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

by M. I. Finley

  16. As for the Senate, which possesses the immense power I have described, in the first place it is obliged in public affairs to take the multitude into account, and respect the wishes of the people; and it cannot put into execution the penalty for offences against the republic which are punishable with death, unless the people first ratify its decrees. Similarly even in matters which directly affect the senators —for instance, in the case of a law diminishing the Senate’s traditional authority, or depriving senators of certain dignities and offices, or even actually cutting down their property —even in such cases the people have the sole power of passing or rejecting the law. But most important of all is the fact that if a single tribune interposes his veto, the Senate not only is unable to pass a decree, but cannot even hold a meeting at all, whether formal or informal. Now, the tribunes are always bound to carry out the decree of the people, and above all things to have regard to their wishes; therefore, for all these reasons the Senate stands in awe of the multitude, and cannot neglect the feelings of the people.

  17. In like manner the people on its part is far from being independent of the Senate, and is bound to take its wishes into account both collectively and individually. For contracts, too numerous to count, are given out by the censors in all parts of Italy for the repair or construction of public buildings; there is also the collection of revenue from many rivers, harbours, gardens, mines, and land—everything, in a word, that comes under the control of the Roman government—and in all these the people at large are engaged, so that there is scarcely a man, so to speak, who is not interested in these contracts and the profits from them. For some purchase the contracts from the censors for themselves, and others go partners with them, while others again go surety for these contractors, or actually pledge their property to the treasury for them. Now over all these transactions the Senate has absolute control. It can grant an extension of time, and in case of unforeseen accident can relieve the contractors from a portion of their obligation, or release them from it altogether if they are absolutely unable to fulfill it. And there are many details in which the Senate can inflict great hardship, or, on the other hand, grant great indulgences to the contractors, for in every case the appeal is to it. But the most important point of all is that the judges are taken from its members in the majority of trials, whether public or private, in which the charges are heavy. Consequently all citizens are much at its mercy and, being alarmed at the uncertainty as to when they may need its aid, are cautious about resisting or actively opposing its will. And for a similar reason men do not rashly resist the wishes of the consuls, because one and all may become subject to their absolute authority on a campaign.

  18. The result of this power of the several estates for mutual help or harm is a union sufficiently firm for all emergencies, and a constitution than which it is impossible to find a better. For whenever any danger from without compels them to unite and work together, the strength which is developed by the state is so extraordinary that everything required is unfailingly carried out by the eager rivalry shown by all classes to devote their whole minds to the needs of the hour, and to secure that any determination come to should not fail for want of promptitude; while each individual works, privately and publicly alike, for the accomplishment of the business at hand. Accordingly, the peculiar constitution of the state makes it irresistible, and certain of obtaining whatever it determines to attempt. Nay, even when these external alarms are past, and the people are enjoying their good fortune and the fruits of their victories, and, as usually happens, growing corrupted by flattery and idleness, show a tendency to violence and arrogance—it is in these circumstances more than ever that the constitution is seen to possess within itself the power of correcting abuses. For when any one of the three classes becomes puffed up, and manifests an inclination to be contentious and unduly encroaching, the mutual interdependence of all the three, and the possibility of the pretensions of any being checked and thwarted by the others, must plainly check this tendency; and so the proper equilibrium is maintained by the impulsiveness of the one part being checked by its fear of the other....

  43. Nearly all historians have recorded as constitutions of eminent excellence those of Lacedaemon, Crete, Mantinea, and Carthage. Some have also mentioned those of Athens and Thebes. The former I may allow to pass, but I am convinced that little need be said of the Athenian and Theban constitutions: their growth was abnormal, the period of their zenith brief, and the changes they experienced unusually violent. Their glory was a sudden and fortuitous flash, so to speak; and while they still thought themselves prosperous, and likely to remain so, they found themselves involved in circumstances completely the reverse. The Thebans got their reputation for valour among the Greeks by taking advantage of the senseless policy of the Lacedaemonians and the hatred of the allies towards them, owing to the valour of one, or at most two, men who were wise enough to appreciate the situation. Fortune quickly made it evident that it was not the peculiarity of their constitution but the valour of their leaders which gave the Thebans their success. For the great power of Thebes notoriously took its rise, attained its zenith, and fell to the ground with the lives of Epaminondas and Pelopidas. We must therefore conclude that it was not its constitution but its men that caused the high fortune which it then enjoyed.

  44. A somewhat similar remark applies to the Athenians’ constitution also. For though it perhaps had more frequent interludes of excellence, yet its highest perfection was attained during the brilliant career of Themistocles, and having reached that point it quickly declined, owing to their essential instability. For the Athenian people is always in the position of a ship without a commander. In such a ship, if fear of the waves or the occurrence of a storm induce the crew to be of one mind and to obey the helmsman, they do their duty; but if they recover from this fear, and begin to treat their officers with contempt, and to quarrel with each other because they are no longer all of one mind—one party wishing to continue the voyage, and the other urging the steersman to bring the ship to anchor, some letting out the sheets, and others hauling them in and ordering the sails to be furled—their discord and quarrels make a sorry show to lookers-on; and the position of affairs is full of risk to those on board engaged on the same voyage: the result has often been that, after escaping the dangers of the widest seas and the most violent storms, they wreck their ship in harbour and close to shore. And this is what has often happened to the Athenian state. For, after repelling on various occasions the greatest and most formidable dangers by the valour of the people and their leaders, there have been times when, in periods of secure tranquillity, it has gratuitously and recklessly encountered disaster. Therefore I need say no more about either it or the Theban constitution, in both of which a mob manages everything on its own unfettered impulse—a mob in the one city distinguished for headlong outbursts of fiery temper, in the other trained in long habits of violence and ferocity.

  45. Passing to the Cretan polity, there are two points which deserve our consideration. The first is how such writers as Ephorus, Xenophon, Callisthenes, and Plato—who are the most learned of the ancients—could assert that it was like that of Sparta, and secondly how they came to assert that it was at all admirable. I can agree with neither assertion; and I will explain why I say so. And first as to its dissimilarity with the Spartan constitution. The peculiar merit of the latter is said to be its land laws, by which no one possesses more than another, but all citizens have an equal share in the public land. The next distinctive feature regards the acquisition of money: for as it is utterly discredited among them, the jealous competition which arises from inequality of wealth is entirely removed from the city. A third peculiarity of the Lacedaemonian polity is that, of the officials by whose hands and with whose advice the whole government is conducted, the kings hold an hereditary office, while the members of the Gerusia are elected for life.

  46. Among the Cretans the exact reverse of all these arrangements obtains. The laws allow them to possess as
much land as they can get with no limitation whatever. Money is so highly valued among them that its possession is thought not only to be necessary but in the highest degree creditable. And in fact greed and avarice are so native to the soil in Crete that they are the only people in the world among whom no stigma attaches to any sort of gain whatever. Again, all their offices are annual and on a democratic footing. I have therefore often felt at a loss to account for these writers speaking of the two constitutions, which are radically different, as though they were closely united and allied. But, besides overlooking these important differences, these writers have gone out of their way to comment at length on the legislation of Lycurgus: “He was the only legislator,” they say, “who saw the important points. For, there being two things on which the safety of a commonwealth depends—courage in the face of the enemy and concord at home—by abolishing covetousness he with it removed all motive for civil broil and contest, whence it has been brought about that the Lacedaemonians are the best governed and most united people in Greece.” Yet while giving utterance to these sentiments, and though they see that, in contrast to this, the Cretans by their ingrained avarice are engaged in countless public and private seditions, murders, and civil wars, yet they regard these facts as not affecting their contention, but are bold enough to speak of the two constitutions as alike. Ephorus, indeed, putting aside names, employs expressions so precisely the same when discoursing on the two constitutions that, unless one noticed the proper names, there would be no means whatever of distinguishing which of the two he was describing.

  47. In what the difference between them consists I have already stated. I will now address myself to showing that the Cretan constitution deserved neither praise nor imitation.

  To my mind, then, there are two things fundamental to every state, in virtue of which its powers and constitution become desirable or objectionable. These are customs and laws. Of these the desirable are those which make men’s private lives holy and pure, and the public character of the state civilized and just. The objectionable are those whose effect is the reverse. As, then, when we see good customs and good laws prevailing among certain people, we confidently assume that, in consequence of them, the men and their civil constitution will be good also, so when we see private life full of covetousness, and public policy of injustice, plainly we have reason for asserting their laws, particular customs, and general constitution to be bad. Now, with few exceptions, you could find no habits prevailing in private life more steeped in treachery than those in Crete, and no public policy more inequitable. Holding, then, the Cretan constitution to be neither like the Spartan nor worthy of choice or imitation, I reject it from the comparison which I have instituted.

  Nor again would it be fair to introduce the republic of Plato, which is also spoken of in high terms by some philosophers. For just as we refuse admission to the athletic contests of those actors or athletes who have not registered or trained for them, so we ought not admit this Platonic constitution to the contest for the prize of merit unless it can first point to some genuine and practical achievement. Up to this time the notion of bringing it into comparison with the constitutions of Sparta, Rome, and Carthage would be like putting up a statue to compare with living and breathing men. Even if such a statue were faultless in point of art, the comparison of the lifeless with the living would naturally leave an impression of imperfection and incongruity upon the minds of the spectators.

  48. I shall therefore omit these, and proceed with my description of the Laconian constitution. Now it seems to me that for securing unity among the citizens, for safeguarding the Laconian territory and preserving the liberty of Sparta inviolate, the legislation and provisions of Lycurgus were so excellent that I am forced to regard his wisdom as something superhuman. For the equality of landed possessions, the simplicity in their food, and the practice of taking it in common, which he established, were well calculated to secure morality in private life and to prevent civil broils in the state, as also their training in the endurance of labours and dangers to make men brave and noble-minded; but when both these virtues, courage and high morality, are combined in one soul or in one state, vice will not readily spring from such a soil, nor will such men easily be overcome by their enemies. By constructing his constitution therefore in this spirit, and of these elements, he secured two blessings to the Spartans—safety for their territory and a lasting freedom for themselves long after he was gone. He appears however to have made no provision whatever, particular or general, for the acquisition of the territory of their neighbours, or for the assertion of their supremacy, or, in a word, for any policy of aggrandizement at all. What he had still to do was to impose such a necessity, or create such a principle among the citizens, that, as he had succeeded in making their individual lives independent and simple, the public character of the state should also become independent and moral. But the actual fact is that, though he made them the most disinterested and sober-minded men in the world as far as their own ways of life and their national institutions were concerned, he left them in regard to the rest of Greece ambitious, eager for supremacy, and encroaching in the highest degree.

  49. For in the first place is it not notorious that they were nearly the first Greeks to cast a covetous eye upon the territory of their neighbours, and that accordingly they waged a war of subjugation on the Messenians? In the next place is it not related in all histories that in their dogged obstinacy they bound themselves with an oath never to desist from the siege of Messene until they had taken it? And lastly it is known to all that in their efforts for supremacy in Greece they submitted to do the bidding of those whom they had once conquered in war. For when the Persians invaded Greece, they conquered them, as champions of the liberty of Greece; yet when the invaders had retired and fled, they betrayed the cities of Greece into their hands by the peace of Antalcidas, for the sake of getting money to secure their supremacy over the Greeks. It was then that the defect in their constitution was rendered apparent. For as long as their ambition was confined to governing their immediate neighbours, or even the Peloponnesians only, they were content with the resources and supplies provided by Laconia itself, having all material of war ready to hand, and being able without much expenditure of time to return home or convey provisions with them. But directly they took in hand to dispatch naval expeditions, or to go on campaigns by land outside the Peloponnesus, it was evident that neither their iron currency nor their use of crops for payment in kind would be able to supply them with what they lacked if they abided by the legislation of Lycurgus; for such undertakings required money universally current, and goods from foreign countries. Thus they were compelled to wait humbly at Persian doors, impose tribute on the islanders, and exact contributions from all the Greeks, knowing that, if they abided by the laws of Lycurgus, it was impossible to advance any claims upon any outside power at all, much less upon the supremacy in Greece.

  50. My object, then, in this digression is to make it manifest by actual facts that, for guarding their own country with absolute safety, and for preserving their own freedom, the legislation of Lycurgus was entirely sufficient; and for those who are content with these objects we must concede that there neither exists nor ever has existed a constitution and civil order preferable to that of Sparta. But if anyone is seeking aggrandizement, and believes that to be a leader and ruler and despot of numerous subjects, and to have all looking and turning to him, is a finer thing than that—in this point of view we must acknowledge that the Spartan constitution is deficient, and that of Rome superior and better constituted for obtaining power. And this has been proved by actual facts. For when the Lacedaemonians strove to possess themselves of the supremacy in Greece, it was not long before they brought their own freedom itself into danger. Whereas the Romans, after obtaining supreme power over the Italians themselves, soon brought the whole world under their rule—in which achievement the abundance and availability of their supplies largely contributed to their success.

  51. N
ow the Carthaginian constitution seems to me originally to have been well contrived in these most distinctively important particulars. For they had kings, and the Gerusia had the powers of an aristocracy, and the multitude were supreme in such things as were proper to them; and on the whole the adjustment of its several parts was very like that of Rome and Sparta. But about the period of its entering on the Hannibalic war the political state of Carthage was on the decline, that of Rome improving. For whereas there is in every body, or polity, or action a natural stage of growth, zenith, and decay, and whereas everything in them is at its best at the zenith, the difference between these two constitutions manifested itself at that period. For exactly so far as the strength and prosperity of Carthage preceded that of Rome in point of time, by so much was Carthage then past its prime, while Rome was exactly at its zenith, as far as its political constitution was concerned. In Carthage therefore the influence of the people in the policy of the state had already risen to be supreme, while at Rome the Senate was at the height of its power; and so, as in the one measures were deliberated upon by the many, in the other by the best men, the policy of the Romans in all public undertakings proved the stronger; on which account, though they met with capital disasters, by force of prudent counsels they finally conquered the Carthaginians in the war.