The Histories, Book VI

Summary

Book VI of Polybius's Histories interrupts his narrative of the Second Punic War at its darkest moment for Rome, the defeat at Cannae in 216 BC, to explain how a city that had just lost an army could recover and, within fifty-three years, bring nearly the whole known world under its power. His answer is the Roman constitution. The book survives only in excerpts made by later Byzantine compilers, so the text breaks off in places; the library text is Evelyn S. Shuckburgh's 1889 translation of what remains, with his sidenotes and section numbers. Polybius begins with a theory of political change. The usual list of three good constitutions, kingship, aristocracy and democracy, is incomplete, because each has a degenerate twin: tyranny, oligarchy and mob-rule. After some catastrophe such as flood or pestilence, scattered survivors herd together under the strongest man. As they come to approve gratitude and condemn ingratitude, the notions of duty and justice arise, and rule by force becomes kingship. Hereditary kings grow luxurious and turn tyrant; the noblest men overthrow them and govern as an aristocracy; their sons turn it into oligarchy; the people rise and set up democracy; and when later generations forget the value of equality and freedom, demagogues and bribery bring violence until a master appears again. Later writers named this cycle anacyclosis. The only escape is a mixture. Lycurgus gave Sparta kings, a council of elders and the people, each checking the others, and Rome reached a similar balance through long struggle. Polybius describes the consuls, who command armies and seem like kings; the Senate, which controls the treasury, foreign embassies and serious crimes in Italy; and the people, who alone confer office, judge capital cases, pass laws and decide peace or war. Each part needs the others, so that when one grows arrogant the rest restrain it. A long, practical account of the Roman army follows: the annual levy, the four classes of legionaries and their arms, the election of centurions, the plan of the camp, the watchword and night watches, the punishment of the fustuarium, decimation, and the crowns and gifts given for courage. Polybius then compares Rome with Athens, Thebes, Crete, Sparta and Carthage, setting aside Plato's ideal republic as a statue among living men. Rome surpasses Carthage because it fights with citizen soldiers, punishes bribery with death, and keeps faith by religious awe. He describes the aristocratic funeral, with its speech from the Rostra and its procession of ancestral masks, and tells of Horatius Cocles holding the bridge. The book closes by predicting that prosperity will one day corrupt Rome into mob-rule under the fair name of liberty, and with the Senate's refusal to ransom the prisoners Hannibal took at Cannae.

Top Lessons

• Every simple government carries the seed of its own corruption

  Polybius argues that kingship slides into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy and democracy into mob-rule, and that the decay comes from within, as rust comes to iron. The change is driven by the second and third generations, who inherit power or freedom without having suffered for it.

• Mixed powers check one another

  The remedy for the cycle is a constitution in which royal, aristocratic and popular elements share power so that none can dominate. Polybius's description of how consuls, Senate and people depend on one another is one of the earliest detailed accounts of checks and balances.

• Honour and shame as public institutions

  Polybius notices that Rome trains courage through visible honours: the funeral speech, the ancestral masks, crowns for scaling walls and saving citizens, and spoils hung in the house. Punishments for cowardice are equally public. A people's customs, not only its laws, form its citizens.

• Faith kept in small things

  Polybius contrasts Greek officials who cannot be trusted with a single talent despite clerks and seals with Roman magistrates who handle large sums and keep their oath. He attributes the difference to religious awe and to the shame attached to bribery. The Senate's treatment of the envoy who tried to slip out of his oath shows the same strictness.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Book VI is a work of political and military history, and its medical interest is slight. Its conjectural history of society begins after floods, pestilences or famine have nearly destroyed the human race, a commonplace of Greek thought shared with Plato's Laws. The chapters on the army record Roman discipline in physical terms: flogging, the fustuarium (death by cudgelling at the hands of comrades) and decimation, as well as rewards for saving a fellow citizen's life. The account of the aristocratic funeral in chs. 53–54, with the body displayed at the Rostra and the wax ancestral masks, is a principal ancient source for Roman mourning practice. Polybius also speaks of polities, like bodies, as having a natural growth, zenith and decay (ch. 51), an organic analogy common in ancient political writing.

• Book VI, ch. 5

  The cycle begins after floods, pestilences or failures of crops have nearly destroyed mankind.

• Book VI, chs. 37–39

  Military punishments (flogging, fustuarium, decimation with barley rations) and the civic crown for saving a citizen in battle.

• Book VI, chs. 53–54

  The Roman aristocratic funeral: the body at the Rostra, the eulogy, and the procession of ancestral masks.