the sources and composition of polybius vi

The Sources and Composition of Polybius VIAuthor(s): Thomas ColeSource: Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Bd. 13, H. 4 (Oct., 1964), pp. 440-486Published by: Franz Steiner VerlagStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4434855 .

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THE SOURCES AND COMPOSITION OF POLYBIUS VI

I. Introduction

The sixth book of Polybius is one of the many ancient works which are studied less for intrinsic excellence than for what they may reveal about their author, his contemporaries, or his predecessors. It contains the most elaborate of Polybius's own pronouncements on government and society, as well as the only extended piece of Hellenistic political theory that survives. Judged simply on their own merits, however, the contents of the book are not especially impressive: a doctrine of the stability of the mixed form of government and the cyclical rise and fall of pure ones which is schematic, oversimplified and admittedly derivative; and an application of this doctrine to the study of Roman history and institutions which is neither consistent nor entirely clear.

Realizing both the limitations of the work and its potential value, students of Polybius proceeded for many years on the tacit assumption that the one was somehow linked with the other: what was not an intellectual achievement of the highest order might prove to be, for that very reason, all the more revealing as a document. Lack of consistency could be taken as a sign of incompleteness - of a failure to harmonize earlier and later versions of the book - and so as a valuable clue to the historian's intellectual development. And Polybius's remarks (6. 5. I) on his indebtedness to predecessors led to a quest for sources which promised, if successful, to add substantially to our knowledge of a whole era in the history of political thought.

Of late, after dominating the study of Book VI for more than a century,' both lines of inquiry have met with considerable skepticism. Polybius's

1 The inconsistencies which formed the point of departure for later inquiries into the

composition of Polybius VI were first noted by P. LaRoche, Charakteristik des Polybios (Leipzig I857) 29-31; and the two theories most often propounded by Quellenkritik -

those which trace the historian's political thought to a Peripatetic or Stoic source - go

back, respectively, to F. Osann, Beitrlge zur griechischen und romischen Literatur-

geschichte 2 (Leipzig I839) 23-25 and F. Creuzer, Die historische Kunst der Griechen (Leipzig i845) I14-17. Of subsequent studies the most important (cited hereafter by

author) are the fo}lowing: R. von Scala, Die Studien des Polybios (Stuttgart I890) 222-50;

F. Taeger, Die Archlologie des Polybios (Stuttgart 1922) 8-122; V. P6schl, Romischer

Staat und griechisches Staatsdenken bei Cicero (Berlin I936) 40-107; F. W. Walbank,

"Polybius on the Roman Constitution,"CQ 37 (1943) 73-89 (= Walbankl); E. Mioni, Polibio (Padua I949) 49-78; H. Ryffel, METABOAH HOAITEIQN: Der Wandel der

Staatsverfassungen (Bern 1948) 180-228; W. Theiler, "Schichten im 6. Buch des Poly-

bius," Hermes 8i (I953) 296-302; C. 0. Brink and F. W. Walbank, "The Construction of the

Sixth Book of Polybius,"CQ N.S. 4 (I954) 97-I22; K. von Fritz, The Theory of the Mixed

Constitution in Antiquity (New York I954) 44-154; F. W. Walbank, A Historical Com-

mentary on Polybius (Oxford X957) 635-73, 724-46 (= Walbank).



The Sources and Composition of Polybius VI 441

inconsistencies have been explained more economically - as the result of his "rather complex theorizing in a realm of which he was not a real master,"2 and his version of the political cycle viewed more often than not as an eclectic composition - either an adaptation and modification of theories known to us from the work of other extant authors" or else a blend of "so many traditional elements that the immediate source is probably past recovery."4 The conclusion to which these studies point is pessimistic: Polybius is no better as atheorist than previously imagined, and his work less revealing than anticipatedof the man and his intellectual background.

The present article adopts a rather more hopeful point of view - a sort of compromise between the skepticism of contemporary 'unitarians' and the perhaps overconfident efforts of earlier scholars to assign parts of Book VI to a specific source or specific period in Polybius's life. It attempts to show that there are two distinct 'strata' in Book VI as it now stands; that they are to be associated, not with different periods of composition, but with two different sources on which the historian has drawn; and that the general character of these sources, if not their exact identity, can be establishedwith some certainty. It is hoped that the resulting blend of unitarian and separatist positionswill prove, like the mixed constitution itself, more durable than some of its less eclectic predecessors.

II. Polybius 6. 5-IO: the ANACYCLOSIs and the Mixed Constitution

The political cycle of Book VI is set forth in detail in chapters five through nine. It begins with the description of a cataclysm, one of a number of natural disasters which periodically destroy civilization can with it most of mankind (6. 5. 4-6). The scattered survivors live an animal-hke existence, remembering nothing from the period before the catastrophe. Eventually they form herds for self-protection and, having assembled in this manner, come gradually to perceive the mutual benefits to be derived from cooperation and an exchange of services among one another. Social sanctions begin to be imposed against these who try to harm their fellows or receive help from them without giving anything in return, and benefactors are rewarded with honor and affection (6. 5. Io-6. 9). These rewards and sanctions are the origin of moral notions of what is right and proper; they also play an important role in the establish-

2 Walbank, 648. Only Theiler's article (followed, in general, by M. Gelzer, Gnomon 28

11956] 83-84) and Walbank1 have advanced new arguments in favor of the separatist position. And the conclusions reached in the latter study are no longer accepted by their author (see Brink and Walbank, 97-98).

3 So von Fritz, 67-68 (Polybius gives a simplified, schematized account based on Laws III and Republic VIII-IX with some material from other sources) and Mioni, 66-69 (Polybius simplifies Platonic and Aristotelian theories).

4 Walbank, 644. Similarly Taeger, 19-27 and Ryffel, I98-202.



442 THOMAS COLE

ment of the first government based on mutual consent. Like other animals, men tend originally to follow the leadership of the strongest and boldest member of their herd (6. 5. 7-9), but only until such time as generally accepted standards of conduct arise. At this point any tribal strong man who decides to act in accordance with popular ideas of what is just and see to it that others do the same will receive the willing support of his subjects, even when he grows old and loses the physical strength which first won him preeminence (6. 6. 10-I2). The new arrangement is seen to be more advantageous than the old and so retained. In this fashion primitive rule of force ('monarchy') is replaced

by 'kingship' - govemment by consent for the mutual advantage of ruler and ruled.

The first kings rule for a time in the interests of their subjects, but they cannot resist the corrupting influence of power and eventually become tyrants (6. 7. i-8). The boldest members of the tribe thereupon revolt and throw out the tyrant; in gratitude the populace intrusts the government to them. But the aristocracy thus created eventually degenerates into a selfish and corrupt oligarchy (6. 8. 3-6), which is in turn thrown out by revolution. Distrusting both the rule of the one and the rule of the few, the people now take the task of governing upon themselves and establish a democracy. This works well for a time, but power corrupts the leaders of the people just as it had corrupted kings and aristocrats. Unscrupulous demagogues arise and democracy degenerates (6. 9. 4-8) into rule by the mob (ochlocracy). Executions, expulsions and confiscations of land follow, so that men are reduced to the disorganized and savage state in which they lived originally - and power is once more in the hands of a 'monarch' (6. 9. 9).

Such is the normal cycle (anacyclosis) of human history. The Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus was familiar with it and sought to produce a political system which would not be subject to the universal tendency to degeneration and decay. By creating a balance of power between kings, elders and people he attempted to free each of the governing bodies from the corrupting influence of unlimited authority. The constitution which resulted was remarkable for its stability (6. io. i-II). A similar limitation of powers and a similar stability characterize the Roman constitution, though the latter came into being, not through the foresight of a single man, but through a series of fortunate political decisions made at critical times in the course of its development (6. IO. I3-I4).

With this observation the more general portion of Book VI concludes. There followed a discussion (now lost)5 of early Roman history, an analysis (6. ii-i8) of the workings of the Roman constitution at its acme, and, finally, a comparison of the Roman constitution with that of other states (6. 43-56) and a prediction of its future history (6. 57). Polybius's venture into the realms

5 Surviving fragments from this portion of the book are assembled in section ii a of

Buttner-Wobst's edition.




of social anthropology and political history is brief, but the problems upon which it touches are numerous: what is the origin of human life and culture? how do the various forms of political and social life come into being and what is the principle governing their development and transformation? is there a single best government or social order, and, if so, has it ever existed in history? Such questions were not new in the historian's day; they had played an important role in Greek speculation beginning with Hesiod's myth of the Ages of Man. The tradition to which our passage is heir is thus a rich and varied one. Yet the source problem which it raises is, to a point at any rate, simpler than it has sometimes been made to appear. We shall deal with the simpler aspects of the problem first.

III. Peripatetic Elements in the ANACYCLOSIS

At the basis of Polybius's analysis there lies a tripartite classification of political constitutions. There are, among 'unmixed' polities, three 'best' forms (6. IO. 6): kingship, aristocracy and democracy; associated with them are three corrupt counterparts: tyranny, oligarchy and ochlocracy. The relation between each best form and its debased counterpart is conceived in organic or biological terms. The latter is an inborn corruption (6. IO. 7: au[u xLocxL) of the former - a "native and naturally attendant ill" (6. IO. 2: O6XE'CV

xac cpuasc ncpC6NrevIv ... .c xxv) which is engendered along with it (6. IO.4:

auyyevv&'iLa) and eventually destroys it, just as worms and rust are the "inbred evils" (6. IO. 3: au[Lpus X?Uat) which cause iron and wood to decay., It follows that the cycle of change which can be observed in political history is not an isolated phenomenon: it merely illustrates the natural law (6. 9. IO: cpu5aFo o xovopt; 6.57. I: (Pa9cE0 &v&yx-n) that destruction and transformation are the lot of all things (6. 57. I: 'i&M Totg OimL U7n6xeLTrL cpOop& xal ['sa-

PoX~). Every body, every activity, every polity has a period of natural growth, then an acme followed by decay and destruction (6. 5I. 4). The mixed constitution is more stable than the pure forms because the presence of a number of different political species (eide) within a single body politic checks or retards the tendency toward decay inherent in each one of them.

The essential points in this doctrine of polity and political change may be stated as follows: I) All constitutions can be placed in one of three categories, depending on whether power resides in an individual, a minority or the demos.

6 As von Fritz notes (88), this simile is not taken from the world of growth and decay. Yet the presence of the term symphyes shows that rusting and rotting are viewed as processes analogous to the decay of living things. Cf. the two closely parallel passages (discussed by von Scala, 19-21; Ryffel, 248-50; Walbank, 659-6o) from Plato (Rep. lo. 6oga) and Philo (Aet. Mundi 20-see text, 445 f.) in which worms and rust are compared explicitly to disease.



444 THOMAS COLE

(2 There is an organic connection between the healthy specimens within each category and the particular corruptions 'innate' to them. 3) All political regimes are transitory, and the resulting political cycle is analogous to the universal cycle of coming into being and decay observable throughout the universe. 4) Mixed polities are more stable than simple ones and so supenror to them. If one examines the parallels to these four ideas which appear elsewhere in Greek literature, it will be seen that their presence in Polybius points unmistakably to the influence of one philosophical school and no other.

I) The tripartite classification of constitutions is at least as old as the fifth century (cf. Herodotus 3. 82. 2; Pindar Pyth. 2.87), but the subdivision of each political genus into good and bad species appears for the first time in Aristotle (EN 8. Io ii6oa3i-b22; EE 7.9 124ib27-32; Pol. 3.5 I279a28-b6). There are approximations to Aristotle's scheme in earlier writers,7 but there is no good reason for believing that he was not the first to present it in its entirety.8 Unlike Polybius, he makes democracy the corrupt form of the rule of the many: the better version is alternately timokratia or politeia. But Aristotle's successors came ultimately to use the same terminology which appears in Polybius. The summary of Peripatetic teaching composed by the first-century philosopher Arius Didymus (ap. Stobaeus 2. 7. 26 = W-H 2. I50. 2I-24) gives Aristotle's classification, but with ochlokratia substituted for demokratia and demokratia for timokratia/politeia.Y

2) The organic metaphor is not so conspicuous in Aristotle's discussion of the varieties of polity as it is in Polybius. Kingship, aristocracy and timocracy are, rather, orthai politeiai from which tyranny, oligarchy and democracy are parekbaseis. Yet the deviation forms are also termed the 'death' or 'destruction' (phehora) of the orthai (EN ii6oa 32), and the organic or biological metaphor is one which appears often whenever Aristotle is dealing with the varieties of

7 See J. de Romilly, "Le classement des constitutions d'Hdrodote A Aristote," REG 72

(1959) 8-I99. 8 Ryffel's attempt (64-70) to find an implicit Sechsverfassungstheorie in the con-

stitutional debate of Herodotus 3.80-82 is not convincing. In that passage Darius does, it is true, praise the monarchy of the one best man (82. 2); presumably, then, he would have recognized as undesirable the rule of someone other than the best. A king-tyrant dichotomy is implied here, and it was (as de Romilly, [above, n. 7] 84, points out) the earliest of the three to develop. But Darius's critique of other types of government declares them to be vicious or unstable even at their best. What Herodotus offers is simply a series of arguments for and against monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy (cf. H. Strohm, Gnomon 23 [I951] 146). The praise and critique of a given regime are never united into a single perspective which would allow for a distinction between good and bad subspecies.

9 On the significance of the change, see R. Walzer, "Magna Moralia und Aristotelische Ethik," Neue Philologische Untersuchungen 7 (1929) I i8-i9. Later classifications (collected by H. Henkel, Studien zur Geschichte der griechischen Lehre vom Staat [Leipzig I872]

IOO, n. 4) agree with Polybius and Arius in making the good form of popular rule demokratia, though they refer to its corrupt counterpart by a variety of terms.




political forms and their metamorphoses.10 There is, moreover, the same close connection between each orthe and its parekbasis as there is in Polybius: the change from the one to the other is the "easiest and closest" of political transformations (EN ii6ob22: ?a&Zaov... oUZo xal p4a'o 'poc3atvouat) inasmuch as it involves only the change of an eidos into its own phaulotes (EN ii6obio-ii).11 A basicaUy similar view of political forms and transformations is present in a later work in which Peripatetic influence has often been detected12 - the first book of Cicero's De Re Publica. There is a "headlong and easy path" (i. 44: iter... .praeceps ac lubricum) connecting each of the three simple constitutions to the finitimum malum (I. 44) or contraria vitia (I. 69) to which it is most prone. Thus kingship is subject to a prima et certissima mutatio into tyranny - deterrimum genus et finitimum optimo (I. 65).

3) In the passages in which his tripartite scheme of constitutions is presented Aristotle does not say anything about the frequency of political change. Arius, however, in the extract already mentioned, notes that polities often undergo transformation for better or worse (W-H 2. 15I. 2-3). It is natural to identify the latter change with the degeneration of orthai into their parekbaseis, and the former with the transformation of such corrupt forms back into orthai, whether of the same or different species. Moreover, in one of the passages already quoted (I.45) Cicero speaks of miri ... orbes et quasi circumitus in rebus publicis commutationum et vicissitudinum. And later in the same book (68) he notes that kings, tyrants, aristocrats and people tamquam pilam rapiunt inter se rei publicae statum.. . nec diutius umquam tenetur idem rei publicae modus.'3

Even more significant are the parallels to Polybius found in a set of passages from Philo's De Aeternitate Mundi and the Pythagorean forgeries ascribed to

10 See, most recently, J. Day and M. Chambers, "Aristotle's History of Athenian Democracy," University of California Publications in History (I962) 41-42.

11 The close connection between orthe and parekbasis has a further consequence noted in both Polybius und Aristotle: a tyrant may win a reputation by laying claim to the title and character of king: cf. 6. 3. io and Pol. 5. II 13I4a33-40.

12 See F. Egermann, "Die Proomien zu den Werken des Sallust," SBWien 214. 3 (I932) 55-65; F. Solmsen, "Die Theorie der Staatsform bei Cicero de re publica I," Philologus 88 (1933) 333 and 337-39; and P6schl, 22-23. K. Buchner's attempt ("Die beste Verfassung. Eine philologische Untersuchung zu den ersten drei Bilchern von Ciceros Staat," SIFC 26 [I953] 6I-86) to isolate the comparison of constitutions found in I. 47-53 as a "peripatetischer Fremdkorper" (o05) in the midst of a more eclectic and original discussion does not seem to me to have been successful.

13 For the Peripatetic affinities of the idea cf., also, Ad Att. 2. 9. 1-2, where the name of Theophrastus is associated with the recognition of an orbis in re publica and with recent events which have transferred power from the senate to the triumvirs. 0. Regenbogen, who has called attention to the passage ("Theophrastos," RE Suppl. 7 [1940] I518-19), suggests that the process of political transformation was one of the matters discussed in the IIo)rxu& n p6q 'roi xaupot6, a work in which Theophrastus considered quae essent in re publica inclinationes rerum et momenta temporum quibus esset moderandum utcum- que res postularet (De Fin. S. II).



446 THOMAS COLE

Ocellus Lucanus and Hippodamus of Miletus.14 These texts, like Polybius, speak of a biological cycle of metabole involving genesis, acme and phthora and applying in different degrees to all gignomena.'6 The elements of the cosmos (Ocellus I5; Aet. Mundi IO9), the seasons of the year (Aet. Mundi IO9-IO),

individual men and women and whole families and cities (Hippodamus ap. Stobaeus 4. 34. 7I = W-H 5. 847. 8-IO) are involved in a perpetual succession of rise and fall. Ocellus, Hippodamus and Philo are linked to one another both by similarities of thought and expression and by what is fairly certainly a common origin in Peripatetic philosophy. Their remarks presuppose the Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity of the world and the transience of all sublunary things; there are parallels of detail between Ocellus and Aristotle's treatise On Generation and Decay; 16 and Philo's discussion, which cites Critolaus, is clearly drawn from a Peripatetic source.'7

4) In the Politics it is reported (2. 6 I265b33-35) that "certain thinkers" have analyzed the Spartan constitution as a mixture of oligarchy, kingship and democracy. Aristotle himself questions the accuracy of this analysis, and when he speaks of mixed government in general refers to something rather different: either a 'middle' polity under the direction of the moderately well- to-do, or a regime which seeks to give recognition to the various contributions - wealth, intelligence, numbers -which different classes make toward the well- being of the state (see below, 465). But it is clear that Aristotle was at least familiar with the formula for mixed government which appears in Polybius; and the same formula appears both in Arius (W-H 2. I5I. I-2) and Cicero (De Re Publ. I. 45 and 69). The former is offering a summary of Peripatetic theory, the latter an account based, as has already been pointed out (above, 445 with n. I2), on what seem to be Peripatetic sources.

The evidence here assembled is both extensive and consistent. It is hardly possible to deny that Polybius has used, for a part of his anacyclosis at any rate, a body of ideas whose ultimate origin is the Lyceum.18The evidence does

14 Discussed in von Scala, 232-44; Ryffel, 203-21; Theiler, 296-98; and Walbank,

644-45. 15 Compare Polybius 6. 51. 4 and 57. i, Aet. Mundi 58, Ocellus 4, and Hippodamus

ap. Stobaeus 4. 34. 7I = W-H 5. 846. i6-847. 8 (reprinted in large part in von Scala, 236-38 and 240-41). Cf., also, the similar passages on the two causes, internal and external, of decay in 6. 57. 2, Aet. Mundi 20, and Ocellus I3; and the phrases b &sd r6 xe-pov Le,3Xmo and the like which appear in Polybius 6. 57. 6, Ocellus 4, Aet. Mundi 5 (phthora defined as Tcpk, r6 X&Zpov ,teocpoX5o) and Arius (W-H 2. I5I. 2-3: 11EVO4& etv 8X T

7Co)XreLoq 7r0oX&xLq 7rp6q T & uvov xOxl T6 XEZpOV). 16 Assembled by Theiler, Gnomon 2 (1926) 596-97. 17 On Philo's sources, see F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles g (Basel I959) 65. 18 Individual elements in this doctrine are, of course, attested in earlier sources. In

particular, the Laws and the Platonic epistles mention, in passages which recall Polybius, the never-ending process of political change (Laws 3. 676b-c; 6. 782a; Ep. 8. 353d-e -

on the kyklos of democratic and tyrannical regimes in Sicilian history); the instability of




not allow us to answer certain more specific questions - whether, for example, the particular Peripatetic to whom Polybius is indebted is Dicaearchus,19 or whether the immediate source for his knowledge of Peripatetic theory was not rather Aristotle's Stoic admirer Panaetius,20 or some pamphleteer of eclectic tendencies.2' Such questions are not likely to reach a solution unless

democracy, oligarchy and monarchy (Ep. 7. 326d: r&q 7r6XCLe TpovvE8oq -re xact 6XLyap-

xtocq xcd aroxpCTrEac ?raoCaoc~ f n~86roze ? yeLv); and the mixed character of the Spartan constitution (Laws 4. 7I2d-e). Absent from Academic texts, however, are both the attempt to link good and bad subspecies in a pattern of metabole and the notion of political change as part of the larger cycle of growth and decay. This being so, and given the close connection between the political theory of the Laws and that of the Peripatetics (text, 31 with n. 75), certain of the Platonic parallels to Polybius strengthen rather than weaken the case for a Peripatetic source. 6. Ir. I I-12, for example, contains observations on the Roman constitution which probably go back to what is said about Sparta in Laws 7I2d-e - but through a Peripatetic intermediary (cf. Pol. 4. 9 1294bl3-36). There are, however, other Polybian parallels in the Laws for which there is no counterpart in Peri- patetic texts; for their significance see below, n. II5.

19 To be numbered among the admirers of the mixed constitution in its Spartan form - if we can assume that the discussion of Sparta which appeared in his Tripolitikos (fr. 70

Wehrli) was an analysis of the tripartite character of Spartan institutions (cf. Cicero, De Re Publ. 2. 41, on the triplex rerum publicarum genus established by Lycurgus) rather than, say, a synkrisis of the polities of Sparta and two other states; and if Photius's reference (Bibl. Cod. 37 p. 8a, 2f) to the polity compounded of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy as dt8oq 7oXt ;eLaq Atx=cpXLx6v is in fact a reference to Dicaearchus -

rather than to the rule of dikaion which would obtain in such a state (so Wilamowitz, Hellenistische Dichtung I [Berlin I927] 64, n. i). In favor of a Dicaearchan origin for Polybius's theory of the mixed constitution are T. A. Sinclair, A History of Greek Political Thought (London I95 I) 270-71; H. Erbse, "Zur Entstehung des polybianischen Geschichts- werkes,"RhM 94 (195I) i6o, n. I; W. Jaeger, Aristotle2 (Engl. transl. Oxford l948) 459, n. 2 and 460, n. i; and the earlier authors cited in Poschl, 22, n. 22 and Walbankl, 84-85.

20 Termed philaristoteles in Index Herc. Lxi; cf. Cicero, De Fin. 4. 79. Panaetius's adherence to the theory of the mixed constitution seems to follow from Re Publ. I. 34 (Scipio's effort to show in discussions with Polybius and Panaetius that the Roman constitution was longe optimam - hence, presumably, the outstanding example of the mixed government of which the two Greeks approved). Cf., also, Diogenes Laertius 7. 131,

where approval of the mixed constitution is listed as Stoic doctrine. Panaetius is certainly the one most likely to have introduced such a point of view into the discussions of the school (cf. M. Pohlenz, Die Stoa 2 [G6ttingen I949] 102). His influence has often been detected in Book VI - see, especially, von Scala, 222-50. But the view faces chronological difficulties (Mioni, 6I-63) and parts at least of the account of social origins in 6. 5-6 are clearly not Stoic (see Taeger, 19-27; Erbse [above, n. i9] 158-59; von Fritz, 55-58; Walbank, 65I1-52).

21 Such as the author of the Ocellus treatise mentioned in the text (446) for its parallels to Polybius. This work is, in the view of its most recent editor, a "popular-philosophischer Traktat" composed under the influence of second-century Peripatetic theory with an admixture of Stoic and Pythagorean elements (R. Harder, Neue Philologische Unter- suchungen I [1926] 151-53). Of a similar character would be the Pythagorean source suggested by A. Delatte, Essai sur la politique pythagoricienne (Li6ge 1922) II3-14 and



448 THOMAS COLE

new evidence is forthcoming, nor are they terribly important. A decision in favor of one possibility or the other will not substantially change or add to what is already known about the philosophical affinities of the particular aspect of Polybius's theories which we have been considering.

There is, however, one very prominent aspect of the anacyclosis which has no Peripatetic parallel; its existence doubtless explains why scholars have been less ready than the rest of the evidence warrants to pronounce in favor of a Peripatetic source.22 Polybius fixes a definite order in which the three forms of polity and their corrupt variants appear. Such a fixed order is paralleled in the cycles of seasons, elements and ages of man which appear in Ocellus and Philo, but not in any of the political contexts with which Polybius has been compared. Cicero recognizes that the evolution of each political species into its finitimum malum is a prima et certissima mutatio (cf., in EN II60b22 [cited above, 445], &ixLa,rov... o0tco xoct p. a'r c ,rotp3oxvouat) but allows for a great variety of secondary changes (I. 45 and 68-69).23 And the general phraseology which Arius uses - polities "change often for better or worse" - suggests that his political cycle had a similar freedom. Nor is Aristotle himself likely to have recognized any fixed succession of political regimes of the sort which Polybius gives: he criticizes Plato sharply (Pol. 5. IO 13I6aI7-38) for attempting to establish just such a succession in the famous cycle of Republic VIII and IX.

We may say with some certainty, then, that the notion of a definite sequence in political history is not Peripatetic. Given the affinity of each orthe for its own parekbasis, constitutions are more likely than not to come in pairs. But these pairs can succeed each other in any order. This need not mean, however, that the cycle of Book VI is entirely unrelated to Peripatetic sources. The anacyclosis does not involve a line of thought entirely different from the Peripatetic one; rather, it presents what is essentially the Peripatetic theory

"La constitution des Etats-Unis et les Pythagoriciennes," Bulletin de la Classe des Lettres et des Sciences Morales et Politiques de l'Acad6mie royale de Belgique, Ser. 5, 34 (1948)

391-412. For even if we grant the authenticity of the Archytas fragments (ap. Stobaeus 4. I. I38 = W-H 4. 85. io-86. 2) dealing with the mixed constitution, on which Delatte bases his case, the biological theory of growth and decay with which the doctrine of the mixed constitution is inseparably connected in Polybius shows clear Peripatetic influence.

2 Of recent studies devoted primarily to Polybius, only those of Erbse (above, n. I9)

and Theiler, 298, hold this view. The Peripatetic origin of Book VI is most often maintained in passing, by those whose main concern is some other author: Theophrastus (Regenbogen, above, n. 13), Cicero (Poschl, 22-23 and 48, with n. 15) or Dicaearchus (Jaeger and Wehrli, above, n. I9).

2a See P6schl, 83-84, who is surely right in insisting that Cicero is here drawing directly on Peripatetic sources - not elaborating on Polybius or contaminating the cycle of Book VI with what he found in Republic VIII or Roman history. For the latter view see, most recently, Buchner (above, n. I2) ioo-oi and S. E. Smethurst, "Cicero and Dicaearchus," TAPA 83 (1952) 231, With n. 25.




along with one rather extraneous addition. The notion of a continuous cycle of genesis, acme and decay works very well as long as one is thinking in terms of single pairs of polities. Difficulties arise as soon as one tries, as Polybius does, to link three such pairs into a fixed succession. Suclh a linking creates a larger unit of cyclical movement - that pursued by a single state or society from monarchy back to monarchy. And though this process recurs perpetually, like the rise of polities and their transformations into the corruptions innate to them, it has, not one highpoint, but three: kingship, aristocracy and democracy. The cyclical unit with which Polybius is concerned has a genesis and destruction but no clearly-defined acme.24 The one non-Peripatetic feature of the antacyclosis destroys what would otherwise be a very neat closed system.25 It is natural to conclude that Polybius's cycle came into being through an attempt, not altogether successful, to alter that system.26

24 It is not perfectly clear from the anacyclosis itself that Polybius intends to make the whole cycle illustrate the succession of growth and decay; but this does become evident when the cycle is applied to Roman history - see text, 479).

25 Walbank, it is true, finds (645) a similar inconsistency in the attempts of Ocellus and Philo to combine the notions of cyclical change and growth and decay. But the progressions of elements, seasons and ages of man to which those writers refer are precisely the ones in which the two ideas can be combined without difficulty. The cycle of elemental transformations has a quite literal highpoint - when what began as earth has risen to the position of fire; and so does each phase of the cycle - when all the material passing through the cycle is in the form of earth, water, fire or air. In similar fashion the year has an acme at the summer solstice and each season its own acme - when all traces of its predecessor are gone and intimations of what is to follow have not yet begun to appear. And there are comparable highpoints both for a man's life as a whole and for each of the ages within it. There is no analogous highpoint in the cycle of constitutions as conceived by Polybius.

26 The difficulty noted in the text is the main one under which Polybius's account labors, and it is plausibly accounted for by the suggestion given there. Far less serious, if indeed it exists at all, is another inconsistency in the cycle to which von Fritz, 87, and Brink and Walbank, i i6, have drawn attention. Kingship comes into being by a gradual process which may properly be called growth; but aristocracy and democracy spring full grown out of revolutions and have their acme at the very start of their existence. This objection, however, loses its force if one regards the different phases of the political cycle as overlapping ones. The metabole which transforms kingship into tyranny is both the beginning of the decline of one-man rule and the beginning of the rise of aristocracy (cf. 6. 7. 9: hatred for the tyrant is at once the arche of his own katalysis and aCia'rmtq emLpOuXq TroT% fyoutiivotq). The early stages of the new government are thus identical with the preliminary phases of the revolution. In similar fashion democracy has its beginnings in the first stirrings of resentment against oligarchy and in the distrust of minority rule which accompanies it. It is unlikely that Polybius had explicitly formulated any such view of the genesis of aristocracy and democracy; yet the ease with which a satisfactory formula can be found shows that there is no fundamental difficulty in his account at this point - only a little vagueness which can be cleared up by a moment's reflection. A hundred years of exegesis has not been able to find a completely satisfactory solution for the main inconsistency in the anacyclosis (see text, 479 f.).

29 Historia XIII, 4



450 THOMAS COLE

It is quite possible - and has been maintained 27 that Polybius himself is responsible for the revision. In all the rest of Greek literature there is no exact parallel to the anacyclosis - a fact which lends some support to this suggestion. But a portion, at least, of the Polybian sequence is paralleled elsewhere, in a series of texts whose similarity to Book VI has not been suf- ficiently noted. These passages must be considered before attempting to reach any final decision with regard to our source problem.

IV. An Alternate Tradition

The latest in time of composition of the texts with which we shall here be concerned is the summary history of human society which appears in Annals 3.26. Tacitus tells of a primitive golden age brought to an end by the rise of vis and ambitio. As a result of the latter there came into being monarchies (dominationes), some of which survive down to the present day. Other peoples preferred legal systems, either at the outset or after they had grown tired of monarchy (26. 3: statim aut postquam regum pertaesum). Tacitus is evidently summarizing some accepted account28 and has so compressed it that the connection between its various stages is not always clear. It would seem, however, that dominationes, since they come into being as a response to the rule of vis and ambitio, are a means of achievinag protection and security (as is kingship in Polybius). In certain instances men grow tired of this system (because kings become tyrants?) and resort to the rule of law. The parallels with Polybius are not extensive and by themselves would be of no significance. The passage is worth citing, however, because it indicates the persistence of the tradition with which we are to be concerned. Other representatives of the tradition will provide a better basis for linking it to Polybius.

One such representative is Lucretius. His account of the development of culture (5. 925-I457) includes a passage on primitive kingslhip. This is the earliest form of government, and the character of the institution closely parallels that of its counterpart in Polybius:

condere coeperunt urbis arcemque [the earliest kings] grew old in locare/PRAEsIDIuM reges ipsi sibi their office, fortifying and walling

27 Cf. P6schl, 83: ".. Polybius gibt eine schematisierte Fassung der bei Cicero vor-

liegenden Lehre von den orbes." 28 Thought by some to be the work of Posidonius discussed in the text (45I); see

S. Blankert, Seneca ep. go, Over natuur en cultuur en Posidonius als zijn bron (Diss.

Amsterdam I941) 92-93, with the earlier discussions cited there. But this is unlikely,

given the absence of any Posidonian parallel to Tacitus's notion of a Golden Age before

the earliest governments. The discrepancy is noted by G. Rudberg, Forschungen zu

Poseidonios; Skrifter utgifna af. K. Humanistika Vetenskapssamfundet i Uppsala 20. 3

(i9i8) 73.



The Sources and Composition of Polybius VI 45I

PERFUGIUMQUE/et pecus atque agros strategic locations and acquiring divisere atque dedere land, the former FOR THE SAKE OF

(IIO8-io) SECURITY, the latter in order to have an abundance of provisions to distribute to their subjects

(6.7.4). Lucretius's kings, like good Epicureans (cf. RS 6), seem to be more interested in their own security than that of their subjects. But this difference notwith- standing, the parallel with Polybius is close. In the ensuing portion of his account Lucretius resembles Tacitus. Envy and the attendant struggle for power make kings hated (II2o-35); they are murdered, and the resulting anarchy leads eventually to the rule of law:

inde magistratum partim docuere creare iuraque constituere, ut vellent legibus uti. II44

Lucretius's older contemporary Posidonius offers an essentially similar view (preserved in Seneca's goth letter, 4-6) of early government.29 In the beginning men, like other animals, followed the lead of the strongest and best members of each herd. These leaders were the first philosophers. They protected the people against would-be offenders and improved the common way of life by their useful discoveries. Subsequently, however, the quality of rule declined; tyrannies replaced kingship and were in turn replaced by the rule of law. Here the original function of kingship and its eventual substitution by the rule of law recall what appears in the Annals, and the reason for the substitution - the degeneration of kingship into tyranny - provides another parallel to the historical sequence envisioned by Polybius. By his assumption that the leadership of the animal herd belongs to the best as well as to the strongest Posidonius does away with the Polybian distinction between the natural form of rule common to man and animals (monarchy) and the purely human institution of kingship which arises out of it p?rOT XOCT'OCU Xrui L alopOiaecoq (6. 4. 7). Yet the attempt to find an animal parallel for the earliest political condition of mankind is identical in both writers.30

29 Posidonius has often been regarded as Lucretius's source for the passage just discussed (cf. Ernout-Robin ad loc.). This identification is possible, but the parallels which link Lucretius's discussion of early kingship both to Polybius (6. 7. 4) and to the Ratae Sententiae of Epicurus (Usener, 395; A. Grilli, "La posizione di Aristotele, Epicuro e Posidonio nei confronti della storia della civiltA," RendIstLomb 86 [I953] 23-24) suggest dependence on earlier models.

30 I. Heinemann, Poseidonios' metaphysische Schriften i (Breslau 192I) 9I, believes that Posidonius's account of early man is simply a revision and correction of what appeared in Polybius. But this theory fails to account for the absence of any Posidonian equivalent to the aristocratic stage in Polybius's account of man's political development. The view put forward in the text - that Polybius and Posidonius derive from a common source - offers a far more satisfactory explanation of the similarities between the two writers.

29*



452 THOMAS COLE

Another passage from Latin literature enables us to trace the tradition present in Tacitus, Lucretius and Posidonius back a stage further - to Polybius's younger contemporary Panaetius. In the De Officiis, a treatise whose first two books are based on Panaetius's flcp' 'oiU xaONKoV-cor, Cicero suggests that the first kings were men of surpassing excellence from whom the people sought protection against the rich and powerful (2. 4I-42). They ruled so long as they made it their practice to deal out equal justice to both high and low; when they ceased to do this they were replaced by an equitable system of law. Here tyranny is not mentioned, but the character and mode of selection of the first king recall Polybius even more closely than do the corresponding parts of Posidonius, Tacitus and Lucretius.

A pair of closely-related passages from Aristotle and Theophrastus show an even earlier phase of our tradition. The latter's account is reported by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Antiqu. Rom. 5. 74. I--2). Originally, every city in Greece was ruled by a king - not despotically like the barbarian hordes, but in accordance with lawful usage and ancestral custom. The most powerful king was the one who was most just and adhered most closely to lawful usage, "not departing from ancestral ways in his mode of life" (,vi8gv ex&aLLt44irvo0 TWV 7aCrpIWv).

For a long time kingships continued to be administered in this fashion - "subject to certain conditions" (br't proZq tLa). Eventually, however, rulers began to reach out for more in the exercise of power and to disregard lawful usage. At this point the people became discontented with the whole institution and put an end to royal government. Thereafter they resorted to magistrates and written laws for protection. Here the parallels with Polybius are even closer. The identification of the most just and law-abiding king with the most powerful might be a generalization from what Polybius says about the earliest king and the willing support he receives from his subjects; and Theophrastus's specific reference to adhering to ancestral ways is closer to Polybius than the vaguer notion of kings as just men and protectors which appears in Panaetius and Posidonius. For in Polybius too the king is a servant of public opinion: the institution comes into being because of one man's decision to lend his support to popular notions of what is right and wrong (6. 6. IO0I2; above, 442), and kings become unpopular when they cease to follow the unostentatious mode of life (diata) cultivated by their ancestors (6. 7. 5-7; cf., in Theophrastus, ?-,L8? sxivv TCO 7Coptcov). Also common to Polybius and Theophrastus is an avowedly utilitarian and empirical view of human psychology. The former has morality come into being as a means of achieving what is socially advantageous (6. 6. 9); kingship is adopted as an institution only when its actual workings in a given instance have been observed and its superiority to monarchy perceived (6. 7. 3); and governments undergo transformation when men discover through bitter experience that the ex- pedients resorted to in the past are unsatisfactory (6. 9. 2-3). In similar




fashion Theophrastus sees in the development of political institutions a process by which men are taught what is useful through trial and error (5. 74. I:

8LO7X06VeTC 7CeL'tpq T? Xp-'MLLOV).

An essentially similar view of political history lies behind the portion of Aristotle's Politics (3. I4 I285b4-I9) devoted to a discussion of that form of monarchy which is exercised "by consent and in accordance with ancestral usage." Such kingships come into being because kings were popular benefactors to begin with and so ruled over willing subjects in hereditary succession. Their functions were partially judicial. Later, however, they either voluntarily abandoned most of their prerogatives or were deprived of them by the people. The notion of the early king as a benefactor, his role as dispenser of justice, the 'customary' character of his rule, and the eventual relinquishing of his prerogatives (by their divison among a set of magistrates?) all have their parallels in Theophrastus and Polybius.

Our tradition cannot be traced with certainty to any source earlier than Aristotle. But there is a good possibility that it is as old as the fifth century. In his Archaeology Thucydides contrasts tyranny with the regime which preceded it: 6id p'-toZq yep'c Pp0xVT XcL?LeZL (I. I3. I; cf. '1rd oZ -LaL

in Theophrastus). Evidently, then, he recognized a sequence of kingship- tyranny in early Greek history.3' Also included in the Archaeology is a mention (i. i8. i) of the general movement by which tyrannies were suppressed by the Spartans. The resulting 'free' regimes, whether oligarchic or democratic, would all have embodied in one form or another the rule of magistrates and law mentioned by Theophrastus and Lucretius. Earlier in the fifth century, Herodotus had described two situations (cf. 3. 142. 3-4; 4. i6i. 3-I62. 2) in which a division of royal prerogatives and possessions among the people took place - much in the manner suggested by Aristotle. And the late fifth-century writer known as the Anonymus lamblichi offers, by way of proving the foolishness of the would-be tyrant, a contrast between the man who gains power and prestige by using his arete in support of law and right and the one who engages in a fruitless attempt to go against the law of the land through reliance on his own might (6. 2-5 = FVS7 II 402. 30-403. io). The opposite fates of the tyrannical strong man and his law-abiding counterpart areillustrated well enough by the rise and fall of kingship described in the tradition we are examining. Moreover, the Anonymus is linked to one text in that tradition (De Officiis 2) by parallels numerous and close enough to suggest that the two works derive from a common, fifth-century source. It is conceivable that this source contained an analysis of early kingship and tyranny which has been stripped of its historical context by the Anonymus.32

31 Cf. Ryffel, 28: " Sollte hier nicht eine Verfallstheorie fuir das Genus der Einzelherrschaft wirklich gewesen sein. . . wie wir sie in breit ausgefuhrter Form bei Polybios vorfinden ?"

32 For a more detailed presentation of the argument outlined here, see "The Anonymus Iamblichi and his Place in Greek Political Theory," HSCP 65 (I96I) I4I-43*



454 THOMAS COLE

Two more passages which develop the same general view of political history as we are examining have yet to be considered. In a sense they are the most important, for they come from Polybius himself. In 2. 4I. 3-5 and 4. I. 5 Polybius gives a brief account of the history of the Achaeans. The race was at first ruled by a continuous succession of hereditary monarchs. At a certain point, however, becoming discontented with one of their kings for ruling despotically rather than in accordance with custom, the Achaeans changed their polity into a democracy. This form of government was maintained with intermissions from that time down to Polybius's own day. The scheme of development presented here is not the one which the facts of Achaean history inevitably demanded.33 The region had a democratic constitution in the fifth century, but democracy was replaced by oligarchy in 4I7, and the cities of the league remained oligarchic through most of the fourth century.34 It would seem that Polybius is fitting events, consciously or unconsciously, to a preconceived pattern.

This pattern, as it appears both in Polybius and in the other texts just considered, is partly the result of an effort to state as simply as possible some of the main facts of Greek political history. As such it could have occurred independently to a number of writers, and one may well ask whether we are justified in speaking of anything so definite as a tradition. Yet from the point of view of the modern student of Greek history, at any rate, a more obvious historical scheme would have been one of the two sequences which Aristotle offers in the Politics: kingship - oligarchy - democracy (4. 13 1297bi6-28)

or kingship - aristocratic polity - oligarchy - tyranny - democracy (3. 15

I286b8-22). The authors with whom we are here concemed have selected as well as simplified, and the agreement between them involves more than a mere sequence of political forms. Tacitus, Posidonius and Lucretius all associate the beginnings of kingship with the early stages of social existence. And Tacitus's account, taken in conjunction with that of Panaetius, provides a plausible reason for the association: kingship is regarded as a first effort to cope with the violence which obtained at one time in men's relationships with one another. Moreover, the related passages from Thucydides and the Anonymus (discussed above, 453) appear in contexts in which the early, chaotic stages of social life are discussed, though not explicitly connected with the rise of kingship.TM Our

33 J. A. 0. Larsen, Representative Government in Greek and Roman History (Berkeley

I955) 201, n. 8, is inclined to accept Polybius's statement (found also in Strabo 8. 384)

that "the country passed directly from monarchy to a republican federal government."

But even if this is so, the rest of the account is hard to square with history. 34 See Walbank, 230.

35 Cf. Thucydides I. 2. I-2, on the rude and unsettled conditions of early Greece, and

Anon. Iambl. 6. i (FVS 402. 24-30), on the creation of nomos as a response to man's in-

ability to live either alone or among his fellows in a state of primitive anarchy. The

similarity of the latter passage to Plato's Protagoras myth has often been noted.




texts are thus linked together by a shared sociological emphasis; and the emphasis does not cease once the beginnings of kingship have been described. Explicitly in Posidonius and Panaetius, implicitly in Aristotle and Theo- phrastus, constitutional regimes come into being as a later development in the same process which created kingship. They represent an effort to achieve that protection and equality under law which one-man rule provided before it became transformed into tyranny. The sequence of kingship, tyranny and rule of law is causal as well as historical.

There is thus enough substance and coherence in the view of history we have been examining to suggest that it does have its roots in political theory. Since approximations to it first appear in the late fifth century it is reasonable to assume that it originated with the investigations and speculations of the Sophists. Transmission to later generations was probably through writings of a 'popular' character - pamphlets on kingship, perhaps, or those rhetorical handbooks which included a selection of political commonplaces for the guidance of the deliberative orator.36 For convenience this view of history may be called tradition 'B' and so distinguished from its Peripatetic counterpart, tradition 'A'.

V. The Composite Character of the ANACYCLOSIS

We have already pointed out several ideas common to tradition B and Polybius VI. The most important of them - that monarchy is the earliest form of government and non-monarchical regimes a later development - is also the one most conspicuously absent from the Peripatetic scheme of constitutional change.37 It is natural at this point to ask whether Polybius's anacyclosis might not have arisen through a combination of the two traditions. As the passage cited from Book II (above, 454) shows, Polybius was acquainted with the view of history embodied in tradition B. To combine this view with that of tradition A certain adjustments would have been necessary; but, as we shall see, they would not have been overly difficult ones to make.

Unlike tradition A, tradition B contains no aristocratic or oligarchic stage. It is evidently to be associated with a certain strand in Greek political thought which makes no sharp distinction, either between monarchy and narrow oligarchy, or between a more broadly-based oligarchy and democracy. In

te Cf. Rhetorica ad Alexandrum 2. I424a8-bI5; Aristotle, Rhet. I. 8 1365b22-66ai6; and the discussion in Ryffel, 243-47.

37 Such a notion is not altogether absent from the Peripatetic texts which we now possess: cf. Pol. 3. 15 1286b8-22 (cited in the text, 454), which traces a sequence of monarchy, aristocratic 'polity', oligarchy, tyranny, and democracy in the history of the state. But it is unlikely that Polybius knew the Politics, and the passage attributes political change to the working of causes (increase in population and the number of those able to make a contribution to the well-being of the state) which lie completely outside the perspective of Book VI.



456 THOMAS COLE

classifying political regimes it looks, not to the number of those who wield power (the one, the few or the many), but to the way in which power is wielded - continuously, by a single man or a minority small and homogeneous enough that no elaborate organization is needed to achieve harmony of purpose and action; or in turn, through a system of rotating magistrates subject to audit and law. Such a bipartite classification of constitutions appears alongside the more familiar tripartite one at all periods of Greek history - in the aristocratic poets, for example, who contrast polis and tyrannis`8, in the Attic skolion which praises Harmodius and Aristogeiton for "slaying the tyrant and making the Athenians isonomous,"39 and in the writings of the men, both moderates and democrats, who protest tyrannical usurpations, whether of the many or of the few, which would destroy what they believe to be the patrios politeia.40 Seen from this perspective, it makes little difference whether tyrants are one, or thirty, or four hundred in number; and an oligarchy which is isonomos must be sharply distinguished from the dynasteia of a small group of men - something which verges on tyranny (cf. Thucydides 3. 62. 3).41 The terminology which appears in such contexts varies considerably. The condition of men who are autonomoi may be contrasted with that of those who are slaves to a tyrant or to a foreign power (cf. Herodotus I. 96. i), or Greek freedom with the rule of oriental despots (ibid., 7. I04. 4). Health is said to be a state of isonomia, by contrast with the monarchia of one of the bodily humors which is disease (Alcmaeon of Croton, FVS7 24B4). Demokratia is set against the rule of 'dynasts' (Democritus, FVS7 68B25I), tyrannides against poleis (Demosthenes 2. 2I),

monarchia against politeia (Aristotle, Poi. 5. 10 U3o0bI-3).4" Democracy and

38 Alcaeus 87. 3 Diehl; Solon 10. 3-4 and 23 passim; Theognis 43-52. 39 Scolia Anonyma io and I3. Efforts to account for the glorification of Harmodius

and Aristogeiton as a piece of political propaganda with a specific aim have reached various and contradictory conclusions (for a survey, see G. Vlastos, "Isonomia," AJP 74

[z953] 34I-44). A better explanation, for the vogue of the tale if not for its origin, is that it harmonized with a tendency, shared by men of various political persuasions, to think in terms of the liberty-tyranny antithesis to the exclusion of any other. Of the series of events which led to the fall of the Pisistratids, popular imagination selected as decisive the one in which this antithesis was most simply and vividly embodied.

40 On the meaning of this slogan - and its vogue among men of different political beliefs - see A. Fuks, The Ancestral Constitution (London 1953) 107-II. The phrase, along with demokratia, is used by Polybius as the opposite of tyranny; cf. 2. 47. 3: the tyrannis of Cleomenes replaces the patrios politeia of the Spartans and 2.43. 8: Aratus's aim was to put down tyrannies and restore to all Trv XOL V xOa 7r1&CpL0V &bCu0epE(v.

*1 Cf. Euripides, fr. 275: XMXk 8' 6XGLVTO 7r&VTeq ot n)paVVL8L/XCLpOUaLV 6?ty&v T &v 7r6?keL VovapXtc - the only clear reference to oligarchy in all of Greek tragedy. See H. Bengl, Staatstheoretische Probleme im Rahmen der attischen, vornehmlich euripidei- schen Trag6die (Diss. Munich 1929) 55-56, who suggests that the passage is directed against the four hundred.

42 See W. L. Newman, The Politics of Aristotle (Oxford I887-1902) I, 52I, who notes that the monarchy-polity dichotomy is the fundamental one throughout Book V.




kingship are presented as the archetypes of all polities (Plato, Laws 3. 693d) or identified with the two basic forms of government, rule by logos and rule by nomos (Rhetorica ad Alexandrum I I420ai9-25).

Through all of these pairs43 one can trace an identical antithesis, one which embodied a way of looking at political phenomena which was evidently both useful and persistent, however incongruously or superficially it might be applied to a given situation. It is, moreover, the very point of view which was most prominent, both in the political life of Polybius's day and in Polybius's own work outside the confines of Book VI." Here the poles of the antithesis are demokratia, which by the second century had come to mean little more than free commonwealth or republic,45 and tyrannis, a term which Polybius applies indifferently to the regimes of despots like Nicocles of Sicyon or social reformers like Cleomenes III of Sparta (2. 43. 3; 47. 3). Nothing, then, would have been easier or more natural than for Polybius to associate under the single term demokratia the rule of elected magistrates and law envisioned in tradition B46 and the more exclusively popular regime demanded by the Peri-

43 The examples could be multiplied, but what has been given should be sufficient to show that this system of classification is not (as has sometimes been maintained - cf. de RomiWly [above, n. 7] 83-84; Pohlenz, Staatsgedanke und Staatslehre der Griechen [Leipzig 1923] II6) a mere simplification or special case of the 'canonical' tripartite one. On the importance of the bipartite division, particularly in early Greek thought, see H. Rehm, Geschichte der Staatsrechtswissenschaft (Freiburg and Leipzig I896) 104-05;

V. Ehrenberg, "The Origins of Democracy," Historia i (1950) 525-26; Newman (above, n. 42) 2, XXVii, n. 2; and , most clearly and forcefully, J. H. Oliver, Democracy, the Gods and the Free World (Baltimore I960) 44-45.

44 Aristokratia and aristoi (in the meaning 'upper classes') do not occur outside Book VI. Aristokratikos appears once, referring to Rome (23. I4. 1); oligarchia and oligarchikos once each (4. 32. i and 31. 2); basileia, demokratia, monarchia, and the corresponding adjectives often - cf., especially, II . I 3. 3-8, where democracy and monarchy are compared and contrasted. (References to oligarchy are given from Schweighaeuser's Index, which is incomplete. For monarchia see Walbankl, 76-77 and, for the other terms, the complete listings in Mauersberger's Lexicon).

45 See Walbank, 222; von Fritz, 8; and Larsen, "Hellenistic Federalism," CP 40 (I945) 88-9i, with the earlier discussions cited there.

46 Even as there envisioned the rule of law may have had certain democratic overtones. Lucretius, Cicero and Seneca all refer to the regime which follows monarchy as one of 'equal law' (5. I149: legibus aequis; De Off. 2. 42: leges...quae cum omnibus semper una atque eadem voce loquerentur; Ep. go. 6: aequo iure). These parallels suggest that the word isonomia stood in the Greek works on which our authors have drawn, and the associations of isonomia were largely democratic. Moreover, Aristotle seems to be envisioning a genuinely popular movement when he says that kings were deprived of their power by the ochloi (1285bI6); the association of democracy with the rule of law (as against the personal rule of oligarchs or monarchs) is found frequently in the orators (see the passages cited in A. H. M. Jones, Athenian Democracy [New York I958] 53); and such an association is in keeping with a certain strand in Greek democratic theory (Vlastos [above, n. 39] 356-6I). The sequel to the fall of monarchy in tradition B would thus seem to be the institution of polities which are predominantly, though by no means exclusively, democratic.



458 THOMAS COLE

patetic classification of tradition A. And it would have been equally easy for him to separate the period of absolute rule posited by tradition B into two chronologically distinct phases, depending on whether the basileis involved were one or more than one.47 Once these steps had been taken, themajor differences between the two traditions were removed; and the six political eide of the one could be arranged in the fixed historical sequence suggestedby the other.

This suggestion as to the origin of the anacyclosis has the merit both of economy and completeness. It accounts for all the important features of Polybius's account48 and is able to do so by positing the use of only two traditions, both of them traceable and well-defined in other texts - not the hypothetical single source or multitude of traditional motifs to which earlier analyses have on occasion resorted. And it has the further merit of being able to be tested by an additional type of evidence, one which has not yet been examined.

If the anacyclosis has in fact arisen through a conflation of two rather different doctrines, one might expect to find in the text of Book VI as it now stands traces of the joining operation which fitted them together. Such traces do in fact exist. There are certain duplications, omissions and inconsistencies in Polybius's account, and all of them are plausibly explained by the two- source theory just proposed.

The revolutions by which aristocracy and democracy come into being are essentially similar to each other: both are popular movements stemming from resentment at the lawless rule of a preceding regime, and both movements are spearheaded by a small minority - a group of men who constitute the boldest and most spirited in the tribe (6. 7. 9) or the individual who first dares speak and take action against the reigning oligarchs (6. 9. x). The aristocratic revolution comes to an end when its leaders receive power from the people - like a gift offered in gratitude (6. 8. 2); the democratic one when the people, having now come to distrust both monarchy and aristocracy, see no recourse but to

47 The word basileus can, of course, mean either a king or a nobleman - the lord of his

own domain or the lord of the land. Nor is there in the earlier period of the Greek language

any other word by which to designate nobles both as hereditary social class and political

aristocracy. 48 Failure to do this is the principal shortcoming of those analyses (notably of von Fritz

and Mioni [above, n. 41) which seek to explain all or large parts of the anacyclosis as a

'simplification' of Republic VIII and IX. To say this is to say that the anacyclosis is an

original creation of Polybius, for aside from the notion of a recurring sequence of political

forms and certain details in their descriptions of the transition from democracy to one-

man rule the two accounts bear no resemblance to each other. Von Fritz and Mioni are

doubtless correct in pointing out that the anacyclosis is not a brilliant or profound piece

of political theory - hence not beyond the capacities of an amateur like Polybius. But

this consideration would carry weight only if the parallels with Plato, insignificant as

they are, were the closest ones adducible between Polybius and other Greek authors.




assume power themselves (6. 9. 2-3). The latter course of events is well-enough motivated in terms of the empiricist psychology evident throughout the anacyclosis.49 Men have learned through experience that it is not safe to delegate to others the task of ruling and protecting them - hence decide that they must now provide for themselves. The course and outcome of the aristocratic revolution seem far less natural and inevitable.50 There is no good reason why its leaders should be a number of bold and spirited men - rather than, say, a single daring man who sets himself up in opposition to the reigning monarch and ends by founding a new dynasty rather than a new form of government. Earlier (6. 7. 3) Polybius had noted how certain monarchs had displeased the people and been replaced with others - evidently without a revolution. Why could this not have happened again? It would have been possible to suggest a reason for the change of polity - people felt that control by a group of men would be a safer arrangement. But Polybius has not attempted to do so. The reason may be that his whole account of the aristocratic revolution is simply a doublet of the popular one which appeared in tradition B, with the minimum amount of change introduced.5' And the aristocrats who emerge from it may simply be a plural version of the first king - men who receive rule as a favor from the people, just as the king received voluntary obedience and support in return for his decision to observe and reinforce popular ideas of right and wrong.

49 For Polybius's empiricist psychology see 6. 5. IO (a period of habituation -synetheia -

must elapse before common ideas of right and wrong develop); 6. 7. 3 (men prefer the gnome of king to the rome of monarch 7reZpav cLX-rp6Te Wr' aotoIV lrJv gpywv '4 Et X9otV

7rapoXcyiq); 6. 8. 4 (aristocrats become oligarchs once they become 7t7p0ot ... 1troXTrtxL

tca6-r,roq xcxt 7ppja(cq); 6. 9. 2-3 (experience of past regimes makes men unwilling to intrust power to kings or aristocrats); 6. 9. 4 (democracy prospers so long as there continue to be men who have had experience of its alternative - uvoaoetlxo 7rEipocv fT6rov).

50 Cf. Ryffel, 193-94, who, however, finds both the transition from tyranny to aristocracy and from oligarchy to democracy 'nicht zwingend motiviert." The "innere Folgerichtigkeit" which, by contrast, the accounts of the declines of the three good forms of government display indicates that Polybius is drawing on a source (ultimately of fifth- century origin, according to Ryffel) which simply analyzed the cause of degeneration in kingdoms, aristocracies and democracies without trying to connect the three forms of government in a temporal sequence. Ryffel is certainly right if one thinks only of such Folgerichtigkeit as is offered by the biological law of growth and decay invoked in tradition A. But his analysis is incomplete. There is another theory of causation at work in Polybius's account, one which involves a likely reconstruction (eikos and its synonym eulogon occur seven times in 6. 5. 7-6. 9) of the course by which men learn through experience to seek out what is advantageous (for the utilitarian, empirical perspective involved here, see text, above, and preceding note.)

51 The Peripatetic doctrine of tradition A would, presumably, have noted the possibility of an aristocratic revolution replacing monarchy. But the change was not one of the primary ones by which orthai decline inito their parekbaseis (text, 444f.), hence did not, in all probability, receive detailed consideration. This being so, it would have been natural for Polybius to turn to tradition B for a model - even if the model was only a partial one.



460 THOMAS COLE

A similar conclusion suggests itself when we consider the accounts of the decline of monarchy and aristocracy. Both institutions begin well, neither king nor aristocrats attempting to set themselves apart from the rest of the population, but seeking simply to protect their subjects to the best of their ability (6. 7. 6 = 6. 8. 3). But as time passes and successive generations of rulers come to know only the superabundance of material possessions and power passed on to them from their fathers, they begin to nourish a desire for unjust profits and the gratification of unlawful desires (6. 7. 6-7 = 6. 8. 4-5). The result is popular resentment and ultimately revolution (6. 7. 8-8. I = 6. 8. 6-9. 2).

Both monarchy and aristocracy fall for the same reason: the corruption bred by too much power enjoyed too long. There is no effort to differentiate the 'inborn evils' to which the two regimes are subject - no effort for example, to speak of the dissensions which might arise within a ruling aristocracy and hasten its downfall.62 Polybius himself says (6. 8. 6) that the fall of aristocracy was identical with the earlier fall of kingship, and at one point he even seems to confuse the two regimes. In speaking of the support which the future aristocrats receive he notes that "the people, when it found leaders in these men, joined forces with them against its masters" (6. 8. i). The masters who are thus opposed are plural - but their regime is a monarchy. The inconsistency suggests dependence on a source which dealt only with the contrast between constitutional or democratic regimes - in which a large number rule and are

ruled by each other in turn - and those regimes, monarchical or oligarchical, in which rule is a special function of a small portion of the population. The one and the many or the few and the many - never the one and the few - are the antitheses which would appear in such a source; and they are the only ones which have any importance in Polybius VI. Once again, the evidence of the text points to the existence of an attempt, only partially successful, to accom-

modate tradition B to tradition A. Polybius's treatment of the genesis of kingship points to the same con-

clusion. The origin of the institution is closely bound up with the whole process by which society develops notions of right and wrong and social sanctions designed to restrain wrongdoers. It is the decision to devote the force on which his rule had previously rested to strengthening these sanctions that converts the primitive 'monarch' into a king. Yet the primitive lawlessness under rule of the strongest out of which kingship arises does not fit into the tripartite scheme of constitutions envisioned by Polybius: it is neither an orthe politeia nor the parekbasis of one.53 And the whole theory of the eternity of man and

the universe on which the Peripatetic theory of political and biological change

52 The ills stemming from each man's desire to set himself above the rest are noted as

a principal cause for the collapse of oligarchy as early as Herodotus (3. 82. 3) and Thucy-

dides (8. 89. 3). 53 The point was first made by Walbankl, 78-79; cf. Theiler, 301.




rests (above, 446) denies the creation of anything ex nihilo. A perpetual succession of the three archetypal constitutions and their corruptions, not the creation of any one of them out of a pre-social and pre-political state, is the natural political counterpart to the cycle of elements and seasons. Polybius tries to fit the pre-political state into the political cycle by giving to it the name of monarchy, and the name itself is indicative of the attempt to combine disparate points of view. Nowhere else - neither in Polybius nor in any other writer - does monarchia have the significance which is here assigned to it.6" The significance must have originated with Polybius himself'5 for a specific purpose - to facilitate the identification of the beginnings of society and government with the "natural genesis of kingship." And the source of this concern with the beginnings of society is surely tradition B, whose sociological perspective has already been noted (above, 455).56

Comparable difficulties appear in Polybius's account of democracy. If democracy is viewed in the light of the tripartite theory of political forms, its 'innate corruption' ought to have something to do with liberty or equality. These are the hallmarks of the regime, excessive indulgence in which may lead to anarchy and ruin.57 But Polybius's analysis of democracy proceeds along quite different lines. So far from being the cause of its downfall, freedom and equality (parresia and isegoria) are its principal preservers. It is only when several generations of democratic prosperity have led men, out of habit, to take their freedom too much for granted, that the decline begins (6. 9. 4-5). In a short-sighted effort at self-aggrandizement certain men embark on a course of action whose result is the loss of the freedom which they have hitherto enjoyed. A rich man who is disappointed in his quest for office begins to use his money to provide himself a following among the people (6. 9. 6). The action

54 Walbankl, 7677. b6 I see nothing to support the suggestion of Brink and Walbank (I15-i6, n. 3) that

monarchia was taken over from Polybius's source. The word used there was, I suspect, dynasteia, which appears in Panegyricus 39 and Panathenaicus 121 to designate the primitive rule of force which preceded the establishment of government in accordance with law, and in Laws 3. 68ob and 68id to refer to the form of social life which preceded the establishment of the first kingship. On the parallels between the latter text and Polybius VI see below, n. I15.

6 Aristotle, by contrast, tends to merge the realms of the social and the political, or to subsume the former under the latter. The most basic form of social organization is, in his view, the kingship of fathers over children. The possibility of a pre-political phase in human existence is thereby eliminated.

57 Cf. Plato's two accounts (Rep. 8. 562b-64a; Laws 3. 699e-70IC) of the excessive eleutheria which destroys democracy. The exposition in De Re Publica I draws directly on Plato for its account (66-67) of the decline of democracy, but it is reasonable to assume that this account was similar in spirit to what Cicero found in the Peripatetic analysis of the three orthai and the parekbaseis attendant on them which he has used elsewhere in the book (above, n. 12); cf. Pol. 5. 7 13ioa25-36.



462 THOMAS COLE

is a step toward the destruction of parresia because it will, if successful, make election to office the result of one man's influence rather than the free compe- tition of talent. The people will cease thereby to be a collection of individuals making free and independent choices and become a single mass following unthinkingly the dictates of a single leader. As long as the leader is wealthy enough to get himself elected to office the extreme consequences of his policy will not become evident: there will only be deterioration in the quality of government or, at most, excessive rivalry between leaders of opposed factions. But when an ambitious and unscrupulous poor man becomes involved in the process the situation will be different. Such a person is, for reasons which Polybius does not explain, excluded from the highest offices of state (6. 9. 8). Perhaps there is a property qualification attached to them; perhaps he cannot buy enough votes to be elected. At any rate legal avenues of advancement are closed to him. To gain a following he is willing to confiscate the goods of the rich and execute or exile anyone who opposes him. The people has long since ceased to act independently. It is like a single venal and parasitic individual and is only interested in its doles, regardless of source. Hence it follows the demagogue in a policy of confiscations, murders and exiles, a policy which leads to the destruction of the social order and the initiation of a reign of violence and force (6. 9. 8-9). The cycle has now returned to its starting point: men are reduced to something resembling their original savage condition, and the only refuge they have is to submit to the power of a single strong man.

What is described in this passage is not so much the destruction of democracy through its innate corruption as the destruction of polity and the reign of law through stasis. The decline begins, not with the class which is supposed to dominate in the democratic state, but with the wealthy.58 And it involves, not an overextension of the liberty and freedom which characterize democracy, but a variant on the same process which brought down monarchy and aristocracy: the excessive concentration of power. The only difference is that democratic institutions do not in themselves produce such a concentration from the outset. It can only come into being in the course of time through the

misworkings of a part of the free political process.59 It is true that Polybius, doubtless in order to fit his account into the tripartite scheme of political

58 As Theiler remarks (302), Polybius is dealing with "einer plutokratisch gesteuerten

Demokratie"; contrast Aristotle, who defines democracy as the rule of the aporoi (Pol.

3. 5 I279big) and is unwilling to call even majority ruledemocracy if the majority happens

to be rich (Pol. 4. 3 129obI4-15). 59 The process by which democracy declines is correspondingly more complicated. It

is for this reason, surely, that the account of that process is longer than the corresponding

sections devoted to kingship and aristocracy - not (as suggested by R. Laqueur, "Die

Flucht des Demetrios aus Rom," Hermes 65 [19301 I66, followed by Walbankl, 86, n. 7)

because Polybius believed he had detected signs of it at Rome and was therefore more

interested in it.




change, speaks only of the excesses perpetrated by the popular party. But the greed and unscrupulous pursuit of power which is central to the decline of the state could have led just as easily to the formation of a similar faction among the wealthy. A conflict of factions rather than the excesses of a mob is what is described in two other accounts which resemble Polybius as closely as do any of those which deal with the collapse of democracy :60 the analyses of stasis which appear in Thucydides 3. 82-83 and the following, probably non- Thucydidean, chapter (3. 84). There, as in Polybius, pleonexia and philotimia (3. 82. 8; 84. i) are seen as the source of a movement which dissolves the feelings of common loyalties which unite the state and substitutes for them factional loyalties and a mood in which all are more anxious to live on the fruits of others' labors than their own (3. 84. I = 6. 9. 8). And the adjectives dorodokous and dorophagous, which Polybius applies to the mob (6. 9. 7), suggest by their Hesiodic echoes (cf. Works and Days, 39, 22I, 264) a general social and political corruption rather than a specifically democratic one.

The disparate elements which have gone to compose Polybius's account of democracy are also evident in a further discrepancy of terminology.61 The corruption of democracy is alternately referred to as 'rule of violence' (cheiro- kratia - 6. 10. 5 and 9. 8) or mob rule (6. 4. IO: ochlokratia). The second of these is the innate corruption of democracy; the first is a rule of fists62 which would result from factional strife of any kind, regardless of whether the popular or aristocratic party were getting the upper hand. In it is foreshadowed the return to the primitive rule of force; and the presence of 'monarchy' at the end of the cycle suggests, just as it did at the beginning, the influence of tradition B rather than tradition A. Since the idea of a non-political state lies outside the purely political perspective of the latter there can be no return to what has never existed.63

60 Elements of Polybius's analysis of the fall of democracy are frequent enough in fourth or fifth-century texts critical of all or part of the democratic system. For the demos as tyrant cf. Herodotus 3. 8i. 3; Aristophanes, Eq. III-I4; Lysias 25. 29-3I; Aristotle, Pol. 2. 12 I274a6; 4. 14 1298a3l-33; 5. II 1313b38-40. Thucydides (2. 65. I0; 3. 42. 5-6) and Isocrates (Pax 3-5 and I4) mention the evil wrought by demagogues who flatter the populace to advance their own careers; and confiscation of the goods of the wealthy was a possibility both predicted by philosophers (cf. Republic 8. 565a-e) and guarded against by Attic legislation (cf. Andocides, Myst. 88; Demosthenes 24. 149; Ath. Pol. 56. 2).

Yet among connected accounts of the collapse of democracy there is, so far as I know, only one which closely parallels Polybius. Pol. 5. 3 I305a28-32 tells how 'ancestral' democracy may change into the 'ultimate' variety when demagogues out of zeal for office make the demos sovereign over the law. And even here the connection of the fall of democracy with the upper-class vice of pleonexia is not so pronounced as it is in Polybius.

61 Noted by Theiler, 301. 62 Once again there seems to be a Hesiodic echo: cf. Works and Days 192: &iX* 8'&V XyPpaV. 63 Periodic destructions of civilizations through natural cataclysms are, of course, a

part of Peripatetic theory and mentioned by Ocellus: Greece has often been barbarous in



464 THOMAS COLE

Polybius's conception of democracy as commonwealth comes out only in his account of the decline of that political system, and such a decline does not appear in any of the texts examined in section IV of this essay as constituting tradition B. It is quite possible that Polybius himself is responsible for adding to the description of the genesis of constitutional government found there an account of its collapse."4 But it is worth noting that the Anonymus Iamblichi (above, 453 and 454) contains an approximation to such an account. After noting that the would-be leader will make no headway unless he supports the law of the land, the Anonymus adds that there is one situation in which a tyrant may come to power - when nomos has deserted the populace as a whole and must be supplied by a single individual (7. I2-I3 = FVS7 II 404. I6-23). This is exactly the situation which in 6. 9. 9 brings about the final return to 'monarchy'. Conceivably, the two accounts are not unrelated.65 But whatever Polybius's degree of dependence on earlier writers for the details of his analysis of the decline of democracy, the notion of a constitutional regime which underlies most of that account belongs to tradition B, not tradition A.

There is one further difficulty in the anacyclosis which can be satisfactorily accounted for in terms of our theory of contamination. We have noted that Polybius's cycle, unlike its parallels in Philo and Ocellus, has no acme (above, 446). That Polybius should speak of the cycle as illustrating the principle of genesis, acme and decay may simply be the result of modifications introduced into the Peripatetic doctrine of metabole without a full realization of their implications. But it may also reflect the influence of tradition B. For there the

establishment of a commonwealth, achieving as it does a collective instrument for the enforcing of the collective social order which men have developed, does mark a kind of culmination. The kingship which precedes is an ultimately

the past and will be so again, both through natural calamities and the migrations of men (42).

It may be from tradition A, then, that Polybius got the idea of inclosing his political

cycle within a larger natural one. But the Peripatetics, though they envisioned a destruction

of the technology on which civilization rests, did not envision the end of government or

society. In his commentary on the Metaphysics Asclepius, drawing ultimately on Aristotle

(see A. J. Festugi&re, La R6v6lation d'Herm6strism6giste 2 [Paris '9491 587-9i), describes

the life of the survivors: fathers ruled among their descendants and there was no injustice

among them (I . 7-9 Hayduck). *4 He is doubtless responsible, at any rate, for the peculiar notion that the collapse of

democracy would result in a state of affairs exactly like that whiclh followed the initial

cataclysm - when all technology and social usages had been destroyed (6. 5. 6). This

difficulty, like the others in the passage, may stem from a failure to effect a satisfactory

combination between the sociological perspective of tradition B and the purely political

one of tradition A. Political arrangements like monarchy and democracy may be destroyed

and leave no trace; a culture is less easily demolished. Polybius has hastily assumed that

two processes which show a certain resemblance to each other are completely identical. 6 For this interpretation of the Anonymus, which sees in 7. I3-I4 a 'Weg hinab' in

the life of the state, see Ryffel, 56 and 82 and HSCP 65 (above, n. 32) 144-45.




abortive effort to achieve the same thing, and any deviation from the constitutional rule which follows would be regarded as a decline. Polybius was perhaps thinking in terms of just such an acme - as well as in terms of the individual highpoints in the life of the three eide recognized by Peripatetic theory - when he spoke of the whole anacyclosis as illustrating the process of genesis, culmination and decay.66

The character of the inconsistencies within the anacyclosis, no less than the parallels to this doctrine found in other works, supports our theory of a double source for Book VI. But the anacyclosis occupies only a portion of this book. We have still to consider what light, if any, our hypothesis casts on two additional aspects of Polybius's political thought: the theory of the mixed constitution and the application, both of this theory and of the anacyclosis, to the study of Roman history.

VI. The Mixed Constitution: Polybius 6. io and the Peripatetics

In introducing his account of the mixed constitution Polybius says that Lycurgus established at Sparta a polity which combined all the qualities and excellences of the pure types (6. io. 6). Stated in this form the theory of the mixed constitution is certainly to be associated with the Peripatetic milieu of tradition A. The pure political regimes are viewed as separate categories, each with an ethos and a set of traits all its own. They are not, as are absolute and constitutional rule in tradition B, different power configurations designed to serve a similar end - the guaranteeing of the social order. But when Polybius comes actually to describe the workings of the Spartan constitution the connection with tradition A is much less clear. Lycurgus established his mixture of the best polities 6. IO. 7 in order that no single one among them should grow unduly and so

be perverted into the corruption innate to it. Rather, they were to counteract each other's power, so that none of them could tip the scales in its own favor or far outweigh the others, and the polity would be preserved for a long time, equilibrium and balance being

8 secured by the principle of counteraction.67 The kings would be prevented from overweening behavior by the fear of the people, which

66 Cf. Ryffel, 2i6: it is the connection of the anacyclosis with "das gesamte Kultur- und Staatsgeschehen" which gives it its acme. Ryffel identifies this acme -wrongly, I think -with kingship: "Die Aristokratie und die Demokratie bringen grundshtzlich nichts Neues in der Entwicklung des Menschen zur Sittlichkeit und zum 'vernunftgelenkten' Wesen" (2 i6, n. 377).

67 Korm 'rq LOk ocm ?6yov. For the reading adopted here see Walbank, 66o-6i. Theiler, 297 and Delatte (above, n. 22) 39I-404 compare the interpretation of the Spartan constitution attributed to Archytas in Stobaeus (4. I. 138 = W-H 4. 85. i6-86. 2).There the balance of power between the various organs of government is said to embody the principle of reciprocity ('r6 &vTLt7r7rovO6;). The parallel is fairly close, but there is one significant difference - see below, n. 87.

30 Historia XIII, 4



466 THOMAS COLE

9 would itself have a sufficient share in the polity, but, in turn, not dare to make light of the kings because of the elders. All of the latter were chosen by election on the basis of their merits (xat' 1x?oynv aptat[v8Yv)

and their task was to dedicate themselves always to the cause of right, IO SO that whichever side would be losing out at any time by staying

within its traditional prerogatives (aL&a T' 'ol T Oeamv 4L[L&vev) would acquire greater weight and power when the influence of the elders

ii was added to the balance. The period of liberty which Lycurgus

secured for the Spartans through this arrangement was the longest of any within our knowledge.

In the course of this passage Polybius shifts his metaphor. The state is first a substance or organism subject to some specific corruption which will destroy it; subsequently, however, it becomes a pair of scales, and the concentration of power which ruins the political equilibrium is an excessive weight on one side which throws the scales out of balance. It is now the problem of a safe distribution of power which occupies the historian, not the conclusions to be drawn from a morphology of political corruption and decay. And the mixture described is one of institutions, not, as in 6. IO. 6, of "qualities and

excellences." The change of metaphor and emphasis would perhaps be insignificant in

itself, but it is bound up with a larger contradiction. The metaphor of a balance would apply most naturally to a constitution which created an equilibrium between two elements, not three. And there are in fact only two main elements in the Lycurgan constitution as Polybius describes it: kings and people. The

gerousia does not seem to be able to act on its own initiative: it can only add its weight to the side of monarchy or democracy. Nor does the aristocratic

element, even with this limited function, seem intended to represent the

interests of a special part of society. Its task is simply to "dedicate itself to the cause of right" (6. IO. 9). The arrangement which Polybius decribes can best

be termed a balance between monarchy and democracy, the balance being achieved by the interposition between king and people of a body which acts as a sort of constitutional court to see that neither side encroaches on the

rights and privileges of the other. In practice such a body might come to have a power comparable to that of kings and people; in theory, however, its only role is that of mediator.

It is clear that Polybius did not arrive at this conception of the mixed

constitution through a study of Spartan or Roman institutions. It bears (with one exception - see below, 469) little resemblance to the former and none at

all to the latter. Nor does it have any strikingly close paralels in those theoretical

treatments of the mixed constitution which seem to belong to tradition A. Arius's

evidence is inconclusive here: he commends the mixed constitution (see above,

446) but says nothing about its workings. There are, however, three texts which




allow us to form a fairly clear idea of what these workings must have been. The mixed constitution described in Cicero's De Re Publica is like Polybius's in that it effects a division of rule between king, senate and people. Unlike Polybius, however, Cicero does not view this constitution as one resting primarily on a balance of power. What it embodies is, rather, a blending of principles and qualities. The presence of the royal element in the Roman constitution brings to the conduct of public affairs direction and control (potestas, vis, imperium: cf. 2. I5 and 57) and provides a focus for popular loyalties (caritas: cf. I. 55). Auctoritas gets its due in the persons of the senators (2. I5; 2. 57), who also supply prudence in deliberation (I. 55: consilium). And popular participation insures that the claims of libertas are not slighted (I. 55; 2. 57). The resulting government is felt to be an eminently 'natural' one. It is in the nature of things that men have freedom in certain matters, that they respect the authority and superior judgment of their betters, that they recognize a single ultimate source of power. The mixed constitution is the political arrangement which embodies all of these principles and strikes a balance between them when they seem to come into conflict. And at least at one point in his discussion (2. 57) Cicero seems to suggest that a freely-developing state will tend naturally and properly toward its fullest realization in a mixed constitution - even though this development involve on occasion a turn of events of which the better judgment of its statesmen might disapprove.68

The teleological implications of such a doctrine are just what one would expect in a theory of the ideal constitution evolved under Peripatetic influence; and there is a clear generic resemblance between Cicero's view of mixed government and the most typically Aristotelian of those which appear in the Politics.69

In that treatise the mixed constitution is most often presented as a "combination of social elements," one which "does justice to everything which contributes to the life of the state."70 Inasmuch as the wealthy, the able and the free citizenry as a whole all share in advancing the material and moral well-being of society, an ideal constitution must recognize the claims of all three - and so will contain aristocratic, oligarchic (or plutocratic) and democratic elements.7' This conception is not identical with Cicero's. There is no place in Aristotle's scheme for a king; the rule of the one best man would

" For Cicero's view of the mixed constitution see, in general, Poschl, on whose presentation (95-99) my own is largely based.

69 On the varieties of Aristotelian mixed constitution, see von Fritz, 82. 70 Newman (above, n. 42) I, 264-65. See, also, E. Barker, The Political Thought of

Plato and Aristotle (London I906) 477-82. 71 For the competing claims of aristocracy, oligarchy and democracy see 3. 12-I3

1282b14-83b42. Aristotle harks back to this passage when, in 4. 8 1294aI0-25 (cf., also, 4. 7 1293bI4-2I), he introduces his discussion of the two varieties of mixed regime: 'aristocracy,' with its recognition of the claims of ability, wealth and numbers; and 'polity,' with its recognition of the latter two.

300



468 THOMAS COLE

simply be a special case of the rule of ability.72 But both writers view the role of the popular and aristocratic elements in the ideal state in much the same way. The only difference is that, whereas Cicero speaks merely of the blend of consilium and libertas achieved by the coexistence of senatorial and popular institutions, Aristotle associates certain principles - liberty and equality, rule by the more talented - with the social classes whose participation in the government insures that these principles shall be observed.73 His perspective is economic as well as ideological. But the presence of the latter point of view in both Cicero and Aristotle, together with their general indifference to the problem of the separation and balance of powers,74 constitutes a significant link between the two writers and separates them, just as significantly, from Polybius.

Nor is this link an isolated one. The ideas of both Cicero and Aristotle seem to have a common origin in a work which greatly influenced Peripatetic political theory, Plato's Laws.75 In the third book of that treatise Plato characterizes both the mixed constitution of Lycurgus and good governments in general as regimes which achieve a proper mixture of phronesis, philia and eleutheria (693b-d; 7oid); and the decline of Persia is linked (697c) to the disappearance of its original constitution, which embodied in proper measure to despotikon, to eleutheron and to philon. These formulae exactly parallel Cicero's triad of consilium, libertas and potestas/caritas.76 Cicero, it is true,

72 Cf. 3. I0 I286b3-5, where aristocracy is defined as the rule of a number of good men,

kingship as that of one good (or the one best) man. 73 Buchner, (above, n. I2) I I6, exaggerates the difference between Aristotle's conception

of the Ansprtiche of different classes to rule and the Ciceronian notion of that Dienst and

Leistung to the state which justifies the presence within it of monarchical, democratic and

aristocratic elements. The claims of Aristotle's different classes are inextricably bound up

with the services which they offer; cf. Pol. 3. 7 I283a14-22.

74 There is no clear reference to the matter in Cicero, only the hint of I. 69: mixed

government possesses aequabilitatem quandam magnam... deinde firmitudinem ... quod

illa prima (the unmixed forms) facile in contraria vitia convertuntur. The aequabilis

compensatio (2. 57) cited in this connection by Walbank (66X) refers to the equalizing or

partial equalizing of rights - not to a balance of power (cf. I.69 and the parallel passages

in De Leg. 3. 24 and Pol. 5. 7 1307a26-27). Aristotle recognizes the dangers inherent in an

excessive concentration of power, whether in a single class (5. 2 I302b33-03aI3) or a

single political body (5. 8 1308bogo-i); but the only contexts in which he discusses a

balance of power mechanism are economic rather than political - cf. 4. II I295b35-39,

where the metaphor of the balance is used and the presence of a strong middle class in the

state said to tip the scales away from an excessive swing in the direction of either rich or

poor, and 4. I2 1297a6, where the middle class is a diaetetes between rich and poor.

Neither Aristotle nor Cicero offers any parallel to Polybius's conception of the role played

by phobos (6. I0. 8-9). 75 For a partial list of borrowings from the Laws in the Politics see E. Barker, Greek

Political Theory3 (London 1947) 380-82; and, for Dicaearchus's dependence on Plato in

his anthropology and political theory, J. B. Bury, The Ancient Greek Historians (London

I908) I87 and Sinclair (above, n. 19) 25I. 78 The parallel is noted by Poschl, 1-22.




links caritas with kingship and consilium with aristocracy, while Plato associates phronesis with monarchy" and philia with the harmony which results from a proper distribution of power among rulers and subjects.78 Once more, we are not dealing with identical theories; but the generic resemblance is unmistakable.

The same book of the Laws is closely linked to Aristotle's discussion of the mixed constitution by its analysis of those basic principles or 'qualifications' (axiomata) of rule which ought always to be taken into account in choosing a city's leaders. These axiomata are that old must rule young, masters slaves, parents children, the intelligent the stupid, the better the worse, the noble the ignoble, and those chosen by the lot those not so chosen (69oa-c). The qualifications which Plato here recognizes are more numerous than the three which appear in Aristotle, and wealth has no place among them. But like Aristotle, Plato recognizes the contrasting claims of liberty and ability: his principle of the lot is democratic; and nobility, superiority and intelligence are different aspects of Aristotle's principle of arete. Moreover, in a later book of the Laws Plato speaks of his own ideal constitution as one which combines the principles of arithmetic and proportional equality - indiscriminate distribution of privileges and offices by lot and just distribution by merit (6. 757d-e). He thus envisions a mixture of democratic and aristocratic principles exactly parallel to what appears in Aristotle.

Cicero and Aristotle provide what are probably to be regarded as partially independent efforts to develop a theory of the mixed constitution on the basis of certain suggestions found in Plato. The exact source of the tradition represented in Cicero cannot be determined.79 But that it was Peripatetic, and that other Peripatetic theories of the mixed constitution - among them the one known to Arius - would have taken the same general lines, are reasonable assumptions.

The regime posited by such theories bears little resemblance to the Sparta described in Polybius 6. IO. 7-II. But it would be fairly accurately described by the summary reference in 6. io. 6 to the mingling of the characteristic qualities and excellences of different constitutions which Lycurgus effected. (The inconsistency of the latter passage with 6. IO. 7-II has already been noted - above, 465-466). The parallels and discrepancies between the Polybian and Peripatetic accounts of the mixed constitution might therefore be explained by assuming that Polybius was familiar with the latter30 and reproduced

77 So Rehm (above, n. 43) 39 and Barker (above, n. 75) 312.

78 Cf. 757a, where the proportional equality that strikes a just mean between the claims of different classes is said to insure philia.

79 The one most often suggested is Dicearchus (above, n. I9). See, however, Pbschl, 23, who notes that Theophrastus or an exoteric work of Aristotle are just as likely choices.

80 Familiarity with such a source is also indicated by 6. i i. 11-12 - on the difficulty an observer would have in deciding whether the Roman constitution were democratic, oligarchic or monarchical; cf. Pol. 6. 9 1294b13-36.



470 THOMAS COLE

it briefly in 6. io. 6. In his detailed account of the Lycurgan regime, however, he simplified and falsified this theory, giving a central position to a problem -

that of the balance of power - which in his source had been merely peripheral. This suggestion has been advanced before,81 and it gains a kind of support

from the fact that the Peripatetic theory has a completeness about it which Polybius's presentation lacks. Its focus is economic as well as political, and it seeks to penetrate below the constitutional structure to the underlying power configurations which that structure may at times obscure.82 Society is made up of several different classes. A common background and common economic interests make these classes homogeneous within themselves. But they have different contributions to make to the state and so can expect to have roles of differing importance in its management. Any arrangement which fails to meet these expectations - to give to each what it rightfully considers its due - must inevitably be unstable, however perfect the system of institutional checks and balances which it embodies. "Masters and slaves will never be friends," says Plato (Laws 757a), "nor superior and inferior men, if they are given positions of equal importance." A system of geometric equality, subordinating but not enslaving the latter to the former, is the only thing which can create the philia needed if a state is to survive. Polybius, by contrast, speaks in terms of a purely political balance, something which would be unimportant or ineffectual if it did not correspond to a real division of power and interest.

Granted, however, that Polybius's formula is less comprehensive than the Platonic and Peripatetic one, it need not follow that it has arisen through an oversimplification of the latter. If this were so one would expect Polybius's account to be completed and supplemented by what can be learned of the Peripatetic theory of the mixed constitution. There is such a supplement, but it is to be found elsewhere - in the sociological analysis given by the anacyclosis. The mixed constitution is a regime which seeks to preserve, more effectively than either kingship or democracy is able to do, that government by consent which became fully operative for the first time when the primitive monarch

was transformed into a king. The prerequisite for its effective functioning is some sort of social consensus; and the social order in which such a consensus

obtains is characterized by the existence of rewards - in the form of esteem and preferment - for men of superior ability (6. 6. 8-9) and the absence of

differences in wealth or way of life strong enough to impair the respect which men feel for the principles of liberty and equality.83 Once these two conditions

81 Rehm (above, n. 43) I36-37. 82 See von Fritz, 81-82.

83 For their importance cf. 6. 8. 4: aristocracy declines when the ruling class ceases to

know 7no)xLn' La6-rijroq xct 7oppiaocq; 6. 9. 4-5: democracy comes to an end when

men begin to take isotes and parresia for granted; and 6. 5. io-6. 5, which traces the

beginnings of moral notions to the feelings of sympathy which one individual's suffering

arouses in others - men who feel themselves to be essentially like him and so likely to be

eventually in a similar situation.




are met class antagonism will not arise - and herein lies the great difference between Polybius and the theorists with whom he is being compared. The mixed regimes of Plato, Aristotle and Cicero seek to create a single polity out of a number of separate classes which are not linked to one another by any feeling of community; Polybius, on the other hand, seeks to safeguard an already existing community from the divisions which arise from a purely political cause - the excessive concentration of power. Since the source of the corruption dealt with is purely political, it is natural enough that the remedy should be conceived in exclusively political terms. Whatever opinion we hold of the relative merits of the two theories of the mixed constitution, there is no reason to see in the one a simplification and misunderstanding of the other. They belong to different worlds of thought.

Polybius's account of Lycurgan Sparta would thus seem to have arisen through a process of contaminatio somewhat similar to that which created his anacyclosis. One of the elements in this contaminatio is the same tradition A discussed in section III of this essay - the Peripatetic theory of constitutional change and of the ideal blend of political forms which guarantees stability. The influence of this tradition is largely confined to 6. io. 6. The bipartite character of the constitution described in 6. IO. 7-II (above, 465-466) and the complementary relationship just outlined between these paragraphs and Polybius's theory of social origins suggest that the other, more important, element in the blend is to be associated somehow with the tradition B discussed in section IV. To test the validity of this suggestion we must re-examine 6. 10. 7-II - this time in the general context of Greek political thought and practice. It may not be possible to discover a definite source for the passage; but a study of antecedents and parallels will at least enable us to form a clearer idea of the general intellectual milieu to which it belongs.

VII. The Sources of 6. IO. 7-II

It has already been pointed out (above, 466) that Polybius's account of the Spartan constitution bears little resemblance to what actually existed at Sparta. Similarities, however, are not altogether lacking. Xenophon tells us (Resp. Lac. I5. 7) that it was customary for the Spartan kings and ephors to exchange annual oaths. The kings swore, on their own behalf, that they would rule in accordance with the laws, and the ephors, on behalf of the people, that so long as the kings abided by their agreement their right to rule would not be challenged. The custom originated, Xenophon says, with Lycurgus, who wished to prevent the kings from getting notions of tyranny and to keep the citizens from becoming envious of their power. Two other passages from fourth-century writers (Isocrates, Archidamus 20; Plato, Laws 3. 684a) mention a similar oath, though they associate its institution with the settlement effected after the conquest of the Peloponnese by the Heracidae.



472 THOMAS COLE

Explicit in Xenophon, Isocrates and Plato is the bipartite division of the Spartan state which appears in Polybius VI; and implicit in Xenophon at least is the notion that the contract involved in the oath seeks to strike a balance of power between kings and people. There is no parallel in these three writers to Polybius's conception of the council of elders as a mediator between kings and people. Plato, it is true, follows up his account of the contract between kings and people by noting that a mere contract was an insufficient check on the tendency to abuse of power inherent in the holding of royal office - hence the more than human wisdom of those Spartan lawgivers who established the dual kingship, the gerousia and the ephorate as three counterbalances to one-man rule (69od-92c). Nothing is said, however, about checks on the people, and the omission is not likely to be accidental. Neither in the Sparta which Plato admires nor in the ideal state whose workings are described in later books of the Laws is liberty secured through a balance of power between different elements in the state. There is liberty, but it exists because the law is supreme ;84 and the law, though it gives to the people certain powers, makes these powers so limited that the people can never constitute a serious challenge to the equilibrium of the state.85 There is a balance of power between different governing bodies, lest the power which they must have if they are to enforce the laws be abused.86 But there is no need for the balance of power between rulers and people which Polybius envisions.87

A brief passage in Plutarch's life of Lycurgus (5. 9) does describe such a balance of power - hence it is more than likely that Polybius has drawn his analysis from some earlier writer. We do not know who this writer was,8" nor

84 Cf. 4. 712eff., where the alternative to the slavery of one part of the state to another

which obtains in monarchy, oligarchy and democracy is not freedom but another kind of

slavery - that of all to God (7I3a-d) or, failing this, to the nomos laid down by that part

of man which partakes most of immortality (7I3e-1 4a: t?Mv To vo5 8LavoLb brovotmL&ovTaq

v6,uov). In similar fashion 6goc speaks of 'rrv toi v6oi x6VrCOV apx7v, and Ep. 8. 354e sees tyranny as the outcome of excessive liberty, contrasting it with the metrios douleia

to God and nomos. 8 See Pohlenz (above, n. 43) 101-02: the democratic elements in the ideal state of the

Laws "sind im Grunde...nur Zugestandnisse...und um so mehr ist er [Plato] besorgt,

den EinfluB3 der Masse abzuschwachen... Die Beamten sollen Sklaven des Gesetzes, aber

der Menge gegentiber Herren sein." 88 Supervision of magistrates in Plato's ideal state is intrusted to a special board of

auditors, appointed by three elected officials (9. 945b-46e). 87 Likewise concerned with no more than a balance of power between the different

organs of government is the Pythagorean fragment on the Spartan constitution (above,

n. 67), which otherwise resembles Polybius quite closely. The royal bodyguard is there

called a middle force which maintains the balance between kings, elders and ephors by

reinforcing the other two bodies when one becomes pleonektikos. The people are not

mentioned. 88 Possibly Ephorus, if A. Andrewes is correct in arguing ("Ephorus Book I and the

Kings of Argos," CQ 45 [I95I] 40-41) that the theme of the historian's first book was the




can we be completely sure that he even existed (Plutarch's source may be Polybius himself). But up to a certain point, at any rate, there can be no doubt about Polybius's indebtedness to predecessors. He may have invented the particular formula by which the notion of a contract striking a balance between rulers and subjects is linked to Lycurgan Sparta; he did not invent the idea itself. And it is a consideration of this idea - along with its applications and ramifications in earlier Greek thought - which will prove most useful in seeking to define the intellectual milieu out of which the non-Peripatetic elements in Polybius's theory of the mixed constitution have arisen.

Polybius would have us believe that the system established by Lycurgus was, until the rise of Rome, unique. Earlier writers, on the other hand, never associate the theory and practice of contractual government exclusively with Sparta. The author of the eighth Platonic epistle, for example, urges on the factions at Syracuse a program of compromise very reminiscent of that embodied in the Spartan oaths. The leaders of the opposing parties are invited to share a triple kingship (355e-56b), whose powers will be analogous to those enjoyed by the kings at Sparta (356b) or stipulated and made responsible (355e: &py)n vTrevOuvog ,oa6tx') in some other way. The remaining offices of government will be divided among assembly, council and a board of nomophylakes. What is said specifically about the prerogatives reserved to the kings - control over the religious life of the state and "as many other things as are appropriate for men who were once benefactors" (356d) - recalls the passage from Aristotle cited earlier (above, 453) on the end of royal govemment: the kings who once ruled over willing subjects by virtue of having been bene- factors89 are stripped of their powers, only retaining control of sacrifices or, as at Sparta, military expeditions (i285bI5-I9). The abandoning of a portion of powers once enjoyed on the condition of being allowed to hold the remainder in security is also involved in the oath of the Heraclidae as described by Isocrates,90 and it appears in the two Herodotean passages mentioned earlier (above, 453) as well. Maeandrios at Samos (3. 142. 3-4) and Demonax at Cyrene (4. i6i. 3-I62. 2) seek to establish a popular government by reserving

degeneration and downfall, through dissension between kings and demos, of the Messenian and Argive Heraclids as opposed to the salvation of the Spartan state by Lycurgus. For Polybius's acquaintance with the work of Ephorus, see 6. 45. i and 46.I0.

89 The benefactions referred to by the author of the Eighth Epistle are, of course, more recent: the freeing of Syracuse from the rule of tyranny and the deliverance of Sicily from the Carthaginians. But it would have been natural enough for him to speak of contemporary kingship in terms suggested by what he conceived to have been the original character of the institution. In similar fashion Euhemerus and his followers were to link the ruler cult of their own day to a theory of early kings deified for their services to the human race.

90 The Heraclidae "donated their private land for the common use of their followers, reserving the kingship for themselves as their private share. And giving mutual guarantees on these terms, they made their expedition. . ." (Archidamus 20).



474 THOMAS COLE:

for the king the office of priest and a certain portion of the possessions of his predecessors and giving the people common access to the rest. The situation envisioned by Aristotle and Herodotus is essentially identical with that created by the contracts between king and people at Sparta and Syracuse, but neither Aristotle nor Herodotus thinks of it as a mixed constitution. It is simply one form of a free or constitutional regime - of the sort which characterizes the second stage of political development envisioned in tradition B.

Our search for parallels to Polybius's view of the Lycurgan constitution has already led us away from tradition A to tradition B, and away from specifically Spartan analogies to those which can be found in the more general realm of the theory and practice of Greek 'democracy' - if we can use the term in the wider sense which it had in Polybius's own day. For the contract between people and 'responsible' king described in the authors we have just been considering is essentially similar to that between the people and its responsible magistrates, who hold, each of them in part and for a limited period, the powers and prerogatives enjoyed by the king during the period before he was reduced to the level of a responsible magistrate himself.91 And though the fall of kingship changes radically the character of government, the division of society into rulers and ruled which Polybius recognizes at Sparta continues to exist even under a constitutional regime. The persistent tendency for the leadership in Greek democracy to come from a small portion of the population - the old and wealthy families - has been noted by a number of observers, ancient as well as modern.92 Plato's Protagoras assumes as a matter of course that the wealthiest citizens will play the most important role in the political life of the commonwealth (Protagoras 326c-d); the Old Oligarch cynically notes (I. 3 and I3) the willingness of the kakoi at Athens to let the chrestoi rule - so long as they themselves continue to be the ones who profit from this rule; and Aristotle gives as a possible democratic arrangement that by which the epieikeis are elected to office by all the citizenry and govern in their interest, receiving a greater share of honor as fair compensation for the security which their rule provides (Pol. 6. 4 I3I8b27-I9a5; EN 6. i6 1163b

9I As his treatment of the Roman constitution shows, Polybius was able to regard elected as well as hereditary officials as 'monarchical' in character. It was evidently essential only that their number be small, and that they function as individuals - not, like the 'aristocratic' senators or elders, as members of a body. The principal magistrates in a democracy could thus be regarded as fulfilling a role analogous to that of the king. Such an assimilation of the institutions of monarchy and polity is already evident in the idealized pictures of Theseus given by the Athenian dramatists and is attested in fourth-century writers as well - cf. Isocrates, Helen 35-37 and Xenophon, Cyropaedia 8. 5. 24-25, which describes an agreement between Cyrus and his subjects closely paralleling that between kings and demos at Sparta.

92 See, in particular, J. Sundwall, "Epigraphische Beitrage," Klio Beiheft 4 (I906).




i-8)93. In similar fashion the author of the Rhetorica ad Alexandrum advises democracies to pick minor officials by lot and the more important ones by election from the whole people. The result will be that the people is not envious of those who hold office - since it can bestow office on whomsoever it pleases; and the wealthier and abler citizens are eager to perform public service - since the good reputation gained thereby is beneficial to them (1424aI2-25). And Polybius himself recognizes a similar democratic division when he names as the principal cause for Athens's downfall the inability of her talented demos to follow for any length of time the direction taken by her equally talented leaders (6. 44). Other writers are more explicit and characterize Athens, at least in certain phases of her history, as "democracy in name but in actuality the rule of the first citizen" (Thucydides 2. 65. 9) or "democracy making use of aristocracy" (Isocrates, Panathenaicus 13I) or "democracy mixed with aristocracy" (Ibid., I53) or "aristocracy with popular consent" (Plato, Mene- xenus 238c-d). Though some of these phrases anticipate the terminology of the theory of the mixed constitutionH, their purpose is something rather different: not a formulation of an ideal mixture of political principles but a convenient way of designating a well-functioning system of elective offices.

Such a balance between rulers and ruled might be precarious - a fact which was as clear to certain students of Greek democracy as it was to Lycurgus. A powerful official was felt to be only a step removed from tyranny - witness the contemporary allusion to Pericles and his circle as Pisistratids,95 the fears aroused by the career of Alcibiades, or Plato's dictum (already implicit in Herodotus 3. 82. 4) on the 7rpoatoctrmq p.x 4 from which tyranny springs (Rep. 8. 565d). And the dangers possible from the other side - the power of demagogues and, in particular, the tendency of popular courts to convict officials out of whim or with a view to enriching the public treasury - are an equally frequent source of complaint.96 It was evidently in response to dangers of the latter sort that at least one fifth-century thinker, and possibly two,

93 Interestingly enough, the example cited by Aristotle (03i8b2i) in this discussion is one with which Polybius, as an Arcadian, might have been familiar - Mantinea. Cf., also, Isyllus of Epidaurus A z-4.

9' So much so that Oliver suggests ("Praise of Periclean Athens as a Mixed Consti- tution," RhM 98 [Ig55] 40) that in Thucydides 2. 65. 9 the "ideal of a mixed constitution colors anachronistically the language used." This formulation is misleading if it suggests that there existed when Thucydides wrote the notion of a mixed constitution as a separate eidos alongside democracy, oligarchy and monarchy. On the other hand, I see no reason for doubting that even the contemporaries of Pericles would have recognized that democracy was more heterogeneous in its composition than oligarchy or monarchy; see the remarks on the composite character of the regime in Thucydides 6. 39.I.

95 On Pericles as 'tyrant' see, in general, V. Ehrenberg, Sophocles and Pericles (Oxford 1954) 84-91.

96 The complaints, though exaggerated (see Jones [above, n. 46] 58-6I) were doubtless justified.



476 THOMAS COLE

suggested a remedy which closely recalls Polybius's gerousia. Hippodamus of Miletus, the architect of the Piraeus, included among the institutions of his ideal state a single supreme court to which all cases should be referred which had been thought to have been wrongly decided, the court to be composed of certain chosen elders97 (see the account in Aristotle, Pol. 2. 8 I267b39-68ai).

Moreover, two fragments of Democritus (B253 and 266) discuss the dangers which the magistrate must face, whether from those wrongdoers with whom he has dealt strictly during his term of office, or from fellow-citizens who fail to distinguish between willful misconduct and errors of omission. There should be, it is suggested (B266), some ordinance (thesmos) or something of the sort which would prevent the innocent magistrate from coming to harm. We do not know what this thesmos would have been; but the supreme court of Hippodamus or Polybius's gerousia would provide a plausible solution for the problem at hand. A magistrate could appeal to it against a hostile verdict given in the audit; and, in general, rich and prominent citizens could look to it as a means of protecting themselves against sycophants.

A more radical solution along the same lines was proposed by those who wished to restore the Areopagus to its former position as general guardian of law and morality. Some thinkers (cited by Aristotle, Pol. 2. I2 1273b35-4I)

praised Solon for "mixing the constitution well" through his institution of elected officials, Areopagus and popular law courts; and Isocrates says that in establishing the gerousia Lycurgus was simply copying what already existed elsewhere - the Athenian Areopagus (Panathenaicus I53-54). If Isocrates is typical, admirers of the Areopagus wished it to be the arbiter in the democratic political process, not, as is Polybius's gerousia, a mere mediator. But the parallels between the two passages just cited and Polybius VI are close nevertheless. The three elements of the mixed constitution of Solon - magistrates, constitutional court and people - are exactly those of the mixed constitution of Lycurgus;98 and the pattern which Isocrates sees in Spartan institutions is both similar to the pattern Polybius finds there and, like that pattern, considerably different from what actually existed.

Isocrates draws his pattern from an Athens which is partially real, partially imaginary." Polybius may have used the same model, but there was another

97 Cf. Polybius's description of the Spartan gerontes: xmx' &Xoysv &pLaT([v8&nv xeXp4LbVO

(6. IO. 9).

98 Though Aristotle views the resulting combination as one of oligarchy, aristocracy,

and democracy, not monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. 99 It is rather unlikely that the Areopagus was ever, as Isocrates and other admirers

claimed, a general guardian of the laws. But by the middle of the fourth century it was

beginning to function, at least on occasion, in such a capacity; see the texts collected in

Day and Chambers (above, n. io) I26-27. A somewhat similar role seems to have been

performed by the nomophylakes, a body whose presence in Athens is first attested in the

320's though Philochorus attributes their institution to Ephialtes (FGrHist 328F64). The




one more immediately available to him. In the chapters of Book II devoted to Achaea the league is compared to a single city on the ground that its inhabitants all possessed the same archons, councillors and dicasts (2. 37. IO-iI). We do not possess much information about the powers of the dicasts to whom Polybius here assigns an important role in the Achaean political system. We do know, however, that they could on occasion function as defenders of the laws (cf. 28. 7. 9, where they are empowered to pass on the constitutionality of an assembly decree) or act as intermediary between the popular and monarchical organs of government (cf., in 38. i8. 3, their appointment by the assembly to try a magistrate).100 And the institution would certainly have been regarded as 'aristocratic' in character (cf. IG VII i88. 9 and SIG3 665. 34-35, on the selection of dicasts aristinden). The parallels with the Lycurgan gerousia, though inevitably limited, are fairly close.

It is thus democratic theory and practice in some of its more conservative aspects which recalls Polybius's version of the Spartan constitution most closely. This fact, taken together with the parallels already noted (above, 473 f.) between Polybius's Sparta and the constitutional regimes envisioned by tradition B, provides strong support for the suggestion advanced at the end of section VI as to the source of 6. IO. 7-II. Either the regime described in these paragraphs - or one which Polybius could easily identify with it - appeared in tradition B as a special variety of constitutional or democratic government;101 or else Polybius has constructed his version of the Lycurgan constitution out of what appeared in that tradition as suggestions for improving the commonwealth - for making it more nearly the rule of freedom and law

latter are found not only in Athens but fairly frequently in Hellenistic democracies; see G. Busolt and H. Swoboda, Griechische Staatskunde (Munich 1920-26) 895, n. I.

100 Perhaps related in their function to the dicasts were the Achaean nomographoi, who are referred to in IG2 IV' 73. M 2-3 as ot 'r6,v v6jiov Uv-e?. On the two bodies see A. Aymard, Les assembl6es de la conf6d6ration achaienne (Paris I938) 182-88, who argues that they were neither permanent nor possessed of judicial powers to the exclusion of the assembly.

101 As the one important Greek state which had been always atyranneutos (Thucydides i. i8. i) Sparta might weU be adduced as the example par excellence of politeia. Thucydides (4. 126. 2) has Brasidas refer to Sparta and her allies as states in which majority rule obtains - by contrast with the military dynasteia found in Macedonia (see Gomme ad loc. and "Notes on Thucydides," CR N. S. I [I95I] I35-36); on three occasions (Pax I43;

Philippus 8o; Letters 2. 6) Isocrates cites the Spartan kingship as the ideal example of a responsible and limited arche; and the Spartans were, of course, the traditional defenders of eleutheria (cf. Herodotus 5. 92. a). So long as one's attention was confined to the Spartan citizen body it was even possible to speak of the polity as a democracy - cf. Pol. 2.

1270bI2, the phrase 8'iuou x&p'To4 in Tyrtaeus 3a. 9, and Areopagiticus 6i: ok..... Acxxeq.LUovtouq aL& -ro5-ro x&XXtLaTo 7xOXVOev0[L6VOu4 6Tt .L&Xt?rTo ?JoxpoU0votuyVUoaL.

For the various attempts to describe democracy as a mixed regime see the passages cited in the text, 475, and Pol. 2. 9 I273b38-39: Solon is believed 8-%Loxpac-'v x TariaoctL rqv 7r0arpLOV XVtOC XMXc(); r'V 7ntOXrV.(0V.



478 THOMAS COLE

which men had sought to obtain when they first abandoned the minority governments which characterized the early stages of human history. Hippo- damus and Democritus (above, 476) suggest two such improvements. Polybius himself offers what could be regarded as a third in the passage on Achaea discussed in the preceding paragraph. The history of the Achaean league proceeds in two stages. First the tyrants are expelled from its cities. This involves both a substitution of democratic for autocratic rule (2. 43. 3) and the acceptance of a program of ethnic unity in place of the separatist policies which the tyrants had pursued under the influence of their Macedonian patrons (on the latter, see 2. 4I. 9-10). Polybius sees in the Achaeans' subsequent adherence to democratic principles the main reason for their success (2. 38. i-6), the foundations of which are thus laid with the fall of the tyrants. But one thing is lacking - strong leadership; and this is supplied only somewhat later by the successive strategiai of Aratus, Philopoemen and Lycortas (2. 39. II-40.2) Translated into the language of Book VI, this means that the Achaeans needed a stronger monarchical element in their democratic constitution. It may have been some such conception of an 'improved' democracy which provided Polybius with the model for 6. IO. 7-II.

The solution for our source problem suggested here involves the assumption that Polybius has linked (and perhaps at times confused) constitutional democracy and the mixed constitution.'02 This is plausible enough, given the parallels between the Lycurgan constitution and democratic theory and practice already noted, and given also the pronouncedly conservative character of the democratic regime which Polybius himself knew best.103 And our assumption has the further merit of clarifying some of the troublesome compositional problems which Book VI raises. It is the positing of just such an association - and confusion - which best explains Polybius's attempt to link the anacyclosis of pure constitutional forms with the history of Rome and the inconsistencies in his account which thereby arise.

VIII. Rome, the Political Cycle, and the Mixed Constitution

Polybius tells us that the Roman constitution was unlike the Spartan in that it arose araduallv, the product of "many struggles and difficulties" and

102 Cf. C. H. McIlwain, The Growth of Political Though in the West (New York 1932)

ioo: "He [Polybius] seems practically to identify democracy with Aristotle's Polity"

(i.e., with the mixture of democracy and oligarchy discussed along with 'aristocracy' as a

mixed form of government - see above, n. 7I) and M. Hammond, City State and World

State (Cambridge U.S.A. 195I), who speaks of Aristotelian 'polity' as a "middle-class and

democratic compromise" (22-23) identified by Polybius with the "conservative demo-

cracy" (69) which he found at Rome. Such statements ignore what Polybius says explicitly

about the place of democracy in his scheme of politeiai, but they describe quite accurately

a different point of view which is implicit - and perhaps more deeply-rooted - in the

historian's thought. 103 On the influence of this model on the theories of Book

VI, see von Fritz, 7 and Hammond (preceding note) 27.




of a series of fortunate decisions made in times of crisis (6. IO. I4). The result, while the "best of existing polities", was still not free from the universal tendency to decay. The course which this decay is to take is predicted in 6. 57. It would seem, then, that the Roman constitution, like any one among the three pure polities described in the anacyclosis, undergoes genesis, acme and phthora.

Polybius also says that knowledge of the anacyclosis will enable one to predict the course of Roman history (6. 4. I2-I3; 6. 9. I2-14) - from which one would infer that this history parallels, not a single phase of the cycle, but the cycle as a whole. The inference is confirmed by two later passages in the book. The chapter which predicts the future decay of the Roman constitution closely resembles the earlier chapter (9) on the decline of democracy, and it says explicitly that the result of the decline of Rome will be ochlocracy (6. 57. 9). Since Polybius could hardly have seen in the early phases of Roman history anything but the sequence kingship (Romulus), tyranny (Tarquin), aristocracy (early Republic); it would follow that he saw the Rome of his own day, not as a mixed constitution, but as an aristocracy (perhaps already tending toward oligarchy) which was destined to be succeeded in due time by democracy and ochlocracy. And a similar idea seems to lie behind the statement (6. 51. 4-8) that in Carthage at the time of the Punic wars the people had already taken over a prominent role in the policy-making of the state, whereas at Rome this was still in the hands of the Senate. This can only mean that at some future date Rome too would become more democratic.

It is strange that Polybius should view the history of Rome as illustrative, now of the anacyclosis of pure polities, now of the development of the mixed constitution, which is supposed by its very nature to avoid the ups and downs of the former. The contradiction can be largely, though not completely, resolved by assuming that he saw the growth of Rome as a process by which the various pure forms of polity gradually merge into one another. The tyranny which follows on early kingship is checked by the rising power of the aristocracy, but the ensuing government, though mainly aristocratic, retains a monarchical element (the consuls). The oligarchy which eventually follows from the excessive predominance of the nobles is checked by the people, whose coming to power, however, produces not democracy but the perfect mixed constitution which secures a proper balance between all three elements in the state. Eventually the demos acquires undue prominence, and since there is no fourth power in the state whose rise can check this development, decline and destruction inevitably follow. The process described in 6. 57 is thus not a transition from aristocracy to democracy, but from the mixed constitution to ochlocracy.

This analysis is based on a reconstruction (first proposed by Taeger, 8-IO9)

of the lost portion of Book VI which dealt with the early history of Rome (above, 442). Taeger's hypothesis, though questionable at a number of points,



480 THOMAS COLE

is doubtless correct in its general outlines.104 But it leaves two difficulties unresolved. The first is similar to one noted already in discussing the anacyclosis (above, 448). The history of Rome has a single highpoint in the mixed constitution, and this is reached by a fairly steady, if not completely uninterrupted, rise. The cycle of pure constitutions, though offered by Polybius as a general pattern on the basis of which Roman development may be predicted, has no such acme. It pursues a zigzag course in which kingship, aristocracy and democracy are all points of equal advance.105 Secondly, in the course of Roman history the democracy which appeared in the anacyclosis is replaced by the mixed constitution. The cycle contains no equivalent to the latter, and it is odd that Polybius should link a 'natural' and inevitable course of events with the growth of Rome- a growth which culminates in a constitution that is rare, if not 'unnatural'.

Both difficulties can be resolved by assuming that Polybius is continuing to think in terms of tradition B, even while constructing a different and more complicated theory of political change on the basis of tradition A. It has already been pointed out (above, 46I) that the sociological perspective of tradition B supplies an acme to the anacyclosis: the establishment of a constitutional regime can be regarded as the culmination of men's struggles to find a satisfactory political safeguard for the social order. By the same token it is a perspective which facilitates the identifying of the anacyclosis with another process with a single acme - the history of Rome. And the association of the mixed constitution with a certain variety of democracy which is evident in Polybius's account of the Lycurgan constitution makes it easy to see why the absence of a definite democratic phase in the development of Rome did not strike Polybius as a departure from the cycle of pure constitutions. The assimilation of the two processes and of the two regimes - democracy and the mixed constitution - is most evident in 6. 9 and 6. 57. The subjects of these chapters are, if we accept Taeger's hypothesis, the collapse of democracy (9) and the collapse of the mixed constitution (57). Yet they display a close and puzzling similarity.

57 begins by reiterating the theory of organic growth and decay: in the history of cities as well as in that of all created things genesis and acme will be followed by decline. One may predict, therefore, that long-continued hegemony will make the Romans luxurious in their way of life and more competitive in office-seeking than is good for the state (57. 5). When "ambition and the fear of disgrace attached to obscurity" along with an "ostentatious

104 The essentials of Taeger's position have been reaffirmed (against the objections of

P6schl, 47-65) by von Fritz, 4I9-2I, n. 73 and Brink and Walbank, 114-I5, with n. I.

For a simpler, but rather less probable, attempt to relate the growth of Rome to the

cycle, see Erbse, "Polybios- Interpretationen," Philologus ioi (1957) 272-74.

105 Some scholars have sought to identify one of the three - either kingship (above,

n. 66) or aristocracy - with an absolute acme; but against such attempts, see Brink and

Walbank, I}7.




and extravagant mode of living" have taken root, the people will inaugurate a change for the worse. "Feeling itself wronged by those who seek a greater share of power for themselves and puffed up by the flattery of those who are ambitious for office," it will "refuse to obey its leaders or even to remain on a footing of equality with them, but instead demand everything for itself" (57. 7-9). The result is the "fairest of all names" - freedom and democracy, but the worst of actualities - ochlocracy (57. 9).1OB

The parallels between this passage and 6. 9 are obvious. Though in 57 Polybius envisions a situation where uncontested hegemony has brought prosperity to all classes, not simply the rich, it is clear that the ambition, extrava- gance and fear of obscurity to which he refers are failings which would affect chiefly the upper classes. The process by which excessive ambition on the part of the rich leads to demagoguery is thus identical in the two chapters. The disappointed office-seeker of 9 (above, 462) who tries to create a following with bribes and doles has his counterpart in those who flatter the demos out of ambition for office. And the final results of democratic excess are also identical in both chapters: in 9 the fall of democracy means return to the primitive rule of the stronger; in 57 the mention of passion (thymos) as the principle governing the counsels of the people (6. 57. 8) recalls the earlier passage (6. 6. I2) in which kingship was said to arise when logismos takes over from the primeval rule of thymos. The degeneration described in 57 reverses the process and so brings the cycle back to its starting point.'07

It was pointed out earlier that a decline in which the pleonexia of prominent citizens is the leading cause might be expected to lead to stasis rather than ochlocracy (above, 463). 6. 57, like 6. 9 describes just such a decline; and like the earlier chapter, it has a parallel in the descriptions of stasis in Thucydides 3. 82-83. The contrast between the fairest of all names and the worst of all situations with which the chapter closes recalls exactly the "specious slogans" - Laovo4Ld 7roMLtLx' and &pLa-'oxpCtcL aCsCppOv under which each of the contend- ing parties at Corcyra sought to conceal its selfish aims (82. 8).

Chapter 57 is describing the same process as was described in 9, and if 9 was rather unsuitable as a description of the collapse of democracy through its inborn weakness, 57 is equally unsuitable as a description of the collapse of the mixed constitution. There is no hint in the latter chapter of the dissolution

106 This should not be taken to mean, as it has been on occasion (see, for example, Walbank1, 86) as a general condemnation of democracy. All Polybius is saying is that when popular rule comes into being as a result of factional strife (rather than through a unified effort to throw off the rule of an oppressive minority), it will not live up to the slogans under which its supporters came to power. The same would be true of the 'aristocracy' established by a victorious oligarchic faction.

107 Theiler (302) detects in 57 signs of 'einer gewissen Entfernung gegenuber dem Kreisschema" as it appears in 9, but the main differences can be attributed to abbreviation and simplification.

31 Historia XIII, 4



482 THOMAS COLE

of the tripartite system of Roman government discussed in chapters ii through i8, with its elaborate set of checks and balances. The only division of power mentioned is a bipartite one - between people and leaders. One can hardly resist concluding that what is described in both 9 and 57 is neither the pure democracy nor mixed constitution of tradition A, but the free commonwealth of tradition B.

IX. Conclusions

If the arguments of sections III through VIII are correct, the genesis of the anacyclosis and of its application to Rome may be reconstructed somewhat as follows:

In examining and discussing the political institutions of Achaea and other Greek states Polybius was familiar with a theory of history which traced a sequence of kingship, tyranny and constitutional democracy in the life of the polis. The theory was sociological in its emphasis and viewed human well- being as a function of the degree to which the exceptional man and the community - individual ability and the collective force of custom and consensus - are able to work to support and strengthen each other. The first step in man's political and social history is the achieving of a social consensus, the enforcing of which is subsequently intrusted to an individual or to a small minority in the population. This is a primitive and ultimately unsuccessful form of government. It is replaced by a constitutional regime, one which reduces kings to the level of magistrates and makes them subject to law and popular audit. The community is thereby taken into a kind of partnership with its rulers, and the resulting political system is the best yet devised. It is not, however, perfect. The possibility of improvement still remains, and only a few states, such as those of the Spartans and the Achaeans, have been fortunate enough to avoid for long periods the stasis which is likely to arise because of the tendency for leaders to become autocratic and for the community to exploit its public servants.

This is one of the two strands in Polybius's thought, probably the original and more basic one. The other is, of course, the Peripatetic theory of the perpetual succession of archetypal constitutions and of the mingling of principles and

types which characterized the Lycurgan regime and represents the political ideal. Acquaintance with this theory and with the history and institutions of Rome produced a change in Polybius's viewsY108 The Roman constitution, with

108 Both may belong to the same period of Polybius's life. For even in the second

century B.C. Rome was probably closer to the main currents of Hellenistic thought than

Megalopolis. Cato is reported (Servius ad Aen. 4. 682) to have regarded Carthage as a

mixed constitution, and several scholars have detected his influence in Book VI - see

Walbankl, 85, n. 3. Moreover, if Panaetius is the intermediary through whom Polybius

became acquainted with the Peripatetic doctrines of tradition A (above, n. i9) it would

have been at Rome that the transfer of ideas was most likely to have taken place.




its tripartite division of power between consuls, people and Senate, seemed a perfect example of the Peripatetic ideal; and the same tripartite pattern was imposed on an earlier view of the Spartan political system. Both Rome and Sparta could now be regarded as better and more elaborately balanced versions of the constitutional democracy enjoyed by the Achaeans.'?*

The ideal constitution in its Spartan form had not undergone any development; but in the royal and aristocratic periods of early Roman history, as well as in the eventual popular supremacy portended by the conflict of orders, Polybius thought that he could discern, embodied separately in distinct historical phases, the same triad of political types whose mingling created the constitution at its acme.110 It was natural to conclude that, just as Achaean democracy was a less stable, less balanced version of what existed at Rome, so Achaean history and the theory connected with it represented a simplified form"' or special case of the basic 'Roman' cycle of political change.

Polybius was not familiar with any work which connected the three pure polities and their perversions into a single historical sequence; but it was easy, on the basis of the doctrines with which he was familiar, to imagine what such a sequence must be. Rule of the few is in some sense intermediate between rule of the one and rule of the many. It must have followed the former in the development of those minority regimes which preceded the advent of constitutions. And it must have come into being through a revolution in much the same fashion as had the latter.'12 Kingship and aristocracy would share the usual end of minority rule - degeneration into a type of tyranny, whether of the one or of the few. And the degeneration of polity into stasis - the great

109 In later times it was possible to refer to the government of republican Rome as a demokratia (see the passages from Dio Cassius cited by Larsen [above, n. 45] 89-9o) Whether this would have been done in the second century is uncertain. But association, if not actual identification, would have been likely enough, given Rome's desire to pose as the protector of Greek freedom.

110 Cf. Erbse (above, n. 104) 274, who, however, seems to me to go too far in suggesting that the actual course of Roman history was the only model for Polybius's attempt to link his three pairs of pure constitutions into a chronological sequence.

1ll Cf. 6. 3. I-3, on the complexity (poikilia) of the Roman constitution and the general ignorance of the characteristic features of its development, both of which make the task of analysis and prognosis more difficult than it is in writing of Greek states. The statement is hard to understand if the anacyclosis is the only pattern of historical evolution with which Polybius is familiar. For if so, Rome is (with the possible exception of Carthage) the only state with a 'normal' development (Brink and Walbank, I20); and the absence of such a development in Greek history should make prognosis harder rather than easier. But Polybius's meaning becomes quite clear if we assume that he viewed the rise and fall of Greek states in the light of a much simpler scheme: that which posits the substitution of the kingships and tyrannies of early times by politeiai and the fall of the latter through pleonexia and stasis.

112 Here Polybius could have taken a cue from Roman history, which, unlike that of most Greek states, did have a clearly-defined 'aristocratic' revolution.

31.



484 THOMAS COLE

danger attendant on any constitutional regime - was easily identified with the specifically democratic phase of the process - the transformation of democracy into ochlocracy. Rule of the stronger, out of which the rule of law arises and into which it degenerates, was given the name 'monarchy' and so identified with a phase in the natural genesis of kingship. In this fashion the new, tripartite cycle was brought back to its starting point.

This anacyclosis was Polybius's own invention, but it had arisen out of its two sources by such an easy and natural process that what was actually invention must have seemed to him more like rediscovery or recovery. Surely this was the most famous of the political cycles posited by philosophers - the one associated with the name of Plato. Polybius had either not read the Republic at all or else remembered its contents indistinctly and incorrectly.113 In either case he did not think it necessary to check his reference. It was easier to meet possible criticisms with vagueness. Hence the perplexing and misleading manner in which the anacyclosis is introduced - as a summary version of a doctrine "set forth with greater accuracy by Plato and certain other philosophers" (6. 5. I).

Since Roman history merely exemplified in more complicated and complete fashion the same principles which were at work elsewhere, it was natural to expect that it would illustrate, just as Achaean history did, both the normal succession of political forms and the gradual progression toward some sort of acme - only the forms would be more numerous and the acme higher and longer-lasting. But Polybius's attempt to revise and improve upon his earlier view of history had involved him in unforeseen and perhaps only half-sensed difficulties. For the normal succession of political forms ceases to have a highpoint once the best polity is no longer simply an improved version of one of their number but, as the Peripatetic scheme demands, a separate eidos; and by the same token this best polity ceases to have any historical context. In referring to the aftermath of the mixed constitution in Roman history Polybius did not even attempt to provide it with such a context: as we have seen (above, 48I-482), chapter 57 is concerned simplywith the fate of the free commonwealth of tradition B. In discussing the antecedents of the regime he was somewhat more ambitious - though the elaborate succession and interpene- tration of political forms which he constructed for early Roman history (above, 479) may have been little more than a tour deforce. And the parallel between the anacyclosis and the development of Rome was, of necessity, never more

113 Efforts to show that Polybius was well-acquainted with the Republic (von Scala,

97-I23, followed by von Fritz, 68 and 4I2, n. 32 and Mioni, 66-68) do not seem to me to have been successful. The parallels to Plato which von Scala adduces are either common-

places or Platonic motifs (e.g., the famous paradox on the philosopher-king) which had

become commonplace. At most they represent bits of Plato remembered apart from their

context after a superficial reading (so C. Wunderer, Citate und gefluigelte Worte bei

Polybios [Leipzig I902) 7I-73).




than approximate: their identity might be implied or asserted (as it is in 6. 4. I2-I3 and 6. 9. I2-14); it could never be spelled out in detail.

This determination to transfer all of the properties of one scheme of political development to another and rather different one may strike us as perverse. But it becomes understandable if we assume that the 'Achaean' cycle represented something fundamental and native to Polybius's whole way of thought; and that he could never, as a consequence, feel fully at home with the 'Roman' cycle - a rather mechanical structure erected out of borrowed materials for a specific and temporary purpose. It is Polybius's continuing dependence on a theory of whose limitations he is aware,'14 but whose influence he is never able to escape, that has given Book VI its heterogeneous character; and it is also what, once recognized, gives us our best clue to the problem of the book's sources and composition.")

New Haven THOMAS COLE Yale University

114 The absence of Achaea from the discussions of Book VI is somewhat curious. Von Fritz (7-8) attributes it to the historian's failure to realize that Achaean democracy was much more of a mixed constitution than the pure democracy demanded by the tripartite scheme of polities. But the omission - if it is not simply an oversight - can be taken as revealing just the opposite: Polybius may have been only too aware that his descriptions of democracy and the mixed constitution were based, in part, on a single model. To mention the model by name would be to jeopardize the already shaky structure of theory by which he sought to establish the peculiarly natural character of Roman constitutional development and the peculiar completeness of the succession of Peripatetic eide it embodied.

116 A discussion of what is probably the most interesting of the problems raised by the thesis of this article - that of the identity of Polybius's B source - would require too long an excursus. One or two suggestions, however, may be in place here. Almost all the characteristic features of tradition B can be paralleled in the third book of Plato's Laws: the bipartite division of polities (text, 457), the linking of political theory to a theory of the origin of culture which closely resembles at certain points that of Polybius 6. 5. 4-7. 4 (see the passages collected in von Scala, I08-I2); a similar account of the decline of monarchy (694af-95e; cf. von Fritz, 4I7, n. 34); a theory of checks and balances (though with the significant difference noted in the text, 472); an account of the collapse of 'lawful' democracy (7ooa-oic), though on completely different lines from what appears in Polybius; and at least a hint of the return to a state of primeval savagery as a consequence of thxe decline of this democracy (cf. 70Ic, on the 7rotXL&V TtLo'vtx?v qluaLm displayed in the final stages of Athenian degeneration). The similarities are extensive, but so are the discrepancies. If Polybius's ultimate source is Plato, this source has been subjected to a "tief eindringende Verarbeitung" (von Scala, 250; cf. iii) which must have originated, not with Polybius himself, but with some intermediate author - perhaps a member of the Academy. (Peri- patetic adaptations of material found in Laws 1II took, so far as we can determine, a different course altogether). It is equally possible, however, that Polybius and Plato go back to a common source. Three of the motifs which have been assigned to tradition B appear in the Suppliants of Euripides: cf. the account of man's prehistory in 201-18,

the parallel criticisms of democracy and monarchy in 409-55, and the economic version of



486 THOMAS COLE, The Sources and Composition of Polybius VI

the theory of the balance of power in 238-45. Like Polybius's theory of the origin of culture (Taeger, i-28; Ryffel, xg-92), this play shows clear Sophistic affinities (see J. S. Morrison, "The Place of Protagoras in Athenian Public Life," CQ 35 [194I3I5). Polybius's Kulturgeschichte also has close parallels in the fragments of Democritus (compare BI64 and 267 with 6. 5. 7-8, B278 with 6. 6. 2-5 and B255 with 6. 6. I0-12),

and Democritus has been seen both as an advocate of mixed government (G. J. D. Aalders, "The Political Faith of Democritus," Mnemosyne 4 Ser. 3 [1950] 3IO) and as an anticipator of certain aspects of the theory of the Rechtsstaat found in Plato's Laws (Rehm [above, n. 43] 52-53). On the Democritean affinities of another text associated with tradition B, the Anonymus Iamblichi, see HSCP 65 (above, n. 32) 150-55. Whatever the exact source or sources of tradition B, it exhibits, by contrast with tradition A, a conspicuously popular character (text, 455). It takes as its starting point neither an abstract scheme of classification nor a universally applicable morphology of growth and decay, but, rather, certain feelings, slogans and programs which were deeply rooted in the actual life of the Greek polis: its hatred of tyranny; its distrust of greatness and power; its sincere and often-frustrated desire for homonoia; its conviction that the barbarians, with their predominantly monarchical mode of government, represent an earlier or arrested stage of political life. It is out of elements such as these that the authors assigned to tradition B have constructed their view of the position of polity in human history, and of the forces which are responsible for its origin, preservation and destruction.

(For criticism and suggested improvements in this paper I am much indebted to Professor Lionel Pearson).



the sources and composition of polybius vi

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