“Who is so worthless or indolent as to not wish to know by
what means, and under what system of government, the Romans in less than
fifty-three years have subjected nearly the whole inhabited world to themselves
– a thing unique in history?”
Who indeed? The rise of Rome from an insignificant town on
the banks of the Tiber to a world-empire in a few short generations is one of
the most inspiring dramas in the western historical imagination. Discipline and
virtue, it teaches, can conquer the world.
Many people who watched this drama as it unfolded were just as impressed
their descendants. They found their historian in Polybius (c. 200 – c. 118 BC),
a Greek aristocrat held in genteel captivity by the Romans. Although
technically a hostage who might have to be executed, he was shown every
courtesy, and even made the tutor to a young Scipio Aemelianus – later
Africanus Minor, conqueror of Carthage. While “visiting” he wrote a history of
Rome’s rise in forty “books,” only five of which survive today. They remain our
principle source for the Punic Wars. (264 – 146 BC)
Excepting perhaps the Gauls, Carthage was Republican Rome’s
most serious foreign enemy. It was rich, powerful, had an expert navy, and knew
how to use elephants. By the time the Romans had unified central and southern
Italy, the Western Mediterranean was very nearly a Carthaginian Lake. When they
seemed on the verge of conquering Sicily too, the Romans decided to act. (264) Although
they had no naval experience to speak of, the Romans built a fleet from nothing
and beat the Carthaginians at Ecnomus. (256) The Roman fleet was wiped out in a
storm, and its accompanying expeditionary force massacred by the Carthaginians.
They sent Regulus, their captive Roman general, back home to negotiate a peace,
but made him promise to return if they refused. He promised, they refused, and
he went back. The Carthaginians could not help but be amazed by his integrity,
but eventually decided to torture him to death as a message to the Romans. His
sons avenged themselves in like manner on some high-born Carthaginian captives.
Both sides built new fleets and clashed again. This time the Carthaginians won
(249), but after twenty-five years of war they, like the Romans, were too
exhausted to continue.
By the time the next war began (219) Hanibal “Barca” ("lightning," 247 – 182) had risen to command. He was in Spain with the main Carthaginian
army, and hit upon the unlikely plan of attacking the Romans from the north. He
lost half his army crossing the Alps, but once in Italy found new allies, and
wiped out major Roman armies at Ticino, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae. (218, 17,
16) The Roman alliance began to crumble, for most of the legionaries were dead
on the field, and those that remained were bottled up inside the city, preparing
to resist a siege that might end of the Republic. However, it never came.
Hannibal’s army was inexperienced in siege warfare, he had received no help
from Carthage, and he was reluctant to surrender the mobility that had won so
many of his battles. With the Italian theatre temporarily in stalemate, the
Romans decided to counter-attack in Spain. Hannibal’s brother, Hasdrubal,
destroyed one of the invading armies at Ebro (215), but was himself defeated at
the Metaurus River (207) by the Roman answer to Hannibal – the dashing young
general Scipio (later Africanus Major.) In 205 he landed an army in Africa,
threatening Carthage for the first time. Hannibal abandoned Italy in order to
rescue the city, but lost the decisive battle at Zama. (202)
The Romans inflicted a humiliating peace – Carthage was
stripped of its navy and its overseas empire, pledged not to make war without
Roman consent, and was burdened with a massive indemnity. Hannibal used his
reputation as a war hero to reform the government, but the mercantile
aristocracy, fearing for their money, their power, and perhaps their lives,
warned the Romans that he was planning to renew the war. Hannibal fled, was
pursued to Bithynia, and committed suicide rather than allow himself to be
captured. “Let us relieve the Romans of their anxiety,” he said, “since they
think it taxes their patience to await the death of an old man.”
Carthage might have eventually renewed the contest, for its
port made it one of the richest cities in the Mediterranean, and it paid off
the Roman indemnity early. But it was ruled by a corrupt and short-sighted
oligarchy, and found an implacable foe in Cato Censor. (234 – 149) During a
diplomatic mission he was astonished at Carthage’s rapid recovery. When he
returned he denounced the Senate for its inactivity, held up a fist full of
figs as a symbol of the ancient enemy’s renewed prosperity, and made it his
habit to end every speech with the motto “Carthage must be destroyed.” Under
his prodding the Senate began to make impossible demands. The Carthaginians
fulfilled them, but the Romans declared war anyway. They burned the city to the
ground, massacred its inhabitants, salted the earth, and invited the gods to
ruin anyone who ever tried to rebuild it. The brief, inglorious, and final
Punic war ended in complete victory. (146) The last serious challenge to Roman
hegemony had been removed. Henceforth, the real dangers to the Republic would
all come from within.
…
Herodotus and Thucydides wrote the history of individual
peoples, but did not attempt any broader perspective of the Mediterranean
world. It is unlikely that they could have found one if they had, for they had
no unifying theme apart from the folly of hubris. The rise of Rome, however, gave
Polybius just such a theme. The history of all the different peoples in the
Mediterranean could now be told as the history of Rome and its enemies. This
remained the basic framework for much Latin history well into the Midi Eval
period, and persisted in the Greek east until 1453. It still exerts a powerful
hold on our historical imagination today – for who knows the history of the
Carthaginians, or of the Persians, except through Roman eyes? They are forever
cast as the villains in the saga of Rome’s rise to power. That saga was, for
Polybius, no mere tale of adventure, but the history of the world.
What of the question with which we started? How did Rome do
it? Polybius was a Greek, and he wrote in order to explain Rome to his
countrymen. Indeed, he hoped they would submit to it, for he would probably be
executed if they did not. But he also had more formidable reasons. First,
Rome’s rise was a matter of institutions, for their government was Aristotle’s
ideal mix of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, and it contained checks and
balances which the unruly Greek democracies lacked. It was also a matter of
character. The Romans were tough, virtuous, hard-working, loyal, disciplined,
and strangers to luxury – as the Greeks had been in the days of Marathon. The
Carthaginians, by contrast, were spoiled by wealth, found it impossible to work
together, and left their fighting to mercenaries. It was also a matter of
religion, for “the very thing that among other nations is regarded as an object
of reproach – i.e. superstition – is that which maintains the cohesion of the
Roman state.” “This might not have been necessary,” he continued, “if it had
been possible to form a state composed of wise men; but as every multitude is
fickle, full of lawless desires, unreasoned passion, and violent anger, it must
be held together by invisible terrors and religious pageantry.” Following the
logic of this argument, he presented Rome’s rise as the decree of the ultimate
power – Fate, which not even the gods can resist. His explanation was thus an
appeal to all Greeks, whether pious or skeptical, to submit to the new power.
It would be hubris, he implied, to resist.
In the centuries since Herodotus and Thucydides, Plato and
the Stoic philosophers had developed a cyclical view of time which held that
the rise and fall of states is a part of a natural rhythm in which virtue
brings victory, victory temptation, temptation vice, and vice defeat. It seems
that this may have been a popular model in Greek historiography after
Thucydides, although so much has been lost it is difficult to say. Polybius
agreed that it held for lesser peoples, even for the Greeks, but not for the
Romans. Fate, he said, had given them an Eternal City, and an Eternal Empire.
It was destined to rise, but never to fall.
Summary of Polybius and his work
Full Text of the Histories
Part of a series on Philosophy of History (VI of XXXV)
(The picture is an ancient bust of Hannibal)
Questions: Do you find Polybius' argument persuasive? Is character a decisive element in history? What about religion? Is it a necessary prop to social order, as Polybius argued, or mere ignorance, as we are so often told today? What about institutions? What is their role in history? Finally, do you see the hand of fate in history? Or is it principally the result of our freely chosen actions?
No comments:
Post a Comment