The Portable Greek Historians: The Essence of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius (Portable Library)

by M. I. Finley

  POLYBIUS

  IN THE centuries after Alexander the Great, the political center of gravity in Greece shifted from Athens, Sparta, and Thebes to the two leagues, the Achaean and the Aetolian, and to Macedon. Polybius was born to leadership in the Achaean League, his father Lycortas being a wealthy land-owner and active politician. However, in 168, when he was scarcely over thirty years of age and had only begun his political career, he fell victim to Rome’s final triumph over the Macedonians at the battle of Pydna. Polybius was one of the thousand well-born Achaeans carried to Rome as hostages in punishment for the League’s part in the Third Macedonian War. There he quickly was taken up by Aemilius Paullus and the young Scipio Aemilianus, and for the next twenty or twenty-five years his life was spent in the closest association with the so-called Scipionic circle. He travelled widely in Italy, Africa, Spain, and Gaul, and he was with Scipio when the latter destroyed Carthage in 146.

  For a man who undertook to write a “universal history” narrating and analyzing in minute detail Rome’s conquest of the world from 220 to 168 (a date which he later shifted to 144 in order to include the final conquest of Spain, Africa, and Greece), the circumstances of his life could hardly have been improved upon. He knew, and knew well, most of the chief actors both in Rome and in Greece. He also knew the places, and for the later years he witnessed some of the events. In the end his travels included that rare experience, for his time, of a voyage on the Atlantic along both the African and Portuguese coasts, and visits to Egypt and Asia Minor. He had access to archives, and he read very widely in the pertinent historical and biographical literature. He also pretended, I might add, to a considerable knowledge of philosophy, but his Stoicism is palpably shallow and derivative.

  All this knowledge and experience were assembled in a vast work of forty books, of which only the first five survive in full, the rest merely in extracts preserved by later anthologies and epitomes. Nothing in what we have points explicitly beyond the year 144, and, apart from some possible (and very veiled) hints in Book VI on the Roman constitution, nothing gives warning that a decade later, with the Gracchi, Rome would enter a full century of civil strife and revolution. As usual, we are completely uninformed about the date or circumstances of the actual publication. It is worth noting, however, that if the tradition is accurate that Polybius died at the age of eighty-two, then he was alive in the tribunates of both Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus.

  —M. I. F.

  From BOOK I

  Introduction

  1. Had the praise of history been passed over by former chroniclers it would perhaps have been incumbent upon me to urge the choice and special study of histories of this sort, as knowledge of the past is the readiest means men can have of correcting their conduct. But my predecessors have not been sparing in this respect. They have all begun and ended, so to speak, by enlarging on this theme: asserting again and again that the study of history is in the truest sense an education, and a training for political life; and that the most instructive, or rather the only, method of learning to bear with dignity the vicissitudes of Fortune is to recall the catastrophes of others. It is evident, therefore, that no one need think it his duty to repeat what has been said by many, and said well. Least of all myself, for the surprising nature of the events which I have undertaken to relate is in itself sufficient to challenge and stimulate the attention of everyone, old or young, to the study of my work. Can anyone 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 single dominion of the Romans, 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 offers no precedent?

  2. We shall best show how marvellous and vast our subject is by comparing the most famous empires which preceded and which have been the favourite themes of historians, and measuring them with the superior greatness of Rome. Those that deserve to be so compared and measured are the following. The Persians for a certain length of time were possessed of a great empire and dominion. But every time they ventured beyond the limits of Asia, they found not only their empire but their own existence also in danger. The Lacedaemonians, after contending for supremacy in Greece for many generations, when they did get it, held it without dispute for barely twelve years. The Macedonians obtained dominion in Europe from the lands bordering on the Adriatic to the Danube—which after all is but a small fraction of this continent—and, by the destruction of the Persian Empire, they afterwards added to that the dominion of Asia. And yet, though they had the credit of having made themselves masters of a larger number of countries and states than any people had ever done, they still left the greater half of the inhabited world in the hands of others. They never so much as thought of attempting Sicily, Sardinia, or Libya; and as to Europe, to speak the plain truth, they never even knew of the most warlike tribes of the West. The Roman conquest, on the other hand, was not partial. Nearly the whole inhabited world was reduced by them to obedience, and they left behind them an empire not to be paralleled in the past or rivalled in the future. Students will gain from my narrative a clearer view of the whole story, and of the numerous and important advantages which such exact record of events offers.24

  3. My History begins in the 140th Olympiad [220-217 B.C.]. The events from which it starts are these. In Greece, what is called the Social War: the first waged by Philip, son of Demetrius and father of Perseus, in league with the Achaeans against the Aetolians. In Asia, the war for the possession of Coele Syria which Antiochus and Ptolemy Philopator carried on against each other. In Italy, Libya, and their neighbourhood, the conflict between Rome and Carthage, generally called the Hannibalic War. My work thus begins where that of Aratus of Sicyon leaves off. Now up to this time the world’s history had been, so to speak, a series of disconnected transactions, as widely separated in their origin and results as in their localities. But from this time forth history becomes a connected whole; the affairs of Italy and Libya are involved with those of Asia and Greece, and the tendency of all is to unity. This is why I have fixed upon this era as the starting point of my work. For it was their victory over the Carthaginians in this war, and their conviction that thereby the most difficult and most essential step towards universal empire had been taken, which encouraged the Romans for the first time to stretch out their hands upon the rest, and to cross with an army into Greece and Asia.

  Now, had the states that were rivals for universal empire been familiarly known to us, no reference perhaps to their previous history would have been necessary to show the purpose and the forces with which they approached an undertaking of this nature and magnitude. But the fact is that the majority of the Greeks have no knowledge of the previous constitution, power, or achievements either of Rome or Carthage. I therefore concluded that it was necessary to prefix this and the next book to my History. I was anxious that no one, when fairly embarked upon my actual narrative, should feel at a loss, and have to ask what were the designs entertained by the Romans, or the forces and means at their disposal, that they entered upon those undertakings, which did in fact lead to their becoming masters of land and sea everywhere in our part of the world. I wished, on the contrary, that these books of mine, and the prefatory sketch which they contained, might make it clear that the resources they started with justified their original idea, and sufficiently explained their final success in grasping universal empire and dominion.

  4. There is this analogy between the plan of my History and the marvellous spirit of the age with which I have to deal. Just as Fortune made almost all the affairs of the world incline in one direction, and forced them to converge upon one and the same point, so it is my task as a historian to put before my readers a compendious view of the ways in which Fortune accomplished her purpose. It was this peculiarity which originally challenged my attent
ion, and determined me on undertaking this work. And combined with this was the fact that no writer of our time has undertaken a general history. Had anyone done so my ambition in this direction would have been much diminished. But, in point of fact, I notice that by far the greater number of historians concern themselves with isolated wars and the incidents that accompany them; while as to a general and comprehensive scheme of events, their date, origin, and end, no one as far as I know has undertaken to examine it. I thought it, therefore, distinctly my duty neither to pass by myself, nor allow anyone else to pass by, without full study, a characteristic specimen of the dealings of Fortune at once brilliant and instructive in the highest degree. For fruitful as Fortune is in change, and constantly as she is producing dramas in the life of men, yet never assuredly before this did she work such a marvel, or act such a drama, as that which we have witnessed. And of this we cannot obtain a comprehensive view from writers of mere episodes.

  It would be as absurd to expect to do so as for a man to imagine that he has learned the shape of the whole world, its entire arrangement and order, because he has visited one after the other the most famous cities in it, or perhaps merely examined them in separate pictures. That would be indeed absurd; and it has always seemed to me that men who are persuaded that they get a competent view of universal from episodical history are very like persons who should see the limbs of some body, which had once been living and beautiful, scattered and remote; and should imagine that to be quite as good as actually beholding the activity and beauty of the living creature itself. But if someone could there and then reconstruct the animal once more, in the perfection of its beauty and the charm of its vitality, and could display it to the same people, they would beyond doubt confess that they had been far from conceiving the truth, and had been little better than dreamers. For indeed some idea of a whole may be got from a part, but an accurate knowledge and clear comprehension cannot. Wherefore we must conclude that episodical history contributes exceedingly little to the familiar knowledge and secure grasp of universal history. While it is only by the combination and comparison of the separate parts of the whole—by observing their likeness and their difference—that a man can attain his object, can obtain a view at once clear and complete, and thus secure both the profit and the delight of history.

  5. I shall adopt as the starting point of this book the first occasion on which the Romans crossed the sea from Italy. This is just where the History of Timaeus left off; and it falls in the 129th Olympiad [264-261 B.C.]. I shall accordingly have to describe what the state of their affairs in Italy was, how long that settlement had lasted, and on what resources they reckoned when they resolved to invade Sicily. For this was the first place outside Italy in which they set foot. The precise cause of their thus crossing I must state without comment; for if I let one cause lead me back to another, my point of departure will always elude my grasp, and I shall never arrive at the view of the subject which I wish to present. As to dates, then, I must fix on some era agreed upon and recognized by all; and as to events, one that is self-evident, even though I may be obliged to go back some short way in point of time, and take a summary review of the intermediate transactions. For if the facts with which one starts are unknown, or even open to controversy, all that comes after will fail of approval and relief. But opinion being once formed on that point, and a general assent obtained, all the succeeding narrative becomes acceptable.

  From BOOK II

  Aratus of Sicyon and the Achaean League

  37. At the same period, the Achaean League and King Philip, with their allies, were entering upon the war with the Aetolian League, which is called the Social War [220-217 B.C.]. Now this was the point at which I proposed to begin my general history; and as I have brought the account of the affairs of Sicily and Libya, and those which immediately followed, in a continuous narrative, up to the date of the beginning of the Social War and of the second war between the Romans and Carthaginians, generally called the Hannibalic War, it will be proper to leave this branch of my subject for a while, and to take up the history of events in Greece, that I may start upon my full and detailed narrative, after bringing the prefatory sketch of the history of the several countries to the same point of time. For since I have not undertaken, as previous writers have done, to write the history of particular peoples, such as the Greeks or Persians, but the history of all known parts of the world at once, because there was something in the state of our own times which made such a plan peculiarly feasible—of which I shall speak more at length hereafter—it will be proper, before entering on my main subject, to touch briefly on the state of the most important of the recognized nations and countries of the world.

  Of Asia and Egypt I need not speak before the time at which my History commences. The previous history of these countries has been written by a number of historians already, and is known to all the world; nor in our days has Fortune wrought any change specially remarkable or unprecedented to them, demanding a reference to their past. But in regard to the Achaean nation, and the royal house of Macedonia, it will be in harmony with my design to go somewhat further back, for the latter has been entirely destroyed, while the Achaeans, as I have stated before, have in our time made extraordinary progress in power and internal unity. For though many statesmen had tried in past times to induce the Peloponnesians to join in a league for the common interests of all, and had always failed, because everyone was working to secure his own power rather than the freedom of the whole, yet in our day this policy has made such progress, and been carried out with such completeness, that not only is there in the Peloponnesus a community such as exists between allies and friends, but an absolute identity of laws, weights, measures, and currency. All the states have the same magistrates, council, and judges. Nor is there any difference between the entire Peloponnesus and a single city, except in the fact that its inhabitants are not included within the same wall; in other respects, both as a whole and in their individual cities, there is a nearly absolute assimilation of institutions.

  38. It will be useful to ascertain, to begin with, how it came to pass that the name of the Achaeans became the universal one for all the inhabitants of the Peloponnesus. For only the principles; practical steps, and an increase of power, were barred by the fact that they had not yet been able to produce a leader worthy of the principles. Whenever any man had given indications of such ability, he was systematically thrust into the background and hampered, at one time by the Lacedaemonian government, and at another, still more effectually, by that of Macedonia.

  40. When at length, however, they did obtain leaders of sufficient ability, their power quickly manifested itself by the accomplishment of that most glorious achievement, the union of the Peloponnesus. The originator of this policy in the first instance was Aratus of Sicyon; its active promotion and consummation was due to Philopoemon of Megalopolis; while Lycortas [father of Polybius] and his party must be looked upon as the authors of the permanence which it enjoyed. The actual achievements of these several statesmen I shall narrate in their proper places; but, while deferring a more detailed account of the other two, I think it will be right briefly to record here, as well as in a future portion of my work, the political measures of Aratus, because he has left a record of them himself in an admirably honest and lucid book of memoirs.25

  I think the easiest method for myself, and most intelligible to my readers, will be to start from the period of the restoration of the Achaean League after its disintegration into separate states by the Macedonian kings, from which time it has enjoyed an unbroken progress towards the state of completion which now exists, and of which I have already spoken.

  41. The period I mean is the 124th Olympiad [284-280 B.C.]. In this occurred the first league of Patrae and Dyme, and the deaths of Ptolemy [I] son of Lagus, Lysimachus, Seleucus, and Ptolemy Ceraunus. In the period before this the state of Achaea was as follows. It was ruled by kings from the time of Tisamenus, son of Orestes, who, being expelled from Sparta on t
he return of the Heraclids, gained possession of Achaea. The last of this royal line to retain his power was Ogyges, whose sons so alienated the people by their unconstitutional and tyrannical government that a revolution took place and a democracy was established. After this, down to the reigns of Alexander and Philip, their fortunes were subject to various fluctuations, but they always endeavoured to maintain in their league a democracy, as I have already stated. This league consisted of twelve cities, all of them still surviving, with the exception of Olenus, and of Helice which was engulfed by the sea before the battle of Leuctra. The other ten were Patrae, Dyme, Pharae, Tritaea, Leontium, Aegium, Aegira, Pellene, Bura, and Caryneia. In the period immediately succeeding Alexander [the Great], and before the above-named 124th Olympiad, these cities, chiefly through the instrumentality of the Macedonian kings, became so estranged and ill-disposed to each other, and so divided and opposed in their interests, that some of them had to submit to the presence of foreign garrisons, sent first by Demetrius and Cassander, and afterwards by Antigonus Gonatas, while others even fell under the power of tyrants; for no one set up more of such absolute rulers in the Greek states than this last-named [Macedonian] king.