of mediator between his conquered countrymen and the Romans. He was selected by the victors for the painful but honourable task of settling the internal affairs of the Greek states after the conquest, and of accommodating their local institutions to the regulations which their new masters had ordained. Throughout an eventful and chequered life, he appears as a statesman of strict integrity and of sound practical intelligence. While there was yet a hope for the freedom of Greece, he strove hard to enable her to tread safely in the slippery path to which she was called. When the last chance was absolutely and irretrievably lost, he did not seek to lead a forlorn hope or to bury himself beneath the ruins of his country, but set himself hard to work to make the subjection of the Greeks as mild and as tolerable as possible, and he urged upon them both by precept and example submission to the inevitable. To Polybius, as a Greek statesman, the breaking up of the Achæan League, and the subjection of every Greek state to Rome, was inexpressibly bitter. Sometimes, though very seldom, the suppressed sorrow finds a pathetic utterance. After being present in company with his friend Scipio at the destruction of Carthage, Polybius hurried back to his native land in time to look on the yet smoking ruins of Corinth, and to see the Roman soldiers playing dice on the choicest pictures of Greece. The comparison which rose before his mind is expressed in the following passage:

'Though the fate of Carthage might seem to be the greatest of all possible calamities, yet one may well regard that which then befel Greece as not less but even in some respects greater. For the former their end is their plea with posterity; but the latter have left not so much as a plausible excuse for those who would fain plead their cause. The Carthaginians at the moment of their fall perished from off the face of the earth, and were thenceforth insensible of their misfortunes; but the Greeks look on at their own calamities, and hand down their losses as an inheritance to their children's children; and just as we count those who live on under torture more wretched than those who expire under their torments, so we should esteem the fate of the Greeks yet more pitiable than that which befel the Carthaginians.'*

But Polybius feels that it is not for him to waste time over vain regrets for the past. He will strive to record it faithfully for a warning, and then devote his powers to making the best of any materials for well-being, which have survived the general wreck.

At the time of these disasters it was my part, as a Greek for the Greeks, to give them my aid in all ways, defending them, palliating

Polyb. XXXVIII. 1 a.

their faults, deprecating the anger of the conquerors; and this I did then and there with all sincerity. But I here record for posterity the memory of the events, not seeking to please for the moment the ears of my readers, but to edify their minds and save them from committing the same faults again. And so I leave this subject.'*

The writings of Polybius, like his life, have little in them of splendid or heroic, but much patient research, much clear intelligent appreciation, and above all unswerving honesty and truthfulness. Never did a writer strive more earnestly to purge his mind from every prejudice and from every hallucination, and to look with unclouded eyes on actual realities. He bends all the powers of his mind to lay before his readers the exact facts of his time, pleasant or disagreeable, without exaggeration and without extenuation.

In the task before us it is much to have the guidance of an author who has so well conceived the ideal at which a historian should aim. We find in him ample materials for reconstructing the image of the times in which he lived and of which he wrote, materials which can be arranged in their true perspective by aid of the light which subsequent events throw on the main lines of the picture. Much in ancient history which was hidden from the wisest of contemporary observers cannot but now be clear. With the result to inform us, we can distinguish the essential from the accidental, the growing force from the declining, the silent tendency from the obvious and external manifestation: institutions and practices, still in their embryo stage, appear to us, as we look back on them, already invested with the characteristics of their developed forms: often we can correct the judgment of the contemporary writer, often we can catch the true significance of that which he casually records. There is ample room within these limits for the labours of modern students, but the value of their work must in every case depend on the fulness and trustworthiness of their ancient authorities. For the period with which we propose to deal, almost our sole sources of information are Polybius himself and Livy, who draws mainly from Polybius. Of the forty books, in which our author originally composed his history, five and a half remain entire, and the rest are known to us by the copious and well-chosen extracts of Byzantine compilers. The work as pre

served is sufficient to make the age with which it deals more intimately accessible to us than any other period of ancient history, excepting only the time of Thucydides and Aristophanes, and the time of Cicero. While we follow Polybius, we feel that we are on safe ground. There is no room here for

* XXXVIII. 1 d.

that

that vexatious though often necessary form of historical criticism, which has to occupy itself with weighing and testing authorities, subject always to the chance of having its verdict set aside by the next generation of scholars. Polybius may not only be followed implicitly in matters of fact, but his wide and accurate knowledge of men enabled him to present us with a faithful picture of the thoughts and the feelings, the fears and the hopes, the social conditions and the moral aspects, of the contemporary world. The very diffuseness and love of digression, which spoil the artistic beauty of his history, open out rich veins of information, and provide abundant material of all kinds for those who would write after him.

Such is a short sketch of the author, from whose pages we learn the history of the Roman conquest. The passages which we shall have occasion to quote in the sequel will enable our readers to judge of the accuracy of its main features. In the meantime we will proceed with our attempt to look through the eyes of Polybius on the chief actors in the great drama which was played out before him.

The Greece, with which the Romans came in contact some two hundred years before the birth of Christ, had for its central point of interest the Achæan League. The task of building up a united Hellas was now for the first time undertaken by a power which had for its main object, not its own domination, as was the case with Athens and Sparta, but freedom and equality for all. The Achæans had long enjoyed a reputation for fairness and probity, which made them convenient mediators whenever their more powerful neighbours wished to settle their disputes by arbitration rather than by war. Thus they arranged

the terms of peace between Thebes and Sparta after the battle of Leuctra, and in still earlier times we find the mutual disagreements of the Greek cities of Italy referred to their decision.† After the shock of the Macedonian conquest, the Achæans, about the year B.C. 234, began to restore the fabric of their old constitution. The original union of a few of the northern towns formed a centre round which the neighbouring states, as they succeeded in getting rid of the tyrants imposed by Macedonian influence, naturally grouped themselves.

'How came it,' Polybius asks,§ that almost all the greatest states of Peloponnesus were willing to share in the federation and to adopt the name of this, the most insignificant of the tribes of Greece?

The reason, to my mind, is this. Liberty and free speech, and the fabric and principles of a true democracy are nowhere to be found in a purer form than among the Achæans. This policy found some

* II. 37.

† II. 39.

+ II. 41.

§ II. 38.

ready

ready adherents among the Peloponnesians; it brought many others. over to its side by persuasion and argument; and where it had to use force, it soon won the acquiescence of those who had been coerced. For by retaining no exclusive privileges for the original members, and communicating every right to all who were taken into the Union, the Achæans soon gained their end with the assistance of two most powerful allies, Equity and Kindliness. This policy, then, is to be esteemed the origin and cause of the concord of the Peloponnesians, and of the prosperity which they now enjoy.' *

The conduct of the Achæans amply justifies their historian in claiming for them whatever support equity and kindliness could give. Even towards the despots whom they deposed, and towards towns which revolted and were reduced by force of arms, they never failed to display a spirit of moderation and humanity. But Polybius lived to see a result of their policy sadly different from that which he still ventured to proclaim when he wrote this passage.

The Achæans never had a fair chance of working out the great problem of Hellenic unity. They had not time allowed them to learn the lessons of government, to correct their errors, or to retrieve their misadventures. They were within the influence of the overpowering attractive force of Rome, and the inexorable process of events drew them ever towards the goal of complete subjection. Polybius utters in one passage † a thought which must have been often present to his mind, the want of reality, namely, in the politics of Greece in view of the master preparing for all in the West. The remark is put into the mouth of an Ætolian envoy, as an argument for internal peace, while the great struggle of the Second Punic War is passing through its crisis.

'For if once we wait till the clouds that now appear on the western horizon settle over Greece, my foreboding is that we shall all of us find our truces and our wars and all these child's games, which we now play with one another, so rudely cut short, that our first prayer to the gods should be, that we may still retain the power to make war and peace with each other when we please, and be able to decide our own quarrels among ourselves.'

But even apart from this external obstacle, it may be doubted whether the method pursued by the Achæans, however natural and proper it may seem to modern readers, was well adapted to the requirements of ancient politics. The Achæan League did not affect to interfere with the self-government of each separate

It is obvious that this second book was published before the disastrous events of the Roman conquest. † V. 104.

state,

state, but established a federal nationality with common magistrates and council, and a general assembly in which all shared. The experience of Switzerland and of the United States of America proves that the growth of a sentiment of national patriotism in the midst of a federation may in time override the attachment of the citizen to his individual state, and produce a real and effective unity.* But in ancient Greece the separatist influences were far stronger than in any of the modern instances. The special facts recorded by Polybius go far to contradict the optimistic generalities of his description of the unity of Peloponnesus. To induce Spartans, Messenians, and Argives, to renounce their mutual jealousies and regard each other as fellow-countrymen, more was required than participation in so cheaply won, so shallow, and so indefinite a thing as a Federal Union. Athens and Sparta, with their subject allies, were really in a far more favourable position for founding a Greek nation, than the Achæans with their agglomeration of equal states. If Athens, while holding fast to her central unity and to the dignity of Athenian citizenship as a position of power and privilege amongst her subjects, had nevertheless been wise enough to grant this privilege to gradually widening circles of favoured individuals and communities, it is possible that her Empire might have consolidated itself into a nation. But both Athens and Sparta 'spurned the conquered as aliens';† their citizenship was a barrier which no subject might pass; and so their day of power was short, and barren of political fruit. The Achæans failed, because they had no such prize to offer. Their citizenship was a thing held cheaply, freely given for the asking, or even pressed on unwilling populations, as German nationality is indiscriminately pressed on the acceptance of Poles and Alsatians, or British freedom on the Irish. It was left to Rome, who haughtily repelled the claim of the Latins to federal equality, and insisted first of all on her own absolute supremacy, to solve the problem by setting up a citizenship of privilege as the goal to which every subject might aspire, but not without toil and effort. To be a Roman, free from subjection to the axe and the rod, became the object of ambition to all civilized men, and in the citizenship thus proposed was found the solvent before which all the barriers of mutual exclusiveness went down.‡

The difficulties of the Achæans were intensified by the pecu

These examples may justify us in hoping for a similar unity in the confederated colonies of the Canadian Dominion and in South Africa.

Tacitus, Ann.' xi. 24. Quid aliud exitio Lacedæmoniensibus et Atheniensibus fuit, quanquam armis pollerent, nisi quod victos pro alienigenis arcebant?" See below, p. 226.

liarities