The Battle of Polybius

[caldrail]

I have, I am sure, made evident in numerous passages and chiefly in the prefatory remarks dealing with the fundamental principles of this history, where I said that the best and most valuable result I aim at is that readers of my work may gain a knowledge how it was and by virtue of what peculiar political institutions that in less than in fifty-three years nearly the whole world was overcome and fell under the single dominion of Rome, a thing the like of which had never happened before.

The Histories, Book 6 - Polybius

 

Domination of the known world has a resonance in our time. We live in the aftermath of tumultuous wars spanning the entire globe in with three ideologies struggled for dominance. The contest that took place between democracy, facism, and communism created the backdrop for the Twentieth Century. For us, this has become imbedded in our culture almost to a subliminal level.

 

Perhaps then we shouldn't be suprised if we notice similarities with our recent past. Hindsight is part of any historians armoury, but always a subjective one, and there lies the danger of comparison. Politics hasn't fundamentally changed since ancient times, although they had ideologies, alliances, and cultures to contend with. For although a society may have different structure and emphasis, the song remains the same. We are the same animal. Like the inhabitants of the ancient world, we have the same emotions, motives, and ranges of responses to choose from. There is, therefore, a haunting familiarity in the events that Polybius wrote about.

 

We must not however foist our modern world upon the that of the ancient. However similar their struggles may seem, analogies between events are at best very approximate, and in using parallels we run the risk of distorting the past. The only true comparison between ancient and modern events is the decision making process of the inluential within the context of situation.

 

The passage given above illustrates the wonder and pride Polybius had for his city state. It is easy to forget how close Carthage came to achieving that first.

What chiefly attracts and chiefly benefits students of history is just this

[marcus silanus]

On a couple of points, I don't think that Polybius can be described as a Roman patriot. He was after all a Greek and in particular, an Acheaen. His disgust at the Epirote betrayal of Acheaen assistance against the Illyrians in a great way, demonstrates that his national loyalty remained in his homeland. The ancients had a far more pragmatic view of war and conquest. Although his homeland had become part of the Roman domain and he was transported to Rome as a 'hostage', this did not mean that he automatically despised the new regime.

 

After a time, Polybius returned to Greece to live out the rest of his days and can not in any way, I believe, be described as a Roman patriot: so what was he? Polybius in my view, was a Greek patriot who sought to explain to his countrymen how Rome had become the dominant power of the "known world". With respect to Rome, he was a huge admirer. His explanation of the political cycle - anacyclosis - stated that this had been a true analysis of states apart from Rome that avoided this return to chaos from a process of ever more sophisticated political institutions. His admiration for the Republic was fixed on its mixture of kingly, aristocratic and democratic power. This admiration was plainly cultured by his positive relationship with his Scipione patrons.

 

A great deal of use has been made of the term 'supremacist'. There are some very good dictionaries where the word is not even found! It has connotations, forgive me Sylla for saying this again, with which I am uncomfortable of not cultural supremacy but pure racism. If the accusation is of cultural supremacy, I doubt if that would be the case with Polybius any more than any other cultured Greek. He may well have held Rome, her values and her politics in the highest esteem and, indeed her developing culture but ultimately I don't think that a Greek can be described as a Roman supremacist.

[sylla]

A great deal of use has been made of the term 'supremacist'. There are some very good dictionaries where the word is not even found! It has connotations, forgive me Sylla for saying this again, with which I am uncomfortable of not cultural supremacy but pure racism. If the accusation is of cultural supremacy, I doubt if that would be the case with Polybius any more than any other cultured Greek. He may well have held Rome, her values and her politics in the highest esteem and, indeed her developing culture but ultimately I don't think that a Greek can be described as a Roman supremacist.

Since you ask and with all due respect, if this term is not found within such dictionaries, maybe they were not so good to begin with; for example, the Webster's New World (3rd Ed) simply defines Supremacist as "the person who believes on or promotes the supremacy of a particular group"; supremacy is "the quality or state of being supreme", and supreme is "highest in rank, power, authority, quality, achievement, performance; Dominant; Utmost, Final, Ultimate". Wikipaedia is a bit more extensive: "Supremacism is the belief that a particular race, religion, gender, species, belief system or culture is superior to others and entitles those who identify with it to dominate, control or rule those who do not".

 

Sorry, but I didn't fabricate such definitions, and it's hard to find any better example than Polybius agenda. I cannot delete valid terms just because I am not comfortable with them, like "genocide", a more than apt description for the fate of the Achaean capital Corinth while the Achaean traitor Polybius was actively collaborating with the enemy.

BTW, supremacism was quite common among ancient cultures.

 

As for a patriot, you're entirely right. Polybius was a Greek, actually an Achaean from Megalopolis. He was never a Roman, so he never had the tria nomina; the right transcription of his name is Polybios.

Like many other former hostages, he became a full lavish collaborator of the conquerors of his homeland; ie. a Quisling, no more, no less.

Polybius himself stated in the Histories epilogue (39,8) Accordingly, having achieved this I returned home from Rome. I had, as it were, been enabled to capitalize the results of my previous political action, a favour which my devotion to Rome well merited.

His agenda was undisputedly supremacist (Roman supremacism, of course); in any case, Polybius was a supremacist by proxy, the same as Vidkum Quisling.

I quoted some examples of his Book VI on post # 25 of the ongoing thread on Cannae, but in any case it is undisputable that the main goal of such books was the justification of the Universal conquest by Rome; that's as supremacist as it can get, period.

 

As for a Historian, Polybius most evidently was, and certainly one of the best ever.

In fact, he got closer to the modern scientific methodology than most other classical historians; his conception on causation and the rules of evidence were far advanced for his own age.

However, his Histories were essentially pro-Roman (more specifically pro-Scipione) propaganda disguised as research; disguised, because his main conclusions were well defined in advance; only his Roman patrons deserved to rule the world, the Roman constitution was the best ever possible, and so on.

If anything, his superb methodology only made his reponsability as a collaborator even greater, because he was rather well aware that he was deliberately distorting the truth.

Edited June 25, 2009 by sylla