Polybius: Histories Book 39

I AM fully aware that some will be found to criticise my work, on the ground that my narrative of events is incomplete and disconnected; beginning, for instance, the story of the siege of Carthage, and then leaving it half told, and interrupting the stream of my history, I pass over to Greek affairs, and from them to Macedonian or Syrian, or some other history; whereas students require continuity, and desire to hear the end of a subject; for the combination of pleasure and profit is thus more completely secured. But I do not think this: I hold exactly the reverse. And as a witness to the correctness of my opinion I might appeal to nature herself, who is never satisfied with the same things continuously in any of the senses, but is ever inclined to change; and, even if she is satisfied with the same things, wishes to have them at intervals and in diversity of circumstance. This may be illustrated first by the sense of hearing, which is never gratified either in music or recitations by a continuance of the same strains or subjects; it is the varied style, and, in a word, whatever is broken up into intervals and has the most marked and frequent changes, that gives it pleasurable excitement. Similarly one may notice that the palate can never remain gratified by the same meats, however costly, but grows to feel a loathing for them, and delights in changes of diet, and often prefers plain to rich food merely for the sake of variety. The same may be noticed as to the sight: it is quite incapable of remaining fixed on the same object, but it is a variety and change of objects that excites it. And this is more than all the case with the mind; for changes in the objects of attention and study act as rests to laborious men.

Accordingly the most learned of the ancient historians have, as it seems to me, taken intervals of rest in this way: some by digressions on myths and tales, and others by digressions on historical facts,—not confining themselves to Greek history, but introducing disquisitions on points of foreign history as well. As, for instance, when, in the course of a history of Thessaly and the campaigns of Alexander of Pherae, they introduce an account of the attempts of the Lacedaemonians in the Peloponnese; or those made by the Athenians; or actions which took place in Macedonia or Illyria: and then break off into an account of the expedition of Iphicrates into Egypt, and the iniquitous deeds of Clearchus in the Pontus. This will show you that these historians all employ this method; but, whereas they employ it without any system, I do so on a regular system. For these men, after mentioning, for instance, that Bardylis, king of the Illyrians, and Cersobleptes, king of the Thracians, established their dynasties, neither go on continuously with the stories nor return to them after an interval to take them up where they left off, but, treating them like an episode in a poem, they go back to their original subject. But I made a careful division of all the most important countries in the world and the course of their several histories; pursued exactly the same plan in regard to the order of taking the several divisions; and, moreover, arranged the history of each year in the respective countries, carefully keeping to the limits of the time: and the result is that I have made the transition backwards and forwards between my continuous narrative and the continually recurring interruptions easy and obvious to students, so that an attentive reader need never miss anything. . . .

After various operations during the autumn of B. C. 147, the upshot of which was to put the whole of the open country in Roman hands, in the beginning of spring B. C. 146, Scipio delivered his final attack on Carthage, taking first the quarter of the merchants' harbour, then the war harbour, and then the market-place. There only remained the streets leading to the Byrsa and the Byrsa itself. Appian, Pun. 123-126. Livy, Ep. 51. Scipio Intends to Fight Having got within the walls, while the Carthaginians still held out on the citadel, Scipio found that the arm of the sea which intervened was not at all deep; and upon Polybius advising him to set it with iron spikes or drive sharp wooden stakes into it, to prevent the enemy crossing it and attacking the mole,1 he said that, having taken the walls and got inside the city, it would be ridiculous to take measures to avoid fighting the enemy. . . .

The pompous Hasdrubal threw himself on his knees before the Roman commander, quite forgetful of his proud language. . . .

When the Carthaginian commander thus threw himself as a suppliant at Scipio's knees, the proconsul with a glance at those present said: “See what Fortune is, gentlemen! What an example she makes of irrational men! This is the Hasdrubal who but the other day disdained the large favours which I offered him, and said that the most glorious funeral pyre was one's country and its burning ruins. Now he comes with suppliant wreaths, beseeching us for bare life and resting all his hopes on us. Who would not learn from such a spectacle that a mere man should never say or do anything presumptuous?” Then some of the deserters came to the edge of the roof and begged the front ranks of the assailants to hold their hands for a little; and, on Scipio ordering a halt, they began abusing Hasdrubal, some for his perjury, declaring that he had sworn again and again on the altars that he would never abandon them, and others for his cowardice and utter baseness: and they did this in the most unsparing language, and with the bitterest terms of abuse. And just at this moment Hasdrubal's wife, seeing him seated in front of the enemy with Scipio, advanced in front of the deserters, dressed in noble and dignified attire herself, but holding in her hands, on either side, her two boys dressed only in short tunics and shielded under her own robes.2 First she addressed Hasdrubal by his name, and when he said nothing but remained with his head bowed to the ground, she began by calling on the name of the gods, and next thanked Scipio warmly because, as far as he could secure it, both she and her children were saved.3 And then, pausing for a short time, she asked Hasdrubal how he had had the heart to secure this favour from the Roman general for himself alone, . . . and, leaving his fellow-citizens who trusted in him in the most miserable plight, had gone over secretly to the enemy? And how he had the assurance to be sitting there holding suppliant boughs, in the face of the very men to whom he had frequently said that the day would never come in which the sun would see Hasdrubal alive and his native city in flames. . . .

Hasdrubal's wife finally threw herself and children from the citadel into the burning streets. Livy, Ep. 51.

After an interview with [Scipio], in which he was kindly treated, Hasdrubal desired leave to go away from the town. . . .

At the sight of the city utterly perishing amidst the flames Scipio burst into tears, and stood long reflecting on the inevitable change which awaits cities, nations, and dynasties, one and all, as it does every one of us men. This, he thought, had befallen Ilium, once a powerful city, and the once mighty empires of the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, and that of Macedonia lately so splendid. And unintentionally or purposely he quoted,—the words perhaps escaping him unconsciously,—4 ““The day shall be when holy Troy shall fall And Priam, lord of spears, and Priam's folk.” ” And on my asking him boldly (for I had been his tutor) what he meant by these words, he did not name Rome distinctly, but was evidently fearing for her, from this sight of the mutability of human affairs. . . .

Another still more remarkable saying of his I may record. . . [When he had given the order for firing the town] he immediately turned round and grasped me by the hand and said: “O Polybius, it is a grand thing, but, I know not how, I feel a terror and dread, lest some one should one day give the same order about my own native city.” . . . Any observation more practical or sensible it is not easy to make. For in the midst of supreme success for one's self and of disaster for the enemy, to take thought of one's own position and of the possible reverse which may come, and in a word to keep well in mind in the midst of prosperity the mutability of Fortune, is the characteristic of a great man, a man free from weaknesses and worthy to be remembered. . . .

After the rejection of the orders conveyed by the legates of Metellus (38, 11), Critolaus collected the Achaean levies at Corinth, under the pretext of going to war with Sparta; but he soon induced the league to declare themselves openly at war with Rome. He was encouraged by the adhesion of the Boeotarch Pytheas, and of the Chalcidians. The Thebans were the readier to join him because they had lately been ordered by Metellus, as arbiter in the disputes, to pay fines to the Phocians, Euboeans, and Amphissians. When news of these proceedings reached Rome in the spring of B. C. 146, the consul Mummius was ordered to lead a fleet and army against Achaia. But Metellus in Macedonia wished to have the credit of settling the matter himself; he therefore sent envoys to the Achaeans ordering them to release from the league the towns already named by the Senate viz. Sparta, Corinth, Argos, Heracleia, and Orchomenus in Arcadia, and advanced with his army from Macedonia through Thessaly by the coast road, skirting the Sinus Maliacus. Critolaus was already engaged in besieging Heraclea Oetea, to compel it to return to its obedience to the league, and when his scouts informed him of the approach of Metellus, he retreated to Scarphea on the coast of Locris, some miles south of the pass of Thermopylae. But before he could get into Scarphea Metellus caught him up, killed a large number of his men, and took one thousand prisoners. Critolaus himself disappeared; Pausanias seems to imagine that he was drowned in the salt marshes of the coast, but Livy says that he poisoned himself. Pausanias, 7.14-15 . Livy, Ep. 52. Orosius, 5, 3.

Pytheas was a brother of Acatidas the runner, and son of Cleomenes. He had led an evil life, and was reported to have wasted the flower of his youth in unnatural debauchery. In political life also he was audacious and grasping, and had been supported by Eumenes and Philataerus for these very reasons. . . .

Critolaus the Achaean Strategus being dead, and the law providing that, in case of such an event befalling the existing Strategus, the Strategus of the previous year should succeed to the office until the regular congress of the league should meet, it fell to Diaeus to conduct the business of the league and take the head of affairs. Accordingly, after sending forward some troops to Megara,5 he went himself to Argos; and from that place sent a circular letter to all the towns ordering them to set free their slaves who were of military age, and who had been born and brought up in their houses, and send them furnished with arms to Corinth. He assigned the numbers to be furnished by the several towns quite at random and without any regard to equality, just as he did everything else. Those who had not the requisite number of home-bred slaves were to fill up the quota imposed on each town from other slaves. But seeing that the public poverty was very great, owing to the war with the Lacedaemonians, he compelled the richer classes, men and women alike, to make promises of money and furnish separate contributions. At the same time he ordered a levy en masse at Corinth of all men of military age. The result of these measures was that every city was full of confusion, commotion, and despair: they deemed those fortunate who had already perished in the war, and pitied those who were now starting to take part in it; and everybody was in tears as though they foresaw only too well what was going to happen. They were especially annoyed at the insolent demeanour and neglect of their duties on the part of the slaves,—airs which they assumed as having been recently liberated, or, in the case of others, because they were excited by the prospect of freedom. Moreover the men were compelled to make their contribution contrary to their own views, according to the property they were reputed to possess; while the women had to do so, by taking the ornaments of their own persons or of their children, to what seemed deliberately meant for their destruction.

As these measures came all at once, the dismay caused by the hardship of each individually prevented people from attending to or grasping the general question; or they must have foreseen that they were all being led on to secure the certain destruction of their wives and children. But, as though caught in the rush of some winter torrent and carried on by its irresistible violence, they followed the infatuation and madness of their leader. The Eleians and Messenians indeed did not stir, in terror of the Roman fleet; for nothing could have saved them if the storm had burst when it was originally intended. The people of Patrae, and of the towns which were leagued with it, had a short time before suffered disasters in Phocis;6 and their case was much the most pitiable one of all the Peloponnesian cities: for some of them sought a voluntary death; others fled from their towns through deserted parts of the country, with no definite aim in their wanderings, from the panic prevailing in the towns. Some arrested and delivered each other to the enemy, as having been hostile to Rome; others hurried to give information and bring accusations, although no one asked for any such service as yet; while others went to meet the Romans with suppliant branches, confessing their treason, and asking what penance they were to pay, although as yet no one was asking for any account of such things. The whole country seemed to be under an evil spell: everywhere people were throwing themselves down wells or over precipices; and so dreadful was the state of things, that as the proverb has it “even an enemy would have pitied” the disaster of Greece. For in times past the Greeks had met with reverses or indeed complete disaster, either from internal dissensions or from treacherous attacks of despots; but in the present instance it was from the folly of their leaders and their own unwisdom that they experienced the grievous misfortunes which befell them. The Thebans also, abandoning their city en masse, left it entirely empty; and among the rest Pytheas retired to the Peloponnese, with his wife and children, and there wandered about the country.7 . . .

He came upon the enemy much to his surprise. But to my mind the proverb, “the reckonings of the foolish are foolishness” applies to him. And naturally to such men things clear as day come as a surprise. . . .

He was even forming plans for getting back home, acting very like a man who, not having learnt to swim and being about to plunge into the sea, should not consider the question of taking the plunge; but, having taken it, should begin to consider how he is to swim to land. . . .

Having secured Boeotia, Metellus advanced to Megara, where the Achaean Alcamenes had been posted by Diaeus with five thousand men. Alcamenes hastily evacuated Megara and rejoined Diaeus at Corinth, the latter having meanwhile been reelected Strategus. Pausanias, 7, 15, 10 .

Diaeus having recently come to Corinth after being appointed Strategus by the vote of the people, Andronidas and others came from Caecilius Metellus. Against these men he spread a report that they were in alliance with the enemy, and gave them up to the mob, who seized on them with great violence and threw them into chains. Philo of Thessaly also came bringing many liberal offers to the Achaeans. And on hearing them, certain of the men of the country attempted to secure their acceptance; among whom was Stratius, now a very old man, who clung to Diaeus's knees and entreated him to yield to the offers of Metellus. But he and his party would not listen to Philo's proposals. For the fact was that they did not believe that the amnesty would embrace them with the rest; and, as they regarded their own advantage and personal security as of the highest importance, they spoke as they did, and directed all their measures on the existing state of affairs to this end: although, as a matter of fact, they failed entirely to secure these objects. For as they understood quite clearly the gravity of what they had done, they could not believe they would obtain any mercy from Rome; and as to enduring nobly whatever should befall on behalf of their country and the safety of the people, that they never once took into consideration; yet that was the course becoming men who cared for glory, and professed to be the leaders of Greece. But indeed how or whence was it likely that such a lofty idea should occur to these men? The members of this conclave were Diaeus and Damocritus, who had but recently been recalled from exile owing to the disturbed state of the times, and with them Alcamenes, Theodectes and Archicrates; and of these last I have already stated at length who they were, and have described their character, policy, and manner of life.

Such being the men with whom the decision rested, the determination arrived at was what was to be expected. They not only imprisoned Andronidas and Lagius and their friends, but even the sub-Strategus Sosicrates, on the charge of his having presided at a council and given his voting for sending an embassy to Caecilius Metellus, and in fact of having been the cause of all their misfortunes. Next day they empanelled judges to try them; condemned Sosicrates to death; and having bound him racked him till he died, without however inducing him to say anything that they expected: but they acquitted Lagius, Andronidas and Archippus, partly because the people were scared at the lawless proceeding against Sosicrates, and partly because Diaeus got a talent from Andronidas and forty minae from Archippus; for this man could not relax his usual shameless and abandoned principles in this particular even “in the very pit,”8 as the saying is. He had acted with similar cruelty a short time before also in regard to Philinus of Corinth. For on a charge of his holding communication with Menalcidas9 and favouring the Roman cause, he caused Philinus and his sons to be flogged and racked in each other's sight, and did not desist until the boys and Philinus were all dead. When such madness and ferocity was infecting everybody, as it would not be easy to parallel even among barbarians, it would be clearly very natural to ask why the whole nation did not utterly perish. For my part, I think that Fortune displayed her resources and skill in resisting the folly and madness of the leaders; and, being determined at all hazards to save the Achaeans, like a good wrestler, she had recourse to the only trick left; and that was to bring down and conquer the Greeks quickly, as in fact she did. For it was owing to this that the wrath and fury of the Romans did not blaze out farther; that the army of Libya did not come to Greece; and that these leaders, being such men as I have described, did not have an opportunity, by gaining a victory, of displaying their wickedness upon their countrymen. For what it was likely that they would have done to their own people, if they had got any ground of vantage or obtained any success, may be reasonable inferred from what has already been said. And indeed everybody at the time had the proverb on his lips, “had we not perished quickly we had not been saved.”10 . . .

Aulus Postumius deserves some special notice from us here. He was a member of a family and gens of the first rank, but in himself was garrulous and wordy, and exceedingly ostentatious. From his boyhood he had a great leaning to Greek studies and literature: but he was so immoderate and affected in this pursuit, that owing to him the Greek style became offensive to the elder and most respectable men at Rome. Finally he attempted to write a poem and a formal history in Greek, in the preface to which he desired his readers to excuse him if, being a Roman, he could not completely command the Greek idiom or method in the handling of the subject. To whom M. Porcius Cato made a very pertinent answer. “I wonder,” said he, “on what grounds you make such a demand. If the Amphictyonic council had charged you to write the history, you might perhaps have been forced to allege this excuse and ask for this consideration. But to write it of your own accord, when there was no compulsion to do so, and then to demand consideration, if you should happen to write had Greek, is quite unreasonable. It is something like a man entering for the boxing match or pancratium in the public games, and, when he comes into the stadium, and it is his turn to fight, begging the spectators to pardon him 'if he is unable to stand the fatigue or the blows.' Such a man of course would be laughed at and condemned at once.”11 And this is what such historiographers should experience, to prevent them spoiling a good thing by their rash presumption. Similarly, in the rest of his life, he had imitated all the worst points in Greek fashions; for he was fond of pleasure and averse from toil. And this may be illustrated from his conduct in the present campaign: for being among the first to enter Greece at the time that the battle in Phocis took place, he retired to Thebes on the pretence of illness, in order to avoid taking part in the engagement; but, when the battle was ended, he was the first to write to the Senate announcing the victory, entering into every detail as though he had himself been present at the conflict. . . .

On the arrival of the Consul Mummius, Metellus was sent back into Macedonia. Mummius was accompanied by L. Aurelius Orestes, who had been nearly murdered in the riot at Corinth (38, 7), and, pitching his camp in the Isthmus, was joined by allies who raised his army to three thousand five hundred cavalry and twenty-six thousand infantry. The Achaeans made a sudden attack upon them and gained a slight success, which was a few days afterwards revenged by a signal defeat. Instead of retiring into Corinth, and from that stronghold making some terms with Mummius, Diaeus fled to Megalopolis, where he poisoned himself, after first killing his wife. The rest of the beaten Achaean army took refuge in Corinth, which Mummius took and fired on the third day after the battle with Diaeus. Then the commissioners were sent from Rome to settle the whole of Greece. Pausanias, 7, 16-17 ; Livy, Ep. 52.

The incidents of the capture of Corinth were melancholy. The soldiers cared nothing for the works of art and the consecrated statues. I saw with my own eyes pictures thrown on the ground and soldiers playing dice on them; among them was a picture of Dionysus by Aristeides—in reference to which they say that the proverbial saying arose, “Nothing to the Dionysus,”—and the Hercules tortured by the shirt of Deianeira. . . .

Owing to the popular reverence for the memory of Philopoemen, they did not take down the statues of him in the various cities. So true is it, as it seems to me, that every genuine act of virtue produces in the mind of those who benefit by it an affection which it is difficult to efface. . . .

One might fairly, therefore, use the common saying: “He has been foiled not at the door, but in the road.” . . .12

There were many statues of Philopoemen, and many erections in his honour, voted by the several cities; and a Roman at the time of the disaster which befell Greece at Corinth, wished to abolish them all and to formally indict him, laying an information against him, as though he were still alive, as an enemy and illwisher to Rome. But after a discussion, in which Polybius spoke against this sycophant, neither Mummius nor the commissioners would consent to abolish the honours of an illustrious man. . . .

Polybius, in an elaborate speech, conceived in the spirit of what has just been said, maintained the cause of Philopoemen. His arguments were that “This man had indeed been frequently at variance with the Romans on the matter of their injunctions, but he only maintained his opposition so far as to inform and persuade them on the points in dispute; and even that he did not do without serious cause. He gave a genuine proof of his loyal policy and gratitude, by a test as it were of fire, in the periods of the wars with Philip and Antiochus. For, possessing at those times the greatest influence of any one in Greece, from his personal power as well as that of the Achaeans, he preserved his friendship for Rome with the most absolute fidelity, having joined in the vote of the Achaeans in virtue of which, four months before the Romans crossed from Italy, they levied a war from their own territory upon Antiochus and the Aetolians, when nearly all the other Greeks had become estranged from the Roman friendship.” Having listened to this speech and approved of the speaker's view, the ten commissioners granted that the complimentary erections to Philopoemen in the several cities should be allowed to remain. Acting on this pretext, Polybius begged of the Consul the statues of Achaeus, Aratus, and Philopoemen, though they had already been transported to Acarnania from the Peloponnese: in gratitude for which action people set up a marble statue of Polybius himself.13 . . .

After the settlement made by the ten commissioners in Achaia, they directed the Quaestor, who was to superintend the selling of Diaeus's property, to allow Polybius to select anything he chose from the goods and present it to him as a free gift, and to sell the rest to the highest bidders. But, so far from accepting any such present, Polybius urged his friends not to covet anything whatever of the goods sold by the Quaestor anywhere:—for he was going a round of the cities and selling the property of all those who had been partisans of Diaeus, as well of such as had been condemned, except those who left children or parents. Some of these friends did not take his advice; but those who did follow it earned a most excellent reputation among their fellow-citizens.

After completing these arrangements in six months, the ten commissioners sailed for Italy, at the beginning of spring, having left a noble monument of Roman policy for the contemplation of all Greece. They also charged Polybius, as they were departing, to visit all the cities and to decide all questions that might arise, until such time as they were grown accustomed to their constitution and laws. Which he did: and after a while caused the inhabitants to be contented with the constitution given them by the commissioners, and left no difficulty connected with the laws on any point, private or public, unsettled.

[Wherefore the people, who always admired and honoured this man, being in every way satisfied with the conduct of his last years and his management of the business just described, honoured him with the most ample marks of their respect both during his life and after his death. And this universal verdict was fully justified. For if he had not elaborated and reduced to writing the laws relating to the administration of justice, everything would have been in a state of uncertainty and confusion. Therefore we must look upon this as the most glorious of the actions of Polybius.] . . .

The Roman Proconsul, after the commissioners had left Achaia, having restored the holy places in the Isthmus and ornamented the temples in Olympia and Delphi, proceeded to make a tour of the cities, receiving marks of honour and proper gratitude in each. And indeed he deserved honour both public and private, for he conducted himself with self-restraint and disinterestedness, and administered his office with mildness, although he had great opportunities of enriching himself, and immense authority in Greece. And in fact in the points in which he was thought to have at all overlooked justice, he appears not to have done it for his own sake, but for that of his friends. And the most conspicuous instance of this was in the case of the Chalcidian horsemen whom he put to death.14 . . .

Ptolemy, king of Syria,15 died from a wound received in the war: a man who, according to some, deserved great praise and abiding remembrance, and according to others the reverse. If any king before him ever was, he was mild and benevolent; a very strong proof of which is that he never put any of his own friends to death on any charge whatever; and I believe that not a single man at Alexandria either owed his death to him. Again, though he was notoriously ejected from his throne by his brother, in the first place, when he got a clear opportunity against him in Alexandria, he granted him a complete amnesty; and afterwards, when his brother once more made a plot against him to seize Cyprus, though he got him body and soul into his hands at Lapethus, he was so far from punishing him as an enemy, that he even made him grants in addition to those which formerly belonged to him in virtue of the treaty made between them, and moreover promised him his daughter. However, in the course of a series of successes and prosperity, his mind became corrupted; and he fell a prey to the dissoluteness and effeminacy characteristic of the Egyptians: and these vices brought him into serious disasters. . . .

Having accomplished these objects, I returned home from Rome, having put, as it were, the finishing-stroke to my whole previous political actions, and obtained a worthy return for my constant loyalty to the Romans. Wherefore I make my prayers to all the gods that the rest of my life may continue in the same course and in the same prosperity; for I see only too well that Fortune is envious of mortals, and is most apt to show her power in those points in which a man fancies that he is most blest and most successful in life.

Such was the result of my exertions. But having now arrived at the end of my whole work, I wish to recall to the minds of my readers the point from which I started, and the plan which I laid down at the commencement of my history, and then to give a summary of the entire subject. I announced then at starting that I should begin my narrative at the point where Timaeus left off, and that going cursorily over the events in Italy, Sicily, and Libya—since that writer has only composed a history of those places,—when I came to the time when Hannibal took over the command of the Carthaginian army; Philip son of Demetrius the kingdom of Macedonia; Cleomenes of Sparta was banished from Greece; Antiochus succeeded to the kingdom in Syria, and Ptolemy Philopator to that in Egypt,—I promised that starting once more from that period, namely the 139th Olympiad, I would give a general history of the world: marking out the periods of the Olympiads, separating the events of each year, and comparing the histories of the several countries by parallel narratives of each, up to the capture of Carthage, and the battle of the Achaeans and Romans in the Isthmus, and the consequent political settlement imposed on the Greeks. From all of which I said that students would learn a lesson of supreme interest and instructiveness. This was to ascertain how, and under what kind of polity, almost the whole inhabited world came under the single authority of Rome, a fact quite unparalleled in the past. These promises then having all been fulfilled, it only remains for me to state the periods embraced in my history, the number of my books, and how many go to make up my whole work. . . .