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There
can surely be nobody so petty or so apathetic in his outlook that he
has no desire to discover by what means and under what system of
government the Romans succeeded in less than fifty-three years (for him
it was the period from 220, just before the outbreak of the Second
Punic War, to 167, the conclusion of the Third Macedonian War against
Perseus) in bringing under their rule almost the whole of the inhabited
world, an achievement which is without parallel in human history.
Polybius
had fared better than most of the leaders and intellectuals that Rome
had taken from Achaea. While a prisoner, he met the head of one of
Rome's great families,Scipio Aemilianus. Scipio found Polybius good
company and exchanged books with him. He took Polybius with him on
military campaigns, and he introduced Polybius to Rome's high society.
Polybius remained in Rome after the other captives returned to Greece,
and Scipio became his patron while he attempted to write the history of
Rome to 146 BCE -- a work that happened to be compatible with the views
of his patrons. Polybius accompanied Scipio to Carthage and witnessed
its destruction in the Third Punic War. Polybius covers the history of
the Second Punic was as well, relying on information available to him
in Roman records. Polybius is one of the most important early
historians.
Polybius
sought to explain how Rome was able to become master over the Greeks.
He described the Romans as having moderation, integrity, valor,
boldness, discipline and frugality in greater amounts than have other
peoples. This, he wrote, enabled Rome to unite and to close ranks when
faced with danger. His fellow Greeks, he wrote, were more literate and
educated than the Romans but when faced with adversity they had
weakened themselves by division and argument.
Polybius
described the superiority of Romans as belonging mainly to the
aristocrats. Common people, Roman and otherwise, he saw as lightheaded,
filled with lawless appetites and inclined toward bursts of anger and
fits of temper. He described the recent rebellion of Greece's common
people against Rome as insane folly, and he believed that despite its
abuses Rome was bestowing upon the Greeks great benefits.
Polybius
saw Rome's patriarchal tradition and its religion as serving the
cohesion that made Rome successful. Awe of the supernatural, he wrote,
helps maintain cohesion. Religion, he wrote, helps to pacify the common
man's anarchic temper. And he described Rome's elite and other ruling
elites as using religion with this in mind.
Polybius
saw Rome's success as partly the result of its willingness to enforce
discipline by such punishments as executing a sentry for neglecting his
duty or beating a soldier with a cudgel for throwing away his weapon,
or beating a soldier for boasting in order to get a decoration, or for
homosexuality. He saw strength in Rome's willingness to punish by
decimation -- the killing of every tenth man -- in any military unit
that had displayed cowardice.
Polybius
believed that societies went through cycles of growth, decay and fall.
And, believing that low birth rates contributed to decline , he warned
Rome's aristocracy about their declining numbers. He wrote of the
incorruptibility of the Romans but warned them about their new hedonism
and the lack of discipline that was creeping into their army. He
warned them about the spread of indifference and a growing influence of
the mob.
Polybius
wrote that Rome's success was in part the result of its superior
institutions and in part the result of its superior people, and at
least a few historians in modern times would describe the Romans as
having had a genius at making law. Having given Rome's elite
credit for Rome's success, would Polybius have blamed them for its
decay? After Polybius, Rome's institutions would prove inadequate in
channeling the impulses of its citizens, and, despite their so-called
genius at law, the Romans would fail to create laws that would
improve their institutions and maintain order. Instead, rising in Rome
was a new politics of violence. |
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