INTRODUCTION
Polybius (c.200–120 b.c.e.)Footnote 1 wrote his Histories to answer the question that, he thought, should exercise all his contemporaries: ‘how, and on the basis of which political regime, did the Roman state extend its domination to almost all of the inhabited earth, in less than fifty-three years?’Footnote 2 Polybius found the key to his answer in the concept of political regime (πολιτϵία). For him, political regimes are the main causal factors of historical events.Footnote 3 In Polybius, as in most Greek authors, a πολιτϵία includes both written and unwritten rules, legal but also ethical norms.Footnote 4 Their worth is revealed by their ability to protect the regime against its ‘connatural flaws’ (συμϕυϵῖς λῦμαι, 6.10.2–5), the germs of decay that tend to change it into its degenerate form. Polybius famously argues that the most efficient repellent of decay is the balanced regime,Footnote 5 where the combination of three powers (monarchic, aristocratic and democratic) prevents each of them from becoming excessive. Rome is the most achieved example of the balanced regime, hence its imperial success (6.50).
But the balanced regime is not a panacea.Footnote 6 Polybius knows that, once it has reached world supremacy, it can degenerate into ochlocracy, the vitiated form of democracy. The influx of riches will make the people greedy and desirous to rule alone (6.57.8–9):
They will want to have the upper hand in all domains. When things have gotten that far, the new regime may be called with the fairest names, ‘liberty’ and ‘democracy’; but it will in truth be the worst of governments, ochlocracy.
The balanced regime is not safe against ochlocracy and false claims to freedom; additional means must be found to protect it against decay.
Polybius has all the more reasons to investigate such means as he admits that democracy has, of all ‘simple’ regimes, the ‘fairest name’.Footnote 7 Other regimes may have characteristic virtues: generosity for kingship (4.27.9), wisdom for aristocracy (6.51.6–8). But the ‘simple’ regime Polybius favours is one where, as in his native Achaea, an equal right to political participation is recognized to all.Footnote 8 It is not only the balanced regime but also democracy that needs to be protected against ochlocracy.Footnote 9 This article argues that, for Polybius, protecting both regimes against the threat of ochlocracy requires maintaining a public ethos attached to ἰσηγορία (the equal right to speak in public) and παρρησία (freedom of speech). Yet no thorough study of ἰσηγορία and παρρησία in Polybius has so far been undertaken.Footnote 10
Polybius’ democratic commitments require qualification. He prefers participation to be in fact exercised by the ‘best’ only.Footnote 11 In Polybius, ‘the people…do not normally assume the initiative’.Footnote 12 The historian is mistrustful of the crowd, which he describes as ‘always light, full of lawless desires, mindless feelings and violent passion’.Footnote 13 It remains true that, for Polybius, ἰσηγορία and παρρησία are the fulcrum of a true democracy. This is the case, for instance, of the Achaean Confederation, at the core of whose political ethos lies a commitment to both.Footnote 14 It is coextensive with the Confederation’s attachment to freedom and, as such, a source of collective pride.Footnote 15 It is inscribed in political practice, in particular in deliberative assemblies.Footnote 16 Achaea is not alone, however, in its practice of ἰσηγορία and παρρησία. Polybius thinks that those two principles can be instantiated in other regimes. They come up in certain monarchies, such as Macedon (5.27.6–7), and I will suggest reasons for thinking that they are to be found in the balanced regime as well.Footnote 17 Though my account of ἰσηγορία and παρρησία in Polybius focusses primarily on democracy, with which the historian explicitly associates them, I will argue that it can shed light on the workings of the balanced regime.
ἰσηγορία and παρρησία have for Polybius both intrinsic and instrumental worth. They have intrinsic worth in so far as they are the proper political condition for a free person, who is entitled to participate in the public exchange of reasons instead of being ruled by mere force. Their instrumental worth is twofold: on the one hand, ἰσηγορία and παρρησία—under certain conditions—maximize the rationality of public decisions; on the other, commitment to them keeps at bay excessive political ambition and demagoguery. When, on account of time and habituation (6.9.5), that commitment fades away, when a democratic people forsakes the value of ἰσηγορία and παρρησία, three consequences ensue: political ambition is given free rein; the rationality of public decision suffers; and the exchange of reasons tends to be replaced by the rule of force.Footnote 18
It therefore becomes crucial to remind whoever enjoys ἰσηγορία and παρρησία—citizens of democracies primarily but also members of regimes where they are present to some extent—of their rareness. This, I suggest, is a task Polybius sets himself in the Histories. He repeatedly alludes to the human tendency to take for granted what is in fact fragile. By showing his readers that ἰσηγορία and παρρησία are in fact both precious and rare, Polybius can remind them of the price of these principles and thus combat the birth of ochlocracy.
To defend my reading, I proceed in two steps. First, I show that Polybius is attached to ἰσηγορία and παρρησία and aware of their intrinsic as well as instrumental value. Second, I demonstrate that forgetting their worth explains the birth of ochlocracy, and that Polybius sets himself the task, as a historian, to remind his readers of their price.
***
The value of freedom is manifold in Polybius’ eyes. To be sure, it is the object of a natural desire to have one’s way, both for individuals (3.111.9) and for communities which can thereby ‘live by their own laws’.Footnote 19 It is also a source of pride.Footnote 20 In addition, it is associated, in Polybius as in Greek culture in general, with moral qualities such as gentle character and depth of soul (27.12.3).
But the political value of freedom mainly appears, in Polybius’ account, under three guises. Political freedom, expressed in terms of ἰσηγορία and παρρησία, is the proper political condition for free men, as it bases political relationships on persuasion (πϵιθώ) and the exchange of reasons instead of force (βία). Second, political freedom as ἰσηγορία and παρρησία improves the rationality of public decisions, under certain conditions. Third, attachment to those two principles provides a safeguard against excessive political ambition.
FREEDOM, THE EXCHANGE OF REASONS, AND NON-DOMINATION
First, freedom has intrinsic value, as it is the political condition that replaces slave-like obligation to obey orders with the exchange of reasons.Footnote 21 Political freedom is the absence of slavery, or tyranny, in the civic realm.Footnote 22 Yet what characterizes the rule of tyrants is that they rule using injunctions (ἐπιτάγματα) and fear (ϕόβος).Footnote 23 Non-tyrannical regimes reject fear and force (βία) in favour of persuasion.Footnote 24 Despite rhetorical claims to the contrary, ochlocracy is not a regime of freedom, as it is based on force (6.10.5).
The intrinsic value of political freedom, especially freedom of speech, is well illustrated by Polybius’ account of the Spartan embassy to Rome in 185.Footnote 25 Areus, the Lacedaemonian envoy, blames the Achaean Confederation for depriving the Spartans of their freedom of speech (παρρησία) since the time when the city was forced to join the κοινόν in the fall of 192:
There remained no freedom of speech because [the Spartans] were not only forced to obey the common decrees of the Achaean Confederation, but also had to submit to the appointed office-holders in their private lives.Footnote 26
Since the integration of Sparta into the Achaean Confederation was based on force, the Lacedaemonians have no real say in their political fate. They are collectively but also personally bossed around. The exchange of reasons has been replaced with the rule of force—and the Spartan envoy makes that substitution of brute force for παρρησία a matter of scandal.
FREEDOM, DELIBERATION AND SOUND POLITICAL DECISION
But the exchange of reasons is not only valuable as the fitting political situation for free men. It is also the basis of sound political decisions. Polybius has faith in the power of reason to convince: true, human nature has a dark, even bestial side (1.67.6); but the power of justice is so strong that ‘the opinions and exhortations of good men’ (τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν γνῶμαι καὶ παραινέσϵις) can dissuade would-be criminals to act.Footnote 27 It becomes all the more important to give ‘good men’ access to public platforms. They will then speak without flattery,Footnote 28 as it is the duty of a good citizen to speak his mind (38.4.3–4).
In a democracy like the Achaean Confederation, where contradictory debate is a cardinal value (30.32.3–5),Footnote 29 the free exchange of reasons normally leads to the victory of the better argument.Footnote 30 Even in dire straits, a statesman accused of misguided policies can bring the people back on the path of reason using frank speech—although παρρησία requires careful handling so that it may not excite passion but may appease it.Footnote 31 It is demagogues who use ἰσηγορία and παρρησία to arouse the crowd’s passions and prevent the emergence of considered decisions.Footnote 32
This means that, for Polybius, ἰσηγορία and παρρησία do not suffice for the best political decision to emerge: they are subject to certain conditions. The orator himself must be ruled by reason (λογισμός) and not by passion (θυμός).Footnote 33 The audience must also be receptive to argument. In Polybius, no system of political institutions and rights can do without ethical norms that ensure the prevalence of λογισμός over θυμός. A πολιτϵία, for Polybius, includes not only νόμοι but also ἔθη.Footnote 34
This sheds light on Polybius’ stance towards democracy. His commitment to the Achaean Confederation is strong, and seems to lie behind his preference for democracy over other ‘simple’ regimes. But why call ‘democracy’ a regime where political participation should in fact be limited to a few excellent men? In such a regime, are ἰσηγορία and παρρησία real? Polybius’ position is not necessarily self-contradictory. He can insist both on the benefits provided by ἰσηγορία and παρρησία and on the necessity for orators and politicians to be ruled by correct ethical principles. Aristocracies or oligarchies, with the fixed limits they set on political participation (birth or wealth), offer no safer protections against bad leadership. Provided that the democratic regime’s politicians are ethically worthy and the crowd ethically decent, democracy has over other simple regimes the advantage of maximizing the pool of arguments on the basis of which decision is ultimately made—a position not unlike that of Aristotle.Footnote 35 Bad democratic leaders are a reason not to do away with ἰσηγορία and παρρησία but to replace them with better ones.Footnote 36 Such is, to use Tuci’s felicitous phrase, Polybius’ ‘aristocratic conception of democracy’.Footnote 37 For Polybius, quite simply, rulers or office-holders who have virtue will tend to act more justly than others.Footnote 38
In the international realm, too, the free and outspoken exchange of reasons normally leads states committed to decent ethical principles to a better judgement.Footnote 39 This is at least the conviction of Philopoemen, Polybius’ Achaean hero, who led his country as στρατηγός several times between 208 and his death in 183. Philopoemen knows that Rome’s domination will one day be so total that ‘the Greeks will be forced to do whatever they are ordered to’ (24.13.6). Other Polybian characters mention that law of international politics, namely that absolute hegemony corrupts absolutely, even a state as committed as Rome to good faith and justice.Footnote 40 To ensure that the free exchange of reasons continues in the international realm, a balance of power is therefore key. Absent that, it remains for lesser states to continue speaking up to the hegemonic power. Opposing the Romans with good reasons has the power of postponing the fatal day when they will not hear any:
If, when they order us something [contrary to justice], we draw their attention to that fact and moderate their impulse, we will contain even for a little while their absolute power, especially since the Romans have up to now given great importance…to keeping oaths, treaties and their promises to their allies.Footnote 41
Philopoemen goes on advising his fellow citizens to ‘defend their rights and not give up, especially when they have the greatest and most excellent (μϵγίστας καὶ καλλίστας) arguments to oppose to the Romans’.Footnote 42 Polybius makes clear elsewhere that he shares Philopoemen’s position (24.10.12), which was also the stance of his own father Lycortas:
The Romans act as they should when they listen to those who seem to them to be in distress and make moderate (μέτρια) demands; but when one teaches them that, among those demands, some are impossible, other bring shame and harm to their friends, it is not their custom to look for victory at all cost, nor to impose such things by force.Footnote 43
Here again, however, conditions apply for the exchange of reasons to lead to a right decision: the power of arguments depends on their quality, be it their importance (μϵγίστας), their ethical worth (καλλίστας) or their moderateness (μέτρια). The argument’s recipient (Rome, in this case) must also be committed to justice. Philopoemen’s and Lycortas’ hope is that Achaea’s discussions with Rome meet the two conditions.Footnote 44
In both internal and international politics, then, Polybius thinks that the free exchange of reasons—ethical conditions obtaining—improves the quality of political decision. Yet his narrative abounds with stories of debates where the quality of deliberation deteriorates because the exchange of reasons is interrupted.Footnote 45 The most notable concerns Achaea: in Corinth in 146, the Roman legates are ousted from the platform by the mob’s shouting, an act that precipitates the Achaean Confederation to its doom (38.12.2–5). And when members of the Council of Elders try to intervene, they are stopped by the soldiers stationed around the rostrum by the demagogue Critolaus, who claims the right to speak his mind. Violence and passion have replaced the exchange of reasons.Footnote 46
The exchange of reasons can, thus, improve the quality of political decisions in both the interior and the international realms. But the interlocutors’ commitment to deliberation and its capacity to make the most considerate decision emerge—lacking in Corinth in 146—is a key condition for that exchange to take place.
ΙΣΗΓΟΡΙΑ AND ΠΑΡΡΗΣΙΑ AS PROTECTIONS AGAINST EXCESSIVE POLITICAL AMBITION
The third and final value of ἰσηγορία and παρρησία, for Polybius, lies in the fact that attachment to them is a safeguard against excessive ambition. That pivotal role of ἰσηγορία and παρρησία is conspicuous in his account of the transformation of democracy into ochlocracy in Book 6 of the Histories.
Book 6 presents Polybius’ account of the cycle of regimes. Turning theoretical, the historian explains how human beings leave the state of nature when they come to obey a sole ruler. Once common moral notions emerge and the ruler decides to act by them, he becomes a lawful king.Footnote 47 But one of his sons or grandsons, spoilt by luxury, turns tyrant. The tyrant’s domination is short-lived, however: with the people’s support, a handful of elite men overthrow him and set up an aristocracy. The sons of the aristocrats in their turn succumb to luxury, changing the regime into oligarchy (6.5.1–6.8.6).
When the people grow indignant of the oligarchs’ misconduct, they follow a revolutionary leader intent on regime change:
When someone observes the envy and hate that the oligarchs have incurred among the citizens and musters the courage to say or do something against the rulers, he finds the multitude ready to give a hand. Then, after some of the oligarchs have been murdered, other exiled, the people do not dare to set up a king—since they fear the injustice of the past ones—or to entrust common affairs to a few—since they keep vivid memories of the misconduct they have just witnessed. Their only real hope residing in themselves, they are driven to that ultimate solution and change the regime from an oligarchy to a democracy. They thus entrust the care of common affairs to themselves. As long as some survive who have had experience of domination and tyranny, they are glad with the new constitution and give great importance to political equality (ἰσηγορία) and freedom of speech (παρρησία). But when a new generation is born and democracy is transmitted to the grandsons of its founders, they grow accustomed to political equality and freedom of speech, cease to appreciate them as before, and seek to have more than the multitude. It is especially those who are superior in riches who are affected by that phenomenon. What happens next is that, when they run for office and are unable to obtain them because they lack virtue, they dilapidate their wealth, enticing and corrupting the crowd in all sorts of ways. The consequence is that, once in their mindless lust for glory they have made the multitude corrupt and avid for bribes, democracy is dissolved, changing into violence (βία) and the government of force (χϵιροκρατία). Being used to eat up the goods of others and to hope to live on their neighbours’ fortune, the people find an ambitious and audacious leader barred by poverty from accessing political honours. The people thus perfect the government of force. They assemble and embark on murders, exiles and division of land, until they have become savage and come back to the beginning of the cycle by finding a master and sole ruler.Footnote 48
The role Polybius assigns to ἰσηγορία and παρρησία in that story is key. Just after the revolution, the two principles are the fulcrum of the ‘republican’ ethos of first-generation democrats—leaders and people alike. They value what they so dearly missed in the oligarchy: the (political) right to defend their (personal) rights, by speaking up against the exactions they suffered from the rulers.Footnote 49 Contrast is key to the valorization of ἰσηγορία and παρρησία: once memories of subjection fade away, the worth of these principles and of the practices which they legitimate becomes less vivid in the eyes of the democrats. Ingrained human desires, such as ‘lust for glory’ (δοξοϕαγία), take the upper hand and assert themselves, especially among the most prosperous and secure, the wealthy. The people follow suit: their commitment to what Cole has called ‘the free competition of talent’ dims down and they become guilty of passive bribery. Demagoguery paves the way to tyranny.Footnote 50
In a sense, ἰσηγορία and παρρησία play only a negative role in democracy’s fall into ochlocracy. It is not so much the excess of the political freedom they incarnate that leads democracy to its fall, as in Plato (Resp. 564a3–4; Leg. 698a9–b2); it is its deficiency.Footnote 51 Excessive ambition and demagoguery are kept at bay as long as people and elite are affectively attached to those two values. It is not that ἰσηγορία and παρρησία provide institutional barriers once demagoguery has set in; rather, democratic citizens strongly committed to them simply lack the motivation to participate (as candidates or voters) in whatever-it-takes political competition—their political attitude is primarily motivated by concern for non-domination and justice. To use Pettit’s republican terminology, commitment to ἰσηγορία and παρρησία acts rather as a ‘screen’ than as a ‘check’.Footnote 52
Polybian psychology has the means to account for the phenomenon at play here. As David Hahm has shown, Polybius thinks that one is attached to guarding others against an injustice one feels threatened of suffering.Footnote 53 To take up a Polybian example: he thinks that it is a law of human psychology that people blame children who show ingratitude towards their parents, because ‘they look to the future and reason that something similar will happen to them’.Footnote 54 In the same way, a person who does not show gratitude towards her saviour elicits reprobation among observers, because they ‘refer to themselves what happens nearby’ (6.6.6). Hence, according to Polybius, the development of notions of duty among human beings. When they witness ingratitude, human beings do not blame only the specific instance they are observing: they pronounce a general condemnation.
Key to Polybius’ theory of moral development is the experience of vulnerability. To quote Hahm: ‘[Polybius] emphasizes that recognition of the value of reciprocity comes about specifically when an individual conjectures that something similar could happen to him (vi.5.5–6). An individual who has no sense of personal vulnerability has no basis for developing an awareness of the value of reciprocal benefaction.’Footnote 55 A person who recognizes herself as vulnerable tends, when witnessing injustice (under the form of lack of ‘reciprocal benefaction’), to develop a sense of justice.Footnote 56 People who feel immune against hardship lack the corresponding motivation.
This explains the tepidity of second-generation democrats towards ἰσηγορία and παρρησία. Hahm’s gloss is helpful here again: ‘When most [first-generation democrats] have died and there are few, if any, who have the experiential basis for recognizing the value of reciprocal political respect, specifically, political equality (isegoria) and freedom of speech (parrhesia), some individuals lacking this recognition give rein to their competitive instincts and begin seeking political power regardless of their qualifications. The rest of the people, by now lacking recognition of the value of equality, fail to notice the danger of assigning offices in disregard of either democratically allotted rotation or evaluation of merit.’Footnote 57 If someone has (say, recent historical) reasons to think that they might be deprived of equality and freedom of speech, they react strongly to violations of others’ right to equal free speech and commit to defending ἰσηγορία and παρρησία in the political community. But once habituation makes them lose sight of that possibility—and, perhaps, when violations of those rights have become less and less frequent—their commitment to the equal political standing of others fades. Remaining violations of ἰσηγορία and παρρησία do not trigger in them a strong sense of indignation; their appreciation of those principles weakens; and they lose the screen that their former ‘republican’ ethos used to provide. Their innate tendency to self-aggrandizement takes the upper hand, and they engage in whatever-it-takes political competition.Footnote 58
Do ἰσηγορία and παρρησία play a similar role in the birth of ochlocracy from the balanced regime? When Polybius goes over that other path towards mob rule, he makes no mention of those two principles. That does not mean, however, that his account of democracy’s change into ochlocracy cannot shed light on that second process.Footnote 59 Two reasons invite us to read the two passages together.
First, Polybius targets similar phenomena in both: the desire to rule (τὸ ϕιλαρχϵῖν at 6.9.6, ϕιλαρχία at 6.57.6) and the desire for wealth (ἐσθίϵιν τὰ ἀλλότρια at 6.9.8, πλϵονϵξία at 6.57.7).Footnote 60 There is, to be sure, an important difference: in the first passage, it is only leaders who host immoderate ambitions; in the second, excessive ambition characterizes both the leaders and the people who, as a political agent, refuse to share power with others, whether king-like figures (consuls at Rome, kings in Sparta) or aristocratic bodies (the Roman Senate, the Spartan γϵρουσία). In the second account (the balanced regime’s fall into ochlocracy), the people’s desire for wealth combines with their desire for power to make them claim to ‘have the upper hand in all domains’ (6.57.8).
It remains the case that the leaders’ excessive ambition (ϕιλαρχία), which ‘first-generation’ democratic ethos used to screen through its attachment to ἰσηγορία and παρρησία, is mentioned by Polybius as a possible factor of the birth of popular lust for power in a balanced regime as well.Footnote 61 Polybius’ historical narrative is here in unison: it singles out the responsibility of Roman magistrates, first and foremost Gaius Flaminius (trib. pleb. 232; cos. 217) for ‘originating the degradation of Roman political morality’ through ‘demagogy’.Footnote 62 Yet Polybius characterizes Flaminius by his jealousy vis-à-vis other Roman leaders (3.80.4).Footnote 63
Second, we have reasons to think that the democratic ethos based on attachment to ἰσηγορία and παρρησία is, for Polybius, present in the balanced regime as well. Lycurgan Sparta enjoyed political freedom (ἐλϵυθϵρία), yet ἰσηγορία and παρρησία are closely associated with freedom in Polybius’ mind.Footnote 64 Following a suggestion of Claude Nicolet, we can also locate some amount of ἰσηγορία and παρρησία in the Roman state, especially in the role of the tribunes of the plebs as spokesmen of the people.Footnote 65 In Polybius’ account of the Roman constitution, the role of the tribunes of the plebs is to ‘do what the people see fit’, to ‘guess their will’ and to promote it (6.16.5). The tribunate of the plebs was an institution bitterly fought by Rome’s short-lived oligarchy, the second decemuiri (450–449);Footnote 66 its restoration marked the end of the decemuiri.Footnote 67 Yet the fall of the decemuiri represents, for Polybius, the beginning of the Roman balanced regime.Footnote 68 The democratic ethos he sees as following upon the fall of oligarchic regimes may very well have, at that time, penetrated Rome—at least its popular element.Footnote 69
If ἰσηγορία and παρρησία are present in the balanced regime—at least in its democratic element—what role do they play in its fall? Polybius insists that fear (ϕόβος, δέος) keeps each of the balanced regime’s constituent parts from overstepping its boundaries, thus ensuring the regime’s longevity (6.10.8, 6.18.8). Fear hinders any attempt at self-assertion from a part against the others. But it also instils, in each of them, a consciousness of vulnerability—of the same kind that, in the anacyclôsis scheme, bound together ‘post-revolutionary’ rulers (aristocrats and democrats respectively) and committed them to equal rights for each other. In democracy, we recall, it is this feeling of vulnerability that bound the people to the values of ἰσηγορία and παρρησία.
Polybius indicates that, when the balanced regime reaches hegemony and prosperity, feelings of vulnerability weaken (6.57.5). This weakening brings, with it, the fading of popular (in the case of Rome, plebeian) commitment to ἰσηγορία and παρρησία. Nothing now prevents the tribunes of the plebs from engaging in limitless political competition and from flattering the people; nothing prevents the people from rejecting such fawning.Footnote 70 The disappearance of the commitment to ἰσηγορία and παρρησία in the Roman plebs and its leaders is a step in the fall of the balanced regime into ochlocracy.Footnote 71 To be clear, ἰσηγορία and παρρησία are not as foundational for Polybian democracy as they are for the balanced regime;Footnote 72 rather, the commitment to ἰσηγορία and παρρησία in the balanced regime—at least in its democratic element—can delay its downfall into ochlocracy.Footnote 73
Commitment to ἰσηγορία and παρρησία, therefore, yields three great political goods for Polybius. It puts political relationships on the proper normative ground; it favours a free exchange of reasons; it keeps away immoderate ambition. For Polybius, that commitment is weakened by two phenomena: imperial hegemony, the natural result of the balanced regime’s superiority over others; and forgetting. The first cannot be avoided, it can only be postponed by a continuous practice of speaking on the part of the hegemony’s allies—as Philopoemen, Lycortas and Polybius themselves admit.Footnote 74 As to forgetting, what does Polybius think can be done against it? Much: it is, after all, the historian’s task to fight against it.
FIGHTING AGAINST HABITUATION AND FORGETTING: HISTORY AS A REMINDER OF FREEDOM’S PRICE
In Polybius, democratic commitment to ἰσηγορία and παρρησία seems to be short-lived. Finding a cure to that disappearance requires getting clear on its causes. When democratic citizens believe that they cannot lose their own right to speak freely, they become less committed to defending that of others. It behoves the historian to remind them that ἰσηγορία and παρρησία are more rare than democratic habits have made them think.Footnote 75 This might not definitely safeguard democracy against decay, but it can at least postpone the regime’s fall into ochlocracy.Footnote 76
The lack of commitment of ‘second-generation’ democrats for ἰσηγορία and παρρησία illustrates a wider law of Polybian psychology: the human tendency towards excessive optimism. Polybius is explicit: humans usually give more thought to what they will do once they achieve success than to how they should react were they to fail.Footnote 77 In other words, they give a much greater subjective probability to success than to failure. Only exceptional characters, such as Scipio Africanus, resist that temptation and keep cool even after stunning success (11.24a.1–2).
Excessive optimism gives itself free rein, Polybius thinks, unless ordinary human beings are kept in a state of constant tension (11.25.6–7). Failing that climate of danger, they tend to exaggerate the results of their past successes, downplay the difficulty of their situation, and give free rein to their tendency toward self-aggrandizement. Examples of both attitudes abound throughout the Histories.
Some Polybian characters are ‘easy-goers’, who think themselves safe too soon and relax prematurely and excessively.Footnote 78 The Histories also present us with a second group, the ‘inexperienced’, who make too little of the failures of those occupying a situation closely similar to theirs (2.21.2–3). They illustrate another law of Polybian psychology: ‘men are inclined to take good care of what they have themselves obtained, but to be wasteful with what has been given to them.’Footnote 79 Often, in Polybius, sons are more self-confident than their fathers, whose industriousness and carefulness brought a success that corrupts the next generation.Footnote 80
Thus, for Polybius, human beings have an ingrained tendency to excessive self-confidence, which leads them to unleash their desire for self-aggrandizement in situations where they feel secure. And since human beings are motivated to guarantee for others what they are afraid of losing (6.6.5), excessively self-confident individuals feel less attached to communal rights. This forms the psychological underpinning of the tepidity of second-generation democrats towards ἰσηγορία and παρρησία. Because, on account of habituation (τὸ σύνηθϵς, 6.9.5), they entertain no thought of losing one day their equal right to free speech, they are less committed to the enjoyment, by others, of ἰσηγορία and παρρησία. The ‘republican’ ethos that animated their grandfathers and fathers grows dimmer and dimmer in their souls. Yet history can play a role in dishabituating, so to speak, readers who live in a democratic or balanced regime from ἰσηγορία and παρρησία.
There are, in Polybius, three ways of fighting excessive optimism. The first is fear (ϕόβος, δέος). In the balanced regime, each constituent power is maintained in its proper bounds by fear of the two others.Footnote 81 In the Roman army, it is the threat of punishment that prevents soldiers from forgetting orders.Footnote 82 But, as we saw, the balanced regime is liable to decay; geopolitical domination and prosperity weaken the force of fear; other means need to be found.
A second means is economic limitation. Polybius is clear that coldness towards ἰσηγορία and παρρησία primarily affects the wealthy (6.9.5). Their fortune reduces to a minimum their feelings of vulnerability and, hence, their motivation to maintaining norms of ‘reciprocal benefaction’. Polybius is usually read as a defender of landed elites and a staunch opponent of redistribution.Footnote 83 But his admiration for the Lycurgan constitution shows his (surely not full-throated) approval of the limitation of economic inequalities (6.48.3).
The third means concerns history as a literary genre. Ryan Balot has shown that Polybius resorts to historical figures to prevent his readers from falling into excessive self-confidence. Polybius targets ‘the self-aggrandizement of those with abundant resources, unassailable security, and no experience of difficulty’ both in Book 6 and in his narrative.Footnote 84 As Balot puts it, ‘Polybius shaped his narrative to emphasize that any hopes for stability in international affairs, and for the just and noble use of hegemonic power, lay in the cultivation of sentiments based on our shared humanity and on the thoughtful recognition of our shared vulnerability to suffering.’Footnote 85
Polybius gives indications that he shares the words of caution delivered by Lucius Aemilius Paullus to his council after his victory over Perseus, king of Macedon, at Pydna in 168:
They should not boast excessively in case of success, nor conceive any arrogant or irreversible project, nor trust at all present prosperity. But especially when one achieves success in private or public life, then—he said—one should keep in mind the opposite fate. In that way one could keep self-control—if only with great effort. Such is the difference between the stupid and the intelligent: whereas the first learn from their own sufferings, the latter learn from those of others.Footnote 86
Polybius voices exactly the same judgement when narrating the fall into tyranny of the democratic regime of Kios in 203:
The people of Kios fell into that disarray not on account of Fortune or of the injustice of their neighbours but because of their thoughtlessness and of their bad political principles. They encouraged the worst among them to become prominent in the city, punished their opponents in order to divide up the goods of their fellow citizens, and fell willingly—so to speak—into misfortunes men fall into, seeing very well that they do, but without—I do not know how—being able to shake themselves out of their mindlessness or have a moment of mistrust, as beasts devoid of reason at least do. For beasts, not only if they have themselves been brought into distress by baits or nets, but also if they see some other incur such risk, are not easily led into similar traps. They rather consider with suspicion the whole place and mistrust all appearances. Human beings, by contrast, do hear of cities utterly destroyed in the way Kios was, or directly witness such events: none the less, when one flatters them with the hope of enriching themselves at others’ expense, they throw themselves inconsiderately headlong upon the bait, even if they know perfectly well that none of those who eat such baits survives, and that all agree that such policies bring disaster.Footnote 87
Polybius may be read here as expressing discouragement: men cannot be taught caution. Characters of the Histories who try to use the past to guard the people from falling into well-recorded traps are not safely protected against failure.Footnote 88 But the project of the Histories is clearly to teach its readers to be careful. Concluding his narration of Achaius’ death after he was entrapped by a Cretan agent of Antiochus, Polybius states:
[Achaius] left for posterity an example that is doubly instructive: first, he showed that we should not trust anyone carelessly; second, that, being men, we should be on the lookout for any possibility.Footnote 89
In the historiographic part of his work (Book 12), Polybius is explicit: ‘past events are fit to make us attentive to the future.’Footnote 90 Personal experience is the best method of learning,Footnote 91 but history provides another path:
Two methods of improvement are at the disposal of human beings: their own failures, or those of others. Though learning from one’s misfortunes is more efficient, learning through that of others is less painful. Therefore, the first should never be embraced willingly, since it corrects one’s path at the cost of great troubles and dangers, and the second should always be sought, since it allows to glimpse the better path without harm.Footnote 92
If history has such a purpose, then it can play a role in reminding readers of real political possibilities.Footnote 93 There are three main ways for it to do so.
The first two have to do with Polybius’ psychology of justice. Recall that two conditions are key to the development of a notion of ‘reciprocal benefaction’: a feeling of vulnerability and the witnessing of injustices. History can vicariously provide both.
There is, first, history’s capacity to convey its readers the fragility of their situation. In general, Polybius celebrates leaders who show awareness that human affairs are never solid.Footnote 94 Members of a democratic regime such as Achaea—or of a balanced regime such as Rome—can learn in the Histories that ἰσηγορία and παρρησία should never be taken for granted. Polybius’ theoretical account, in Book 6, presents this degeneration as a natural tendency, which should already worry any reader committed (if dimly) to those principles. Polybius’ narrative is also disquieting: like Kios, a democracy has an innate tendency to degenerate into ochlocracy, and a balanced regime, such as Sparta or Carthage, is exposed to the same fate. External causes can also play out and replace democracy with tyranny (2.41.5–10) or with another regime.
A reader who is a citizen of a democratic or balanced regime should, upon reading such theoretical or historical stories of decline, perceive the vulnerability of his own situation. This would be enough to rekindle his commitment to ἰσηγορία and παρρησία in his community—in other words, his commitment to the democratic form of ‘reciprocal benefaction’, where the give-and-take of arguments steers the community on the right path.
By instilling in his readers the sense that their enjoyment of ἰσηγορία and παρρησία is far from secure, Polybius intends to put them in the state of fear (δέος) which the balanced regime or a good penal system is supposed to create. That fear of losing such great political goods should, laws of Polybian psychology obtaining, strengthen their commitment to those two values, guard them against excessive political ambition, and make them more prone to react, in their own political communities, to violations of the equal right to speak freely.
But Polybius’ stories of loss of ἰσηγορία and παρρησία also give the other condition for the reinforcement of one’s sense of reciprocity—namely, the presentation of injustice. The citizen of a democratic or balanced regime, committed as such to ἰσηγορία and παρρησία, should feel indignation upon reading of cities deprived of such rights. Such indignation should reinforce his commitment to those principles.
A feeling of vulnerability prepares the reader to react strongly to injustices he will witness in his own regime; and Polybius’ histories of excessive ambition in democratic or balanced regimes additionally provide examples of injustice. The second condition for the reinforcement of one’s sense of justice is fulfilled. The reader’s commitment to the give-and-take of democratic debate is thereby reinforced.
The second way for history to protect readers against forgetting the value of ἰσηγορία and παρρησία is its capacity of re-enacting the past. As Daniel Moore has shown, Polybius gives great importance to Roman funeral practices because they re-enact, for the audience, the great deeds of the ancestors.Footnote 95 Polybius’ Histories do the same, to some extent:Footnote 96 when narrating the beginning of Aratus’ career, for instance, Polybius mentions the ‘great danger’ that the Macedonian garrison at Acrocorinth imposed on the Greeks (2.43.4). It is from that threat that Aratus freed the Greeks. Putting before the eyes his exploits makes the reader share in both the injustice of Macedonian control of mainland Greece and the vulnerability felt by the Greeks of the time. Slightly earlier, Polybius has indicated that Aratus was motivated in his enterprise by his love of the Achaean political principles (2.43.3), among which ἰσηγορία and παρρησία take pride of place (2.42.3; cf. 2.38.6). Like the young Roman hearing of the great deeds of the maiores, an Achaean reader of Polybius’ Aratus narrative should be able to relive the revolution that brought freedom back to Achaea.
Third and last is Polybius’ holding-up of role models of ἰσηγορία and παρρησία as heroes of the Histories. This use of memory mobilizes the other channel of human moral development detailed by Polybius in Book 6. Next to his account of the birth of justice in the human mind, Polybius tells of the coming into being of ideas of what is ‘honourable and shameful’ (καλὸν καὶ αἰσχρόν, 6.6.9). Such ideas arise when members of a community see one of them ‘defend the group against perils’ (ἐν τοῖς δϵινοῖς, 6.6.8). Such behaviour is thought by the group to be honourable. Polybius’ insistence on Achaean statesmen committed to—and practising—open and frank debate in difficult political circumstances (in this case growing Roman exigences and susceptibility) is in part meant to give the reader a sense of their bravery and to make him respond favourably to the democratic risks they took.
These three historical tools—namely, inducing in the readers a feeling of vulnerability as well as a sentiment of injustice when reading of deprivations of the equal right to speak freely; representing to them past struggles for free speech; and showcasing heroic defences of ἰσηγορία and παρρησία—reveal Polybius’ originality among ancient reflections on freedom. Polybius was no philosopher—he never claimed to be one—and thought that narrative, more than arguments, motivates one to uphold the best political principles. In particular, citizens of regimes where ἰσηγορία and παρρησία are present could, by reading his work, be reminded of their worth. History is meant to shake them from their democratic slumber.
