Delphi Complete Works of Polybius

by Polybius

  Polybius always maintains that the study of documents is only one, and not the most important, element in the equipment of an historian. The best is personal experience and personal inquiry.

  Of the sources of his own history, then, the first and best may be set down as knowledge acquired by being actually present at great events, such as the destruction of Carthage and the sack of Corinth; visits to the Roman army in camp; assisting at actual debates in his own country; personal knowledge of and service under men of the first position in Achaia; personal visits to famous localities; voyages and tours undertaken for the definite object of inspection and inquiry; and, lastly, seeing and questioning the survivors of great battles, or the men who had played a leading part in conspicuous political transactions.

  From his earliest youth Polybius had enjoyed some special advantages in these respects. As he himself says, “the events in Greece fell within his own generation, or that immediately preceding his own, — and he therefore could relate what he had seen, or what he had heard from eye-witnesses” (4, 2). And of the later period he “was not only an eye witness, but in some cases an actor, and in others the chief actor” (3, 4). When he was probably under twenty we hear of his being present at an important interview between Philopoemen and Archon; and his election as hipparch in B.C. 169, soon after he reached the legal age, was in consequence of his having thrown himself with vigour into the practical working of the cavalry under Philopoemen. In regard to Roman history and polity, we have Cicero’s testimony that he was bonus auctor in primis, and more particularly in regard to chronology, quo nemo fuit in exquirendis temporibus diligentius. Nor is this praise undeserved, as is shown by his energy in pushing minute and personal inquiries. Thus he learnt the details of the Hannibalic war from some of the survivors of those actually engaged; visited the localities, and made the pass of the Alps used by Hannibal; studied and transcribed the stele or bronze tablet placed by Hannibal on the Lacinian promontory; travelled through Libya, Spain, Gaul, and the seas which washed their shores (perhaps even as far as Britain), in order to give a true account of them. Conversed with Massanissa on the character of the Carthaginians, as well as with many of the Carthaginians themselves. Carefully observed Carthagena. Inspected the records at Rhodes, and the Archives at Rome; and studied and transcribed the treaties preserved there. Visited Sardis, Alexandria, and Locri Epizephyrii. To this, which is by no means an exhaustive account of his travels and inquiries, may be added the fact that his intimacy with the younger Africanus, grandson by adoption and nephew by marriage of the elder Scipio, must have placed at his disposal a considerable mass of information contained in the family archives of the Scipios, as to the Hannibalian war, and especially as to the campaigns in Spain.

  Such were some of the means by which Polybius was enabled to obtain accurate and trustworthy information.

  It remains to inquire how far Polybius availed himself of the writings of others. He looks upon the study of books as an important part of an historian’s work, but, as we have seen, not the most important. His practice appears to have been conformable to his theory. The greater part of his information he gained from personal observation and personal inquiry. Nevertheless, some of his history must have been learnt from books, and very little of it could have been entirely independent of them. Still, as far as we have the means of judging from the fragments of his work that have come down to us, his obligations to his predecessors are not as extensive as that of most of those who wrote after him; nor is the number of those to whom he refers great.

  Of his preliminary sketch contained in books 1 and 2, the first book, containing the account of the first Punic war and the Mercenary war, appears to have been derived mainly from the writings of Fabius Pictor (b. circ. B.C. 260), and Philinus of Agrigentum (contemporary and secretary of Hannibal). He complains that they were violent partisans, the one of Rome, the other of Carthage. But by comparing the two, and checking both by documents and inscriptions at Rome, he, no doubt, found sufficient material for his purpose.

  The second book contains an account of the origin of the war between Rome and Illyricum; of the Gallic or Celtic wars from the earliest times; and a sketch of Achaean history to the end of the Cleomenic war. The first two of these must have been compiled with great labour from various public documents and family records, as well as in part from Pictor. The sketch of Achaean history rested mainly, as far as it depends on books, on the Memoirs of Aratus; while he studied only to refute the writings of Phylarchus the panegyrist of Cleomenes. He complains of the partiality of Phylarchus: but in this part of the history it was perhaps inevitable that his own views should have been coloured by the prejudices and prepossessions of a politician, and one who had been closely connected from boyhood with the patriotic Achaean party, led by Philopoemen, which was ever at enmity with all that Cleomenes did his utmost to establish.

  For his account of Sicilian affairs he had studied the works of Timaeus of Tauromeniun. Although he accuses him bitterly, and at excessive length, of all the faults of which an historian can be guilty, he yet confesses that he found in his books much that was of assistance to him in regard both to Magna Graecia and Sicily; for which he also consulted the writings of Aristotle, especially it appears the now lost works on Polities (πολιτείαι), and Founding of Cities (κτίσεις). The severity of his criticism of Timaeus is supported by later authors. He was nicknamed ἐπιτίμαιος, in allusion to the petulance of his criticism of others; and Plutarch attacks him for his perversion of truth and his foolish and self-satisfied attempts to rival the best of the ancient writers, and to diminish the credit of the most famous philosophers.

  As far as we possess his writings, we find little trace in Polybius of a reference to the earliest historians. Herodotus is not mentioned, though there may be some indications of acquaintance with his work; nor the Sicilian Philistus who flourished about B.C. 430. Thucydides is mentioned once, and Xenophon three times. Polybius was engaged in the history of a definite period, and had not much occasion to refer to earlier times; and perhaps the epitomator, in extracting what seemed of value, chose those parts especially where he was the sole or best authority.

  For the early history of Macedonia, he seems to have relied mostly on two pupils of Isocrates, Ephorus of Cumae and Theopompus of Chios; though the malignity of the latter deprived his authority of much weight. He also studied the work of Alexander’s friend and victim, Callisthenes; and vehemently assailed his veracity, as others have done. More important to him perhaps were the writings of his own contemporaries, the Rhodians Antisthenes and Zeno; though he detects them in some inaccuracies, which in the case of Zeno he took the trouble to correct: and of Demetrius of Phalerum, whose writings he seems to have greatly admired.

  For the contemporary history of Egypt and Syria he seems to have trusted principally to personal inquiry. He expressly (2, 37) declines entering on the early history of Egypt on the ground of its having been fully done by others (referring, perhaps, to Herodotus, Manetho, and Ptolemy of Megalopolis). For the Seleucid dynasty of Syria he quotes no authorities.

  On no subject does Polybius seem to have read so widely as on geography: doubtless as preparing himself not only for writing, but for being able to travel with the knowledge and intelligence necessary to enable him to observe rightly. He had studied minutely and criticised freely the writings of Dicaearchus, Pytheas, Eudoxus, and Eratosthenes. He was quick to detect fallacies in these writers, and to reject their dogmatising on the possibilities of nature; yet he does not seem to have had in an eminent degree the topographical faculty, or the power of giving a graphic picture of a locality. Modern research has tended rather to strengthen than weaken our belief in the accuracy of his descriptions, as in the case of Carthagena and the site of the battle of Cannae; still it cannot be asserted that he is to be classed high in the list of topographers, whether scientific or picturesque.

  He appears to have been fairly well acquainted with the poets; but his occasion
s for quoting them, as far as we have his work, are not very frequent. He seems to have known his Homer, as every Greek was bound to do. He quotes the Cypria of Stasinus, who, according to tradition, was son-in-law of Homer; Hesiod, Simonides of Ceos, Pindar, Euripides, and Epicharmus of Cos. He quotes or refers to Plato, whom he appears chiefly to have studied for his political theories; and certain technical writers, such as Aeneas Tacticus, and Cleoxenos and Democlitus, inventors of a new system of telegraphy, if they wrote it rather than taught it practically.

  Even allowing for the loss of so great a part of his work, the list of authors is not a long one: and it suggests the remark, which his style as well as his own professions tend to confirm, that he was not primarily a man of letters, but a man of affairs and action, who loved the stir of political agitation, and unbent his mind by the excitement of travel and the chase. Nothing moves his contempt more than the idea of Timaeus living peaceably for fifty years at Athens, holding aloof from all active life, and poring over the books in the Athenian libraries as a preparation for writing history; which, according to him, can only be worth reading when it springs, not from rummaging Record offices, but from taking a personal share in the political strife of the day; studying military tactics in the camp and field; witnessing battles; questioning the actors in great events; and visiting the sites of battles, the cities and lands which are to be described. § 3. THE ACHAEAN LEAGUE

  To the student of politics the history of Greece is chiefly interesting as offering examples of numerous small states enjoying complete local autonomy, yet retaining a feeling of a larger nationality founded in a community of blood, language, and religion; a community, that is, in the sense that, fundamentally united in these three particulars, they yet acknowledged variations even in them, which distinguished without entirely separating them. From some points of view the experiment may be regarded as having been successful. From others it was a signal failure. Local jealousies and mutual provocations not only continually set city against city, clan against clan, but perpetually suggested invitations sent by one city, or even one party in a city, to foreign potentates or peoples to interfere in their behalf against another city or party, which they hated or feared, but were too weak to resist. Thus we find the Persians, Macedonians, Syrians, and Romans successively induced to interfere in Greek politics with the assurance that there were always some states, or some party in each state, who would welcome them. From time to time men of larger views had conceived the idea of creating a united Empire of Hellas, which might present an unbroken front to the foreigner. From time to time philosophers had preached the impossibility of combining complete local independence with the idea of a strong and vigorous nationality. But the true solution of the problem had never been successfully hit upon: and after various abortive attempts at combination, Greece was left, a helpless collection of disjointed fragments, to fall under the intrigues of Macedonia and Rome.

  The Achaean league was not the first attempt at such a formation; though it was the first that ever arrived at anything like a complete scheme of federalism (unless the Aetolian preceded it); and was in many respects a fresh departure in Hellenic policy, and the first experiment in federation which seemed to contain the elements of success. From the earliest times certain Greek states had combined more or less closely, or loosely, for certain specific purposes. Such were the various Amphictyonies, and especially the Amphictyonic league of Thermopylae and Delphi. The object of these was primarily religious: the worship of a particular deity, the care of a particular temple; the first condition of membership being therefore community of blood. But though this was the origin of their being, there were elements in their constitution which might have developed into some form of federalism, had it not been for the centrifugal forces that always tended to keep Greek states apart. Thus we can conceive the idea of the Pylagorae from the various states gradually giving rise to the notion of a central parliament of elected representatives; and the sphere of its activity gradually extending to matters purely political, beginning with those which were on the borderland of religion and politics. And, indeed, the action of the great Amphictyonic league at times seemed to be approaching this.

  But the forces tending to decentralisation were always the stronger: and though the league continued to exist for many centuries, it became less and less political, and less and less influential in Greece. So too with other combinations in Greece. The community (τὸ κοινὸν) of the Ionians, beginning with a common meeting for worship at the Panionium, on one memorable occasion at least seemed for a brief space to promise to develop into a federation for mutual succour and defence. In the Ionian revolt in B.C. 500, the deputies (πρόβουλοι) of the Ionian states met and determined to combine against the enemy; they even went so far as to appoint a common general or admiral. But the instinct of separation was too strong; at the first touch of difficulty and hardship the union was resolved into its elements.

  The constitution of the Boeotian league was somewhat more regular and permanent. The Boeotarchs appear to have met at regular intervals, and now and again to have succeeded in mustering a national levy. There were also four regularly constituted “Senates” to control them, though we know nothing of their constitution. But the league had come to nothing; partly from the resistance of the towns to the overweening pretensions of Thebes, and later from the severity of the treatment experienced by it at the hands of Alexander and his successors.

  Thessaly, again, was a loose confederacy of towns or cantons, in which certain great families, such as the Aleuadae and Scopadae, held the direction of their local affairs; or some tyrannus, as Alexander of Pherae, obtained sovereign powers. Still, for certain purposes, a connexion was acknowledged, and a Tagus of Thessaly was appointed, with the power of summoning a general levy of men. For a short time prior to the Roman conquest these officers appear to have gained additional importance; but Thessaly never was united enough to be of importance, in spite of its famous cavalry, even among Greek nations, far less to be capable of presenting a firm front to the foreigner.

  One other early attempt at forming something like a Panhellenic union ought to be noticed. When the Persian invasion of B.C. 480 was threatening, deputies (πρόβουλοι) met at the Isthmus, sat there in council for some months, and endeavoured to unite Greece against the foreigner. But the one expedition which was sent solely by their instigation proved a failure. And when the danger was over, principally by the combined exertion of Athens and Sparta, this council seems to have died a natural death. Still for a time it acted as a supreme parliament of Greece, and assumed the power to punish with fine or death those Greeks who had medised.

  Besides these rudimentary leagues, which might, but did not, issue in some form of Panhellenic government, there were periods in Greek history in which the Hegemone of one state did something towards presenting the appearance of union. Thus Polycrates of Samos seemed at one time to be likely to succeed in forming a great Ionian Empire. And in continental Greece, before the Persian wars, we find Sparta occupying the position of an acknowledged court of reference in international questions, — a position in which she probably had been preceded by Argos. And after those wars, by means of the confederacy of Delos, formed at first for one specific purpose — that of keeping the Aegean free of the Persians — Athens gradually rose to the position of an imperial city, claiming active control over the external politics of a considerable portion of Greece and nearly all the islands (B.C. 478-404). But this proved after all but a passing episode in Greek history. Athens perhaps misused her power; and Sparta took up the task with great professions, but in a spirit even less acceptable to the Greek world than that of Athens; and by the peace of Antalcidas (B.C. 387) the issue of the hundred years’ struggle with Persia left one of the fairest portions of Hellas permanently separated from the main body. Asiatic Greece never became Hellenic again. The fall of the Persian empire before the invasion of Alexander for a while reunited it to a semi-Greek power; but Alexander’s de
ath left it a prey to warring tyrants. It lost its prosperity and its commerce; and whatever else it became, it was never independent, or really Hellenic again.

  For a few years more Sparta and then Thebes assumed to be head of Greece, but the Macedonian supremacy secured at Chaeronea (B.C. 338), still more fully after the abortive Lamian war (B.C. 323), left Greece only a nominal freedom, again and again assured to it by various Macedonian monarchs, but really held only on sufferance. The country seemed to settle down without farther struggle into political insignificance. The games and festivals went on, and there was still some high talk of Hellenic glories. But one after another of the towns submitted to receive Macedonian garrisons and governors; and Athens, once the brilliant leader in national aspirations, practically abandoned politics, and was content to enjoy a reputation partly founded on her past, and partly on the fame of the philosophers who still taught in her gardens and porches, and attracted young men from all parts of the world to listen to their discourses, and to sharpen their wits by the acute if not very useful discussions which they promoted. Sparta, far from retaining her old ascendency, had been losing with it her ancient constitution, which had been the foundation of her glory, as well perhaps as in some respects the source of her weakness; and for good or evil had ceased to count for much in Hellenic politics.