Republican Virtues: Merits and Morals in Polybius’ Constitutional Analysis of the Histories, Book 6

Abstract

John Adams asserted that the historical summation of republican political thought can be found in one writer: Polybius of Megalopolis. More clearly than any other, Polybius articulated those qualities that define good statesmen and citizens and make republics strong and successful. This article will examine this claim by bringing new historical analysis to Book 6 of Polybius’ Histories in order to identify the republican virtues important to Polybius. Polybius believed that Rome survived its early defeats in the Second Punic War and emerged triumphant over all of its enemies due to a unique combination of morals and merits that characterized good statesmen and strong republics. These extended deeper than political institutions and into the social fabric that bound the Roman people together and defined their relationships with one another, both in their homes as citizens and on campaign as soldiers. This article will work through Polybius’ analysis and show how Rome’s constitution used political institutions to suppress civic vices; armies in the field to cultivate civic service, sacrifice, and skill; military camps to shape public notions of duty, honor, and shame; and Roman families—as exemplified in public funerals—to habituate and showcase personal and civic virtues.

1. Introduction: Polybius on Moral Constitutionalism

When Hannibal crossed the Alps in 218 BC and within three years inflicted a series of devastating defeats on the Roman Republic, Rome’s unique constitutional order, crafted over centuries of compromise and hard work, seemed to approach an untimely end. Yet Rome survived, defeated Hannibal, and then moved on to build a Mediterranean empire. This shocking turn of events prompted the Greek historian Polybius to become the first person to ask how Rome’s republic did it. Determined to provide answers, he wrote the Histories.

The opening of Book 6 of the Histories sets up the question of what equipped Rome to weather Hannibal’s storm. After narrating Mediterranean history and Rome’s catastrophic defeats in the previous books, Polybius makes a forecasted yet unorthodox transition to a discussion of Rome’s republican constitution. In his preface to Book 6, he remarks, “Now the chief cause of success or reverse in all matters is the form of a state’s constitution; for springing from this, as from a fountain-head, all designs and plans of action not only originate, but reach their consummation” (6.2).1 A republic, in his mind, was something that animated the political soul of the citizen and formed a people’s public life of the spirit. His discussion of Rome’s constitution goes beyond how moderns usually use the term. This article will note the institutional strengths of Rome’s republic but also focus on the qualities Polybius believed were necessary for any republic in any age.

Polybius was a historian and not a political theorist. Nonetheless, as a well-read aristocrat and statesman of his day, he was familiar with the political thought of writers like Plato and Aristotle, which gave his Histories an interdisciplinary flavor, especially with regard to regime design, political ethics, and statesmanship (6.5).2 As he used historical narrative to answer the question of how Rome came to dominate the Mediterranean, republican virtues lay at the heart of his explanation. With his background as a man-of-action and commander, Polybius’ account of civic virtue had a practical edge, including not only morals but also merits, meaning the knowledge and hard skills that have immediate application in a situation, especially a crisis. As a military man, Polybius marveled at the practical abilities of Hannibal, particularly as recounted in Book 3, which narrates Hannibal’s spectacularly successful invasion. However he found the Roman political community even more impressive because of its harmonious blending of both the practical and the moral.

That Polybius cared about virtue has been a contested opinion, with recent analyses by Arthur Eckstein and Lisa Hau surveying the debate that will be briefly retraced here (Eckstein 1994; Hau 2017). Polybius was rediscovered in the Renaissance, and through the 19th-century those who analyzed him—such as Jean Bodin, John Dryden, John Adams, and Friedrich Nietzsche—saw him as a historian deeply interested in the importance of human morality and an advocate “for virtuous behavior” (Eckstein 1994, p. 17). In this sense he fit with those other significant historians and biographers of republican Rome: Livy, Sallust, and Plutarch.

20th-century scholarship overturned this, with Andre Aymard, Paul Pédech, and eminent Polybius expert F. W. Walbank seeing Polybius as a Machiavel who advocated “utilitarian” and “ruthless” behavior characterized by a “brutal realism” and “total lack of sentiment.” Walbank insists Polybius was practical and not moral, oddly implying that these were mutually exclusive ideas.3 Kurt von Fritz likewise emphasizes Polybius’ pragmatism, although he reluctantly concedes that Polybius’ religious skepticism would be frequently overcome by outbursts of indignation at sacred violations or appeals to divine powers and that Polybius’ nonetheless believed in abstract concepts like beauty and goodness as influenced by Stoic moral philosophy (Von Fritz 1975, pp. 56–59). Walbank and von Fritz have been followed by other scholars in the 21st century (Eckstein 1994, p. 18).4

This view of the Machiavellian Polybius has now itself been challenged, most exhaustively by Eckstein’s Moral Vision in the Histories of Polybius and Lisa Hau’s Moral History from Herodotus to Diodorus Siculus. In a return to the traditional understanding, Eckstein holds that “Polybius intended The Histories as a handbook for political men, an exploration of good and bad statecraft... And even more broadly, The Histories were intended as a discussion of the problem of human life in general” (Eckstein 1994, pp. 16–17).5 “Polybius also hoped that those who studied his Histories would emerge with a firm determination to live their lives nobly,” for his “moral world” included “courage,” “honor,” “avoidance of deceit,” “duty,” and “self-control” (Eckstein 1994, p. 26).

Others have followed in Eckstein’s vein. Nelsestuen, for example, sees “customs, norms, and values” as secondary to formal institutions yet still essential for Polybius (Nelsestuen 2017). Brian McGing emphasized the historian’s use of character sketches to advocate for good statesmanship (McGing 2010, pp. 26–38). Stephen Sims rejects the theory of Polybius as a mere “realist” interested in the “simple appeal of success and attaining a relative gain of power over a perceived rival,” seeing instead a historian dedicated to revealing the fruits of “noble activity and the life of virtue,” where “moral excellence... is the height of human life, especially when it is found in a statesman” (Sims 2015). Iskander Rehman describes Polybius as an ancient “Tocqueville of Republican Rome,” who analyzed the unique virtues and qualities that propelled the rising foreign power, with “self-sacrifice,” “moderation,” “empathy,” “prudence,” and “glory in the service of Rome” making the list (Rehman 2019). Ryan Balot maintains that the Histories “offers us a rich vocabulary of virtue, vice, and emotional sensibility which enables us [those writing in the liberal-democratic tradition] to engage in such debates more precisely and self-consistently.” For Balot, “Polybius offers an original perspective on virtuous republican leadership and on the close interconnections between republican politics and imperial power” (Balot 2010, pp. 485, 503). Hau asserts that Polybius “is obviously, explicitly and unashamedly a moral-didactic historian” and rejects the false dichotomy of the practical and the moral Polybius, insisting that he deeply believed the “morally right tends to go hand in hand with the practically advantageous” (Hau 2017, pp. 23, 42).

Part of this back-and-forth about Polybius is the usual structure of scientific revolutions in scholarship.6 More important, however, has been the centuries-long trajectory of modern republicanism’s deemphasizing the personal and overemphasizing the institutional. Iseult Honohan traced civic republicanism over the centuries and argued that classical republican political thought, of which, in her mind, Polybius was clearly a part, emphasized “common goods and civic virtue.” Like other classical historians and philosophers, Polybius tended to argue that good personal and familial ethics made for just and good polities (Honohan 2002, p. 6). From its inception, modern republicanism shifted the emphasis from civic virtue to institutional virtue. It emphasized the rule of law, divided sovereignty, and personal freedom as it simultaneously deemphasized moral statecraft and civic duty. Machiavelli, for example, downgraded the virtues to practical, utilitarian skills, and Harrington emphasized strengthening institutions to the detriment of training statesmen and citizens toward virtue.7 This trend continued until institutions and pragmatics became paramount and the old classical and Christian virtues had been dismissed as quaint fictions of a bygone age at best, or, worse, as “inherently oppressive, moralistic, exclusive, militarist and masculinist” (Honohan 2002, p. 6).

Honohan’s summation is verified by more popular works such as Bruce Bueno de Mesquita’s Dictator’s Handbook, which insists that investigations into virtue are distractions from the real business of rule. How the world ought to be might somehow be important but not for understanding politics in the real world (de Mesquita and Smith 2022, p. 14). Or consider the less incendiary work by Richard Dagger: Civic Virtues. According to Dagger, the classical and the Christian virtues are not, in fact, “directly” part of civic virtue and should be relegated to the background in our modern “republican-liberal” age. For Dagger, courage, charity, wisdom, temperance, and love are all hopelessly perfectionist ideals. They should be supplanted by newer values: autonomy, tolerance, fair play, civic memory and activity, and a respect for individual rights (Dagger 1997, pp. 194–96). Other recent works on statesmanship tend to ignore the classical virtues, except perhaps for the occasional nod to some kind of vaguely defined courage. More important, for example, is “charisma,” “commitment,” a “guiding vision,” and the ability to motivate people (Jentleson 2018, pp. ix, xxiv–xxvii).

Underlying this debate is the fact that the Roman Republic lays on the other side of several historical watersheds: the advent of Christianity, the industrial revolution that has made agrarian republicanism obsolete, and liberal capitalism’s emphasis on specialization of labor and individual autonomy. Nonetheless, Polybius invites modern republicans—whether political theorists, civics teachers, or the dedicated citizen—to reconsider how expansive a republican constitution is and to reimagine a sense of the public consequences of civic virtue or vice.

2. Aims, Approach, and Method

This article stands in the tradition that sees Polybius as a moral historian. For Polybius, statesmen and citizens should neither be intolerant tyrants intent on destroying liberty nor incompetent and unskilled managers of men. They must be rational and skilled, but they also must be virtuous. He discovers in Rome the best collection of constitutional virtues—that unique combination of morals and merits that characterized good statesmen and strong republics. Polybius sees Rome emerging as the leading state of the Mediterranean due to a holistic set of republican qualities that were inculcated by and manifested in the full range of social institutions and habits. He takes the broadest possible approach to a constitutional order, seeing it as extending not only to political institutions, but also to the military, religious practices, and social mores. Virtue, rationality, and success are natural companions, a Polybian conviction we will examine by carefully walking through Book 6 and explicating its text. Recent archeological work largely corroborates Polybius’ description of the Roman army and camp, and such material evidence will be discussed when appropriate in the text and more extensively in the notes.

The primary aim of this article will be to identify the republican virtues (and their attendant vices) Polybius analyzed and how he believed they were inculcated (or, with vices, suppressed). It will begin with how Polybius sets up Book 6 in his earlier discussions of the historian’s aims and duties. It will then work through Book 6, examining how Rome’s political institutions suppressed civic vices; how its armies in the field cultivated civic service, sacrifice, and skill; how its encamped army shaped public notions of duty, honor, and shame; and how the Roman family—as exemplified in public funerals—was expected to habituate and showcase personal and civic virtues.

A secondary aim of this article will be to reunite the topics of Book 6. As will be seen in the references, the tendency is for political theorists to examine the early and late chapters of Book 6 and for military historians to analyze the middling chapters on the Roman army and military camp. This is not in keeping with Polybius’ intentions in writing Book 6 or his understanding of political constitutions in general. Polybius would have found much lacking in the overly categorized understanding of constitutions today and thought that the soul, ethos, spirit, or heart of a republican people is exhibited in institutions both public and private, and in actions at home and abroad. Roman citizenship began on the farm, found public expression in the forum, and reached its most intense manifestations on military campaigns. Hopefully this article will serve as a cordial invitation to military historians and political theorists alike to examine Polybius’ contribution to republican political thought and practice with an interdisciplinary lens.

3. The Historian’s Task and the Lead-Up to Book 6

The books leading up to Polybius’ constitutional study feature ongoing analyses of Greek, Carthaginian, and Roman virtues, both at the collective and individual levels. In the Histories’ opening chapters Polybius several times insists that history exists to teach statesmen not only the background and causes of events, but the ethical behavior of the key actors in these events (e.g., 1.1, 1.35, 3.31). Historians thus afford leaders the opportunity to learn good judgment through the success and errors of others. The good historian also refuses to indulge in excessive treatment of dishonorable or criminal behavior, but instead stresses wise, honorable, and virtuous actions (2.7, 61). His historical account of the republic’s travails and eventual victory in the First Punic War, the primary subject of his lengthy Book 1, foreshadows the qualities that would facilitate Rome’s building of an empire. In the earliest stage of his Histories, Polybius thus introduces Roman character as having been shaped by its citizens persevering through the adversities of ongoing warfare, with them eventually triumphing over more ferocious or talented adversaries through “collective planning, temperance, and commitment to duty” (Champion 2004, p. 102).

Book 3 narrates Hannibal’s strategic genius as the Carthaginian commander repeatedly triumphed over the follies of individual Roman commanders, first Ti. Sempronius Longus, and then G. Flaminius and C. Terentius Varro. Polybius opens by reminding the reader of his purpose to point out how the Romans suffered failure and defeat at Hannibal’s hands and yet how their long history of enduring such defeats produced the perseverance that allowed them to overcome and achieve empire (3.1–4).

Polybius praises Hannibal’s command abilities and statesmanship from the initial siege and destruction of Saguntum that launched the war, where he points out the example Hannibal set for his troops in prudence, courage, and martial skill (3.17). Hannibal’s march from the Pyrenees to the Alps and into Italy showcased his logistical capabilities, ability to craft alliances, creativity in solving intractable problems, and his talent for encouraging soldiers with inspiring yet practical speeches (3.44, 63). In December 218, Hannibal engaged an equally sized Roman army but seized the advantage with superior use of winter terrain by making the Romans cross a frozen river, after which they unknowingly descended into a trap. While Hannibal pinned them down as the anvil, his brother acted as the hammer by smashing the Romans in the rear with Carthaginian cavalry, destroying most of the Roman legions and their allies. The following winter Hannibal suffered extreme weather and the attrition of his forces as he passed down the Apennine spine into central Italy. By June, more Roman armies had been mustered, with the forces divided as they searched for Hannibal in the center of Italy. Again, Hannibal drew the Romans into a trap. Using the complex terrain of a lakeside covered in fog and hastily erected fortifications blocking a pass on the other side of the lake, he lured one of the Roman armies into a long, drawn out column before pouncing on them as if from nowhere. Many of the Romans were dead before they knew whence the Carthaginians had emerged.

Throughout his description of the Trebia (3.60–75) and Trasimene (3.77–94) campaigns, Polybius highlights Hannibal’s courage, calculated risks, prudent leadership, and superior knowledge of his enemy. For Polybius, Rome’s Carthaginian foe was the master of war. Nevertheless, with each defeat, Polybius also highlights Roman endurance. After Trebia, he describes the Romans’ undaunted preparation for another campaign and remarks that “For the Romans both in public and in private are most to be feared when they stand in real danger” (3.75). After Trasimene, he praises the senate’s ability to calm the agitated assemblies. It “remained self-possessed, taking thought for the future as to what should be done by everyone and how best to do it” (3.85). He then dedicates the following chapters to Q. Fabius’ invention of a strategy of attrition that would starve Hannibal of battlefield victories over the Romans (3.85–94, 100–105). The Romans would blunder into another defeat, but Polybius has foreshadowed the practical and moral machinery that would facilitate its survival when that occurred.

The third decisive battle took place in southern Italy, where Hannibal had established a new base and was achieving his objective of stripping away Roman allies from the republic’s federation. The largest Roman army ever mustered met him again outside Cannae. Slightly less than ninety thousand Romans faced a Carthaginian army about half that size in a set piece battle. In a double envelopment maneuver still studied in military academies and recounted in textbooks on strategy, Hannibal demonstrated his outstanding command and control of his forces by surrounding Rome’s legionaries on all four sides and negating their numerical superiority. Over the course of the bloodiest day in Roman history, about seventy thousand legionaries and allies were hacked to bits in what must have been a horrific nightmare of human carnage (3.106–117).

Polybius has swiftly led his reader through yet another admirable Hannibalic victory, and yet he closes his account by setting up the sequel to the story in Book 6:

For though the Romans were now incontestably beaten and their military reputation shattered, yet by the peculiar virtues of their constitution and by wise counsel they not only recovered their supremacy in Italy and afterwards defeated the Carthaginians, but in a few years made themselves masters of the whole world. I therefore end this Book at this point, having now described the events in Spain and Italy that occurred in the 140th Olympiad. When I have brought down the history of Greece in the same Olympiad to the same date, I shall pause to premise to the rest of the history a separate account of the Roman constitution; for I think that a description of it is not only germane to the whole scheme of my work, but will be of great service to students and practical statesmen for forming or reforming other constitutions.

(3.118)

The real lesson of history was not the incomparable generalship of Hannibal, but the unconquerable constitution of Rome.8

4. Roman Politics: Suppressing the Vices

Polybius’ location of his constitutional analysis presents the Roman ideal of a defensive war against a ferocious aggressor, a point which he makes explicit in the closing bookend of the chapter when he points out the perseverance and resolve of the Roman citizen-soldier defending hearth and home (McDonnell 2006, p. 68). This narrative structure means that philosophers like Machiavelli are thus not following Polybius, at least during the 2nd Punic War, when they praise Rome’s “bellicosity and military success.” Instead they wrongly reinterpret a historian who begins his analysis of their constitution by praising the moderation, compassion, and loyalty that resulted from “the Romans’ long experience of suffering” (Balot 2010, p. 496). Rome’s position as the aggrieved defender in a just war—at least in this instance in Polybius’ eyes—amplifies the republic’s noble response. Like the perfect man whose character is not truly seen until his lowest moment when he has borne “high-mindedly and bravely” a violent shift in circumstances, Rome revealed its greatness when it temperately endured Hannibal’s aggressions and atrocities.

The preceding books have routinely examined the virtues of individual statesmen, and he will now examine such virtues in polities as a whole. Polybius introduces Rome’s constitution with a review of the three basic kinds of government: kingship, aristocracy, and democracy.9 These each had respective, corrupted forms. Tyranny substituted the most just and wise man as king for the most unjust sort of man. Oligarchy corrupts the honor and service of an aristocracy into lesser values like wealth and birth shared among a ruling clique. Democracy descends into mob rule, which is merely the tyranny of the moment’s majority (6.4–10). For these forms of government, Polybius advocated an overarching temporal theme of anacyclosis, that these regimes transition to one another in a cycle that ultimately repeats itself (Rood 2007, pp. 180–81). The dilemma with the pure forms is their tendency to quickly degrade into viciousness, and the suppression of vice among the governing powers will be a chief theme as Polybius examines political institutions.

Polybius’ anacyclosis involved a moral cycle. Monarchy (monarkhia), for example, begins when the “strongest and bravest” emerges to lead. This man’s qualities, however, are little different than the strongest and bravest animal that leads a pack or herd (6.5). Kingship (basileia), by contrast, is characterized by the good statesman, who earns the approval of those he rules. Such is true also of aristocracy, where only “the most just and most wise” are selected to rule (6.4, 6–7, 10). A regime is just—as in the case of kingship compared to despotism—when reason and good judgment (logismos, gnome) drives consent of the governed rather than fear or coercion (Champion 2004, pp. 100–1). Polybius highlights gratitude as an essential quality to the maintenance of any political order (Sims 2015). A people have the capacity to endure and overcome setbacks when they are inspired by the deeds of their forbears who brought the current generation into being despite the setbacks of their own times. Such shared experiences foster the virtues of “moral goodness and justice” (kalos kai dikaios) because citizens have become accustomed to enduring together and sharing the order that resulted from wise and just rule (6.5).

When gratitude has been supplanted by laziness and forgetfulness of what parents and grandparents have achieved, injustice and tyranny inevitably result, leading to the cycle of regime devolution. The unbiased Polybius notes that even Rome, which has steeled itself more than any other against vices and decay, will eventually succumb to this “natural decline” that, like human biology, human institutions cannot escape. Polybius demonstrates his pessimism about human nature in his account of anacyclosis, with regimes always degenerating within a few generations into their tyrannical counterparts (Champion 2004, p. 100). The pure forms are more susceptible to this communal forgetfulness because its polity includes no internal struggles that might inhibit the “ingratitude,” “greed,” “luxury,” “jealousy,” and “giving way to appetites” that develop among the later generations of those who rule (6.3–9).

There is another regime, a seventh form,10 that arrests, a least for a period of time, anacylosis. This regime mixes the pure forms, with Sparta and Rome being the most well-known examples of how this has been achieved in history. Polybius holds that Rome’s republic surpasses what the mythological lawgiver Lycurgus had given the Spartans with his brilliant reasoning because Rome arrived at its mixed constitution “by the discipline of many struggles and troubles, and always choosing the best by the light of the experience gained in disaster.” Rome’s republican constitution reached its peak during the war with Hannibal, with its mixture of the pure forms being so fair that it was impossible for even a native to see if the Roman monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy held more power over the others (6.3, 10, 11).

Polybius quickly surveys Rome’s political institutions. Two annually elected consuls took the place of the kings of the early republic and, with lesser magistrates, executed the decisions of the republic, presided over the assemblies, and commanded the armies (6.12). The senate was drawn from former magistrates. It controlled the treasury, managed diplomacy, oversaw judicial proceedings, and deliberated all policies in both foreign and domestic affairs (6.13). The assemblies did not deliberate, but they were the official decision-makers of the republic. The people were also responsible for conferring official honor, shame, or punishment on citizens and statesmen (6.14).

Polybius departs from other classical theorists on mixed government in that he lays stress on the checks and balances of the Roman system.11 In times of trial, especially during foreign invasions, Rome’s institutions cooperate (sunergeo) with one another, drawing from the strengths inherent in each of the three to make Rome formidable in war and magnanimous in peace. Domestically, each power balances the excesses, corruptions, or temptations of the others (6.15–17). His pessimism with regard to human nature and human institutions, emphasized in his commitment to anacyclosis, leads Polybius to value checks and balances. Polybius uses strong verbs like antiprasso, blapto, antistao, parapodizo, koluo, and epistemi to describe how Roman political institutions counteract, disable, hold back, entangle, hinder, or halt each other with their countervailing powers (6.15.1, 6.18.1, 6.18.7–8). The magistrates, given power in the first place from the assemblies, cannot execute the republic’s duties without the funds granted by the senate, and their behavior and decisions abroad are subject to the scrutiny and approval of the assemblies (6.15). The senate holds very little really power in decision-making unless approved by the people and executed by the magistrates (6.16). The assemblies are subject to the authority of the consuls, who carry out corporal and capital punishment of citizens, and cannot make decisions without the deliberations and administrative work such as contracts carried out by the senate (6.17).

The Roman constitution suppressed the swiftness and efficiency of autocrats, self-interested oligarchs, or emotion-ridden majorities because it presumed human folly and wickedness. This system of checks and balances hardwired discipline and restraint into the business of government. Collegiality, compromise, and consensus worked better than unbridled demagoguery, strongarming, and self-aggrandizement. Magistrates, senators, and citizens learned that the surest way to success was through giving up some of what they might want to get more of what more people needed. Indeed, in the 2nd and 1st centuries, as Roman magistrates began behaving without restraint and when Rome behaved without sensitivity to the needs of its allies, the fabric of the republic and its federation starting ripping apart at the seams.12 Roman political institutions and norms ceased suppressing vices and instilling restraint, leading to the Republic’s demise.

Polybius’ first major section on the Roman constitution would have caught his readers by surprise, for rather than showing how Rome institutionalizes virtues, he prefers to draw attention to the suppression of vices already laid out so well in his anacyclosis’ discussion. Other polities might have discovered how to bring out virtues in its statesmen and citizens, but Rome has gone beyond this by inventing the best manner of suppressing their vices. Polybius gives a full account of how Roman families, institutions, and social mores cultivate virtue in the following chapters, but the unique strength of Rome’s political institutions is how they identified and targeted the vices of those who rule. Over centuries of constitutional development, the Romans have determined how to marshal their political machinery against the evils that threaten the art of governing.

5. The Roman Army: Cultivating Public Service, Sacrifice, and Skill

In a move many modern political scientists find bewildering, Polybius turns matter-of-factly to the next features of the Roman constitution, the army and its encampment on campaign. This discussion of the Roman military occupies a sweeping 24 chapters of Book 6, all of which tend to be ignored in constitutional analyses today.13 Doing so misses much of Polybius’ argument, for he believed understanding how Rome fought its wars revealed more about Rome’s republican strengths than a mere analysis of its political institutions. Should a reader dismiss or ignore Polybius’ account of Rome’s military, that reader neglects the most important manner in which the Roman constitution habituated citizens to civic service and sacrifice. Rome’s political institutions kept vices at bay, but Rome’s citizens marshaled for war unleashed the republic’s virtues against its enemies.

Polybius traces the process of conscription and the summoning of allies and then describes the various fighting units of the Roman legions. He notes the high demands of Roman military service, citing the requirement of 10-years’ service for a cavalryman and 16 years for an infantryman, with no one being eligible for political office unless they have seen 10 years of service (6.19). He then describes the enrollment of troops, from the light-armed velites (~1200 troops), drawn from the poorest classes, to the youngest heavy infantrymen the hastati (1200), the principes heavy infantry in the prime of life (1200 troops), and the veteran triarii heavy infantry (600 troops) (6.21). Throughout its history, Roman cavalry always performed a secondary role, as indicated by Polybius noting that Rome’s allies provided three times the amount (6.26). Rome’s preference for heavy infantry reveals its reliance on the common citizen-soldier who could afford his own equipment and fight equally well as an individual or within his unit.14

This uniformity in Roman legions—matched to some degree by the allied units that fought alongside the legions in battle—matured over the centuries as Romans considered the best manner for training new recruits, deploying their best troops, and utilizing their most experienced veterans. Polybius walks through the weapons of each kind of troop, with the citizen-soldiers of Rome prioritizing a flexible heavy infantryman who, after throwing javelins at the enemy, will only survive battle if he knows how to fight with his ovular shield (scutum) and Spanish sword (gladius).15

Throughout Polybius’ description, age and the ability to afford equipment play a predominant role in determining status as well as where and how citizen-soldiers fight. Rome’s republican army habituates the youngest soldiers—both the poorer classes who serve as light infantry and the wealthier heavy infantry—to serve in the front ranks. Immediately after their enrollment, citizens take public oaths to obey their commanders and execute their orders “as much as is in their power” (6.21). From the outset, these farmers turned citizen-soldiers had the burden of piety placed upon them. Polybius held a high view of piety—praising those who honored the gods, kept their agreements, and fulfilled their duties (4.20, 36.9–10).16 Their public vows committed each citizen-soldier to exhibiting this fundamental virtue and set the standards for honor if they went above and beyond their oath or for shame if they failed in their sworn duties.

This organization meant that first-time recruits were forced into the heat of the opening fighting and either learned how to kill the republic’s enemies quickly or perished in the attempt. The republican army provided means of support, for the hastati included in its ranks other men who had already seen battle, and they were supported to their rear by those veterans in the prime of life who still retained their youthful vigor. The principes fought with the same equipment as the hastati and would surge to the support of the front ranks if attrition or an enemy counter-maneuver made them vulnerable. The last ranks held the maniples of triarii, always half the size (no doubt due to the natural attrition of old age), whose purpose was not only to support the hastati and principes in times of need, but also to ensure the younger troops fulfilled their oaths.

Elsewhere Polybius highlights the republican nature of Rome’s fighting style. Unlike their monarchic and democratic counterparts in Greece, the Roman heavy infantryman was given twice as much space to wield his scutum and gladius. The Roman citizen-soldier functioned as part of a community while in camp, on the march, moving from a column to ranks, and when javelins were hurled at the approaching enemy. Once they closed with the enemy, however, the individual Roman’s skill as a warrior became preeminent, which is why he was given more space to maneuver against tighter formations like the phalanx (18.30). The legions exhibited a unique republican fighting style, where citizen-soldiers must function in the community yet also excel as an individual. Generals, tribunes, and centurions paid close attention to the performance of the men within their view so that they could later punish or honor them in the camp. Even velites bore distinctive markings on their shields so that their commanders could recognize individuals who displayed exceptional duty or courage in battle (6.22).

Officers were selected with this republican sense of piety and courage in mind. Among the rank and file, the “best and bravest” men were honored with service as standard bearers for the maniples. The election of centurions “by the citizen-soldiers themselves at the annual levy” meant that non-aristocratic soldiers enjoyed opportunities for advancement and leadership. With the republican Roman army as the “most prominent state institution,” this not only made centurions the most meritocratic position in the Roman army, but it also provided a path to public acclaim and leadership among the lower classes (Taylor 2018, pp. 147, 62). Centurions and optiones were similar to modern noncommissioned officers and earned their position by merit, chosen not simply for their physical prowess or bravery, which might be of a foolhardy kind that would lead those under their command into death, but for their virtues. They must be men reputed for standing their ground despite overwhelming enemy numbers or unfavorable circumstances. They must be those who would fulfill their oath and lead others in doing so, men so pious that they would rather die at their post than abandon it (6.24). Republican courage thus was circumscribed by the higher virtue of duty to whatever post one defended on behalf of the republic.

Legionaries also exhibited Rome’s ability to adopt their enemies’ finest tools and tactics, to adapt them to their own purposes, and to invent new ways of countering more talented foes. As seen with the veteran triarii, Roman soldiers previously fought in a phalanx-type formation with smaller, round shields and spears. The scutum and javelin were adopted from fighting the mountainous Italian tribes, which the Romans tweaked so that once their missiles struck the enemy, the top shaft bent or broke, rendering it unusable by the enemy.17 The gladius was adopted from fighting Spanish tribesman, no doubt recently in the Punic Wars. The breastplates still worn by poorer citizens gave way to the chain-mail worn by Gauls, and the signature Montefortino helmet was acquired in a similar manner. The cavalry adopted heavier armor and equipment to match their Greek opponents. This Roman virtue is unmatched by their opponents, for “no people are so ready to adopt new fashions and imitate what they see is better in others” (6.23–25).18

By Polybius’ time, the Romans had been fighting in the structured manipular formation for a century and a half. The manipular legion was no mere “mob” or “cluster,” but a highly organized hierarchy of units, which, at the level of small unit warfare, could fight in open or closed formations depending on the terrain, enemy tactics, and other needs of the moment. These tactics demanded that Roman citizens be trained and disciplined. In the thick of battle the citizen-soldier would need to respond intelligently to commands and shifting circumstances to keep himself, his immediate comrades, and his unit safe and successful.19

Polybius paints a vivid picture of the value Romans placed on public service and sacrifice. From the moment the consuls order the enrollment of troops, Rome’s farmer-citizens begin a transition process led by the men they have just elected for the wars they have authorized. Bound by oaths and arranged in units, new recruits learn how to serve and sacrifice for their republic under the watchful eye of their commanders and with the support of experienced veterans who will support them in their time of need and shame them if they abandon their duty. Roman leaders were expected to model this code of service and sacrifice, with the wealthiest funding their service in the cavalry and those aspiring to political office needing to demonstrate their fitness to lead during at least a decade of service. This system unmasked cowards and could elevate an otherwise unimpressive citizen to sudden glory if he performed in an exemplary manner on the battlefield or if he stood his post when others faltered. When the din of battle ceased, this venue for recognizing such honor or shame took place in a microcosm of the Roman Republic: the military camp.

6. The Roman Military Camp: Microcosm of Republican Duty, Honor, and Shame

On campaign, a Roman consul typically commanded two Roman legions that occupied the center positions in battle and two comparable allied contingents called “wings.” Consular armies, which numbered about 20,000 soldiers, needed a large, secure location that provided protection and shelter to their citizen-soldiers on campaign. As evidenced from modern archeological research, Roman field camps constitute one of the engineering marvels of the ancient world, what Polybius describes as particularly “noble and excellent” (kalos kai spoudaios) and worthy of attention for what it tells us about Roman republicanism (6.26).20

The Romans built camps along a standard blueprint that they almost always followed regardless of the circumstances or terrain. Polybius takes pains to detail the layout. The Roman camp functioned as a miniature version of the republic, transplanted into the theater of war. Shaped as a square, it arranged the fighting units based on how the Roman federation fought battles, with Rome’s allies and auxiliaries along the periphery and the legions nearer the center. Camp roads ran from the four gates in the centers of the four ramparts that were surrounded by a ditch. Two main cross streets led to the three central areas: the praetorium (commander’s tent), the forum (market and meeting ground), and the quaestorium (treasury and supply depot) (6.27–32, 41).21

The Romans took pains to ensure the camp was nearly always the same, manipulating the terrain to suit the desired order. This insistence on consistent order differed from the Greek camps Polybius had observed, where armies shaped their camps to the natural terrain (6.41). It showcased the Roman penchant for undertaking any labor if it promoted a familiarity and consistency that reminded Roman citizen-soldiers of their particular duties. Each citizen had his place within his maniple and legion in the camp just as in battle. Legionaries guarded the front and rear of the camp; allies stood guard over the sides. As they had upon their enlistment, soldiers took oaths while the camp was being constructed, swearing that they would steal nothing and hand over any misplaced items they found. Two maniples were dedicated to keeping the ground in front of the central areas cleared and watered so that it was pristine. This heart of the camp served as the place of honor and judgment, much like the forum, Capitoline, and Palatine in Rome (6.33).

Polybius dedicates three chapters to the meticulously managed system of guard duty, with allied prefects, cavalry prefects, centurions, and tribunes all playing roles in securing the ramparts and monitoring the troops on guard. If they discover a man absent from his post or asleep on duty, they will summon witnesses, and then report back up the chain of command. At daybreak a court martial is held by the tribunes, complete with witnesses and the oversight of the consul (6.33–37).

The hierarchy of the republic is present in the camp but so is the power of the aristocracy and the democracy. The young sons of Rome’s aristocracy earned their place in the republic by leading the men in battle and justly administering them in the camp. Their management of the camp’s construction became one of the first responsibilities for junior tribunes on the road to public office.22 They were the ones responsible for administering the sacred oaths of service, face-to-face, to the men. If they were vicious or demonstrated bad judgment, their soldiers would return home and refuse them the dignity of office. Commanders who led bravely and wisely could be rewarded a grass crown or other tokens. Commanders who demonstrated a total failure in leadership would be dishonored when they returned and perhaps even suffer a mutiny or a refusal to fight by the citizen-soldiers while in the field.

Punishments and honors were distributed by the consuls in the center of the camp, either in the praetorium or forum, as they would have been at home. Those who fell asleep on duty would be tried and executed in public at the hands of their fellow soldiers. Entire units guilty of cowardice were given reduced rations and were forced to camp outside the walls to earn back their courage. Representatives were selected by lot and bastinadoed. Those guilty of stealing would be flogged as well. Polybius remarks that such punishments habituated men who would otherwise have behaved cowardly to find their courage and stand their ground, knowing that they faced certain death back in the camp. Escape offered no release, according to Polybius, for when the guilty returned home, they would find their homes shut against them and be forced into an ignominious exile (6.37–38). Those who believed themselves incapable of courage were thus disciplined into finding it, whether by their centurions in the field or by their families back home.23

On the other hand, those who demonstrated remarkable prowess or courage received public recognition and rewards, with the consul calling them out in the forum, praising their conduct with speeches, and giving them crowns of gold, notable items from the spoils, or other trophies. Roman culture held those who saved a life in particular esteem, with the man saved seeing his savior as a father for the rest of his life (6.39).

The camp thus served as a forum—a literal forum transplanted into the center of their military quarters—to recognize extraordinary service and excellence on behalf of the republic. As with the funeral at home, young men would be inspired by the great deeds recounted and rewarded after battle (McDonnell 2006, p. 68). The functioning of the camp during this trying phase of the middle Republic exemplified a defeated yet stronger republic in terms of character when contrasted with the victorious yet increasingly decadent republic of the following century, when examples of dissolute behavior among young men were plentiful (McDonnell 2006, pp. 259–60).

The camp incubated republican service for the young men, who, Polybius explains, seeing the examples of shame and honor so vividly recounted, strive to emulate those who have been praised before their fellows. The camp, that microcosm of the republic abroad, then transplanted itself back into the sinews of the republic when the armies returned home. Triumphs and ovations paraded enemy prisoners and booty and featured distinguished individuals and units.

Unlike the ancient recorders of Egyptian history, Roman annalists and historians did not seek to obscure or minimize Roman defeats. Instead, it seems the Roman community endured their military disasters with the expectation that victory would eventually come—a point Polybius himself references regarding Roman long-suffering. Triumphs not only celebrated Roman victory in public forums but also brought communal healing and restored pride after a series of defeats.24

Trophies and spoils earned on the field and recognized in the camp would adorn the walls and doors of citizens who had returned to their farms. The family farm had incubated physical hardiness and good citizenship, and the army and camp returned legionaries—especially the young men—back to their republic with experiences of service that shaped their reputation and personally defined what it meant to be a Roman citizen-soldier. The camp was thus as much a feature of the Roman constitution as its magistrates and assemblies. Perhaps the space Polybius afforded it reveals how he believed the camp represented even more.

7. The Roman Family Farm and Funeral: Inculcating and Exhibiting Civic Virtue

Polybius concludes his analysis with a comparison of the constitutional cultures of other polities. Athens and Thebes, he argues, merit little attention given the violent and meteoric course of their constitutional histories. This dismissal makes sense given Polybius’ earlier analogy of the man whose true character is tested by adversity. Thebes and Athens, regardless of any cultural benefactions to history, rose to power due to great leaders such as Epaminondas, Pelopidas, and Themistocles. However, like “a ship without a captain,” both polities proved unable to weather misfortune and succumbed to recriminations and infighting, with the fickle mobs wrecking the ship within sight of home (6.43–44).

Readers should not be surprised to see Polybius’ excoriating the Theban and Athenian democracies. He has already pointed out the flaws of pure democracies and sees them as examples that cultivate a people governed by “irrationality,” “bitter outbursts,” “violence,” and “passion.” Crete likewise deserves little praise as a culture that promotes “avarice” and “acquisitiveness,” leaving Sparta and Carthage as the best comparisons to Rome (6.45–46). The vices he identifies in Crete, Thebes, and Athens are the result of their bad constitutions, for it is a polity’s “customs and laws” that “make men’s private lives righteous, well-ordered, and the general character of the state gentle and just” (6.47). Throughout Book 6, Polybius has described the symbiotic relationship between individual virtue—honesty, courage, loyalty, and the fulfillment of oaths—and the public good. Those constitutions that incentivize intemperance, greed, or selfishness will naturally be inferior to constitutions that rely on and inspire private virtue. For Polybius, the latter even outclasses a pure, theoretical republic such as Plato’s because the constitutional statue of a philosopher’s musings provides fewer insights than a breathing, flesh-and-blood republic such as Carthage, Sparta, or Rome (6.47).

Among these three exemplars, Rome’s constitution was the best. Sparta’s deficiency was that it made no allowance for expansion and visionary statesmen who could extend the boundaries, laws, and customs of its polity (6.50). The comparison between Carthage and Rome was harder to weigh. Polybius returns to anacyclosis and argues that Carthage, having come into being sooner than Rome, was past its zenith and nearing its decline (6.51). Polybius is unconvincing here and provides little justification beyond the general human body analogy of an older man being less fit than a man in the prime of life. Carthage has become more democratic, with the fickle mob gaining more power, whereas Rome, in its prime, features the senate at the height of its power. Polybius here raises more questions than answers.25

Polybius’ final argument is more convincing: Rome is superior to Carthage because it fights with citizen-soldiers, men habituated to defend their homes and serve their republic. This closing note about Rome brings together everything Polybius has already described about Rome’s constitutional ethos. He returns his reader to Roman domestic life, not only in the public settings of the city but in the little republic of the family farm. Polybius concedes what he has already demonstrated in his historical narrative: Carthage has traditionally outclassed Rome at seamanship and has recently deployed a multi-national army filled with mercenaries and foreign subjects that surpasses Roman cavalry, and, as seen with Hannibal’s campaign, even Rome’s vaunted infantry (6.52). Carthage’s undoing, however, will be that their professional soldiers will not outlast and ultimately cannot outfight the manpower of Rome.

Rome’s quantitative manpower advantage, produced by constitutional mechanisms that enlist a nearly unending supply of citizens and allies dedicated to the Roman federation, has already shown resilience, and would continue to do so. Throughout its history, numerous enemies had defeated the Roman republic in battle. They often had superior generals and battlefield tactics. However, each of Rome’s enemies ultimately succumbed to Rome’s constitutional advantages. A large part of this was Rome’s ability to absorb defeats. Rome’s manpower base was enormous because it extended citizenship and allied treaty status more quickly than any other state in the Mediterranean.26 The Roman republic was hierarchical, but it also relied upon a large middling base of smallholding farmers who could afford the basic equipment for an infantryman.

Eventually Rome’s natural tendency at military adaptation would also produce qualitatively superior soldiers as well. For the soldier-historian Polybius, this started on the Roman farm. Carthaginian troops fight for pay, but Romans fight for the homes they have left behind and “fighting as they are for their country and their children, never can abate their fury but continue to throw their whole hearts into the struggle until they get the better of their enemies” (6.52). They may be less skilled and lose battles, but the cause for which they fight emboldens them to win wars by fighting until they find a way to defeat their enemies. Polybius did not associate the Roman refusal to accept defeat merely with the qualities of excellence or courage (arete or andreia) (McDonnell 2006, p. 66). Instead, Polybius argues this indomitable perseverance resulted from their nature as citizen-soldiers, as men who were fighting for their families and homes.

Roman civic culture was superior to Carthage’s because it was more organic. Every citizen’s republic began on the family farm, where fathers and mothers—the paterfamilias and materfamilias—inculcated republican virtues such as honesty, hard work, self-sacrifice, honor, obedience, and piety. Writing much later, Plutarch, in his life of Polybius’ contemporary Cato, provides a detailed portrait of what Polybius references. Plutarch portrays the farm and hearth as incubators of Roman republican values, where young men were trained in martial tasks like swimming, throwing javelins, enduring extreme temperatures, boxing, and hunting. They also learned family stories and the history and laws of the republic (Cato, 20). The end result of this household training regimen, according to Polybius, was that Rome and its Italian allies routinely churned out superior young citizens with “physical strength and personal courage” whose national institutions then “habituated the young men with hardy souls” (6.52).

Anyone searching for a “single moment” in Roman life that captures how the republic turns out “men who will be ready to endure everything in order to gain a reputation in their country” should witness a Roman funeral. The literary moment for Polybius to expand on the constitutional ideas inherent in a Roman funeral is well-chosen. In his narrative, Rome has just suffered a total disaster at Cannae. Approximately a quarter of the male population of Italy has perished in the last three years and the Roman citizen body has been drastically reduced. Many Roman funerals had occurred and would continue to occur over the next several years, but Polybius argues that the public ceremonies also empowered Rome and its citizens.

Roman funerals—particularly those for distinguished statesmen and commanders—were elaborate processions like a military triumph, where the deceased would be carried through the city and taken into the forum, oftentimes with the body arranged upright so that he could be seen. In the forum, the Roman public heard a recital of his greatest achievements on behalf of the republic, all given by magistrates, senators, and accomplished citizens. The man’s family would even would bring out busts of ancestors. The deceased now joined this illustrious rank of forebears. His rank, civic awards, and military trophies would be meticulously displayed in chariot processions with all the dignity of the offices which the man held. The speeches recounted the man’s service and the deeds that earned him his reputation and then connected him with the men portrayed in the other busts, his ancestors whose deeds had inspired his own. After the funeral, a mask made of the deceased would be carefully place in a cupboard near the hearth in the home, a position of honor that would be opened during special feast days and other moments dear to the family (6.53).

Polybius describes how young men in particular became transfixed by the affair, providing at home what the camp achieved in the field, a venue for models of emulation:

There could not easily be a more ennobling spectacle for a young man who aspires to fame and virtue. For who would not be inspired by the sight of the images of men renowned for their excellence, all together and as if alive and breathing? What spectacle could be more glorious than this?

(6.53)

The entire ceremony was geared toward honoring the service and sacrifices of the man, his family, and his ancestors, recounting generations of “noble deeds rendered immortal” by their recitation and emulation by the rising generations (6.54). Polybius insists this has been a hallmark of the republic from its earliest days in the 6th century, when the first republican heroes expelled the monarchs and fended off their attempt to regain power. Stories abounded about men such as Horatius, who defended a bridge into the city until it was destroyed, sacrificing his life in the process but counting it worth the cost because it was traded for the safety of his republic (6.55).

The funeral reinforced and inspired stories from the lives of great men that would be told for generations. Out of this emerged a Roman cult of public service. To be a great statesman or a great citizen, you would have to earn your place alongside the legendary figures of history, whose heroism and service on behalf of their fellow citizens saved or built the republic. Undergirding all of this was Roman piety. It had become fashionable in Greek circles to be skeptical of the gods and superstitions. Given so many tawdry stories about them, this is hardly surprising. Among the Romans, on the other hand, fathers taught their sons the justice and morality of the gods because only by maintaining fidelity to the family gods could a Roman citizen perform justly and dutifully within his republic (6.56).27

Rome’s constitution is thus not merely institutions, laws, and votes in the forum. A constitution is an embodiment of those ideas and mores that brings a people into being. It reaches into the depth of their identity as individuals part of families. The funerary family custom reveals the symbiotic relationship between the virtues inculcated in the household and the strength of the republic, as M. L. Clarke explains:

The family merges into the state. The way to gain glory for the family was by serving the state in war and peace. And service to the state was learned through the same discipline and obedience and respect for tradition that operated in the home.... the state was a kind of extension of the household....

(Clarke 1968, p. 4)

The funeral also illustrated how Rome’s routine yet rigorous religion, cultivated at the home, sustained the republic:

Roman religion produced no teachers or prophets.... Its close connection with the various processes of life in the home, the farm, and the state would foster a sense of tradition and social solidarity, and its orderliness and insistence on the correct manner of proceedings, its conception of man’s relations with the gods as something in the nature of a legal contract could encourage a similar attitude in man’s relations with his fellow-men.

(Clarke 1968, pp. 4–5)

In a similar vein, Nelsestuen sees the aristocratic funeral as a communal exercise wherein “base human psychology is thus both restrained and retrained towards the common good” (Nelsestuen 2017, p. 232).

The funeral is Polybius’ final, decisive piece of evidence illustrating the superiority of Roman customs and mores in comparison to other republics commonly treated by philosophers. Rome’s constitution, more than any other, habituates the ideal citizen. Polybius’ Rome is strong and just not merely because it has balanced institutions but because it shapes its citizens’ souls. This made Rome worthy of empire, for Roman mores appealed to its neighbors and former adversaries, who saw “the undeniable goods compared to self rule. These goods included, but were not limited to, the good of a just and fitting peace and the rule of a city that was committed to the life of virtue and law” (Sims 2015).

8. Conclusions: Roman Hostage Postscript

Polybius’ postscript to Book 6 returns to his historical narrative with Hannibal awaiting the return of hostages he sent to open negotiations with Rome. Cannae had been followed up with the capture of the Roman camp and Hannibal’s gaining 8000 captives among the men who had been left behind as guards. Hannibal took ten of these men, made them swear oaths to return, and then sent them to Rome to request a ransom. Hannibal here followed standard practices in ancient warfare, and this served as his opening gesture in negotiations that would surely see the Roman Republic grant concessions, including the loss of territory and the abandonment of their federation in Italy.

Polybius casts the scenario from Hannibal’s perspective with the victorious general expecting to reap the spoils of victory. His reader shares Hannibal’s surprise when the Roman envoys returned empty-handed. They had made their pleas to the Senate, even offering to pay the ransom out of their own resources. However, several of Rome’s leading statesmen pointed out that Hannibal would use the ransom to pay his own troops. Keeping the prisoners, on the other hand, would cost him time and money. More importantly, paying would show a weakening of Roman resolve, not only to Hannibal, but to Rome’s citizens and allies. The Senate thus refused the envoys demands and even took matters a step further by passing a law that all troops must either conquer on the battlefield or die on it. None would be ransomed. And those who survived such defeats would remain in arms until they regained their honor by victory or death.

Polybius’ postscript provides one last moral example: that of a man who tried to cheat his oath to return to Hannibal by claiming he had already “returned” after he had left to retrieve something he had forgotten. Polybius tells us that far from anyone in Rome accepting his interpretation of the oath, they looked with such disgust on his blatant impiety that whereas they allowed the other nine delegates to return of their own free will, which they did, this man they sent back in chains. When Hannibal was informed of all these decisions his spirits fell. In Polybius’ closing words, his “joy at his victory in the battle was not so great as his dejection, when he saw with amazement how steadfast and high-spirited were the Romans in their deliberations” (6.58).

Hannibal’s calculation (logismos), so often praised as his chief virtue, has been “defeated” by Rome’s constitutional morals and merits. Polybius has used Book 6 to show what that looks like and foreshadow how Hannibal would be defeated and the Second Punic War would end. Roman political institutions would continue to suppress potential vices: the people will not be allowed to panic and capitulate, the senate will not exhibit cowardice in its foreign policy, and commanders will learn to be less impetuous and accept Fabius’ strategy of attrition. Roman armies will continue to serve and sacrifice as its commanders and citizen-soldiers adopt Hannibal’s tactics, adapt them, and then use them against him until they have achieved the victory. Roman camps celebrating honor and punishing shameful conduct would transport little versions of the republic throughout the Mediterranean world in the coming years: to Spain, where Romans would conquer Hannibal’s base; into Sicily, Gaul, and Greece to defeat Hannibal’s allies; and finally into Africa itself where the Romans finally defeated Hannibal. All the while, Roman civic virtue would continue to be incubated where citizens’ lives began on Roman farms and celebrated where they were laid to rest in Roman funerals. That is how the world’s strongest republic survived Hannibal’s invasion, and that is how “the Romans in less than fifty-three years have succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government—a thing unique in history” (1.1).