HANNIBAL AT NEW CARTHAGE POLYBIUS 3. 15

Hannibal at New Carthage: Polybius 3. 15 and the Power of Irrationality Author(s): A. M. Eckstein Source: Classical Philology, Vol. 84, No. 1 (Jan., 1989), pp. 1-15 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/270040 Accessed: 14/01/2010 02:27 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Classical Philology. http://www.jstor.org HANNIBAL AT NEW CARTHAGE: POLYBIUS 3. 15 AND THE POWER OF IRRATIONALITY A. M. ECKSTEIN Ou6t6S 6? KpEi(GccoV T'OV FCPOV POU4E1UdcLoV, oGrtep pseyioGTV atTtoq K(aKOV PpoTOI;. -Euripides Medea 1079-80 A S IS WELL KNOWN, Polybius, the ancient historian of the rise of Rome, divided the origins of major wars into three distinct elements: aitiat (the "causes," properly speaking); Tupoqpdacs; (mere "pretexts," or propaganda); and &pXai (the "beginnings," in the sense of the first overtly hostile actions). This conceptual scheme is set forth in detail at 3. 6-7, where Polybius discusses the origins of the Hannibalic War. Here Polybius is careful to define aitia explicitly. But it is a concept of some subtlety, even obscurity (3. 6. 7): "by 'causes,' I mean the things that shape in advance our judgments and decisions (rc)v KpiosEoV Kai tiaXlil0\ov), that is to say, our notions of things (?7tivoiac), our states of mind (L6taOeto i), the accompanying calculations (TOi)5 ... Guukkoytlooiou), and everything through which we reach decisions and projects (z6 Kplvai tI Kai nipo0{cOa t)." The exact meaning of this passage has been much debated.' From that debate, however, we can conclude that in Polybius' view, an aitia can be either a human psycho- logical state or an event in the real world insofar as it leads to a human psychological state. Thus, according to Polybius, the anger of the Aetolians (a psychological state) was the cause of the Syrian War (3. 7. 1), whereas the Greek campaigns against Persia in the 390s (events in the real world) were aiziat of Alexander's Asian expedition precisely because they led Alexander's father, Philip II, to calculate that such an expedition would succeed (3. 6. 10-12). Of course, in the case of immensely complicated phenomena such as wars, causes are themselves often complicated, and aiziat of both sorts are, in Polybius' understanding, sometimes present simultaneously. But the degree to which Polybius stresses events in the real world as caiiat varies from case to case, whereas his emphasis on the importance of 1. See K.-E. Petzold, Studien zur Methode des Polybios und zu ihrer historischen Auswertung (Munich, 1969), p. 11 and n. 1, and F. W. Walbank, Polybius (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972), pp. 158-59, against P. Pedech, La methode historique de Polybe (Paris, 1964), pp. 80-88, and id., Polybe: "Histoires, "Livre I(Paris, 1969), p. xxiv. [? 1989 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved] 0009-837X/89/8401-0001$01.00 A. M. ECKSTEIN human psychological states is always strong. Overall, then, Polybius focuses not on the impersonal force of events but on human decision- making: aitiat are aitriat because they lead to decisions.2 And this focus on human decision-making makes sense; for the Histories are in good part intended as a handbook of statesmanship-a guide to good and bad decision-making-written for contemporary statesmen by one of their own kind.3 Indeed, Polybius underlines this didactic purpose pre- cisely in the section of Book 3, dealing with the origins of the Second Punic War, that we are discussing (cf. 3. 7. 4-7). As we can see just from the examples given above, in Polybius' view the mental states that underlie war are of two basic types, emotional and rational. It is true, of course, that Polybius often attributes a mixture of rationality and emotion to his subjects: he is not simplistic. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that emotion is central to some decisions, rational calculation to others. Thus the Aetolians, in the period leading to the Syrian War, did make some rational plans and preparations (implied in 3. 6. 5); but basically, according to Polybius, they acted from opyti (3. 7. 1; cf. 3. 3. 3, 3. 7. 2). Moreover, and in particular, Polybius believes that to make emotions (not least, anger) the wellspring of policy is to court disaster-witness the case of the Aetolians-no matter how much calculation overlays the basic emotion. The main purpose of this paper is simple: to show that Polybius depicts Hannibal, in his crucial interview with the Romans at New Carthage, as a model of the "bad" Polybian statesman, driven by emo- tion and-in his violent feelings against Rome-fully sharing the disposi- tion of his father, Hamilcar, and the disposition of the Carthaginians in general. This depiction inevitably implies a negative Polybian judgment on Carthaginian policy leading to the Second Punic War: a policy based on emotion invited disaster, and disaster was the final result. I will concentrate on the language Polybius uses to describe Hannibal-and Hamilcar and the Carthaginian people before him-as they take the road to war with Rome. But to clarify Polybius' judgment here, it will be useful first to examine this depiction of how a successful war is conceived. When presenting his threefold schema of the origins of wars, Polybius, as we have seen, uses Alexander's expedition against Persia as an ex- 2. Clearly, Pedech exaggerated in claiming that in Polybius "les causes sont toujours des operations intellectuelles" (Polybe, p. xxiv), by which he meant exclusively "le pouvoir raisonnant des hommes" (cf. Methode, p. 600): both Petzold and Walbank (above, n. 1) demonstrate that events in the real world can be Polybian aiTiat. Moreover, even where Polybius does emphasize psychological states as ctiritt, they are often characterized more by emotion than by reasoning (see below). Such states can be considered "intellectual" only in the sense that anything passing through a person's mind, whether rational or emotional, creates "operations intellectuelles" of some sort; but this is hardly Pedech's meaning. Nevertheless, Pedech is surely more right than wrong in stressing that the crucial event in any Polybian causal chain is a human decision. Thus for Polybius (uhlike, e.g., Thucydides, in the famous passage at 1. 23. 6), wars do not result from the working out of mere impersonal historical forces (though occasionally Tyche may play some role, as in 15. 20); rather, they are the result of conscious human choices. 3. On the purposes of Polybius' 7npayuaTIrtcl iCTopia, see K. S. Sacks, Polybius on the Writing of History, University of California Publications in Classical Studies, vol. 24 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1981), pp. 178-86. 2 HANNIBAL AT NEW CARTHAGE ample. Polybius says (3. 6. 3-4) that it is a mistake to take the crossing of Alexander's army to Asia as the "cause" of this war: that was only the first open act of violence, or apXqi. The real cause of the war was Philip II's evolving intention to attack Persia (3. 6. 5, 12). Moreover, Polybius emphasizes that this intention was based entirely on Philip's rational calculations regarding the actual balance of Greek and Persian military power. Having contemplated (3. 6. 12 KaTravoriloaq) the successes of Xenophon and Agesilaus decades before, Philip reasonably concluded (Youkoytc6t(evo;) that the Persian army was no match for the Greeks, and that the great empire could therefore be taken. In this passage, I believe, Polybius does not use the words denoting rational consideration and calculation as value-neutral terms. On the contrary, they express Polybius' approval of Philip's method of reaching an important policy decision. Indeed, the account of Philip's ability to see through surface appearances to an underlying and contrasting mili- tary reality closely parallels another famous story Polybius tells about one of his heroes: how Scipio Africanus, facing seemingly overwhelming odds, correctly calculated the chances for success of a Roman march on New Carthage in 209.4 The point Polybius makes in 3. 6. 12 is at work even more strikingly in an extraordinary passage in Book 8. Theopompus, a contemporary of Philip II, had recognized Philip's effectiveness as a statesman; but he had also severely criticized the king's private life. In his Philippica, Theopompus depicted Philip's court (which he had personally visited in the 340s) as a den of wild and drunken debauchees, of whom the leading drunk and lecher was none other than the king himself.S It is clear enough that Theopompus' moralizing concern with the evils of lust and alcohol sometimes verged on the obsessive; nevertheless, the weight of the evidence tells strongly in favor of his depiction of the wild style of life around Philip.6 But Polybius will have none of it, proclaiming instead that Theopompus' picture of Philip and his court must be false and malicious (8. 10-11). Why does Polybius attack Theopompus and reject his account of Philip II's personality? Walbank has suggested that the reasons have to do with Philip's good reputation in Polybius' Arcadia, together with Polybius' resentment of Theopompus for his failure to give a central place in his history of Greece to the founding of Polybius' hometown, Megalopolis.7 This seems to me excessively subtle. Polybius says the following (8. 10. 5-12), and it is quite clear: the men who raised Macedon 4. Note esp. 10. 6. 12: Scipio's plan, very bold on the surface, is said to spring in reality from aKkoyGUi Oi oi acKptPeocaTot. 5. For discussion of this passage (quoted at 8. 9. 6-13), see F. W. Walbank, "Polemic in Polybius," JRS 52 (1962): 1-2, with id., A Historical Commentary on Polybius, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1967), p. 80. 6. On Theopompus' moralizing, see G. Shrimpton, "Theopompus' Treatment of Philip in the Philippica," Phoenix 31 (1977): 123-44, esp. 136-44. On the realities of Philip's court, see, e.g., E. Badian, "The Death of Philip II," Phoenix 17 (1963): 244-50; J. R. Fears, "Pausanias, the Assassin of Philip II," Athenaeum 53 (1975): 111-35; G. W. Cawkwell, Philip of Macedon (London, 1978), p. 52. 7. "Polemic in Polybius," p. 2. 3 A. M. ECKSTEIN from a backwater to the greatest kingdom in the world must have been courageous and industrious, men of virtue (&apETi), not vice; they must have been "kingly" men, possessing not merely robustness, but also greatness of character and self-restraint (te7yaXoWuXia, aocppooGvrl). Philip, in other words, could not have been a drunk or a lecher-on these a priori grounds.8 Indeed, Polybius has already asserted, long before this passage, that a grave weakness for sex and drink is usually incompatible with military and political success (3. 81. 5-6), whereas Philip II was obviously very successful. Theoretically, Philip could have been portrayed as an exception to the rule Polybius states in 3. 81. 5-6, which is carefully phrased and not ironclad. But clearly the historian did not think Philip had been an exception: he believed (or preferred to believe) that Philip had been successful because rationality and other virtues ruled his life.9 It is for this reason that Polybius rejected Theopompus' disturbing picture of the king. One can go further. Not only is Polybius' Philip consistently presented as the cool calculator, never dominated by passion (as many other Polybian politicians are ); he is even praised precisely for his ability to control his emotions and irrational impulses. So we find Philip's self- control after Chaeronea contrasted very favorably with Philip V's lack of self-control at Thermum two centuries later (5. 10. 1-12. 4). It is particularly relevant to our purposes that the emotion Philip controlled here-with Polybius' firm approbation-was wrath, OuvL6 (5. 10. 3). Nor is Polybius' approbation merely philosophical, for he is arguing here that Philip's policy of mercy after Chaeronea defused Athenian hostility toward him and so achieved, at small expense, a practical political result of major importance (5. 10. 2-5). It was a result, in fact, that exactly matched Philip's calculations, an advantage won for himself through his shrewdness (5. 10. 4 ayXtvoia). Moreover, this political ad- vantage had particular value for his new, long-range project, the great Persian war (cf. 3. 6. 13). By contrast, Polybius says that Philip V suffered only evil consequences as a result of giving in to his angry passion (5. 11. 1 Ovuo6). Thus, I suggest, Polybius' rejection of Theopompus is part of a fully formed view of life and politics according to which success is gained through rational decision and action, and emotion (especially violent emotion) is to be resisted: most people may be influenced by emotion, but successful people strive to control it and certainly do not allow emotion to dictate their decisions. Polybius' consequent image of the rational and calculating Philip II-a man in control of his passions- may well strike us as a distortion of the real king. But the inappropriate application of a deeply felt ideology only helps us to delineate that ideology more clearly. 8. On Polybius' habitual use of arguments from the a priori probable (KcaT TOrv iKO6ra X6yov), see Walbank, "Polemic in Polybius," pp. 5 6; see also B. L. Twyman, "Polybius and the Annalists on the Outbreak and Early Years of the Second Punic War," Athenoaeumi 65 (1987): 71-72. 9. Indeed, no actual exceptions to the "drinking and lechery" rule occur in the extant text. 4 HANNIBAL AT NEW CARTHAGE In the great Asian expedition, therefore, Polybius saw the result of rational calculation evolving in the mind of a calm and farseeing states- man. The second major example in Polybius' general schema of the origins of wars concerns the special topic of Book 3, the Hannibalic War itself. Polybius argues that it is a mistake to call Hannibal's attack on Saguntum and his crossing of the Ebro the causes of the war: these were only its apXai (3. 6. 2-3). What must be thought the first cause of the war (vo[ptoToov ntpOrov pi;v tclTlov) is Hamilcar Barca's anger against Rome over the defeat of Carthage in 241, which led him from the beginning to desire renewed conflict (3. 9. 6-9). The second and greatest cause of the war (6euzrpav, peyiozrlv 8b ... ai[iav) was Rome's seizure of Sardinia in 238, for it added the anger of the Carthaginian people to Hamilcar's own and allowed him to carry out his policy with full public support (3. 10. 1-5). The third cause of the war (zpitTrv aiziav) was the successful Carthaginian expansion in Spain, under the direction of Hamilcar and his successors, for this increased Carthaginian confidence (3. 10. 5-6).10 In Polybius' conception, then, the origins of the Hannibalic War plainly resemble the origins of Alexander's Asian expedition in this one respect: both wars are desired by a father but carried out by a son. Unlike Philip the king, of course, Hamilcar, as the citizen of a republic, could not simply order his community to fulfill his desires; hence Polybius emphasizes the events that won general Carthaginian support for Hamil- car's policies. Nevertheless, just as Philip stands behind Alexander, so (in Polybius' conception) Hamilcar stands behind Hannibal. This is why Polybius, after laying out the causes of the war in 3. 9-10, summarizes them by saying (3. 10. 7): "that Hamilcar contributed much to the origins of the second war, although he died ten years before it began, is much in evidence." To support this thesis Polybius then adduces one further bit of proof, Hannibal's famous oath to Hamilcar (3. 11. 1-12. 4). And that anecdote is in turn followed by a final summarizing formula (3. 12. 7): "these, then, were the causes of the war."'' Despite this parallel between the two wars, however, there is a notable difference. For at the heart of the Hannibalic War, according to Polybius, there lay not cool reasoning but hot emotions: the emotions of Hamilcar, of the Carthaginians, of Hannibal. Polybius twice ascribes Hamilcar's desire to renew war with Rome to Oupo6S (3. 9. 6, 3. 10. 5). Similarly, he emphasizes that the Carthaginian people came to support Hamilcar's policy because of their own anger (6pyi7) at Rome (3. 10. 5, 3. 13. 1). He presents Hamilcar's son-in-law, Hasdrubal, in command in Spain in the mid-220s, as a harsh enemy of Rome (3. 12. 3; cf. 2. 13. 6). And Hanni- bal completes the pattern (3. 12. 3-4): "Hamilcar made both his son-in- law and his blood son such enemies of Rome that none could have been 10. This causal sequence illustrates the double nature of ailicat discussed at the beginning of this paper: they can be either psychological states (so the first cause here, Hamilcar's anger) or events that lead to certain psychological states (as in the second and third causes). 11. Note that in emphasizing Hamilcar's role Polybius was explicitly contradicting Q. Fabius Pictor, who emphasized only Hasdrubal and Hannibal (3. 8). 5 A. M. ECKSTEIN more bitter"; and though Hasdrubal died before he could set the war in motion, "circumstances put it into Hannibal's power to give all too manifest proof of his inherited hatred toward the Romans (TIiv IcaTpctav EX0pav)." ?uvt6(, 6py,l, eXOpa: clearly, Polybius uses these terms very promin- ently in discussing the origins of the Second Punic War. The usage makes Pedech uneasy, for he holds that both Hamilcar and Hannibal are typical "grands heros de Polybe..., hommes froids, positifs et calculateurs," men ranking with Philip II and Scipio Africanus.'2 And Pedech's uneasiness is well founded. We have already seen that Polybius praises Philip II for controlling his Oupog6, as opposed to letting it drive a major policy. It is therefore hardly surprising that Polybius similarly praises his hero Scipio Africanus for controlling his 0upoi6 (15. 4. 11; cf. also 15. 17. 2-5). Prima facie, the behavior of Polybius' rational heroes should not be impelled by angry passion. The problem here for Pedech only looms larger when we examine other passages in the Histories where 6pyil, v6poI , and EXOpa appear, and the personages Polybius associates with these terms.13 First 6py' (and 6pyi opiat). For Polybius, 6py'l does have the virtue of occasionally producing wholehearted and effective action; and in certain polemical passages, he presents this as a worthwhile virtue in- deed.14 Moreover, Polybius is willing to concede that 6py' is sometimes completely justified.15 Nevertheless, he believes it is clearly dangerous to make 6py' the source of policy, for anger can gravely distort judgment (see the general statements