Polybius between Greece and Rome to be familiar to his readers. The same historical background had also been
deployed when Polybius first came to the issue of how the Romans acted in
the final war against Carthage, and how their actions should be judged.
Polybius conceals his own opinion by the device of setting out four dif-
ferent opinions of Rome’s conduct which were held in Greece. It should be
emphasised, however, that none of the four opinions quoted is positively
favourable: of the two more favourable, one held that it was a sign of pru-
dence on the part of the Romans to destroy an ancient enemy when the op-
portunity offered; and the other maintained that the Romans had committed
no actual offense in international law. Of the two unfavourable views, one
held that the level of deceit used by the Romans amounted to impiety and a
breach of treaty obligations. The other was that the Romans had previously
taken their warfare only to the point of forcing their opponents to submit to
their orders. But now they were deserting their former principles in favour
of a lust for domination (philarchia) like that of Athens and Sparta and would
come to the same bad end (, ). Here, too, the history of the fifth and fourth
centuries is recalled to the reader.
But the most remarkable and detailed of all the occasions where Polybius
makes use of the earlier history of Greece belongs at a previous stage in his
narrative; very significantly this is at exactly the point where Roman mili-
tary force first became a major factor in the life of mainland Greece. In
or ..the Romans, threatened by an alliance between Philip V of Mace-
don and Hannibal, themselves made an alliance with the Aetolian league,
the major power in north-western Greece.^15 Then in ..ambassadors
from Acarnania, which was in alliance with Philip, and from Aetolia, now
allied to Rome, presented themselves simultaneously at Sparta, each hoping
to persuade the Spartans to join his side. To underline the significance of
the occasion, Polybius in book gives each of the two ambassadors a speech
which presents a view of the historic role of the Macedonian monarchy in
Greece and the light in which the Roman intervention should be viewed.
(There is no way of saying how far the speeches in Polybius resemble any-
thing that was actually said on this occasion, shortly before his birth. What
matters is simply what we have in the text, two speeches designed to bring
out the significance of a major turning point.)^16
The Aetolian speaks first and, as so often in the text of Polybius, goes
back to the mid-fourth century, to the capture of Olynthus by Philip II and
his suppression of Sparta; then Alexander’s destruction of Thebes, and Anti-
. H. H. Schmitt,Die Staatsverträge des AltertumsIII (), no. .
. See esp. F. W. Walbank, ‘‘Polybius and Rome’s Eastern Policy,’’JRS (): .