There has been something of a boom in Polybian studies of late. The last decade has seen, to mention only a selection, two introductions to the historian, one in English (B. McGing, 2010), the other in German (B. Dreyer, 2011), the completion of a multi-volume Italian translation and commentary by M. Mari, J. Thornton and D. Musti, a new edition of the Loeb translation, several conferences with their resulting volumes, and C. Champion's innovative study of the role of ethnicity and culture in the Histories. Now B. has produced a welcome monograph on the central theme of Polybius' history.
Polybius' attitude to Rome has always been the subject of controversy, a situation not helped by the loss of around two-thirds of his history of the western power's progress to Mediterranean supremacy. While some have seen him as critical of Rome, others have berated him as a traitor and collaborator. B. himself presents a Polybius who is broadly favourable to Rome while at the same time maintaining a certain intellectual distance. The book opens with a review of various modern treatments of Polybius' attitude to Rome and Roman imperialism. It is a rather dense, scholar-by-scholar survey, when a more synthetic analysis might have brought the main themes of earlier scholarship out more clearly. None the less it leaves the reader in no doubt about the degree of diversity and disagreement that exists among scholars of Polybius.
The book is divided into two parts, the first on the attitude of Hellenistic intellectuals to imperial rule, the second on Polybius himself. The aim of Part 1 is to explore Polybius' intellectual milieu and show that ‘imperialism’ was largely treated by his contemporaries or near contemporaries as an acceptable, even admirable, objective for a state to pursue. In three successive chapters there are useful discussions (again often surveys) of attitudes to imperialism and to Rome in philosophers, poets and prophetic writings and finally in historians. B. argues that the majority of these writers and thinkers accepted imperialism as a fact of international relations. Much of what he says is persuasive but sometimes I feel that B. does make the shift from acceptance (which does not involve a positive judgement) to admiration (which does) rather too readily. Furthermore, talk of ‘imperialism’ tends to impute to these writers a more coherent and deliberate conceptualisation of what was happening than they were likely to have held in practice. When, for instance, the poets Polystratus and Antipater composed verses on Mummius' destruction of Corinth, they may not have had an opinion on imperialism, Roman or otherwise.
After outlining the intellectual context in which Polybius should be understood, B. moves on in Part 2 to Polybius himself. Here he argues that the historian shared this admiring view of imperial rule and was favourably impressed by Rome, believing its rule to be moderate and beneficent. Expansion when carried out in the right way was acceptable and for the most part Roman conduct met with Polybius' approval. B. acknowledges that Rome was not free from criticism in Polybius' text, but where (in Books 30–33 especially) Walbank had seen a cynical Polybius highlighting Rome's pursuit of self-interest at the expense of justice, B., influenced by J.-L. Ferrary and A. Eckstein, tends to play down the significance of criticism and rejects Walbank's suggestion of cynicism. Any criticism is seen as tempered by Polybius' readiness to impute blame or responsibility to the others apart from the Romans. B. is surely correct that Polybius' attitude to Rome is far from simple, but he might have paid more attention to the historian's own position in relation to Rome: how might Polybius' way of representing Rome have been shaped by his own subject status? This is partially addressed in the chapter on his actions in the service of Rome after his detention had ended, but much more could have been said, see for instance J. Thornton, ‘Polybius in Context: the Political Dimension of the Histories’ in B. Gibson and T. Harrison (edd.), Polybius and his World (2013), pp. 213–30. In the course of the book B. revisits and illuminates various much-discussed issues in Polybian scholarship, such as the Roman use of pretexts in the outbreak of war, Diodorus fragment 32.2 on the three stages of imperial rule, the Romans as barbarians, the role of Tyche, Pausanias 7.16.9 on democracy and the Roman settlement of Greece after 146.
B. argues that P. and his contemporaries had a generally positive view of imperialism; if they did not favour Rome, then they favoured another state, such as Carthage or Macedon. Certainly kings in particular were expected to make war on others, but at the same time a focus on texts specifically about conquest and imperialism can lead to too partial a picture. What is missing is the perspective of the polis, which may not have viewed the expansion of more powerful states with equanimity. A constant theme in Hellenistic politics, especially in civic decrees (which B. does not tend to exploit), is the desirability of freedom, something that always sat uneasily with the ambitions of the great powers, whether the kings or Rome. Polybius makes much of the Roman support for freedom in 196, while his hero Philopoemen observes that the peoples of Capua and Sicily have long been enslaved and laments that this will be the fate of Greece as well (Polyb. 24.13).
In some ways B. seems to present two Polybiuses. One is an admirer of imperialism and Roman imperialism in particular, the image that comes across most strongly in the book. But alongside him there is another Polybius, a realist who recognises that Roman rule has to be accepted because the Greeks are simply too weak and the Romans too powerful (cf. p. 130). There is something of a tension between these two, which is never fully resolved.
This is a stimulating volume with a strong argument, clearly and methodically laid out, supplemented by extensive endnotes that offer a comprehensive treatment of the scholarship and associated problems. It will be essential reading for anyone studying Polybius or the Roman conquest of the Greek East.
