3 Polybius, Thucydides, and the First Punic War (2024)

Tim Rood

Polybius is often seen as standing in a rather paradoxical relationship with Thucydides. On the one hand, he is widely thought to have modelled his ‘pragmatic’ style of historiography on Thucydides: both historians expressed a preference for utility over pleasure and paid particular attention to causal analysis. Yet at the same time Thucydides’ influence seems to operate at a very general level: Walbank, for instance, argued that Polybius’ own narrative of Roman expansion is at odds with the model of hard Thucydidean realism that he applied in his analysis.2 And some scholars have even doubted that Polybius had much, if any, first‐hand knowledge of Thucydides.3 He may write (in Peter Derow's formulation) as a ‘pro’ with a large ‘bibliography’,4 but he makes only one explicit reference to Thucydides in the extant portions of his work.5 Unlike some later historians, he does not consciously adopt Thucydidean phraseology. He also differs from Thucydides in his extremely overt narratorial style. Polybius’ apparent indifference to Thucydides is thought in turn to derive from his hostility to the democratic world of Periclean Athens—itself part of a broader lack of interest in fifth‐century Greece by contrast with the new configuration of the Greek world after Sparta's defeat at Leuctra and the growth of Macedonian power under Philip II and Alexander.6

I will argue in this chapter that Polybius engaged with Thucydides in a far more extensive and suggestive way than has been appreciated. My focus here will be on a particularly rich set of correspondences between two sections of Polybius (his account of the First Punic War and his analysis of the Roman constitution) and two sections of Thucydides (his analysis of the causes of the Peloponnesian War and his account of Athens’ doomed invasion of Sicily); I will also argue that Polybius picks up Thucydides’ broader depiction (in both speech and narrative) of the Athenian and Spartan characters. By exploring these various intertexts, I hope to offer a new way of understanding Polybius’ portrayal of Roman expansionism—a topic that was central to the scholarly interests of Peter Derow. I start, however, with some more general remarks on the level of Polybius’ knowledge of Thucydides.

In a long excursus on the art of the commander in his ninth book, Polybius includes an example drawn from Athens’ invasion of Sicily—Nicias’ failure to withdraw from Syracuse following a lunar eclipse: ‘Thanks to this it came about that, when he started the next day, the enemy had obtained information of his intention, and army and generals alike fell into the hands of the Syracusans’ (9.19.1–4).7 Polybius here follows Thucydides’ criticism of Nicias’ reliance on seers (7.50.4). But he has also telescoped the sequence of events in Thucydides’ account, where there is a considerable gap (including two further sea‐battles) between the eclipse and the start of the Athenian retreat. Polybius’ mistake may strengthen his critique of superstition—but what does it imply about his knowledge of Thucydides? Rather than assuming ignorance of Thucydides, it seems better to posit a simple slip:8 the delay of a single day that Polybius places after the eclipse may be a mistaken recollection of the delay of a single day that Thucydides places after the final sea‐battle (7.74.1). Polybius is careless, but his carelessness does at least lie in his collapsing together two separate Athenian delays in Thucydides.

Polybius’ gaffe about Nicias can in any case be set against an apparently clear echo of Thucydides. In his third book, Polybius concludes his long analysis of the causes of the Second Punic War by discussing the importance of causation for historical writing: without an analysis of causation, ‘what is left is a show‐piece but not a lesson, and though it may please for the moment it is of no possible use for the future’ (3.31.13). Polybius is generally thought to be alluding to Thucydides’ famous pronouncement on why his work may be judged ‘useful’: ‘It may be that the lack of a romantic element in my history will make it less of a pleasure to the ear…It was composed as a permanent legacy, not a show‐piece for immediate hearing’ (1.22.4).9 While Polybius expresses the utility/pleasure opposition in several other passages,10 it is here that his words are closest to Thucydides’. But even this passage could be taken as a sign only of Polybius’ particular awareness of Thucydides’ methodological passages.11 And some scholars have argued that Polybius’ remarks are a commonplace and not derived directly from Thucydides at all.12

Support for a sceptical position has been found in a passage where Polybius fails to seize an opportunity to mention Thucydides. In his twelfth book, which is devoted to a discussion of historical writing, Polybius criticizes Timaeus’ version of Hermocrates’ speech at Gela in 424 bc (12.25) without mentioning that Thucydides had also written a version of that speech. Like the mistake about Nicias, however, this silence need not imply ignorance of the relevant part of Thucydides. Polybius follows typical ancient rhetorical techniques when he combats Timaeus with arguments from probability;13 he presumably also recalled that Thucydides had admitted to some freedom in the composition of speeches (1.22.1).14

The question of how much Polybius had read Thucydides is ultimately unanswerable. If previous scholarship has laid particular stress on links between the two historians’ methodological remarks, that is because most historiographical research on Polybius has concentrated on those sections rather than on the narrative. The links proposed in this chapter will provide a more positive basis for assessing Polybius’ knowledge of Thucydides—though they still leave open the possibility that Thucydidean material could come from Polybius’ sources for the First Punic War (for instance Philinus, who, like Thucydides, began his account of his war at the start of his second book (Polyb. 1.15.1), and who may also have dated war‐years in the Thucydidean manner (cf. Polyb. 1.41.4, 56.2)). But my analysis aims in any case to shift attention away from the extent of Polybius’ reading to the question of how Thucydides was used.

Polybius’ account of the First Punic War is placed at the start of his two introductory books, which fill in the background to the period of Rome's rise to global power. Central to his analysis of the causes of the war is a passage where he recounts embassies sent to both Carthage and Rome by the Mamertines, a group of mercenaries who have seized control of Messene but are now being hard pressed by Hieron of Syracuse. Rather than focusing on the embassy to Carthage, Polybius describes at some length the response to the embassy sent to Rome:

As it turns out, when the Romans do make their minds up, the Carthaginians are ‘already in possession of the citadel’ of Messene (1.11.4). The Romans’ fears for their future seem justified.

Polybius’ account of the escalation that led to the First Punic War compresses three stages in Thucydides’ account of the escalation that led to the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides began by describing a civil dispute in Epidamnus; this dispute then led to conflict between Corcyra and Corinth after an Epidamnian supplication was first refused by Corcyra, then accepted by Corinth; finally, the Corinthian decision to help Epidamnus led to conflict between Athens and Sparta after a Corcyraean appeal for help was accepted by Athens. The same three stages appear in Polybius. First, Polybius makes the Mamertines appeal to the Romans, their kinsmen (1.10.2), just as Thucydides makes the Epidamnians appeal to Corcyra, their mother‐city. Secondly, by a neat short‐circuit, Polybius has the Mamertines appeal to both Carthage and Rome at the same time, while Thucydides has the Epidamnians turn to Corinth only when the Corcyraeans reject them. Thirdly, in Polybius the Mamertine appeal to Carthage prompts the Romans into action through fear of the growth of Carthaginian power, just as in Thucydides Corinth's acceptance of Epidamnus makes Corcyra seek an alliance with Athens, and Athens’ acceptance of that alliance is part of the process of expansion that frightens the Spartans into war (1.23.6, 88).

In both Thucydides and Polybius the process of escalation is also marked by one pointed delay. Thucydides reports that the Athenians held two assemblies over the Corcyraean alliance: at the first they gave some weight to the Corinthians’ moral objections, but at the second they were swayed by a perception that Corcyra would be useful in the coming war against the Peloponnesians (1.44). Polybius similarly reports that the Romans had ‘protracted deliberations’ in response to the Mamertine embassy as they weighed up the claims of justice and expediency (1.11.1). Historians have generally discussed this delay in terms of internal Roman politics (in particular, the relative importance of the senate and the comitia in dealing with international affairs at this date).16 But the delay can also be read as an allusion back to Thucydides, highlighting the fact that both the Athenians and Romans are faced by a conflict between claims of conventional morality and self‐interest and that both are guided by their perception of necessity to take steps that cause an expansion of the conflict.17 The general link between the account of their deliberations is strengthened by one close parallel in phrasing: just as Polybius writes that the Romans were determined ‘not to let Messene slip’ (μὴ προέσθαι, 1.10.9), so too Thucydides writes that the Athenians were determined ‘not to let Corcyra with its powerful navy slip to Corinth’ (μὴ προέσθαι, 1.44.2).18

Polybius’ sketch of the Romans’ fear of the growth of Carthaginian power links not just with Thucydides’ account of the development of Athenian power in the run‐up to the Peloponnesian War, but also with claims about the Athenians’ plans for the future made by the exiled Alcibiades in a speech at Sparta. While Polybius claims that the Romans fear Carthaginian expansion first in Sicily and then in Italy (1.10.5), Thucydides makes Alcibiades claim that the Athenians have similar ambitions: ‘We sailed to Sicily intending first of all to subdue the Sicilian Greeks, if that could be done; then to move on to a like subjugation of the Greeks in Italy; and finally to make an attempt on Carthaginian empire and Carthage itself’ (6.90.2).19 This intertext seems to support the common assumption that the source for Polybius’ account of the Roman deliberations was the strongly apologetic Roman historian Fabius Pictor. Thucydides’ whole account of the Athenians’ ambitions in the West marks them as rash and overambitious—and ultimately they suffer a disastrous defeat. By analogy with Thucydides’ Athenians, Polybius’ Carthaginians (at least as the Romans perceive them) are also cast as greedy and doomed to defeat.

And yet the Alcibiades intertext may itself hint that Polybius’ account reflects Roman apologia. Alcibiades’ speech at Sparta is by no means a neutral account. His sketch of Athens’ ambitions in the West was meant to persuade Sparta to send help to Syracuse. It suits his rhetorical purpose to offer an exaggerated image of Athenian desires, projecting onto the Athenians as a whole plans which Thucydides has earlier associated only with Alcibiades himself (6.15.2). Alcibiades’ exaggerated presentation of Athens’ ambitions undermines the authority of the Roman perceptions of Carthage. It hints that the Romans exaggerated the scope of Carthaginian ambitions in order to justify to themselves their own morally dubious intervention in Sicily.

Polybius’ allusion to Alcibiades’ speech becomes still more interesting if one reads how Alcibiades’ argument advances: ‘If all or most of this succeeded, our plan was then to attack the Peloponnese. We would bring with us this entire additional force of overseas Greeks, as well as hiring a large number of barbarians, including Iberians and others who are at the present time acknowledged to be the best fighters in that part of the world; we would use the plentiful timber in Italy to build many further triremes; with our fleet thus augmented we could effectively encircle (πέριξ πολιορκοῦντες) the Peloponnese…and we could then go on to dominate the entire Greek world’ (6.90.3). Alcibiades’ threat that the Spartans may find themselves encircled is picked up in the Romans’ fear that the Carthaginians may ‘surround them…on every side’ (κύκλῳ…περιέχοντες)—and again the echo hints that their fear may be exaggerated. More striking is Alcibiades’ suggestion that Athens views the West as a region abundant in timber and in warlike barbarians whose conquest will be a springboard to conquest in central Greece. For Polybius, by contrast, the West can no longer be conceived as a distant land of natural abundance. Sicily is now the arena of conflict between two western powers, Carthage and Rome—and for the victor trained in the toils of war there is the prospect of expansion in the eastern Mediterranean and beyond.

We have seen, then, that Polybius’ use of Thucydides opens up his account of Roman deliberations to very different sorts of reading. It implicitly maps the Roman–Carthaginian conflict in space and time against Thucydides’ presentation of Athens’ western interests. At the same time, the ambiguity in Polybius’ account of Roman planning before the First Punic War casts the opening narrative as programmatic: one of his strategies in approaching Roman imperialism was to create the possibility of opposed readings from Roman and Greek perspectives.20 As we shall now see, this richly dialogic use of Thucydides is maintained when Polybius turns to the narrative of the war itself.

For Thucydides, the Athenian disaster in Sicily was the greatest event in the Peloponnesian War and indeed in Greek history as a whole (7.87.5). And one of the motifs within the narrative that justifies that assessment is the element of the unexpected. The Athenian enterprise in invading Sicily is viewed as ‘incredible’ (6.31.1: ἄπιστον); their perseverance even after the Spartan occupation of Decelea again takes the Greeks by surprise, particularly when measured against the expectation of a quick defeat for Athens at the start of the war (7.28.3: παράλογον τοσοῦτον); and the Athenians themselves are greatly surprised by Syracuse's naval resistance (7.55.1: παράλογος…μέγας). The greatness of the Sicilian expedition is further emphasized by Thucydides’ focus on emotional upheaval and shifts of confidence: the dismay felt by the Syracusans when Athenian reinforcements arrive by contrast with the Athenians’ renewed confidence (7.42.2: κατάπληξις versus ῥώμη), the gloom in the Athenian troops as they wretchedly retreat on foot from a city to which they had sailed in splendour (7.75.6–7).

The same motifs that run through Thucydides’ account of the Athenian invasion of Sicily are central to Polybius’ presentation of the First Punic War. Like Thucydides, Polybius uses the structuring opposition of land‐ and sea‐fighting.21 He also frequently gestures towards Thucydides’ account of naval tactics. When he describes, for instance, the slower Romans using ‘ravens’ to restrict the movement of the swifter and more experienced Carthaginian fleet (1.22), he recalls Thucydides’ account of the slower Syracusans using ‘iron hands’ (7.65.2) to restrict the movement of the swifter and more experienced Athenian fleet. Polybius keeps up the Thucydidean overtones in his description of the first sea‐battle—which ‘eventually became exactly like a land fight’ (παραπλήσιον…πεζομαχίας, 1.23.7), just like the naval battles Thucydides describes at Sybota (1.49.2), Pylos (4.14.3), and Syracuse (7.62.2, 4).22 Polybius also describes how, in a battle off Drepana much later in the war, the heavy Roman ships with their inexperienced crews are unable to engage in the complex manoeuvre known as the diekplous (1.51.9)—the Athenian speciality that was denied them in the confines of the harbour at Syracuse.23 But the conditions off Drepana are in due course reversed in the conclusive battle of the Aegates islands, with the Romans now playing the naval role that had previously belonged to Carthage (6.61.2).24

Polybius also uses language found in Thucydides’ Sicilian narrative to emphasize the shifting fortunes experienced by both sides during the long war. Particularly common are the unexpected shifts that, as we have seen, are highlighted in Thucydides: a Carthaginian general has two close and ‘unexpected’ escapes in quick succession (1.21.11, 23.7: ἀνελπίστως);25 the Roman victory off Mylae makes good their hopes at sea ‘unexpectedly’ (1.24.1: παραδόξως);26 later they suffer the ‘unexpected’ destruction of two fleets in a storm (1.54.8: παραλόγως), but recover with a final push at sea that upsets Carthaginian expectations (1.60.1: παρὰ τὴν ὑπόνοιαν) and leads to their similarly ‘unexpected’ (1.62.1: ἀπροσδοκήτως)27 final defeat at the Aegates islands. The emotions experienced by participants amidst these extraordinary shifts of fortune are another theme shared by the two historians: they both use the vocabulary of shock and awe and focus on swings of confidence.28 And while much of this vocabulary is typical of emotive historical writing, the clustering of one verb for increased confidence (the passive of ἐπιρρώννυμι) is unmatched in extant Greek literature (Polyb. 1.24.1, 28.8, 41.2; Thuc. 6.93.1, 7.2.2, 7.4, 17.3).29

Polybius’ narrative also recalls (with crucial differences) Thucydidean sequences. Early in the First Punic War a Carthaginian general was able to escape from Acragas with his troops because the joyful Romans had relaxed their guard (Polyb. 1.19.12). The Syracusan Hermocrates, by contrast, used a trick to stop the Athenians withdrawing after the final battle in the harbour, when the other Syracusans had taken to drink (Thuc. 7.73–4). Later in the First Punic War, after the Romans have taken the war to Libya, a single Spartan, Xanthippus, reversed Carthage's misfortunes (Polyb. 1.32–5)—just as the Spartan Gylippus reversed Syracuse's misfortunes (Thuc. 7.2).30 In both cases, moreover, the Spartan general attributed defeats in previous battles to their having been fought in confined spaces unsuitable for elephants or cavalry, and then won a victory on better terrain (Polyb. 1.32.2–4, Thuc. 7.5.3—the difference is that Gylippus himself had been responsible for the previous defeat). The two Thucydidean parallels appear to bode well for Carthage. But then the crucial difference: Xanthippus soon abandoned the Carthaginian cause so as to avoid jealousy and slander (1.36.2–3).

Thucydides is even more strongly in view as Polybius draws his account of the First Punic War to an end: ‘It was at once the longest, most continuous, and most severely contested war known to us in history’ (1.63.4). Polybius’ focus on the continuity and length of the war recalls Thucydides’ criteria for judging the greatness of the Peloponnesian War (1.23).31 This strongly Thucydidean close is reinforced by an explicit comparison between the navies that fought in the First Punic War and those from the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars (1.63.8). The Thucydidean note then continues as Polybius sketches how the Carthaginians move straight from the war against Rome to fighting their own mercenaries:

The model for this description is Thucydides’ account of Athens’ position after the defeat in Sicily:

In both passages, a country has moved from expansionist ambitions to fear for its own future, and the lack of resources that now endangers the country's continued survival is emphasized by a string of negatives.

Polybius’ frequent engagement with Thucydides’ Sicilian narrative is not mere literary play. Thucydides’ ‘greatest Hellenic event’ (7.87.5) is figuratively subsumed within an even greater conflict, enabling the careful reader to draw lessons from the repetitive patterns of history. The pattern of echoes also, as we have seen, makes an implied comment on the changing spatial significance of Sicily: the island has shifted from being subjected to attack by the leading naval city in the Aegean to being the main arena for a long conflict between the two great powers in the West. As an implicit reflection on spatial and temporal configurations, Polybius’ interaction with Thucydides looks back to Thucydides’ own modelling of his Sicilian narrative on Herodotus’ account of the Persian Wars,32 and also to another narrative configuration that Thucydides implicitly rejects—the parallelism between the Athenian‐ and Spartan‐led resistance to Persia in the Aegean and the Syracusan‐led resistance to Carthage in the West.33 Indeed, Polybius may not have been the first historian to transfer Thucydidean patterning to the West. The account of the Carthaginian defeat at Himera in 480 bc found in Diodorus (11.23–4) is modelled on Thucydides’ account of the Athenian defeat in Sicily and the subsequent position in Athens (7.87–8.1),34 and while Diodorus himself wrote a century after Polybius, he may have drawn the Thucydidean echo from an earlier historian such as Timaeus, Ephorus, or Philistus (a renowned imitator of Thucydides).35

The practice of using Thucydides’ account of Athens’ Sicilian catastrophe as a way of comparing different disasters is given a twist later in Polybius’ Histories. When he comes to the Roman defeat at Cannae in 216 bc, he describes how the Romans overcame their initial surprise and ‘prepared everything on every side with energy’—‘for the Romans are most to be feared, collectively and individually, when true fear surrounds them’ (3.75.8: πάντα δὲ καὶ πανταχόθεν ἐνεργῶς ἡτοίμαζον. τότε γάρ εἰσι φοβερώτατοι Ῥωμαῖοι καὶ κοινῇ καὶ κατ’ ἰδίαν, ὅταν αὐτοὺς περιστῇ φόβος ἀληθινός). Here too a strong verbal echo brings out how the Roman response contrasts with the Athenians’ immediate feeling of hopelessness after the disaster in Sicily: ‘On every side everything was giving them pain and fear surrounded them’ (πάντα δὲ πανταχόθεν αὐτοὺς ἐλύπει τε καὶ περιειστήκει…φόβος, 8.1.2).36 Though Thucydides’ Athenians do soon bounce back (8.1.4: ‘As tends to happen in a democracy, the people were ready to embrace any form of discipline in the panic of the moment, and they proceeded to implement the decisions they had taken’), Polybius suggests that the Romans’ distinctive national character enables them to surpass the Athenian resilience portrayed by Thucydides.

It may still seem that importing Thucydides’ Sicilian narrative into the Second Punic War dilutes the strong spatial patterning I have suggested for the First Punic War. This interpretative move threatens to strip the Thucydidean echoes of their power, making them stock material to be recycled for one war after another. And this threat may well seem greater if Polybius lies behind some of the allusions to Thucydides (above all to the Sicilian expedition) in Livy's account of the Second Punic War.37 Nonetheless, Polybius’ use of Thucydides to illustrate what is distinctive about the Roman character should be read not as mindless repetition, but as a thoughtful continuation of a pattern that is already found in the account of the First Punic War and taken further in the analysis of the Roman constitution in book 6. It is to this pattern that we now turn.

Polybius justifies the attention he devotes to the First Punic War in part by the fact that it served to illustrate the ‘national characteristics and resources’ of Rome and Carthage at a time when ‘their institutions were as yet in their original integrity’ (1.13.12–13). He picks up this theme when, several years into the war, the Romans suffer a disaster in a storm off the south coast of Sicily, losing 266 ships in all. While emphasizing the magnitude of the disaster (‘no greater catastrophe is to be found in all history as befalling a fleet at one time’, 1.37.3), he goes on to blame not fortune but the lack of judgement of the Roman commanders—which is itself a reflection of the Roman character: ‘it is a peculiarity of the Roman people as a whole to treat everything as a question of force; to consider that they must of course accomplish whatever they have proposed to themselves; and that nothing is impossible that they have once determined upon’ (1.37.7). Polybius here looks back to a famous passage in Thucydides where Corinthian speakers oppose the slow and steady Spartans to the swift and daring Athenians: ‘If they set an aim and fail to achieve it, they take that as a personal loss: if they succeed and make a gain, they regard this as only a minor achievement compared with what comes next.…For them, uniquely, in any project hoping and having are the same thing’ (1.70.7).

The Thucydidean colouring continues as Polybius reflects on how this rashness was the cause of their naval misfortunes: ‘This is what they experienced on the present occasion: they have often experienced it since and will continue to do so, until they correct this fault of daring and force which makes them think that any season of the year admits of sailing as well as marching’ (1.37.10). The term ‘daring’ (τόλμα) is a repeated characteristic of Polybius’ Romans—and another strong point of contact with Thucydides’ Athenians (the Corinthians call them ‘daring beyond their power’, παρὰ δύναμιν τολμηταί: 1.70.3).38 More pointed still is Polybius’ appeal to the idea of recurrence, which looks back to Thucydides’ claim that his account will be found useful by those ‘who will want to have a clear understanding of what happened—and, such is the human condition, will happen again at some time in the same or a similar pattern’ (1.22.4); and again to his account of the ills of civil war: ‘it happened then and will for ever continue to happen, as long as human nature remains the same’ (3.82.2). The generality of Thucydides’ comments contrasts with the precise advice given to the Romans. That advice has itself troubled some scholars, who question its relevance for Polybius’ own day.39 But we can also see Polybius as offering a definition of the Romans precisely by virtue of the specific advice he offers them: this is the sort of the advice that the practical Romans might be thought liable to heed. At the same time, he fashions his own identity as a historian who offers more practical advice than Thucydides: the difference in their qualifying ἕως ἄν phrases (‘as long as human nature remains the same’ / ‘until they correct this fault of daring.’) sums up the difference between the outlooks of the two historians.

Thucydides’ analysis of national character is further evoked in Polybius’ account of how the Romans were able to overcome their deficiencies at sea. In his account of the Roman constitution in book 6, Polybius writes that the Carthaginians’ greater naval preparations were ‘only natural with a people with whom it has been traditional (πάτριον) for many generations to practise this skill (ἐμπειρίαν)’ (6.52.1); but while ‘in skill (ἐμπειρίαν) the Romans are much behind the Carthaginians…the upshot of the whole naval war has been a decided triumph for the Romans, owing to the valour of their men. For although nautical science contributes largely to success in sea‐fights, still it is the marines’ strength of spirit (εὐψυχία) that turns the scale most decisively in favour of victory’ (6.52.8–9). Polybius’ comment on Carthage reverses a comment on Athens that Thucydides attributes to the Syracusan Hermocrates as he encourages his countrymen to press on with the war at sea: ‘there was nothing traditional (πάτριον) or permanent about the Athenians’ skill (ἐμπειρίαν) at sea’ (7.21.3).40 The contrast in the thoughts puts even more emphasis on the means through which the Romans do manage to surpass the Carthaginians: bravery.

Still more striking is the way Polybius’ analysis of the Roman effort at sea picks up Thucydides’ comment on the Spartans’ efforts on land in the battle of Mantinea. While Polybius wrote that Roman spirit made up for failings in skill by sea, Thucydides claimed that ‘despite this complete failure of professional skill (ἐμπειρία) the Spartans then gave a remarkable demonstration of their ability to win the day by courage alone (ἀνδρεία)’ (5.72.2). Thucydides’ comment has itself been surprising to commentators: whether he is using ἐμπειρία to mean ‘skill’ or ‘experience’, it is not altogether clear that the Spartans have been short of either. Perhaps Polybius too was surprised by it: he choose to apply Thucydides’ analysis of the Spartans’ performance on land to the Romans’ performance at sea. At the same time, he echoes a speech that Thucydides gives to the Peloponnesian commanders before a sea‐battle off Naupactus: ‘your relative lack of experience is outweighed by your superior bravery. Take the Athenians’ expertise, which is what you fear most. True, if expertise is accompanied by courage, in a dire situation it will remember and apply its training, but without strength of spirit (εὐψυχίας) no skill is proof against the dangers of battle’ (2.87.4). Yet in Thucydides that comment is disproved by the ensuing narrative—a paradigmatic demonstration of the value of the Athenians’ naval skill. The fact that the Peloponnesians’ discredited generalization holds true for Polybius’ Romans brings out the same shift we earlier observed in the character of naval warfare: naval skill counts for less when sea‐battles are like land‐battles.41

Polybius’ focus on Roman character in book 6 picks up a theme adumbrated in the earlier narrative. In one of the first engagements of the war, a Carthaginian attack on Roman forces at the start of the siege of Acragas looks likely to be successful until the Romans put up a stout resistance owing to the death penalty set for deserters. Polybius concludes that ‘the difference (διαφορά) in their institutions saved the Roman fortunes, as it had often done before’ (1.17.11). The comment that the Romans survive because they are different from everyone else echoes Thucydides’ comment on the Spartans’ failure to exploit the opportunity offered by the revolt of Euboea in 411 bc: ‘Not for the first time (there had been many other examples) the Spartans showed themselves, of all possible enemies, the ideal opponents in a war fought by the Athenians. The fact that they were so different (διάφοροι) in national character (the Athenians quick and enterprising, the Spartans slow and unadventurous) gave a particular advantage to the Athenians as a naval power’ (8.96.5). That is, the Athenians survive because they are different from the Spartans, the Romans because they are different from everyone else. And the Romans are different from everyone else because they combine the best of the Athenian and Spartan characters. They display a Spartan constancy at the same time as an Athenian daring.

But the Roman daring in taking to the sea carries with it the danger of corruption. Athenian naval power depends on democracy and is threatened by instability. It is a threat that Polybius addresses when he turns to describe the Athenian constitution—with the help of an appropriately naval image:

While the metaphor of the ungovernable ship is traditional,42 Polybius’ depiction of the ship entering a harbour and being viewed by spectators irresistibly brings to mind Thucydides’ account of the onlookers on the shore in the final battle in the great Harbour at Syracuse—a famous description echoed by many later writers.43 The word Polybius uses for the instability of the Athenian democracy (ἀνωμαλία) even picks up Thucydides’ account of the ups and downs of the battle: ‘owing to the varied nature of the sea‐battle (τὸ 〈ἀνώμαλον〉 τῆς ναυμαχίας), inevitably the men lining the shore had varying (ἀνώμαλον) perspectives’ (7.71.2). Polybius archly recasts Thucydides’ stirring narrative as metaphor: the twists and turns of the battle in the harbour of Syracuse become a figure for the unruliness of the Athenian democracy whose final defeat is being proleptically enacted.

I have tried to show that Polybius exploited Thucydides with verve and acumen, deepening his analysis of the process of Roman expansionism and the character that drove it and enabled them to bounce back from reverses on both land and sea. If the picture of Polybius I have presented holds any weight, then that is not least because one argument often proposed for Polybius’ lack of interest in Thucydides can be turned on its head. It is precisely the lack of relevance of fifth‐century Athens to the world of Polybius that gave him the freedom to use Thucydides’ historical analysis without becoming embroiled in the problems of partisanship that beset his explicit engagement with other historians. And if my portrayal of Polybius’ strong ‘Thucydidization’44 extends to the narrative the Thucydidean reading of human nature that Walbank saw in his passages of analysis, then I hope that this would have met with Peter Derow's approval: for it was the great achievement of his most exhilarating article on Polybius to reveal with both passion and humanity the deeper consistency that runs through Polybius’ analysis and narrative.45

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