The Hellenistic World and Romeis to treat the monarchies which played such an important part in his world
as being themselves objects worthy of the serious application of political
theory. In that he is quite explicitly the heir of the fourth-century Greek
political theory of Plato and Aristotle, to both of whom he refers repeatedly,
and whose analyses were devoted to the nuclear city-state.^12 When he comes
to his famous discussion of the Roman constitution in book , the frame of
reference or comparison which he applies is first of all Sparta and the con-
stitution given by Lycurgus (, ); later he returns to Sparta, once again,
along with the cities of Crete, Mantinea, and Carthage. Two other candidates
for consideration, Athens and Thebes, are set aside because their respective
periods of dominance, in the fifth and fourth centuries respectively, were
too brief, their political structures too unstable or fragile to be worth seri-
ous comparison with that of Rome (, –). In the end, Polybius makes
clear, what demonstrated that the Spartan constitution was also inferior to
the Roman one was the fact that it did not stand up to the strains imposed on
it by controlling a foreign empire. The Spartans had succeeded in dominat-
ing their neighbours in the Peloponnese, the Messenians. But when it came,
in the early fourth century, to a general domination of Greece, they found
themselves compelled to be dependent on the very Persians whom they had
just defeated. For they needed to ask them for the funds which their own
laws, laid down by Lycurgus, prevented them from generating at home. So
they made the inglorious Peace of Antalcidas (the ‘‘King’s Peace’’) of ..,
in which they betrayed the freedom of the Greeks to Persia in return for fi-
nancial support. By comparison, the Romans, having sought at first only the
domination of Italy, could command the resources to control an overseas
empire as well (, –).
In examining the ability of a city-state to support an empire, Polybius ex-
tends the range of political thought beyond that inherited from Plato and
Aristotle. So he does also in his marvellous account in book (–) of the
history of his own Achaean league from its legendary origins, to its over-
shadowing by Sparta and then Macedon in the fourth century, and its re-
emergence, recovery of freedom, and rapid extension in the third. Plato and
Aristotle had not given any attention to analysing the nature of federal states.
Polybius did. By his own time, he says, the Achaean league had almost be-
come a single city-state: ‘‘They have the same laws, weights, measures and
coinage, as well as the same magistrates, councillors and juries, and the whole. For his explicit allusions to Plato and Aristotle, see the Teubner ed. by Th. Büttner-
Wobst, , (Aristotle) and (Plato).