Fear and Loathing in Polybius' Histories

Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought

In his Histories, Polybius compares the descent of the rule of King Philip v of Macedon to tyranny to Plato’s description from the Republic of a man transforming into a werewolf. Such imagery is unique in classical Greek historiography, and exemplifies Polybius’ reliance on the idea of men acting like animals to describe when individuals or groups lose self-restraint, an idea found in Plato’s Republic. Plato uses θηριώδης to describe the ‘base desires’ of the soul that must be constrained by reason otherwise the individual will resort to crime or political revolution to satiate them. Polybius employs ἀποθηριόω in situations when individuals or groups lose part or all of their self-control, which results in self-destruction. The parallels in language and ideas indicate that Polybius’ idea of humans acting like animals derives from Plato. Recognizing this intellectual origin provides readers with a better understanding of the universal lessons of the Histories.

i. what meaning does the word "subversion" carry under the principate, a regime that itself may be seen as constituted in and through subversion, that arose from what theodor mommsen called an "empire in permanent revolution" and what Carl schmitt described as a "state of emergency," that rests its claim to legitimacy on the radical deformation of republican institutions like the tribunate and the consulship? I will approach this question from the perspective provided by the younger pliny in his Panegyricus, a speech in praise of the emperor trajan originally delivered in the autumn of 00 Ce on the occasion of pliny's taking up the suffect consulship, and later circulated by pliny in written form (epist. III 3; 8).

Contents acquired universal reputation as a historian but he has not gained the same recognition or received the same attention as a writer.⁵ The relative lack of scholarly effort in this direction can be attributed to two main reasons. The first and most obvious is the fragmentary character of the Histories. Of its original forty books only the first five survive complete, while for the remaining thirty-five we rely on Byzantine excerpts and the use of the work by later writers. The fragments of these books are often very substantial, but still, with so much of the text missing, it is difficult to fully appreciate the literary art that has created it. The second reason is related to a characteristic feature of Polybius, namely, his unusually overt narratorial presence that can be felt throughout the story due to his frequent commentary on the unfolding events.⁶ This feature of the Polybian narrator, which is much more prominent than in other ancient Greek historians, has directed scholarly interest toward his argumentative passages, with the result that the value of a comprehensive literary analysis of his narrative has been overlooked. And yet, Polybius' work, in spite of its gaps, exhibits a narrative complexity that would make it a good candidate for an analysis of this kind. His Histories, composed in order to explain Rome's rise to universal domination, is indeed a prime example of an intricately structured narrative. In his attempt to portray the growing interconnection of political events throughout the Mediterranean area, Polybius uses an annalistic method which consists in treating the events of the various geographical regions in a fixed order. He begins with the events in Italy, and then recounts what happened within the same Olympiad year in Sicily, Spain, Africa, Greece and Macedonia, Asia, and Egypt.⁷ This sequence, which from book 7 onwards constitutes the standard structural framework of the Histories, enables Polybius to describe how the events of the oecumene after Olympiad 140 start to become intermingled and to influence each other, thus promoting the expansion of Roman rule. The impressive diligence with which Polybius weaves together his multiple narrative threads into a coherent whole indicates his interest in issues of structure and narrative form, suggesting that the analysis of his work from a narratological perspective may be an avenue of inquiry worth pursuing. This book is a study of Polybius' narrative. It examines the Histories as a narrative text, focusing on the various techniques used by Polybius in shaping his historical account. The shape of the narrative is the result of choices that Poly- See Foucault 1972, 201 for references to unfavourable assessments of Polybius' prose.  On the intrusiveness of the Polybian narrator see below, ch. 1 n. 15.  See below, pp. 60-64.

This thesis builds upon recent scholarship that has analyzed Polybius' Histories as a literary work both to offer an interpretation of the narrative structures that define the text and to analyze the implications of these structures for our reading of the text as a historical source. It investigates the challenges of narrative that Polybius encountered as he wrote the Histories, how he coped with these obstacles, and what effects his solutions to these problems imposed on his presentation of the real world. The relationship between the didactic purpose of the Histories and Polybius' selection and presentation of historical content is also examined. The primary conclusions drawn by this thesis is that the Histories is a literary presentation of the real world, and that readers must always approach the text as a subjective interpretation of the past-not as an authoritative narrative of events. The purpose of this investigation is not to discover what actually happened around the Mediterranean in the third and second centuries B.C.E., but to better understand the literary representation of this world created by Polybius. iv

In my paper I will explore the instances where Polybius either directly or indirectly references the pleasure one can gain from reading his work and its relationship to universal history. Most scholarship, however, has focused on the pragmatic or the moral sense of Polybius’s The Histories while neglecting the pleasure that one could glean from reading history. Walbank remarks, “Polybius regards the study of the past as essentially a way to attain practical ends by learning lessons…” (1972: 58). Marincola goes further to say that history in Polybius’s work is twofold: it offers “a practical knowledge of the way the political world works and a moral education in the way the larger metaphysical world works.” (2001: 116). Further, Eckstein posits that Polybius conceives of his work as educational in nature. (1995: 248). While these readings are important to our understanding of The Histories, we should not limit ourselves solely to these interpretations. Polybius is aware of the pleasure that his work could impart. For example, Polybius defends his treatment of Scipio because he believes that “the story would be enjoyable (ἡδεῖαν) for [his] older (πρεσβυτέροις) [readers] and profitable (ὠφέλιον) for [his] younger readers (νέοις)” (31.30 trans. Scott-Kilvert). Polybius earlier comments that pleasure is not sole purpose for writing his work. In this instance, Polybius directly addresses his readership in order to make clear the type of history he chooses to write (9.1-2). In this passage, Polybius maintains that his expressed purpose for writing history “was not so much to give pleasure (τρέψεως) to my readers as to benefit those who devote their attention to history” (9.2 trans. Scott-Kilvert). In this instance, even though Polybius argues that pleasure is not his true objective, he is nevertheless aware of the possibility that one could find enjoyment within his narrative. At the beginning of his narrative, Polybius again recognizes the possibility of pleasure that one could find in universal history. He states that his “comprehensive view…encompasses both the practical benefits and the pleasures (τερπνὸν) of history (1.4 trans. Scott-Kilvert). It is important to accept both readings that Polybius envisioned for his work: (1) the moral and pragmatic lessons that Rome’s youth would be able to understand should they want to go into politics and (2); the pleasure that universal history affords its readers.

N. Miltsios - M. Tamiolaki (eds.), Polybius and His Legacy (= Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes; Vol. 60), Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018

An exam of some of Polybius’ crucial statements on the aims of history writing, on methodology of research, and on aetiology, suggests that Polybius’ views on history and historical methodology were mainly influenced by post-Thucydidean historians (Ephorus and Theopompus especially). The A. suggests that those very instances where Polybius seems to recall Thucydides are due to the mediation of fourth-century historians, confirming that the modern view that Greek historiography suffered a decline after Thucydides must be rejected.

In N. Miltsios – M. Tamiolaki (eds.), Polybius and His Legacy, Berlin-Boston, 43-54, 2018

The scholars who dealt in a specific way with Polybius’ interests for the past history made only quite brief observations on the modest references to the Greek West in the Histories. They stressed, on the one side, Polybius’ low interest for the history of the West, on the other, the insertion of Polybian references to the western historical context almost exclusively in the framework of the historiographical polemic with Timaeus. However, a survey of Polybius passages on the Syracusan tyranny highlights: a) firstly, that Polybius looks to the phenomenon of the Syracusan tyranny with a certain interest, evaluating its representatives on the basis of their government qualities, often considered remarkable; b) secondly, that this behaviour of the historian is in part independent from issues of historiographical polemic and that quite probably it is affected by judgment perspectives of Achaean and Roman origin.

Journal of the History of Ideas, 2008

This paper explores political fear in classical thought. Through an analysis of Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, and Sallust, I discuss two broad uses of fear: fear as a source of unity and of moral energy. In addition, the paper addresses the enervating role of political fear in Tacitus’ writings. The discussion centers on three issues: first, I draw attention to an important and often neglected set of themes in classical thought; second, I provide a historical resource for contemporary discussions of political fear; third, I argue that fear’s multiple uses in political theorizing ought to be a focus of scholarly inquiry.