. They denied Cleomenes’ petition, but he escaped house arrest.
Meanwhile, to the east of Egypt, the Seleucid empire had descended into civil war. The emperor, Antiochus, had assigned the governorship of Asia Minor to Achaeus, his inland province of Media to Molon and the satrap of Persis to Molon’s brother, Alexander. The brothers promptly raised a rebellion against the fifteen-year-old emperor, expecting little trouble from him but fearing the new head of state, Hermias, “a cruel and devious man” (V.xli). Hermias’ rival at court was Epigenes, who had proven himself a capable military commander and orator; “Hermias patiently bided his time, always waiting for an opportunity and excuse to bring Epigenes down” (V.xli). When Epigenes urged the emperor to put down the rebellion at once, accompanying the Egyptian troops, Hermias charged him with scheming to get the boy killed. Epigenes chose to overlook this accusation, putting it down to “an ill-timed fit of anger, rather than true hostility” (V.xlii). Epigenes’ real intention was indeed to make the emperor “busy with military service and constantly surrounded with danger” not to get him killed but to toughen him up, make him understand that the world is too dangerous to be ignored (V.xlii).
With rich and sizeable Media under his rule and a solid alliance with his brother, Molon looked forward to the war with confidence. “All the inhabitants of Asia were absolutely terrified of him and he seemed unstoppable” (V.xlv). He defeated the Seleucid forces. The nonplussed Antiochus turned to Epigenes for advice. When Epigenes urged the emperor to continue the fight, Hermias again staged a tantrum, again in vain. But when the army nearly mutinied over the issue of back pay, Hermias offered to pay them out of his own pocket in exchange for the exclusion of Epigenes from the campaign. The emperor reluctantly agreed. Soon after, Hermias framed his rival and prevailed upon the emperor to execute him. Hermias now had every reason to suppose he could control the emperor. But when half of Molon’s troops betrayed their commander and went over to Antiochus, Molon committed suicide, fearing “the torture he would endure if he were captured alive” (V.liv). Antiochus could now do no more than crucify his corpse and gave the governorship of Media to a loyalist, Diogenes. This vindicated the war policy of the late Epigenes and discredited scheming Hermias. So, for good measure, the emperor’s courtiers assassinated Hermias; more, the women stoned his wife to death and “the children did the same for his sons” (V.lvi).
Freed from the crisis in the interior provinces, Antiochus turned his attention to Coele Syria. On advice of his physician-counselor Apollophanes, who had warned him of Hermias’ perfidy, he first took the opportunity to seize Seleucia Pieria from Ptolemy, since that city in Egyptian hands would have hindered any operations in Syria. In 218, the war over Coele Syria began. Antiochus counted on Ptolemy’s disinclination “to assent on a decisive battle” (V.lxvi). He didn’t understand the character of Sosibius, Ptolemy’s head of state. Negotiations ensued, with each side claiming rightful rulership over the region, but Sosibius was already “completely committed to war,” and used the truce to ready the Egyptian forces (V.lxvii). Egypt had already allied with Achaeus, the Seleucid governor of Asia Minor, so Antiochus too steeled himself for the fight. He lost, at Rapha, in 217, then sued for peace.
In Greece, the previous year, Philip, poised to beset Sparta, received a letter notifying him of Carthage’s defeat of Rome at Etruria. He shared the information with a close adviser, Demetrius of Pharos, who recommended a change of course. Instead of continuing his campaign in Greece, Philip should quickly make peace with the Aetolians, subdue Illyria and invade Italy. “All Greece,” Demetrius said, “was already subject to him, and that situation would last, now that the Achaeans had chosen to ally themselves with him and the Aetolians were struggling to recover from the war. But Italy was the first step to world conquest, which was his exclusive right”—as a direct descendant of Alexander the Great—and “there was no better time to invade Italy than now, when the Romans were down and out” (V.cii). “Young, fortunate in war, and known for his daring,” Philip was “seduced by Demetrius’ suggestion” (V.cii). For their part, the Aetolians proved as eager for peace as was Philip for conquest. The treaty conference “was the first occasion when Greek, Italian, and Libyan affairs became interconnected. From then on, the point of reference when Philip and the Greek leaders were deciding on war or peace with one another was no longer what was happening in Greece; everyone’s eyes were turned instead towards Italy and the intentions of people there” (cvi). For their part, the Romans became “concerned about just how far Philip would go,” and began to send out feelers to the Greeks (V.cvi).
As planned, Philip invaded and conquered Illyria, further worrying the Romans. But of course their main concern was Hannibal, who had just defeated them at Cannae. “That was how things stood in Greece and Asia” (V.cx). Polybius will now pause to consider the Roman regime.
He has already shown the radical difference between republicanism and monarchy. Whether in Egypt, the Seleucid empire, Macedon, or Sparta, monarchic rule depends squarely not only on the character of ‘the one’ ruler but on the intrigues undertaken by those around him. Whether it is Hermias in the Seleucid court or Demetrius whispering into Philip’s ear, monarchs are prey to their confidants. Republics may be to faction what air is to fire but factionalism inflames monarchies, too, although it is restricted to a very small circle.
In addition to the problems inherent in regimes, Polybius sees those inherent in size. Small political societies, city-states, find themselves continually threatened by their larger neighbors. But empires are threatened not only by rival empires but by ambitious provincial governors with eyes on the emperor’s throne. Given his elaboration of such dilemmas, Polybius’ turn to the Roman regime is quite logical
Note
- The most famous example was the German end-around France’s fortified Maginot Line in 1940; decades later, United States troops demonstrated the same tactics in their two wars in Iraq. The French had been warned by a then-obscure army officer, Charles de Gaulle, whose 1934 book, Vers l’armée de métier argued (in vain, as it happened) for such a mobile force as a needed supplement to the defensive borderline ‘shell.’ For commentary, see Will Morrisey: Reflections on De Gaulle: Political Founding in Modernity (Lanham: University Press of America, second edition, 2002).
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