Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/429

Rh POLYBIUS 413 Second Punic War, but the sketch of early Roman history in book i., and of the early treaties between Rome and Carthage in iii. 22 sq. Among the many defects which he censures in previous historians, not the least serious in his eyes are their inattention to the political and geographical surroundings of the history (ii. 16 ; iii. 36), and their neglect duly to set forth the causes of events (iii. 6). Polybius is equally explicit as regards the personal qualifications necessary for a good historian, and in this respect too his practice is in close agreement with his theory. He has a profound distrust of closet students and a profound belief in the value of a personal knowledge of affairs. Without such experience a writer will, he says, be guilty of endless blunders and omissions, and will inevitably distort the true relations and importance of events. History, he asserts, will not be satisfactorily written until either men of affairs undertake to write it, not as a piece of bye-work but as an honourable and necessary task, or until intending historians realize that some actual experience of affairs is indispensable (xii. 28). Such ex perience would have saved accomplished and fluent Greek writers like Timreus from many of their blunders (xii. 25a), but the short comings of Roman soldiers and senators like Q. Fabius Pictor show that it is not enough by itself. Equally indispensable is careful painstaking research. All available evidence must be collected, thoroughly sifted, soberly weighed, and, lastly, the historian must be animated by a sincere love of truth and a calm impartiality. What follows where any or all of these conditions and qualifica tions are absent Polybius illustrates abundantly in his frequent and scathing criticisms on previous writers. In the case of Timaeus, against whom he seems to cherish a peculiar animosity, nearly all that remains of book xii. is devoted to an exposition of his short comings. Q. Fabius Pictor and Philinus are charged both with ignorance of important facts and with partiality (i. 14 ; iii. 9), while in the second book Phylarchus s account of the war between the Achtean league and Cleomenes of Sparta is mercilessly dissected. It is not possible here to discuss the question whether Polybius has been just to his predecessors ; it is more important to consider how far he himself comes up to the standard by which he has tried others. In his personal acquaintance with affairs, in the variety of his experience, and in his opportunities for forming a correct judgment on events he is without a rival among ancient historians. A great part of the period of which he treats fell within his own lifetime (iv. 2). He may just have remembered the battle of Cynoscephalpe (197). He must have been sixteen or seventeen years old at least when the power of Antiochus was broken at .Magnesia (189), while of the events from 168-146 he was, as he tells us (iii. 4), not only an eye-witness but a prominent actor in them all. As the son of Lycortas he lived from his early youth in immediate contact with the foremost statesmen of the Pelopon nesus, while between 181 and 168 he was himself actively engaged in the military and political affairs of the Achaean league. The period of his exile in Rome served to add largely to his stores of experience : lie was able to study at close quarters the working of the Roman constitution, and the peculiarities of the Roman temperament ; he made the acquaintance of Roman senators, and became the intimate friend of the greatest Roman of the day. Lastly, he was able to survey with his own eyes the field on which the great struggle between Rome and Hannibal was fought out. He left Eome only to witness the crowning triumph of Roman arms in Africa, and to gain a practical acquaintance with Roman methods of government by assisting in the settlement of his own beloved Achaia. When, in 146, his public life closed, he completed his preparation of himself for his great work by labori ous investigations of archives and monuments, and by a careful personal examination of historical sites and scenes. If to all this we add that he was deeply read in the learning of his day (/Elian, Tact, i., avyp irovua.0ris), above all in the writings of earlier historians, we must confess that, as at once scholar, states man, soldier, and man of the world, he was above all others fitted to write the history of the age of transition in which he lived. Of Polybius s anxiety to get at the truth no better proof can be given than his conscientious investigation of original documents and monuments, and his careful study of geography and topography both of them points in which his predecessors, as well as his suc cessor Livy, conspicuously failed. Polybius is careful constantly to remind us that he writes for those who are &amp;lt;ptofj.a6eis, lovers of knowledge, with whom truth is the first consideration. He closely studied the bronze tablets in Rome on which were inscribed the early treaties concluded between Romans and Carthaginians (see for these Rhein. Mus., 32, 614; iii. 22-26). He quotes the actual language of the treaty which ended the First Punic War (i. 62), and of that between Hannibal and Philip of Macedon vvii. 9). In xvi. 15 he refers to a document which he had person ally inspected in the archives at Rhodes, and in iii. 33 to the monument on the Lacinian promontory, recording the number of Hannibal s forces. According to Dionysius, i. 17, he got his date for the foundation of Rome from a tablet in the pontifical archives. As instances of his careful attention to geography and topography we have not only the fact of his widely extended travels, from the African coast and the Pillars of Hercules in the west to the Euxine and the coasts of Asia Minor in the east, but also the geographical and topographical studies scattered throughout his history, such as the description of Sicily (i. 42), of Cisalpine Gaul (ii. 14), and of the Euxine (iv. 10), the discussion of Hannibal s route over the Alps, and the graphic picture of the scene of the battle of Lake Trasimene. Lastly, to judge from its extant fragments, book xxxiv. seems to have been actually a treatise on geography in general. Next to the duty of original research, Polybius ranks that of impartiality. Some amount of bias in favour of one s own country may, he thinks, be pardoned as natural (xvi. 14) ; but it must not be gratified at the expense of truth. It is unpardonable, he says, for the historian to set anything whatever above the truth. And on the whole Polybius must be allowed here again to have practised what he preached. It is true that his own sympathies and antipathies are not entirely concealed. His affection for and pride in Arcadia appear in more than one passage (iv. 20, 21), as also does his dislike of the ^Eolians (ii. 45; iv. 3, 16). His treatment of Aratus and Philopcemen, the heroes of the Achsan league, and of Cleomenes of Sparta, its most constant enemy, is perhaps open to severer criticism it is at any rate certain that Cleomenes does not receive full justice at his hands. Similarly his views of Rome and the Romans may have been influenced by his firm belief in the necessity of accepting the Roman supremacy as inevitable, and by his intimacy with Scipio, the head of the great patrician house of the Cornelii. He has evidently a deep admira tion for the great republic, for her well-balanced constitution, for her military system, and for the character of her citizens. He shares too the dislike of the Roman aristocracy for such men of the people as Flaminius (ii. 21) and Varro (iii. 116). But, just as his patriotism does not blind him to the faults and follies of his countrymen (xxxviii. 4, 5, 6), so he does not scruple to criticize Rome. He notices the incipient degeneracy of Rome after 146 (xviii. 35). He endeavours to hold the balance evenly between Rome and Carthage ; he strongly condemns the Roman occupation of Sardinia as a breach of faith (iii. 28, 31) ; and he does full justice to the splendid generalship of Hannibal. Moreover, whether his liking for Rome was excessive or not, there can be no doubt that he has sketched the Roman character in a masterly fashion. Their ambition, their invincible confidence in themselves, their dogged courage which made them more dangerous the harder they were pressed, and their devotion to the state are all clearly brought out. Nor does he show less appreciation of their practical sagacity, their readiness to learn from other peoples, their quickness in adapting their tactics both in war and diplomacy to changing circumstances, and their mastery of the art of ruling. His interest in the study of character and his skill in its delinea tion are everywhere noticeable. He believes, indeed, in an over ruling Fortune, which guides the course of events. It is Fortune which has fashioned anew the face of the world in his own time (iv. 2), which has brought the whole civilized world into subjection to Rome (i. 4); and the Roman empire itself is the most marvellous of her works (viii. 4). But under Fortune not only political and geographical conditions but the characters and temperaments of nations and individuals play their part. Fortune selects the best instruments for her purposes. The Romans had been fitted by their previous struggles for the conquest of the world (i. 63) ; they were chosen to punish the treachery of Philip of Macedon (xv. 4) ; and the greatest of them, Scipio himself, Polybius regards as the especial favourite of fortune (xxxii. 15; x. 5). The praise which the matter of Polybius s history deserves cannot be extended to its form, and in this respect he contrasts sharply with Livy, whose consummate skill as a narrator has given him a popularity which has been denied to Polybius. Some of the most serious defects which spoil Polybius s history as a work of art are due to an over-rigid adherence to those views of the nature of the task before him which have been described above. His laudable desire to be comprehensive, and to present a picture of the whole political situation at each important moment, is fatal to the con tinuity of his narrative. The reader is hurried hither and thither from one part of the field to another in a manner at once wearisome and confusing. Thus the thrilling story of the Second Punic Var is broken in upon by digressions on the contemporary affairs in Greece and in Asia. More serious, however, than this excessive love of synchronism is Polybius s almost pedantic anxiety to edify and to instruct. For grace and elegance of composition, and for the artistic presentation of events, he has a hardly concealed con tempt. Hence a general and almost studied carelessness of effect, which mars his whole work. On the other hand he is never weary of preaching. His favourite theories of the nature and aims of history, of the distinction between the universal and special histories, of the duties of an historian, sound as most of them are in themselves, are enforced again and again at undue length and with wearisome iteration. No opportunity is lost of pointing out the lesson to be learnt from the events described, and more than once the reader is irritated, and the effect of a graphic picture is spoilt, by obtrusive moralizing. Nor, lastly, is Polybius s style itself such as to compen-