The Hellenistic World and Rome
elaborate checks and balances, showed remarkable resilience, and Hannibal
was ultimately defeated.
As to the question of whether Polybius’ analysis of Rome was appropriate
or wholly misguided, my view is that it was not in the least inappropriate
to discuss Rome in terms of Greek political theory, or to compare it to well-
known Greek models.^5 But my main point is that to understand Polybius we
have to accept that his whole perspective is that of the self-governing Greek
city, or league, of the classical and Hellenistic periods. The second point is
that Polybius’ intention, in analysing the reasons for the success of Rome,
was neutral: to give reasons for success and resilience is not in itself to rec-
ommend a system, still less to praise the results of its success.
That brings me to a third preliminary point. In going on to cover the
troubled period from to .., Polybius evidently did intend to intro-
duce an element of moral judgement into hisHistory. How in fact had the
victors used their power? There is no simple or unambiguous way of stating
Polybius’ conclusion. In a paper with the same title as this one, F. W. Wal-
bank, the greatest modern expert on Polybius, concluded that on the whole
his view was favourable.^6 I think otherwise; that Polybius, though he ex-
presses himself obliquely, took an increasingly distant and hostile view of
Roman domination. At the very least, one point is surely remarkable by its
absence. In the whole surviving text there is not a single word to the effect
that Roman domination was a good thing or brought benefits to those who
came under it. For a man who believed that the Achaean revolution of –
..was a tragic error, who had spent seventeen years in Rome, and who
had friends in the highest Roman circles, this silence surely speaks volumes.
There is more to it than that, however. In the second to last of the surviv-
ing books () he comes to the Achaean war of –.., which destroyed
his own Achaean league, which he had called in book the political system
best fitted of all for equality and freedom of speech—in fact, true democracy
(, , ). To introduce the Achaean war he puts it deliberately in a long his-
torical perspective: going back to Xerxes’ invasion of Greece in ..,he
reviews all the major calamities and conflicts in Greek history, and concludes
that this was the greatest disaster of all; partly because it was the Achaeans’
own fault, partly because in other cases no moral blame had been incurred,
. For this view, see ‘‘The Political Character of the Classical Roman Republic (–
..),’’JRS (): – ( chapter in F. Millar,Rome, the GreekWorld, and the EastI:
The Roman Republic and the Augustan Revolution).
. F. W. Walbank, ‘‘Polybius between Greece and Rome,’’Polybe(Entretiens Hardt ,
), .