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
The Nature of Authoritative Evidence in Polybius and Agelaus' Speech at Naupactus*
From several perspectives, the Aetolian ambassador Agelaus' speech at Naupactus is a key passage in Polybius' Histories (5.104.1-11). It contains what is perhaps the most memorable image in the work, the metaphor of the ultimate victor in the Hannibalic War as clouds from the west looming over Greece (5.104. 10), and it signals the initiation of the symploke, the historical point at which, in Polybius' eyes, the affairs of east and west became inextricably intertwined (5.105.4-10). Henceforth, Polybius judged, there were no longer discrete historical theaters; the only worthwhile history would therefore be synoptic and universal in scope.' Most modem scholars agree that Polybius has amplified the historical importance of the Naupactus conference as a marker for the unification of the oikoumene. Moreover, Agelaus' speech furthers Polybius' representation of Philip V of Macedonia as an aggressor with unlimited imperialistic schemes, as Agelaus, like Demetrius of Pharos before him, appeals to Philip's ambitions for world sovereignty in his plea for peace at Naupactus.
French film theory and criticism : a history/anthology, 1907-1939
These two volumes examine a significant but previously neglected moment in French cultural history: the emergence of French film theory and criticism before the essays of Andr Bazin. Richard Abel has devised an organizational scheme of six nearly symmetrical periods that serve to "bite into" the discursive flow of early French writing on the cinema. Each of the periods is discussed in a separate and extensive historical introduction, with convincing explications of the various concepts current at the time. In each instance, Abel goes on to provide a complementary anthology of selected texts in translation. Amounting to a portable archive, these anthologies make available a rich selection of nearly one hundred and fifty important texts, most of them never before published in English.