Romans as ΒΑΡΒΑΡΟΙ: Three Polybian Speeches and the Politics of Cultural Indeterminacy
T HE SPEECHES IN POLYBIUs' HISTORIES provide important insights into what is perhaps the most controversial topic in Polybian studies: the Greek historian's attitudes towards Rome. A great deal of modern scholarly debate has revolved around mutually exclusive interpretations that Polybius was essentially either pro-Roman or anti-Roman.' A close reading of the Histories suggests a more nuanced approach to the question of Polybius' views on Rome. Viewing Polybius' barbarian category in relation to his representations of the Romans provides a key to the historian's stance(s) on Rome, and here his speeches are of the utmost importance. The objectives of the present study are to analyze Polybius' "barbarology" vis-'a-vis Rome, with a special focus on the medium of the reported speech, and to explore its implications regarding the political predicament of Greek statesmen of the second century in the face of Roman power. In only one passage in the Histories (12.4b.2-3, discussed in Section II below), does the Achaean historian say in his own voice that the Romans were a barbarian people. Yet in three reported speeches, Polybius allows his historical agents Agelaus, Lyciscus, and a Greek ambassador, probably the Rhodian statesman Thrasycrates, to call the Romans "barbarians."2 Without discounting the historicity of these ambassadors' charges against the Romans, I shall argue that Polybius employs these speeches as a vehicle for indirect expression of hostility towards Rome, a hostility conforming to widespread Greek public opinion at the time of composition of the Histories.3 I refer to this Greek view of the Romans as fdpfa3pot, according to
War and Imperialism in Republican Rome
earlier paper in Proc. Camb. Philol. Soc. (1974) on Phoenician colonization in the West, it allows us to ask how long and in what forms this civilization, implanted by the eighth or seventh centuries (and highly important for early Rome and Etruria), persisted under Roman rule. Or, to put it another way, when and where do we begin to see a Romanization which is not dependent on a previous Hellenization (Narbonensis) or 'Punicization' (North Africa, Spain, Sardinia)? Garnsey and Whittaker should be congratulated, and asked to organize another seminar.
Polybius 1. 2. 7–8 and 1. 3. 3.
The earliest extant manuscript of Polybius, Books 1–5 is A (Vaticanus Graecus 124). It was copied by a monk called Ephraim in the tenth century in a fine early minuscule hand; quite probably A should be dated to A.D. 947, though this cannot be certain, since Ephraim gave the day of the month and the indic-tion in the subscription, but not the year. A is written in two columns to the page, the average line length is 19–21 letters, and the almost invariable extreme lengths are 18 and 22 letters. There are two lacunae in A on successive pages, the first affecting the bottom six lines of the second column of f. 1v and the top line of the first column of f. 2r, and the second affecting 11. 3–9 of the second column of f. 2r. These lacunae also appear in all other manuscripts covering the same section of text, with no significant variation of the content; however, the scribe of A has clearly taken a good deal of trouble to reproduce as accurately as possible the text in front of him, while all other manuscripts reproduce the text across the page with gaps of varying length. In addition to this, it can be shown that the line length of A is the same as that of the hyparchetype of all the extant manuscripts of Books 1–5.