Polybius: The Rise of the Roman Empire

After reading Thucydides, I was fascinating by the idea of contemporaneous historians; people writing histories of times they lived through, of events they had even participated in.

When hunting for another contemporaneous history, Polybius was the first choice that seemed to come up in my searches. Polybius was a Greek hostage of the Romans, of a peculiar sort with a seemingly wide amount of freedom during his captivity that allowed him access many high tiers of Roman society; he was an active in both Greek and Roman politics in some of the times he wrote of in his history.

Despite the seeming alignment with what I was looking for, when I tried to read Polybius last time, I bounced off of him, and ended up reading Herodotus instead.

On a vacation last summer, we were in a wonderful used bookshop, and I picked up a few classical histories. Plutarch, another Xenophon (haven’t read yet) and The Rise of the Roman Empire, which is a selection of a subset Polybius’ Histories) by F. W. Walbank, that uses Polybius’ discussions of Rome to chart its growth into the super power it became.

Through this edition, I was able to get through Polybius. It required some effort, but I am glad I did it.

A forewarning; This blog post is filled with far more long quotes than any other. This is partially because in many cases, Polybius makes his case far better than any restatement I could make, and partially because I now can scan text via my phone, so I didn’t have to type out the quotes by hand.

The History

Can any one be so indifferent or idle as not to care to know by what means, and under what kind of polity, almost the whole inhabited world was conquered and brought under the dominion of the single city of Rome , and that too within a period of not quite fifty-three years? Or who again can be so completely absorbed in other subjects of contemplation or study, as to think any of them superior in importance to the accurate understanding of an event for which the past affords no precedent. -Plb 1.1.

Polybius believed that it was important to trace cause and effect through history, and so his history covers an enormous amount of ground; however to keep it tractable, Walbank focuses The Rise of the Roman Empire on the parts of Polybius’ history that talk about Rome, it’s interaction with other nations, and the story of Carthage, as told via the Barca family of Hamilcar, Hasdrubal and Hannibal, however it also interweaves some of Polybius’ own philosophy of both politics and history.

Polybius viewed history as an important education for statesmen, and saw history as valuable only insofar as it provided true stories of decision making that provides either positive or negative lessons to readers. He also thought it was critical that people who wrote history understood, by experience, the politics they would document:

There is, however, another category of authors, who appear to be justified in undertaking the writing of history, but who in fact are just like the theoretical doctors. They haunt the libraries and become thoroughly versed in memoirs and records, and then convince themselves that they are properly equipped for the task; but while they may appear to outsiders to bring everything that is needed to the writing of political history, yet in my opinion they provide no more than a part. Certainly the, study of the memoirs of the past has its value for discovering what the ancients believed and the ideas which people formerly entertained about conditions, places, nations, states and events, and also for understanding he circumstances and eventualities with which each nation in earlier times had to deal. And certainly past events are relevant in making us pay attention to the future, provided that a writer inquires in each case into the facts as they actually occurred. But to persuade oneself, as Timaeus did, that the resources of documentary research alone can equip one to write an adequate history of recent events is naive beyond words. It is as though a man were to imagine that he was a capable painter, indeed a master of the art, merely by virtue of having looked at the works of the past. — Plb 12.25e

The narrative history was all new ground for me, covering the three Punic wars (though, the Third Punic War was not covered with much depth). Honestly, I found that Polybius did a good job of achieving exactly his goal set at the introduction: Explaining how the Romans came to rule the known world in a very short period of time.

One of the things I love about reading history is the way it reminds me that human institutions are fragile, and change is always just around the corner.

Below, I cover two small sections of the history I found interesting, sharing some block quotes.

The Cycle of History

One of the ideas that Polybius is famous for is his notion of the ‘Rotation of the Polities’. He sees political systems as following in a natural cycle of succession. In his analysis, there are six different forms of government (or constitutions):

1. Kingship
2. Tyranny
3. Aristocracy
4. Oligarchy
5. Democracy
6. Mob rule

Each pair of these are a ‘good’ and ‘bad’ version of the same thing:

The truth of what I have just said may be illustrated by the following arguments. We cannot say that every example of one-man rule is necessarily a kingship, but only those which are voluntarily accepted by their subjects, and which are governed by an appeal to reason rather than by fear or by force. Nor again can we say that every oligarchy is an aristocracy, but only those in which the power is exercised by the justest and wisest men, who have been selected on their merits. In the same way a state in which the mass of citizens is free to do whatever it pleases or takes into its head is not a democracy. But where it is both traditional and customary to reverence the gods, to care for our parents, to respect our elders, to obey the laws, and in such a community to ensure that the will of the majority prevails - this situation it is proper to describe as democracy. — Plb 6.4

From natural beginnings, political systems transition, Kingship to Tyranny, to Aristocracy, to Oligarchy, to Democracy, to mob rule, and then finally a new king arises from the mob, and the cycle begins again.

Living in times where democracy feels fraught across the globe, it was interesting to read Polybius’ take on the decline of democracy (emphasis mine):

At this point the only hope which remains unspoiled lies with themselves, and it is in this direction that they then turn: they convert the state into a democracy instead of an oligarchy and themselves assume the superintendence and charge of affairs. Then so long as any people survive who endured the evils of oligarchical rule, they can regard their present form of government as a blessing and treasure the privileges of equality and freedom of speech. But as soon as a new generation has succeeded and the democracy falls into the hands of the grandchildren of its founders, they have become by this time so accustomed to equality and freedom of speech that they cease to value them and seek to raise themselves above their fellow-citizens, and it is noticeable that the people most liable to this temptation are the rich. So when they begin to hanker after office, and find that they cannot achieve it through their own efforts or on their merits, they begin to seduce and corrupt the people in every possible way, and thus ruin their estates. The result is that through their senseless craving for prominence they stimulate among the masses both an appetite for bribes and the habit of receiving them, and then the rule of democracy is transformed into government by violence and strong-arm methods. By this time the people have become accustomed to feed at the expense of others, and their prospects of winning a livelihood depend upon the property of their neighbours; then as soon as they find a leader who is sufficiently ambitious and daring, but is excluded from the honours of office because of his poverty, they will introduce a regime based on violence. After this they unite their forces, and proceed to massacre, banish and despoil their opponents, and finally degenerate into a state of bestiality,’ after which they once more find a master and a despot. Such is the cycle of political revolution, the law of nature according to which constitutions change, are transformed, and finally revert to their original form. - Plb 6.9

Every kind of state, we may say, is liable to decline from two sources, the one being external, and the other due to its own internal evolution. For the first we cannot lay down any fixed principle, but the second pursues a regular sequence. I have already indicated which kind of state is the first to evolve, which succeeds it, and how each is transformed into its successor, so that those who can connect the opening propositions of my argument with its conclusion will be able to make their own forecast concerning the future. This, in my opinion, is quite clear. When a state, after warding off many great perils, achieves supremacy and uncontested sovereignty, it is evident that under the influence of long-established prosperity life will become more luxurious, and among the citizens themselves rivalry for office and in other spheres of activity will become fiercer than it should. As these symptoms become more marked, the craving for office and the sense of humiliation which obscurity imposes, together with the spread of ostentation and extravagance, will usher in a period of general deterioration. The principal authors of this change will be the masses, who at some moments will believe that they have a grievance against the greed of other members of society, and at others are made conceited by the flattery of those who aspire to office. By this stage they will have been roused to fury and their deliberations will constantly be swayed by passion, so that they will no longer consent to obey or even to be the equals of their leaders, but will demand everything or by far the greatest share for themselves. When this happens, the constitution will change its name to the one which sounds the most imposing of all, that of freedom and democracy, but its nature to that which is the worst of all, that is the rule of the mob. — Plb 6.57

History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes, feels appropriate here.

Views on Roman Superstition

I thought this passage was remarkable:

However, the sphere in which the Roman commonwealth seems to me to show its superiority most decisively is in that of religious belief.

Here we find that the very phenomenon which among other peoples is regarded as a subject for reproach, namely superstition, is actually the element which holds the Roman state together. These matters are treated with such solemnity and introduced so frequently both into public and into private life that nothing could exceed them in importance.

Many people may find this astonishing, but my own view is that the Romans have adopted these practices for the sake of the common people. This approach might not have been necessary had it ever been possible to form a state composed entirely of wise men. But as the masses are always fickle, filled with lawless desires, unreasoning anger and violent passions, they can only be restrained by mysterious terrors or other dramatizations of the subject. For this reason I believe that the ancients were by no means acting foolishly or haphazardly when they introduced to the people various notions concerning the gods and belief in the punishments of Hades, but rather that the moderns are foolish and take great risks in rejecting them. — Plb 6.56

There’s a modern-feeling cynicism about religion here; he talks about Roman religion as if it exists only as a tool, instilled in the Roman people as a means to the end by the powerful. He might even be right, and yet, in this he reminds me of a dark-version of Marx, praising the Roman opioid as a key to social control.

The Edition

I read Penguin Classics The Rise of the Roman Empire by Polybius, selected by F.W. Walbank, and translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert (the same one who translated the Plutarch I read).

The introduction was good and did an excellent job of introducing Polybius’ work, or at least the selection Walbank made. I’m not sure I would have read the book had it not been for the quality of the introduction. Each chapter lead with a good introductory note, setting the stage and providing historical context, which was very helpful.

Last time I read Polybius, I accused him (or the translation) of being stilted and awkward. This time, knowing how much I appreciated the translation of Plutarch by Scott-Kilvert, I suspect the blame lay on Polybius. (During the writing of this blog post, also used Tufts’ Perseus Digital Library, which has the Evelyn S. Shuckburgh translation, which really showed how much I appreciate Scott-Kilvert’s translation skills, and his use of a more modern vernacular).

I still found him to be stilted for the early chapters this time around, but over time I adapted, or he became a better writer and it bothered me appreciably less.

Despite the promise of the edition, it was overall one of the weakest classic history editions I’ve read:

• The Footnotes were of strongly varying quality: some useful, some clearly superfluous or misplaced and no notes to fill in the missing pieces. While I don’t think Polybius needed the very detailed notation that I had in the edition of Thucydides that I read , I was nevertheless let down often by this edition’s supplemental information.
• The maps are atrocious. They are almost entirely unusable through huge swathes of the book. Admittedly, I’m hugely spoiled from reading the Landmark Ancient Histories, which are absolutely lousy with excellent maps, but the maps in this book were just trash.
• There’s a diagram of a Roman camp, which is trying to help you visualize what Polybius describes in one chapter… but all the labels are in un-translated latin. Which makes it a pain to decipher.

Plutarch: The Rise and Fall of Athens

I just finished reading ‘The Rise and Fall of Athens’, a collection of writings by Plutarch, extracted from his Parallel Lives, a project where he compared and contrasted notable Greek and Roman figures.

The Rise and Fall of Athens is a selection which uses the Greek biographies to chronicle Athens from its founding by Theseus to its figurative fall led by Lysander.

This was a very pleasant read. As praise, I have to say, the translation by Ian Scott-Kilvert was smooth to the point of feeling as if it may not accurately reflect the source; of course, because I don’t read Ancient Greek, I can’t know that.

In the early biographies, in particular Theseus, it’s really fascinating to see Plutarch trying to navigate the murky waters of legendary figures. Clearly he needs to rely on myth for his biography, but he tries to be as careful as he can in his recounting of said myth, and tries to nail down, to the extent he can, a real person underlying the legend.

Later biographies are interesting to see figures I’d seen in other contexts get their own focus. For example, Cimon and Lysander.

I didn’t take much in the way of notes this time around, but I did grab two extended quotes.

Contrasting Cleon and Nicias:

Cleon commanded a large following because of his practice of ‘pampering the people and finding jobs for all’, but even those whom he went out of his way to win over, when they saw the greed and effrontery of the man, turned to Nicias as their leader. Nicias, by contrast, wore an air of gravity which was by no means harsh or vexatious but was blended with earnestness and caution, and this won him the confidence of the people by giving the impression that he was positively afraid of them.

On the banning of currency in Sparta, and resulting philosophy:

Finally, it was decided that currency could be imported for public use, but that any private person found in possession of it should be put to death. This was as if to say that Lycurgus had been afraid of money itself, and not of the greed that it engenders; and indeed, as events turned out, so far from eliminating this vice by forbidding private individuals to own money, the law tended to encourage them by permitting such ownership to the state, so that in this way its use acquired a certain dignity and honour.

It was hardly possible for men who saw money valued in public to despise it in private, or to regard what was evidently prized and cherished by the community as something worthless or useless to the individual. On the contrary, public practices tend to impress themselves far more swiftly upon the habits of private life than individual faults or failings ever do upon the community. When the whole deteriorates, it is only natural that the parts should become corrupt with it, but those diseases which travel from the part to the whole encounter plenty of correctives and antidotes in the parts which remain sound. Thus the Spartans set terror and the law to guard their citizens’ houses and prevent money from finding a way in, but they did nothing to make their spirits impervious or superior to its power: instead they implanted in their people a lively ambition to acquire wealth by setting it up as an exalted and noble object.

Xenophon’s Hellenika

After finishing Herodotus, I was hungry for more ancient history. Herodotus had thoroughly entertained me for large swathes, and so I felt eager for more.

Given my hunger, and a pre-existing irritation that The Peloponnesian War was incomplete, leaving the closing chapters of the war untold, it seemed that Xenophon’s Hellenica was the best bet for me to read next. I was also heartened by the existence of a Landmark edition, with a new translation by John Marincola.

It turns out that the Landmark edition has a huge, and extremely helpful introduction. Hellenica is a complicated work. The history it recounts is flawed in many ways; Xenophon tells a history which pre-assumes reader knowledge of many major events… without actually recounting said events himself. He also appears to exhibit a variety of biases (pro-Spartan, anti-Theban) which affect the way he tells his history.

The History

Hellenica starts very nearly at the end of Thucydides, as to provide a continuation of the Peloponnesian War. Maybe it was my time away from Thucydides, but I found Xenophon’s continuation to be dry and laconic. It mostly felt… obligatory. The best parts of Xenophon only start after the end of the Peloponnesian war. His recounting of the Thirty Tyrants , a bloody oligarchy installed in Athens at the end of the war with the support of Sparta, was a fascinating account of a horrid time, and extremely helpful.

There are sections of Xenophon that shine, where his writing totally comes alive. I was particularly impressed with his description of Jason of Pherai via his tale of Polygamous of Pharasulus which opens Book Six. By the end of his discussion of Jason, I half expected a movie starring Jason Momoa to be in production.

Xenophon covers some interesting parts of ancient history: the Battle of Leuctra, where the Spartans faced a huge defeat (the trophy erected there was eventually replaced by a permanent monument, which stands today), and the rise of Thebes.

Greek histories are fascinating at least partially because of the way in which they show how many Greek ideas form the headwaters of an intellectual tradition we live in today. I continue to be fascinated by the way in which many of our ideas of government harken back to Athens (often intentionally!). I enjoyed the places where you could see the construction (deconstruction and reconstruction) of the Athenian state, and the pieces reflected in modernity. Occasionally I lose touch that these are the tales of real people who really lived and died. Seeing photos of archeological sites and contemporaneous artifacts reminds me. This has reinforced a desire to visit Greece one day to see some of these sites myself.

Thoughts

Despite some strong sections, I struggled with Hellenica quite a bit compared to Herodotus, and even Thucydides. Despite Herodotus’ discursive style, both he and Thucydides were much more focused in their writing. Each book can be given a single sentence thesis statement: Herodotus recounts (along with everything he knows about the world) the Greek victory over an enormous invading Persian force. Thucydides recounts (most) of the Peloponnesian war, a 27 year long war between Athens and Sparta.

I cannot make a similar thesis statement for Xenophon’s Hellenica. He starts by recounting the end of the Peloponnesian war, starting off where Thucydides ends, but then simply seems to tell of most battles involving Sparta for the next 40 years or so. You could perhaps say he’s telling history as it was important to him and his family; the history ends shortly after the fall of his son Gryllus who died at the Battle of Mantinea). Yet the scope of the work is far too broad to be just a memoir. However, where both Thucydides and Herodotus had (different, but) clear methods to their histories, Xenophon rarely hints at any methodology. Mostly you have no idea where any of his information is coming from, which poses a particular challenge when other sources have contradicted him.

The Landmark edition of Xenophon leans into this challenge by providing selected translations of Diodorus Siculus and The Oxyrhynchus historian (a.k.a P). I didn’t read all these parallel histories; it became exhausting after a while, but I am glad that they were included. (I am also very happy to have learned the story of Oxyrhynchus Papyri via the inclusion of P’s work. )

Unlike Herodotus, I leave Xenophon with no energy to seek out more ancient history at the moment. I need a break. I don’t think reading Xenophon was a waste of time, but it wasn’t as enlightening or interesting as the previous two histories I’ve read. At the end of Hellenica, we are left just about where Philip II of Macedon begins to take over Greece; his son would be Alexander the Great. Interestingly, despite this incipient change, Xenophon barely mentions the Macedonians in his history. If I wanted to continue a chronological exploration of the Ancient Greek world I’d seek a history of the rise of Macedon next.

Random Notes

• “Alketas the Spartan was keeping guard over Oreos…” is a sentence… apparently Oreos was a place!
• The Landmark Edition calls the work Hellenika, whereas many others render it as Hellenica. I am not sure what the deal is there.

Histories, by Herodotus

After reading The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, I found myself hankering for more ancient histories. As we approached the season finale of America, I still craved that welcome distraction from the modern world by reading about ancient peoples.

One thing that had fascinated me about Thucydides was the contemporaneous nature of his account; reading the history told by someone who lived through it was particularly appealing. So I set out trying to find other histories written by people who lived through events.

I initially landed on Polybius, a Greek in Rome, writing about the rise of the Roman empire. However, my Project Gutenberg forays into it had me struggling. Partially it was because I seem to have a bit of a bias against Roman history; for whatever reason I find myself predisposed to dislike it. I also found Polybius' writing clunky; that may be translation.

After bouncing off Polybius, I briefly flirted with trying to read Julius Ceasar, but I was concerned that the best way for me to approach that would be to start by reading the his recount of the Gallic wars, before moving onto what really I thought would be interesting, which was reading his Civil Wars.

After hemming and hawing for a week or two, downloading reams of classics onto my Kobo, I finally decided that I really ought to give Herodotus a try. Thucydides had a low opinion of Herodotus (I realized while reading Herodotus that they were largely contemporaries), which had certainly influenced my desire to read him. Yet, as you look for ancient histories, his name is nigh-unescapable.

After starting, I was intrigued fairly quickly: Herodotus is chronicling a great battle between Persia and the Hellenic people, from a legendary history of conflict, to the retreat of the Persians under Xerxes, after a series of defeats at Salamis, Platea and Mycale.

The Translation

As with Thucydides, I relatively quickly realized that I would like a more up-to-date translation, and so after some research I decided upon the Landmark Herodotus. A weighty tome, the translation by Andrea L. Purvis is very new, and extremely readable. The book is filled with footnotes, and oh so many maps, very helpful in Herodotus given the enormous geographic scope of the book. The book also includes a series of appendices on a variety of topics adjacent to or directly related to Herodotus' text.

As I did with Thucydides, let me share the first little bit of both translations for flavour. Here's the George Campbell Macaulay translation, available on Project Gutenburg:

This is the Showing forth of the Inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassos, to the end that neither the deeds of men may be forgotten by lapse of time, nor the works great and marvellous, which have been produced some by Hellenes and some by Barbarians, may lose their renown; and especially that the causes may be remembered for which these waged war with one another.

Those of the Persians who have knowledge of history declare that the Phenicians first began the quarrel. These, they say, came from that which is called the Erythraian Sea to this of ours; and having settled in the land where they continue even now to dwell, set themselves forthwith to make long voyages by sea. And conveying merchandise of Egypt and of Assyria they arrived at other places and also at Argos;

Here is roughly the same section of text from Andrea L. Purvis's translation:

Herodotus of Halicarnassus here presents his research so that human events do not fade with time. May the great and wonderful deeds — some brought forth by the Hellenes, others by the barbarians — not go unsung; as well as the causes that led them to make war on each other.

Persian authorities of the past claim that the Phoenicians were responsible for the dispute. This is because, after they had come to and settled the land which they still inhabit from what is now called the Erythraean Sea, they at once undertook long sea voyages and brought back cargo from Egypt, Assyria, and elsewhere, but more to the point they came to Argos.

The History

Where Thucydides is razor focused on a narrow slice of history, the 27 years of the Peloponnesian war, Herodotus instead is interested in sharing everything he knows of the known world insofar as it can be tangentially related to his main topic of the Greco-Persian war. He weaves seamlessly between legendary history and recorded or recounted history.

Where Thucydides made it clear in his introduction that he made great effort to find out what actually happened and when, recounting only the most likely series of events when there are multiple stories, Herodotus retells all he knows, even when he is unsure of the truth, or even when he flat out considers a tale to be untrue. I found that to be interesting to see his criticism of ancient people's conceptions of themselves or others, and how they agree or conflict with each other.

In addition to being hugely philosophically different, Thucydides and Herodotus could perhaps not be more different from a writing style. Thucydides almost exclusively tells his history in Chronological order, counting summers and winters through his text. Herodotus instead wrote in a style of nested digressions; in the middle of a particular story he would take some opportunity to interject a dump of his knowledge about something related; then he would digress in the middle of yet another digression. In computer programming thinking, it was as if he was maintaining a stack of topics, freely pushing and popping the topics as appropriate.

There are sections of the Histories that remind me of Buzzfeed articles: "You’ll never believe the intercourse traditions of this Libyan people", and others where he simply recites whatever his source at the time gave him, occasionally with a heavy eye roll implied. He seemed perfectly wiling to share tales that smell strongly of myth, like Xerxes having the Hellespont whipped. There are sections where he recounts people and places just beyond the edge of Greek knowledge that include crazy things, like huge ants the size of foxes in India that collect gold.

Though the framing of Histories is as a tale of war between the Persians and the Hellens, to me it is the least interesting part of reading the Histories. Where Thucydides has a firm grasp of warfare, Herodotus tells a tale of a war that doesn't make much sense as he recounts it. To inflate the power of greek victory Xerxes' invading army is made comically large by Herodotus, and yet, the actual deciding battles of the war (Salamis, Platea and Mycale) are treated fairly perfunctorily. After a few losses, the enormous army of Xerxes mostly flees, with a small force left behind under the command of Mardonios, who in turn is seemingly easily chased from Greece. There is a propagandistic element to Herodotus' history, hoisting the deeds of the Greeks to the status of legend, and freely tossing in anecdotes of barbarity to ensure that the Persians aren't seen as just people.

Where Herodotus is best (though perhaps the least reliable) is when he is writing his 'Travellers Guide to the Ancient World'. As he recounts his history he find occasion to tell of Persia, Babylon, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Libya (all of Africa that's not Egypt or Ethiopia). These pieces, which feel perfectly in keeping with modern Travel literature, are some of the most enjoyable to me to read. His tales of the structure and societies of these ancient peoples, while not always terribly accurate, nevertheless provide a fascinating insight into how he (and Greeks more broadly) saw the rest of the world. Some bits of this include laugh out loud anecdotes of bizarre legends, peculiar customs of dubious veracity, or flat out wrong descriptions of things he must have never seen himself (hippos with horse manes).

I found the pieces of his history corroborated by archeological evidence fascinating. For example, the discovery of the Tunnel of Eupalinos, a tunnel a mile through a mountain in Samos, is partially due to Herodotus' description.

The Landmark Herodotus

I have mixed feelings about the Landmark edition of Herodotus that I ended up reading. I appreciated the maps enormously, but I found the footnotes to be underwhelming having just previously read the Oxford World Classics version of Thucydides which had excellent notes written by P.J. Rhodes.

If you were to casually scan my Landmark edition of Herodotus, you'd be left with the impression that the book is footnoted with reams of information; however that appearance is at least a little deceiving. About 50% of the footnotes are map references to named places, and large number of footnotes are repeated many times. One footnote in particular stood out to me:

Lacedaemon (Sparta): Herodotus uses the names Spartans and Lacedaemonians interchangeably. "Spartans" however often refers specifically to citizens of the state of Sparta, whereas any inhabitant of the territory of Lacedaemon is a Lacedaemonians. See Appendix B, the Spartan State in War and Peace, §5,7 and n. B.7.a.

This footnote is probably repeated 50 times throughout the text. By the end of the book I actually found the footnoting to be quite annoying. It distracted me from reading the main body of the text, and yet only about 1 in 10 footnotes were actually worth reading. Most were map references to places I already well knew where they were, or repetitive footnotes for concepts that were already clear to me. I suppose if you were using this book as a scholastic reference, and assigned to read a single chapter or section of the book you'd be immensely appreciative of this style of footnotes, but as I read from cover to cover, they just increasingly became an annoyance.

The Appendixes are good, but I didn't find them as helpful as Rhodes' notes in Thucydides. This is because I read them at the end, after I'd finished the main text, and as well because they feel a bit abbreviated. Most are only three pages, and a good chunk is summarizing or cataloguing the text I'd just read.

Assorted Thoughts:

• I will never stop reading Megabazos as Mega-Bezos, Jeff Bezos' final form.
• It's funny to see Herodotus, 2400 years ago complaining about the concept of Continents, an idea that still causes consternation today.
• Bookstores struggle with authorship of translated works, leading to bizarre computer generated phenomena as I found looking for a paper copy, like naming the author of Herodotus' histories 'John M. Herotodus' or 'Paul Herotodus'.

The Peloponnesian War

Last night I finished reading Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War.

I started reading it for the dumbest of reasons really. After skimming this Bloomberg Opinion article, I saw mention of the Thucydides Trap, a term introduced and popularized by Graham Allison. For some reason this term, and it's seemingly simplistic nature stuck in my craw, and I found myself curious about the primary source. Given the age of the source, I figured there was a reasonable chance I could get a copy off of Project Gutenberg, and sure enough, The History of the Peloponnesian War was there. I popped it into my eBook reader, and started reading. I was in between books, and a bit tired of the fiction series I had been working through, so this was a nice palette cleanser.

After a day or so of reading, I was surprised to find myself reasonably engaged. As someone who didn't study antiquity, and has a weak historical background, I was surprised at the depth and detail of this 2400 year old piece of writing. I learned later that Thucydides is regarded sometimes as one of the fathers of history as an impartial record of events. His self-described approach to his history felt immensely modern to me, and I found myself shocked into paying even more attention when I read this:

The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.

The clarity of purpose, and the firmly held belief, even in his time, that the study of history is often a study of human nature: this impressed me deeply.

Translation

While I enjoyed reading the Gutenberg version, and made reasonable progress into it, I wondered if some of my challenge with it was the translation: it is the Richard Crawley translation from 1874, and so the English at times feels archaic and overly florid, with challenging sentence constructions. I came to the conclusion that if I was going to finish, I would like to try finishing with a newer translation if one was available.

I ended up buying a paperback copy of Martin Hammond's translation from 2009. I rapidly began to appreciate this copy's extensive notes written by P.J. Rhodes, which provided much needed context to the text as well as commentary and discussion. I finished reading the book with the Hammond translation. To compare the two translations, I'll share the first couple of sentences of each, to give a flavour:

Crawley:

Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, beginning at the moment that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it. This belief was not without its grounds. The preparations of both the combatants were in every department in the last state of perfection; and he could see the rest of the Hellenic race taking sides in the quarrel; those who delayed doing so at once having it in contemplation.

Hammond:

Thucydides of Athens wrote this history of the war fought against each other by the Peloponnesians and the Athenians.

He began his work right at the outbreak, reckoning that this would be a major war and more momentous than any previous conflict. There were two grounds for this belief: Both sides were at the full height of their power and their resource for war, and he saw the rest of the Greeks allying with one or the other, either immediately or in intent.

Both are totally readable, but you can immediately see a difference in style and shape. I definitely found Hammond's translation to be more modern feeling and fluid, and I think I made easier progress with it. Nevertheless, I think Crawley's translation is totally possible to manage. Similar to reading Shakespeare, you do eventually adapt to the linguistic changes.

Reflections

Why did I read it? I said that I was baited into the book by the term 'the Thucydides Trap'. The important piece of the book related to the Thucydides Trap is dealt with relatively early. Yet still I finished the book. I enjoyed the book overall, but there were definitely places where I felt challenged; I think ultimately I finished, at least partially, to prove to myself that I still could. I, like many, worry that the internet and social media have permanently reordered my attention span, making deep thought and challenging reading impossible. Finishing this book felt like an important affirmation that I am still capable of reading something of this depth and challenge, which is important to me.

One aspect of the book that truly fascinates me is the fact that it was written roughly contemporaneously to events. Thucydides says in his first paragraphs (above) that he started his history as soon as the war began, and ultimately was a general in the Athenian army playing a part. At some point he was ostracized from Athens due to displeasure with his military performance, and in his exile he obviously sought out as much information about the conflict as he could get, from all sides involved wherever he could. I find myself fascinated by the idea of reading other contemporaneous histories; I think it would be fascinating for example to read a Roman history of the fall of the Republic, written by a Roman during that time. I am not sure if such a volume exists!

Echos

The book, in addition to chronicling the Peloponnesian war (though, the book is incomplete, and ends about six years before the end of the 27 year war; yet we know from certain comments within the book that Thucydides did in fact live to see the end of the war. The reason behind the incompleteness of the book seems to be a mystery lost to the ravages of time), also chronicles the fall of Athenian democracy and fall into oligarchy. Living through the white hot heat of history, as it feels we are now, I found a peculiar sense of comfort reading about the failures of Athens. I think we have an ahistorical view of the times we live through; we often feel like what is happening is happening for the first time ever. Yet, I found grounding in seeing story of similar failure of state from 2400 years ago. The parallels are weak, but the forces of human nature nevertheless echo. I found Thucydides emphasis on human nature to be quite calming. While I suspect we would not label him impartial these days, he aspired to it. I found his attempted impartiality calming. As an Athenian, and living in propagandistic times as we do, I had sort of expected a vilification of the Spartans, which never happens. I would even go so far as to say that of all those involved with the war, his criticism lies most heavily on the Athenians.

In places, the Peloponnesian War and notes give insight into Athenian society and its construction. Some of this I found fascinating for the echos of today. For example, in the notes of the Oxford World Classics edition on 6.40:

Successful democracies, such as the Athenian, succeed in persuading rich men not to regard the regime as hostile to them but to cooperate with it and pursue honour through it.

There's something in this insight that feels important to today. In these times of extraordinary inequality, it feels as if the wealthy no longer feel any debt to society, and so are comfortable with the diminishment of society. Somehow, it feels like that cooperation and honour needs to be rebuilt.

Similarly, Cleon, perhaps the first demagogue, as described (perhaps unfairly!) in the book echos populist leaders today.

The Thucydides Trap

The original bait for me to read Thucydides was Graham Allison's Thucydides Trap (twitter link for soft paywall).

Near the beginning Thucydides history he contrasts what he sees as the pretences for war with what he saw as the real reason for the war, which was Spartan fear of the rising power of Athens. For Allison, this fear is common when a new power rises in the world, and almost always leads to war, and so he coined the term the Thucydides Trap, which now is almost exclusively applied to the rise of China, and an 'inevitable' Sino-American war.

Having read Thucydides, I find myself annoyed by the term. While the start of the Archidamian war (the first half of the Peloponnesian war, interrupted by the Peace of Nicias) as chronicled by Thucydides does seem to follow fear, the rest of the war has many causes beyond simply Spartan fear. Without commenting on the other evidence Allison deploys, I find his term the Thucydides Trap to be 'snappy' but not particularly useful -- and certainly not an eponym that Thucydides deserves for a couple of paragraphs of comment.