Polybius' Account of Antiochus III

Abstract

IN AN ARTICLE entitled, and Antiochus the Great-A Study in Cold War,' Ernst Badian argues that the tragedy of Antiochus has a special poignancy for our generation.2 But if we wish to understand Antiochus III we must begin by inquiring where Polybius, our one reliable source, obtained his information, and also what influences were brought to bear, whether personal or literary, to colour his account. Polybius himself gives us a clue in the first paragraph of his Introduction, which ends with a rhetorical question: For what man is so indifferent or so lazy that he does not care to know how, and under what form of government Rome brought virtually the whole oecumene under her rule in barely fifty-three years, a result never achieved before ?' This theme of world rule recurs in a famous passage following the narrative of the First Punic War, in which Polybius denies the claim made by some that Rome owed her position in the world to rvxq, to blind chance.4 Not at all. The Romans set out to obtain world dominion, and because they were fit for it they succeeded. In his commentary Walbank suggests that Polybius is arguing here for the practical value of studying history. If Rome became great as the result of a series of accidents then her history would not be an infallible guide for future statesmen-and of course this is true. However, the Greek writers alluded to by Polybius need not be mere men of straw. Some historians, out of national pride, will have been eager to belittle the achievements of Rome, just as later on Livy went out of his way to minimize the successes of Alexander the Great;5 and Polybius' own history is in part intended to prevent this same downgrading of Rome. That he was not altogether successful is shown by the fact that Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who lived under Augustus, still finds it necessary to insist that the Romans were not mere savages whose empire was acquired undeservedly. And Plutarch, over a century later, undertakes the same task in his Defortuna Romanorum. But let us return to Polybius' main point, that Rome achieved world dominion as the result of a deliberate plan. Unlike Thucydides Polybius believed in imperialism as fervently as the Syracusan historian Philistus believed in tyranny. In effect he posits world rule as a prize offered to the successful competitor: Rome or Carthage in the West; Syria, Macedon,