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The Gaze in Polybius' Histories*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

James Davidson
James Davidson
Affiliation:
St Hugh's College, Oxford
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Extract

Summarizing Polybius' contribution to the study of Roman history, Mommsen paid him the following compliment: ‘His books are like the sun in the field of Roman history; where they begin, the misty veils which still cloak the Samnite and Pyrrhic wars are lifted, where they finish, a new and if possible still more vexatious twilight begins.’ Since Mommsen our understanding of Polybius' methods, his bias and omissions, his ideology and concerns, has progressed immeasurably, thanks largely to the work of Pédech and Walbank. Nevertheless, the idea that the Histories represent, at least in their conception, the illumination of an intrinsic reality persists. Polybius' supposed ‘poor style’ is often treated as in some way an absence of historiographical mediation. In this case, ‘transparency’ in a text, the sensation that it provides unmediated access to what it describes, is achieved not by a smooth and inconspicuous style, but by coarseness. Tarn compared Polybius' work to rescripts and despatches, as if he were only interested in an unobtrusive recording role, and this attitude to the historian, far from being in decline, has received some radical and authoritative support in recent years. One reappraisal of Roman imperialism has argued that Polybius was much closer to the reality of the process than many twentieth-century historians. Another study claims to ‘want to say no more than what Polybius said’. Ultimately, I have no argument with those who stress Polybius' honesty and reliability. More problematic, however, is an attitude to our use of Polybius' history which is often assumed in eulogies of his truthfulness: that when we read Polybius, we are enabled to gaze directly on the landscape of Roman history, a single substantial unitary reality, structured out of objective facts.

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Articles
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The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 81 , November 1991 , pp. 10 - 24
Copyright
Copyright ©James Davidson 1991. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Mommsen, Th., Römische Geschichte (9th ed, 1903), 11, 453Google Scholar: ‘Seine Bücher sind wie die Sonne auf diesem Gebiet; wo sie anfangen, da heben sich die Nebelschleier, die noch die Samnitischen und den Pyrrhischen Krieg bedecken, und wo sie endigen beginnt eine neue womöglich noch lästigere Dämmerung.’

2 See for instance Usher, S., The Historians of Greece and Rome (1969), 105Google Scholar: ‘Turning finally to Polybius, we are emphatically back in the world of reality’; 123:‘…we have a competent, clear and technically knowledgeable account of battles and stratagems and a precise description of the psychological reactions of the participants in each situation’; Marsden, Eric W., ‘Polybius as a military historian’, in Polybe [Entretiens du Fondation Hardt XX] (1974), 294–5Google Scholar: ‘As he wanted to be, Polybius is a veritable mine of information for the military man. It may be a positive advantage that he did not include more interpretative sections, which might have contaminated the evidence rather than clarified it.’

3 Tarn, W. W., Hellenistic Civilisation (1927), 231Google Scholar.

4 Harris, W. V., War and Imperialism in Republican Rome (1979), esp. 111–13 and 115–16Google Scholar.

5 Millar, F., ‘The political character of the classical Roman Republic, 200–151 B.C.’, JRS 74 (1984), 2Google Scholar.

6 See his essay, ‘The value of narrativity in the representation of reality’, in Mitchell, W. J. T. (ed.), On Narrative (1981), 19Google Scholar.

7 IX.9.9–10: … Walbank, F. W., A Historical Commentary on Polybius II (1967)Google Scholar, discusses the suggested emendations ad loc. (p. 132).

8 Walbank, op. cit. (n. 7), ad loc. Walbank concludes by suggesting as the most likely restoration Reiske's . (Reiske, J. J., Animadversiones ad Graecos auctores (1757–1766) IV, 487)Google Scholar. However, both W. R. Paton in his Loeb edition (vol. IV, 1925) and Raymond Weil in his Bude edition (vol. VII, 1982), the most recent text available, base their translations on Walbank's second version. Both leave the Greek text unaltered, with the lacuna, although Weil comments in the apparatus ‘Supplevi e.g. .

9 Polybius is attacking an exemplum of proverbial strength, see Herodotus 1.84 and Lucian, De Mercede Conductis 13. For other illusions of danger, cf. 1.47, where the ‘Rhodian’ amazes the Romans at Lilybaeum by his recklessness, although in fact, he is able to rely on his knowledge of the shoals, and III.78.8–79.1, where Hannibal's troops think the march through the marshes of Etruria will be dangerous, but Hannibal himself has discovered that the water is shallow and the ground firm.

10 cf. Walbank, F. W., ‘Polemic in Polybius’, JRS 52 (1962), 1–4Google Scholar; Pédech, P., La Méthode historique de Polybe (1964), 549Google Scholar.

11 This emphasis on calculation and planning reflects Polybius' concern with the importance of πϱόνοια in military activity (see Pédech, op. cit. (n. 10), 217–22). It would damage his argument somewhat, if it appeared that so successful a general as Hannibal had launched himself on the Romans without due care and attention. For other examples of Hannibal's foresight, see III.34; 47.7-8; 48.11; 49.9; 53.1; 70.12; 71.2; 79.1; 92.10; VIII.34; XI.19.

12 Other examples are I.52.1; 60.8; 78.6; II.47.4; III.34.2–3; 92.3; V.14.9–10; 36.7–8; 102.1; VIII.15f.; 16.2; VIII.15.1 and 6; 32f.; X.3.7; 39.2; XI.39.15; XV.5.8; 35.6; XXIII.5.5.

13 Walbank, op. cit. (n. 7), ad loc. Polybius himself does not make it clear whether he thinks the march actually dangerous or not, but he does stress the care taken by Hannibal to scout ahead (IX.5.8), and describes no opposition along the route.

14 III.68.9;

15 III.38.5: …

16 For ancient ideas about the relative value of the senses, cf. Blum, H., Antike Mnemotechnik (1969), 164–71Google Scholar and Hartog, F., Le Miroir d'Hérodote (1980, Eng. trans. 1988), 260 ff.Google Scholar

17 cf. Pédech, op. cit. (n. 10), 394; and F. W. Walbank's excellent survey of the problem of ‘tragic history’, Polybius (1972), 34–40.

18 For emphasis, see Pédech, op. cit. (n. 16), 226ff. and 258.

19 VIII.1.4; … .

20 I.57.1–2: …

21 For the didactic and apodeictic elements in Polybius, see Walbank, op. cit. (n. 17), 87–91 and Pédech, op. cit. (n. 10),43ff.

22 Wunderer, C., Polybios — Forschungen (III Gleichnisse und Metaphem bei Polybios) (1909), 55Google Scholar:‘… ausserordentlich haung…’; de Foucault, J. A., Recherches sur la langtie et le style de Polybe (1972), 233Google Scholar:‘…unemploi extraordinairement fréquent…’. For other examples, see the list in Wunderer, 55–60, and de Foucault, 229 and 331. Some, as Wunderer remarks (58), have probably lost their Grundbedeutung.

23 ibid., 55: ‘…es ja dem Historiker nahe liegt die Kriege, die er schildert, unter dem Gesichtspunkt eines Wettkampfes anzusehen …’.

24 The ἔφεδϱοϛ is the competitor in any of the heavy sports, who has drawn a bye to go through to the next round: see Poliakoff, Michael B., Combat Sports in the Ancient World (1987), 21—2Google Scholar, and for its use as a literary metaphor, Garvie, A. F. (ed.), Aeschylus Choephori (1986)Google Scholar on lines 866–8. ἔφεδϱοϛ and its cognates are very common in Polybius and usually do mean nothing more than ‘lying in wait’ or ‘reserves’. However the technical sense is implied by the context at IV.9.6 and XXVIII.17.5, where Antiochus is seen as the next foe to be faced after Perseus, cf. also II.13.6 and III.23.6. Xenophon uses the term similarly in a metaphor Atiab. II.5.10.

25 Surprisingly, many historians are prepared to accept the speech as authentic, cf. Walbank, op. cit. (n. 17), 69, n. 11 and Harris, op. cit. (n. 4), 116, n. 4, with bibliography.

26 v. 104.5–7:

27 Exactly what kind of auditorium Polybius has in mind for these agonistic contests is hard to say. Strictly speaking it ought to be a stadium of some kind, see Poliakoff, op. cit. (n. 24), 20–1. In a later period there is plenty of evidence for the use of theatres to put on gladiatorial shows, see Robert, L., Les Gladiateurs dans l'orient grec (1971), 36 and 246–7Google Scholar. It is surely not inconceivable that they could have been used for combat-sports in an earlier period. Suidas s.v. οϰηνή has the arena (ϰονίοτϱα) as an area of the theatre.

28 For the use of comparison in Polybius, see Lorenz, K., Untersuchungen zum Geschichtswerk des Polybios (1931), 81Google Scholar, n. 73 and n. 74; Pédech, op. cit. (n. 10), 408—10 and 420—5.

29 XII.26c. 1: … ….

30 And possibly even beyond the text, where the agon is between Polybius and his rivals among the historians. For this competition, see Vercruysse, M., ‘A la Recherche du mensonge et de la verité. La fonction des passages méthodologiques chez Polybe’, in Purposes of History. Studies in Greek Historiography from the Fourth to the Second Century B.C. (Studia Hellenistica xxx) (1990), 34–6Google Scholar and cf. T. Wiedemann, ‘Rhetoric in Polybius’, in idem, 291.

31 The versions of Livy and Polybius are very different, but both mention the effect of Hannibal's campaign on Rome's allies. Unlike Polybius, however, Livy sees the attempt to win defectors not in terms of a show-case comparison between the two sides, but as a much more brutal use of force to compel them to change their allegiance by devastating their land.

32 III.90.11 :… πᾶσι δῆλον ποιήσειν….

33 It is worth comparing Livy's account (XXVIII.32), which in the narrative immediately after Scipio's speech follows Polybius' very closely. Livy's Scipio, too, notes the absence of a foreign element in the Roman army, but fails to admit the apodeictic intention which Polybius stresses in his version.

34 See above, n. 9.

35 VII.15.2–5: …

36 III.18.3: … .

37 Pédech, op. cit. (n. 10), 548. Even in cases where Polybius does not deny the strength and strategic importance of cities, it is still usually perceived strength he is talking about, cf. IV.70.4 and XXXVIII.3.3.

38 Marsden, op. cit. (n. 2), 290 and 294–5.

39 There is no indication in the surviving text that there was any reference to Lissus and its acropolis before VIII. 13. For the site and its strategic role, see Walbank, op. cit. (n. 7), ad loc. and Badian, E., Studies in Greek and Roman History (1964), 20Google Scholar.

40 This disdain is especially apparent in the over-confidence of Longus (III.72.2) and of the inhabitants of ‘strong’ cities, who ‘relying on the natural and artificial strength of a place omit to keep guard and in general become remiss’ (VII.15.2).

41 cf.XI.14.2:‘Most results in war are due to the skill or the reverse of the commanders’; I.35.4–5: ‘For one man and one brain laid low those great numbers of men who seemed so invincible and efficient’; XVIII.28.6–7.

42 cf. Pédech, op. cit. (n. 10), 211, withn. 38 and 251.

43 See also I.46.6;52.1;78.6; II.47.4; III.34.2–3; 92.3; V.14.9–10 (cf. V.7.1–2); VII.15f.; 16,2; VIII.32f.; X.3.7; 39.2; XI.39.15; XV.5.8; 35.6. ϰαταπλήττω and its cognates are extremely common in Polybius. For a complete list, see Maucrsberger's Polybios-Lexicon.

44 See II.20.10–21.1; VIII.32.4–33.2; cf. III.102.11; 104.2; III.1; V.69.11.

45 III. 18.5–6: . Cf. also v.74.3; II.6.1; III.116.8; XIV.9.6.

46 For other examples of this phenomenon, see III.72,2; III.92.3; V.55.1;XI.34.15;XXIX.27.13. For the concept of φανταοία, especially as a function of mimetic narrative as used in oratory, see Anon., De Subl. XV. 1.

47 cf. Philip after Chios (XVI.8.3–4). In the case of Hamilcar, it is, of course, Hannibal, his son, who completes his father's unfinished business. This pattern of sons putting their father's plans into operation occurs elsewhere in the Histories, and lies behind the bizarre theory ascribing the origins of the Third Punic War to the deceased Philip V (XXII.18), which relies to some extent on the analogy with Philip II's initiation of Alexander's Persian expedition (ibid. 10); cf. also Eumenes (XXI.20.6).

48 III.102.11, cf. I.46.13; II.64.7; III.116.8; VIII.32ff.

49 A comparison with Livy's account is again illuminating (XXV.II). The details are close enough to suggest the Roman knew Polybius' version and deliberately altered the emphasis. In both accounts, Hannibal anticipates the Roman attack, but his purpose, according to Livy, is not to demonstrate superiority, but to decimate the enemy's forces. Livy, the ‘armchair historian’, seems deliberately to prefer a more material military narrative to the more psychological and dialectical approach of Polybius, the ‘man of action’.

50 III.70.11: .

51 See Pédech, P., in the introduction to his Budé edition, Polybe, Histoires, Livre i (1969), xviGoogle Scholar f. and Walbank, op. cit. (n. 17), 160 ff. and n. 38, n. 44, and n. 46; cf. Harris, op. cit. (n. 4), 107 ff. and 110.

52 Walbank, op. cit. (n. 17), 161–2.

53 A. Heuss, ‘Der erste punische Krieg und das Problem des römischen Imperialismus’, Hist. Zeit. 169 (1949–1950), 457–513; cf. Walbank, F. W., ‘Polybius and Rome's eastern policy’, JRS 53 (1963), 6Google Scholar. Heuss uses the parallel to attack Polybius' version of events. But, as Harris has pointed out, the mental process he describes is not in itself unconvincing. It is true there was no full-scale battle at Agrigentum, but it was nevertheless a great ‘trial of strength’, which is what matters for Polybius. See Harris, op. cit. (n. 4), III n. 3.

54 Derow, P. S., ‘Polybius, Rome and the East’, JRS 69 (1979), 2:Google Scholar ‘… for Polybius, it was success or one signal success in particular, that helped to stimulate the Romans to broaden their aims.’

55 For the authenticity of Agelaus' speech, see n. 25. However, it must be admitted that in style and idea, the speech conforms to Polybius' view of the world.

56 As Gruen (‘Aratus and the Achaean alliance with Macedon’, Historia 21 (1972), 617)Google Scholar points out, Polybius is unlikely to have got this version from Aratus' Memoirs. As with Agelaus' speech, it is so much in harmony with the author's understanding of human action, that we are entitled to view the whole episode as a Polybian deduction.

57 Gelzer, M., Hermes 68 (1933), 151Google Scholar. Heuss challenged him on Agrigentum (op. cit. (n. 53), 488 n. 1, but cf. Harris, op. cit. (n. 4), non. 1).

58 See Walbank, op. cit. (n. 17), 77 n. 60; Molthagen, J., ‘Der Weg in den ersten punischen Krieg’, Chiron 5 (1975), 104Google Scholar; Harris, op. cit. (n. 4), 186; Ruschenbusch, E., ‘Der Ausbruch des 1. punischen Krieges’, Talanta 12–13 (1980–1981), 57Google Scholar; cf. Pédech, op. cit. (n. 51), 8–9.

59 Ruschenbusch, op. cit. (n. 58), 57.

60 Polybius himself, as Derow has shown, op. cit. (n. 54), 9, is not interested inKriegsschuldfragen.

61 cf. Walbank, F. W., Selected Papers (1985), 259f.Google Scholar

62 cf. for Herodotus, Hartog, op. cit. (n. 16), 260–309. For Thucydides, Schneider, Ch., Information und Absicht bet Thukydides. Untersuchung zur Motivation des Handelns [= Hypomnemata XLI] (1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Pliny, NH XXXIV.65; cf. Plato, Soph. 235d–236c, ondistortion in sculpture, Pollitt, J. J., Art and Experience in Classical Greece (1972), 174ff.Google Scholar I am not necessarily suggesting a direct influence, but it is possible that Duris of Samos provided some kind of link between art theory and history, cf. Sacks, Kenneth, Polybius on the Writing of History (1981), 159Google Scholar.

64 On the old debate about the nature of Polybius' apodeictic history, cf. Pédech, op. cit. (n. 10), 43–53 and K. Sacks, op. cit. (n. 63), 171–8.

65 Genette, G., Figures III (1972), 187Google Scholar.