timelets | Entries tagged with polybius

Book- based research is free of risk and hardship—or at least it is if you ensure that you find yourself either a city where there are plenty of historical works available, or a nearby library. Then all you have to do is recline on a couch while carrying out your research and collating the statements† of earlier writers, and there is no hardship involved in that. But although investigative work involves a great deal of discomfort and expense, it has a great deal to offer in return; in fact, it is the most important thing a historian can do.

--- Polybius, The Histories.

This is a good insight that helps understand why and where the internet (and TV) promotes knowledge vs conspiracy theories.

The point is that, just as it is impossible for someone who lacks military experience to write well about warfare, it is impossible for someone who has never acted in the political sphere or faced a political crisis to write good political history. Nothing written by authors who rely on mere book-learning has the clarity that comes from personal experience, and so nothing is gained by reading their work. For without its educational element, history is altogether uninspiring and useless. Moreover, when such authors decide, despite their lack of relevant experience, to give detailed accounts of cities and terrains, obviously the same thing happens: they omit a great deal that is worth mentioning, and linger over things that do not deserve it.

--- Polybius, The Histories.

Note also his use of the term "education" that implies practical experience in a specific field of study.

In fact, educationally speaking, this will prove to be the most important aspect of my work, now and in the future. For neither rulers nor those who express opinions about them should think of victory and overall dominion as the goal of military action. It makes as little sense for a man to fight others just to crush them as it does for a man to take to the open sea just to cross it. [3.4].

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...the considerable difference, between a starting point and a cause or pretext. A cause or pretext always comes first and a starting point comes last. I take it that the starting point of anything consists of the first application in the real world of a course of action that has already been decided upon, while the cause is what first influences one’s judgements and decisions, or, in other words, what first influences one’s ideas, feelings, reasoning about the matter, and all one’s decision-making and deliberative faculties. [3.6]

--- Polybius, The Histories.

https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789047430995/Bej.9789004177550.i-248_009.xml?language=en

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I would not want any reader to find my account confusing and obscure just because he is unfamiliar with the region, so I shall describe its natural features and their relative positions—as I intend to throughout my work, by constantly comparing and correlating unknown places with those which are familiar and long known. Since defeat in military engagements on land or at sea is usually due to geographical factors, and since knowing how an event happened is always more interesting to us than just knowing that it happened, topographical descriptions are important whatever kind of event is being talked about, and especially important for military events.

--- Polybius, The Histories.

Note the method he uses to introduce the reader to the unknown. He also emphasizes the connection between topographic layout and the process (how) that leads to a certain outcome.

He [king Philip] let anger get the better of him and acted just as impiously as the Aetolians—trying to cure one evil with another—and it never crossed his mind that this was wrong.
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To take and destroy an enemy’s forts, docks, cities, men, ships, crops, and so on and so forth—in other words, to weaken the enemy while strengthening one’s own cause and moving closer to one’s objective—is forced upon one by the rules and rights of war. But even in wartime gratuitous damage to temples and statues and other works of art, when there is not the slightest chance that this will either help one’s own cause or weaken the enemy, is a sure sign of a fanatic in a rage.

--- Polybius, The Histories.

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...if, god willing, things ever improve in Cynaethae, people there should tame themselves by acquiring an interest in culture, and especially musical culture.

--- Polybius, The Histories.

This was all sound, practical thinking on Hannibal’s part. [81] Anyone who claims that any aspect of generalship is more important than knowing the character and temperament of the enemy commander certainly does not know what he is talking about.
In a fight between individual soldiers, or between one rank and another, winning depends on seeing how to get through to the target—on spotting an exposed or undefended part of the opponent’s body. The same goes for those who lead whole armies, though they are concerned not with physical vulnerability, but any mental weakness that the opposing leader displays. Many commanding officers have lost their own lives and caused the utter ruin of their states as a result of complacency and general inertia; many others are so fond of wine that they cannot even get to sleep without drugging themselves with drink; others are so addicted to sex and its attendant derangement that they have been responsible for homes and cities being razed to the ground, and have brought personal disgrace upon themselves by the manner of their deaths.

Then again, impulsiveness, recklessness, irrational ardour, a false conception of one’s abilities, and arrogance are characteristics that make a man vulnerable to his enemies and highly dangerous to his friends; such a man reacts too readily to any plot, ambush, or trick.
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He [Flaminius] gave no consideration to timing and terrain, and had no plan except to engage the enemy. He treated victory as a foregone con- clusion, and he had raised the hopes of the mob to such a pitch that soldiers under arms were outnumbered by non-combatants bearing chains and fetters and so on, who accompanied the army in the hope of booty.

--- Polybius, The Histories.

I wonder what he means by timing.

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...if someone bears in mind the part played by the extraordinary and the unexpected on those occasions, and remembers how many myriads of men were, for all their fearlessness and their armament, destroyed by the resolve and the resources of those who faced danger intelligently and rationally, he will not be dismayed by immense quantities of supplies and weapons, and hordes of troops, into abandoning all hope and failing to fight for his land and the country of his birth.

--- Polybius, The Histories.

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Reflecting on this episode, no one could fail to conclude that men’s souls are even more liable than their bodies to suffer from lesions and malignant tumours, that spread in them and grow in malignancy until they become utterly incurable. In the case of ulcers, even treatment may sometimes inflame them and make them spread more rapidly, while the effect of leaving them untreated, to do what they naturally do, is that they go on eating away at the surrounding flesh until nothing substantial remains.

Something similar happens in men’s souls too, where livid and putrid growths often make people more baleful and cruel than any beast. Kind and merciful treatment is taken by such people to amount to fraudulent scheming, and they become increasingly suspicious of and hostile towards their benefactors. But vengeful retaliation arouses in them such a rabid desire to win that there is nothing, however taboo or terrible, that they do not tolerate, and think the better of themselves for behaving with such boldness. In the end, they become so malignant and cruel that they might as well not be human.

--- Polybius, The Histories.

The prose is beautiful:

But between the storm and the complete lack of havens on this stretch of coastline, the two Roman fleets were so completely smashed that even the timbers from the wrecks were useless.

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I cannot here give a thorough account of these struggles: the opposing generals* were like a pair of exceptionally brave and skillful boxers fighting it out in a contest for first prize, who pummel each other so incessantly with blow after blow that it is impossible for either the contestants or the spectators to note and anticipate every single attack or punch, though the overall vigour and determination displayed by the two men can be used to gain an adequate impression of their skill and strength and courage.

They tried everything—traditional ideas, improvised tactics dictated by particular circumstances, and schemes that involved risk and aggressive daring—but for many reasons decisive success eluded them: their forces were evenly matched, their camps were impregnable, and the two camps were extremely close to each other. Their proximity was the main reason why every day there were incessant minor engagements, but nothing decisive happened.

But Fortune, like a good umpire, unexpectedly moved the contestants out of this arena and increased the riskiness of the contest by decreasing the size of the ring.

--- Polybius, the Histories.

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After all, is there anyone on earth who is so narrow-minded or uninquisitive that he could fail to want to know how and thanks to what kind of political system almost the entire known world was conquered and brought under a single empire, the empire of the Romans, in less than fifty- three years*—an unprecedented event? Or again, is there anyone who is so passionately attached to some other marvel or matter that he could consider it more important than knowing about this?

--- Polybius, The Histories.