Polybius on the natural cycle of political systems
The Histories: beginnings, to balances, to bestiality [New Translation alongside some Old]
Polybius wrote:
BOOK 6
[extracts from a “fragmentary totality”]
Systems of Government
[5] … What, then, do I mean when I speak of ‘beginnings’? Under what circumstances am I claiming that these political systems first arise? Legend has it that in the past the human race has been annihilated by catastrophes such as flood, famine, and crop-failure, and there is every reason to think that the same will happen in the future too, over and over again.
Such catastrophes also entail the simultaneous loss of all the arts and crafts, and so, in due course of time, once the human population has increased again (from the seeds sown, so to speak, by the survivors of the catastrophe), naturally enough they form bands. That is what other animal species do, and it is reasonable to expect that humans too compensate for their natural weakness by herding together with others of their own kind. Under these circumstances, it is inevitable that anyone with exceptional physical strength and mental daring will take command and set himself up as ruler over the rest. Since this is what we see happening in the case of unreasoning animals—because it is obvious and indisputable that in the case of bulls, boars, cocks, and so on the strongest takes command—we must conclude that it is a truly natural function. It seems plausible to suggest, then, that this is what primitive human life too was like—that people formed bands, as animals do, with each band following the strongest and most aggressive man among them. The determinant of these men’s rulership was their strength, and that is what we call monarchy.
As for the origins of kingship, after a while there gradually arise within these groups feelings of kinship and intimacy, and then for the first time people acquire the concepts of good and bad, and right and wrong.
[6] The way these concepts take root and form is as follows. The urge to mate is a universal, natural instinct, and the result is that children are born. Now, some of these children, after being reared and reaching maturity, fail to defend or otherwise show gratitude towards those who brought them up; on the contrary, they set about speaking ill of them and doing them harm. It is not hard to see that this is likely to displease and offend those of their associates who are aware of the care lavished on them by their parents and the trouble they took to ensure that their children were looked after and fed.
For since human beings differ from other animals in that they alone have rational intelligence, it plainly follows that people are unlikely to overlook this abnormal behaviour, as other animals do. No, they will disapprove of what is happening and the thought that in the future each of them too might find himself at the receiving end of such treatment will aggravate their negative response to the present. Or again, suppose someone in danger receives help and assistance from another person, but fails to show gratitude to his saviour, and in fact sets about doing him harm. It is easy to see that, in all likelihood, those who know what is going on will share the injured party’s indignation and imagine the same thing happening to them, and so will find such behaviour displeasing and offensive.
As a result of these situations, a certain conception gradually arises within each individual of the importance of duty, and he begins to reflect upon it. This is the be-all and end-all of the sense of right and wrong. Or again, if someone takes it upon himself to be the chief defender of everyone in times of danger, by resisting and retaliating against the most aggressive animals, it is likely that the general populace will signify their gratitude and respect for him, while condemning and disapproving of anyone who conducts himself in the opposite way. And it is again reasonable to suppose that this will lead people to reflect on what constitutes bad or good behaviour, and on the difference between the two, and that for utilitarian reasons good behaviour will begin to be admired and imitated, and bad behaviour will be avoided.
If, under these circumstances, the leader of the community, the man with the greatest strength, consistently supports what the general populace has come to think of as good and bad, and his subjects see that he apportions rewards and punishments as appropriate, they stop being frightened of his power, and accept his rule more because they approve of his policies.
However old he gets, they work together to preserve his rule and wholeheartedly defend him against the assaults and schemes of those who would put an end to his dominion. In this way, monarchy imperceptibly slides into kingship, when reason replaces forcefulness and strength at the helm.
[7] This is how men first acquire the concepts of good and bad, and right and wrong, and how true kingship begins and develops. I say ‘true’ kingship, because the common people not only preserve the original king’s rule, but also see that it passes down to his descendants, believing that men born from kings and brought up under their influence will share their principles. And from then on, if any of these descendants fails to find favour with them, the criteria they use to choose their rulers and kings are no longer physical strength and forcefulness, but excellence of judgement and intelligence, because by then they have gained first-hand experience of the difference between the two.
In the olden days, anyway, once a man had been chosen as king and had gained this position of authority, he retained it for life. He saw to his subjects’ security by fortifying places and enclosing them within walls, and took over land to make sure that they were well supplied with provisions. And as he occupied himself with these matters, no one ever spoke ill of him or resented him, because he did not dress or eat or drink in a way that made him stand out; he lived pretty much like everyone else, and spent all his time in close contact with the general populace.
But kingship was passed down from generation to generation within the same family, and once the kings had made everything as secure as they could and had ensured a more than adequate supply of food, the fact that there was so much of everything tempted them to begin to indulge their appetites. They felt that rulers should dress in a fashion that distinguished them from their subjects, that their food should be presented and prepared in distinctive and elaborate ways, and that they should be allowed total sexual freedom, even to the extent of sleeping with inappropriate partners. This behaviour aroused people’s resentment and disgust, which in turn kindled hatred and hostile anger in the kings, and so kingship gave way to tyranny. At the same time the seeds of its dissolution were sown, as conspiracies began to be formed against the tyrants. These conspiracies arose not in the lowest strata of society, but among the most noble, high-minded, and courageous men, because they are the ones who find it hardest to bear insolence from those set over them.
[8] For the reasons I have already mentioned, the common people lent their support to these new champions of theirs in their actions against their leaders, and so kingship and tyranny were wholly obliterated, and a new era of aristocracy began. For the common people immediately repaid their debt, so to speak, to those who had got rid of the tyrants, by deferring to their authority and putting themselves in their hands. At first, these new leaders gladly accepted their assignment. They made the common good their top priority, and managed all the private and public affairs of the general populace responsibly and carefully. But then the sons in their turn inherited this position of authority from their fathers. They had no conception of hardship, and just as little of political equality or the right of any citizen to speak his mind, because all their lives they had been surrounded by their fathers’ powers and privileges. And so they either dedicated themselves to rapaciousness and unscrupulous money-making, or to drinking and the non-stop partying that goes with it, or to seducing women and preying on boys, and in the process, they changed aristocracy into oligarchy.
Before long, however, it was their turn to arouse those same feelings of resentment and disgust in the general populace that I mentioned a short while ago, leading to the same result: they met with just as catastrophic an end as the tyrants.
[9] What happened was that, sooner or later, someone noticed how his fellow citizens resented and hated the ruling oligarchs, and when he summoned up the courage to speak or act against them, he found that the general populace was ready to back him all the way. They murdered or banished the oligarchs, but then, since fear of past monarchic injustice deterred them from setting up a king, and the recent villainy of the oligarchs dissuaded them from entrusting the government to just a few men, the only remaining untried alternative was for them to rely on themselves. So that was the system they resorted to: they changed the constitution from oligarchy to democracy, and assumed administrative duties and responsibilities themselves.
While those who had experienced oligarchic excess remained alive, they were content with the existing regime and were fully committed to equality of speech and the right of every citizen to speak his mind. But by the time a new crop of young men had been born and democracy was in its third generation, the principles of equal and free speech were too familiar to seem particularly important, and some people began to want to get ahead of everyone else. It was especially the rich who succumbed to this temptation and longed for power. But then, finding that their own resources and merits were not enough to enable them to get what they wanted, they squandered their fortunes on bribing and corrupting the general populace in all sorts of ways. Once this inane hunger for glory had made the common people greedy for such largesse and willing to accept it, democracy in its turn was overthrown, and replaced by violence and government by main force.
For once people had grown accustomed to eating off others’ tables and expected their daily needs to be met, then, when they found someone to champion their cause—a man of vision and daring, who had been excluded from political office by his poverty—they instituted government by force: they banded together and set about murdering, banishing, and redistributing land, until they were reduced to a bestial state and once more gained a monarchic master.
[The old “standard” (1889) translation by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh]
For the mob, habituated to feed at the expense of others, and to have its hopes of a livelihood in the property of its neighbours, as soon as it has got a leader sufficiently ambitious and daring, being excluded by poverty from the sweets of civil honours, produces a reign of mere violence. Then come tumultuous assemblies, massacres, banishments, redivisions of land; until, after losing all trace of civilisation, it has once more found a master and a despot.
This is the cycle of constitutions, the natural way in which systems of government develop, metamorphose, and start all over again. A clear grasp of the theory may not deliver the ability to make infallible predictions about when some constitutional event will happen in the future, but provided one’s judgement is not biased by anger or resentment, one will rarely go wrong about what phase of growth or decline a system has reached, or about what transformation it will undergo next. At any rate, where the Roman constitution is concerned, the theory gives us our best chance of understanding its formation, growth, and prime, and of predicting its future reversal and decline.
For, as I said not long ago, the Roman constitution is a superb example of a system whose formation and growth have always been natural, and whose decline will therefore also conform to natural laws. There will be an opportunity later to develop this idea.
[10] For the time being, however, since it is far from irrelevant to my project, I shall give a brief account of Lycurgus’ legislation. Lycurgus understood the inexorability of the natural processes I have been talking about, and realized how precarious every political system is if it is unmixed and uniform, because before long it degenerates into its vicious counterpart, from which it is naturally inseparable.
Just as rust is the corruption inherent within iron, and woodworm and grubs are the corruption inherent within timbers, and just as iron and wood, even if they remain unaffected by all external sources of harm, are still destroyed by these things that form within them, in the same way every political system has a source of corruption growing within it, from which it is inseparable.
For kingship it is the system we have been calling tyranny, for aristocracy it is oligarchy, and for democracy it is government by brute force. According to the theory I have just outlined, it is inevitable that each of these political systems will finally degenerate into its vicious counterpart.
As a precautionary measure, then, the constitution Lycurgus drew up was not simple and uniform. He bundled together all the merits and distinctive characteristics of the best systems of government, in order to prevent any of them growing beyond the point where it would degenerate into its congenital vice.
He wanted the potency of each system to be counteracted by the others, so that nowhere would any of them tip the scales or outweigh the others for any length of time; he wanted the system to last for ever, maintained in a high degree of balance and equilibrium by the principle of reciprocity.
[The old “standard” (1889) translation by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh]
Lycurgus, I say, saw all this, and accordingly combined together all the excellences and distinctive features of the best constitutions, that no part should become unduly predominant, and be perverted into its kindred vice; and that, each power being checked by the others, no one part should turn the scale or decisively out-balance the others; but that, by being accurately adjusted and in exact equilibrium, the whole might remain long steady like a ship sailing close to the wind.
Kings were prevented from becoming overbearing by fear of the citizen body, who were assigned a fair share in government; the common citizens, in their turn, were deterred from disrespecting the kings by fear of the elders, all of whom were bound to cleave constantly to justice, because the criterion for selection for the Council of Elders was virtue. This meant that the part of the system that was at a disadvantage because of its conservatism* would always be reinforced and given added weight by the predilection and inclination of the elders. And the upshot was that the constitution so framed by Lycurgus preserved independence in Sparta longer than anywhere else in recorded history.
Lycurgus used calculation to predict how the nature of each of these systems of government would dictate its beginning and its outcome; he drew up his constitution without having suffered. But in the Romans’ case, even though the result was the same, in that they created the same kind of regime for themselves, this was not at all the outcome of reason, but of many struggles and trials. On every occasion, they drew on the knowledge they had gained from their setbacks to make the best choices, and this enabled them to achieve the same result as Lycurgus, and to make theirs the best system of government in the world today. […]
The Roman Constitution in Its Prime
[11] … There were three fundamental building blocks of the Roman constitution—that is, all three of the systems I mentioned above. Each of them was used so equitably and appropriately in the ordering and arrangement of everything that even native Romans were hard put to say for sure whether their constitution was essentially aristocratic, democratic, or monarchic. This is not surprising: the constitution would have appeared monarchic (or a kingship), aristocratic, or democratic, depending on whether one focused attention on the powers of the consuls, the powers of the Senate, or the powers of the common people. The areas of authority that each of these three had—and still have, since the situation has hardly changed nowadays—are as follows.
[The old “standard” (1889) translation by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh]
As for the Roman constitution, it had three elements, each of them possessing sovereign powers: and their respective share of power in the whole state had been regulated with such a scrupulous regard to equality and equilibrium, that no one could say for certain, not even a native, whether the constitution as a whole were an aristocracy or democracy or despotism. And no wonder: for if we confine our observation to the power of the Consuls we should be inclined to regard it as despotic; if on that of the Senate, as aristocratic; and if finally one looks at the power possessed by the people it would seem a clear case of a democracy. What the exact powers of these several parts were, and still, with slight modifications, are, I will now state.
[MGH: Consuls = monarchic]
… While the consuls are resident in Rome—that is, before they take their armies out into the field—they are responsible for all matters of public concern … if one focuses attention exclusively on this aspect of the constitution, one might reasonably conclude that it was pure monarchy or kingship. …
[MGH: The Senate = aristocratic]
… The Senate’s most important role is that it controls the treasury, in the sense that it is responsible for all state revenues and almost all expenditure. … [A] visitor to Rome who arrived when the consuls were away would think that the constitution was thoroughly aristocratic. And in fact this is exactly the impression that is prevalent in Greece and in the royal courts, because almost all their business is handled by the Senate. …
[MGH: The people = democratic]
… But the people do have a part to play, and a very important one at that, because they control rewards and punishments. … Then they are responsible for assessing legislation; most importantly, it is they who decide whether or not to go to war; and they also either ratify or abrogate alliances, truces, and treaties. And again, all this means that it would be plausible to suggest that the people’s role is paramount, and that the constitution is a democracy. …
…
[18] To a considerable extent, then, each of the three components of the Roman constitution can harm or help the other two. This enables the whole made up of all three parts to respond appropriately to every situation that arises, and that is what makes it the best conceivable system of government. For example, when a general threat from abroad forces the three estates to cooperate and collaborate, the state gains extraordinary abilities: first, since everyone competes to devise ways to combat the emergency, and everyone cooperates in their public and private capacities to complete the task at hand, there is no contingency that it is incapable of meeting; second, decisions are made and acted on extremely promptly. This gives the Roman state its characteristic feature: it is irresistible, and achieves every goal it sets itself.
Or again, suppose the external threat has been dealt with and, as a result of their victory, they enjoy prosperity and a life of ease and plenty; and suppose that this gradually goes to their heads, and that idleness leads, as it usually does, to arrogance and presumption. Under these circumstances, the way the state helps itself from its own resources would become particularly clear. For suppose one of the estates, thanks to an inflated impression of its own importance, pushes itself forward and tries to gain the upper hand over the others—well, clearly none of them does get inflated or presumptuous, because none of them is self-sufficient, as I have just been explaining, and the designs of each of them can be effectively counteracted and hampered by the others. Everything remains in its assigned place, then, either because its impetus is checked, or because right from the start it is afraid of being curbed by the others. […]
[MGH: sections on The Roman Military System and The Roman Constitution Compared with Others have been omitted here]
Concluding Remarks
[57] I hardly need to argue that every existing thing is subject to decay and decline: the inescapable facts of nature are convincing in themselves. Where states are concerned, there are two kinds of natural agent that may be responsible for their decline, one external, the other innate. External agencies are too indeterminate to be studied with any certainty, but internal decline is capable of orderly study. I have already stated the sequence in which the various constitutions develop and how they change into one another, and anyone who is capable of drawing conclusions from premisses should by now be in a position to predict the future.
I think there can be no doubt what lies in the future for Rome. When a state has warded off many serious threats, and has come to attain undisputed supremacy and sovereignty, it is easy to see that, after a long period of settled prosperity, lifestyles become more extravagant, and rivalry over political positions and other such projects becomes fiercer than it should be. If these processes continue for very long, society will change for the worse. The causes of the deterioration will be lust for power combined with contempt for political obscurity, and personal ostentation and extravagance. It will be called a democratic revolution, however, because the time will come when the people will feel abused by some politicians’ self-seeking ambition, and will have been flattered into vain hopes by others’ lust for power. Under these circumstances, all their decisions will be motivated by anger and passion, and they will no longer be content to be subject or even equal to those in power. No, they will want everything, or almost everything, for themselves. When this happens, the new constitution will be described in the most attractive terms, as ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, but in fact it will be the worst of all constitutions, mob-rule.
I have now covered the formation, growth, and prime of the Roman state, the kind of constitution it has, and the differences, for better or worse, between it and other states, and so I end my constitutional excursus here.
[The old “standard” (1889) translation by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh]
57. That to all things, then, which exist there is ordained decay and change I think requires no further arguments to show: for the inexorable course of nature is sufficient to convince us of it. But in all polities we observe two sources of decay existing from natural causes, the one external, the other internal and self-produced. The external admits of no certain or fixed definition, but the internal follows a definite order. What kind of polity, then, comes naturally first, and what second, I have already stated in such a way, that those who are capable of taking in the whole drift of my argument can henceforth draw their own conclusions as to the future of the Roman polity. For it is quite clear, in my opinion. When a commonwealth, after warding off many great dangers, has arrived at a high pitch of prosperity and undisputed power, it is evident that, by the lengthened continuance of great wealth within it, the manner of life of its citizens will become more extravagant; and that the rivalry for office, and in other spheres of activity, will become fiercer than it ought to be. And as this state of things goes on more and more, the desire of office and the shame of losing reputation, as well as the ostentation and extravagance of living, will prove the beginning of a deterioration. And of this change the people will be credited with being the authors, when they become convinced that they are being cheated by some from avarice, and are puffed up with flattery by others from love of office. For when that comes about, in their passionate resentment and acting under the dictates of anger, they will refuse to obey any longer, or to be content with having equal powers with their leaders, but will demand to have all or far the greatest themselves. And when that comes to pass the constitution will receive a new name, which sounds better than any other in the world, liberty or democracy; but, in fact, it will become that worst of all governments, mob-rule. With this description of the formation, growth, zenith, and present state of the Roman polity, and having discussed also its difference, for better and worse, from other polities, I will now at length bring my essay on it to an end.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE [extract]
… As usual, my policy has been to try to capture the original (naturally), while at all times writing proper English, rather than being guided by the structures of the original. For Polybius, it would in any case be a hopeless task to try to reproduce much of his writing more exactly: his style is almost a lack of style, above all because of his periodic sentences, with their tendency to run on for many lines. At the same time he had a powerful devotion to the high-literary device of avoiding hiatus—that is, never, or as rarely as possible, having a word that ends with a vowel preceding a word that begins with a vowel, a very natural occurrence in ancient Greek. In order to avoid hiatus, he often adopted a word order that would have seemed curious even to fellow Greeks, who were extremely flexible in such matters. At any rate, his ordering of words is not reproducible in proper English. … Polybius is not always an easy read in the original Greek, but he is no more hard than, say, Faulkner or the later Henry James, and for many of the same reasons. In any case, as I have already explained, it is my policy to write good English, in so far as that is compatible with not betraying the original, rather than the awful language of crib-style translations. This is the first new translation of Polybius for many years, and it is time to make him available to new generations; only a few people nowadays will be reading him with the Greek text by their elbows. …
The Source:
Polybius, The Histories, translated by Robin Waterfield, with an introduction and notes by Brian McGing, Oxford University Press 2010
Evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.