The Historian's Sins of Omission and Commission: Polybius' Sounds of Silence

A Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic, 2022

For who can be so ignorant or indolent to be uninterested by what means and under what form of government the Romans -in less than fifty-three years -have conquered almost the whole inhabited worlda deed without precedent in history? And who is there, so enflamed by other manifestations of study or spectacle, that regards anything to be of greater moment than the acquisition of this knowledge? With these words, at the start of The Histories' proem (1.1.2), Polybius presents his objectives and contents. These will be modified later when the initial chronological arc (220-167) is extended up to and beyond the destruction of Carthage and Corinth in 146 (3.2-4). 1 But the core aim -to explain the success of Rome and its unstoppable expansion -is maintained. Polybius primarily intends to speak to a political audience, particularly that of Greek cities; this is his public. Polybius himself had played a prominent political role at home as a hipparch of the Achaean League before arriving in Rome in 167, immediately after the Battle of Pydna. His role formed the essential premise for the composition of The Histories. Starting from these assumptions, this chapter aims to show how Polybius, a Greek and one of the Achaean League's ruling elite, offered to the Greek public an interpretative picture of Rome's political experience, applying conceptual categories elaborated by Greek philosophical thought to this 'foreign' context. My argument is prompted by some recent discussion in the debate on the forms that politics took in Rome. This debate was stimulated by Anglophone scholars (starting from Millar 1998), then subsequently by those of the German school, with the fundamental contribution of Hölkeskamp 2010 (see Chapter 1; Chapter 7). In a discussion held in 2005 at the Istituto Italiano per la Storia Antica on the problem of how to define Roman Republican politics in the twenty-first century , participants identified the need to recognise the peculiarity of the Roman Republican system by overcoming the dichotomy between 'aristocracy' and 'democracy', a false historiographical dilemma, which Polybius has helped to generate . With respect to these considerations, I would like to address the problem from another point of view: what are the features that unite certain political concepts,

Journal of Roman Studies, 2013

discourse as a key element of ancient diplomacy and aptly demonstrates its impact on the 'real' world. In this respect, B.'s larger conceptual framework greatly helps to generate new insights, though it is quite deplorable that he fails to look beyond Constructivism and Realism to explore the potential of other theoretical strands, such as Institutionalism and the so-called 'English school', which could arguably make a major contribution to understanding elements of order in the essentially anarchic world of ancient interstate relations. What is truly odd about this book, with its profound concern for moral issues, is the author's persistent attempt to avoid the intricacies of historical judgement. Notwithstanding its professed impartiality, the study actually shows a marked pro-Roman bias, which to a large degree reects the emphasis of the overwhelmingly Romanocentric sources. This has serious consequences when it comes to drawing conclusions on the nature of Roman imperialism. While B. repeatedly insists that this is not what his book is about, the truth is that he almost invariably interprets Rome's foreign policy moves as defensive (e.g., 159 on the 'light touch' of amicitia: 'The Romans did not seek out opportunities for aggrandizement and aggression …, but sought to contain and control violent systemic anarchy'). Granted, he may be right to consider the debate on the defensive or aggressive character of Roman expansionism 'an intellectual dead end' (356), but the often one-sided readings presented in his otherwise very perceptive enquiry will undoubtedly add further fuel to this old controversy.

Paper delivered at the Symposium, The Roman Legacy, at the University of Minnesota, 21 April 2017

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.

Various aspects are essential to understand what Polybius believed were the main reasons for Rome’s rise to power over the Mediterranean. One of these aspects is Rome’s “mixed constitution” and its place within the constitutions’ cycle. A “mixed constitution” that differed from other constitutions established in neighbour regions and that seemed to have given Rome a huge advantage. Another aspect that Polybius believed turned Rome into hegemonic power were its morals. Morals that were felt not just on certain individuals’ leadership or on legions’ discipline, but also on its citizenship and the state. Tyche, or fortune, played an important role in the development of some of the events that happened in the Mediterranean. This is a concept that has different meanings within Polybius narrative. On occasions, Tyche seems to connect events that happened at places that are very far from each other or events that happened in different historical periods. Polybius view on how Rome’s imperialistic policy started is also an important aspect to look at. The writer focused his attention on “how in less than fifty-three years the Romans became masters of the inhabited world”1. Its internal strength and foreign policy played an important part in such achievement.

Studi Classici e Orientali 59 (2013), 2013

The aim of this article is to provide an institutional analysis of Polybius’ text (1,11,1-3) concerning the outbreak of the First Punic War. Polybius says that when the Mamertines’ request for help against the Carthaginians came to Rome, the senate – which was divided between advocates and opponents of a military commitment in Sicily – could not find a resolution, and the matter was decided by “the majority” that voted for entrusting the consul of that year, Appius Claudius, with the task to save the Mamertines. The ‘issue’ is represented here by the interpretation of Polybius’ term “the majority” (Oi dé pollói), that modern scholars have interpreted both as a reference to the majority of the Roman senators – assuming therefore that the final decision was taken by the senate – and as an allusion to the “majority of the Romans” – henceforth supposing that the question was ultimately decided by a vote of the popular assembly. This paper offers a third way, and suggests that the Polybian “majority” must be interpreted as a reference to the intervention of the Roman people, but not in the form of an official vote by the comitia. Several elements in the language of Polybius (i.e. the economic status of those who attended the meeting, and the role played by the consul in the gathering of this crowd) make us suspect that the popular intervention took the form of a "contio", that is an informal meeting through which a magistrate tried to create a popular consensus on a particular political initiative. A new political interpretation of Polybius’ passage is hence proposed, namely that the consul used the will expressed by the people in the "contio" in order to force the Senate to entrust him with the command he was asking for.