Another world
Hugh Lloyd-Jones
Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization Arnaldo Momigliano (Cambridge University Press £.4.50) The most learned ancient historian, perhaps the most learned historian in the western world, who since retiring from his London chair has moved between Pisa, Chicago, and All Souls College, Oxford, has made of lectures given first at Cambridge and later at Bryn Mawr a small book which is not only one of the finest specimens of his scholarship, but which is also written with elegance, clarity and wit. It deals with the rewarding topic of the cultural connections of the Greeks with Romans, Celts, Jews and Iranians during the Hellenistic period. Carthage is left out because too little is known about it, the Romans having destroyed the city in 146 BC; Egypt is left out because the Greeks had recognised the importance of its culture well before the Hellenistic age.
The book brings out with startling clarity the lack of interest shown by the Greeks in all civilisations but their own. The astonishing enterprise that, during the eighth and seventh centuries BC, led them to plant their colonies over the whole Mediterranean coastline front the Black Sea to Gibraltar did not extend to an eagerness to understand the thinking of the foreigners with whom they came into contact. The great city of Massalia (Marseilles), founded by the Asiatic Greek city of Phocaea about 600 BC, would have made an excellent base for expeditions into the interior of Gaul to carry out researches. No such expeditions were sent out. The Greeks preferred to sail along the coast, and seldom entered the interior which so many of their products penetrated. During the fourth century Pytheas sailed to this countrY and to Jutland, but had nothing to report about inland France itself. Even when the Gauls invaded Greece and established a principality' in Asia Minor, Greek art might depict them but Greek writers ignored them — until a century later the Roman ruling class required them to satisfy its demand for description and interpretation.
The first serious efforts to describe Gaul and Spain were made by the historian Polybius (c.201-120 BC); unfortunately most of the parts of his work that contained them have been lost. We know more of the subsequent description by the great Stoic philosopher, Posidonius (c.135-51 BC). Troubled at first by the sight of human heads nailed up outside the houses of the Gallic chiefs, this brilliant cosmopolitan intellectual familiarised himself with this alien culture and his highly intelligent and readable account of the Celts was useful to Julius Caesar while he was conquering Gaul. Polybius and Posidonius were also the chief contributors to Greek understanding of a more important foreign people, the Romans, although Greek influence in Rome had been powerful from an early date. Rome was long ruled by the Etruscans, a people deeply, though selectively, influenced by Greek culture; and throughout the present century research has made it ever clearer that Greek influence in Italy began earlier and went deeper than had previously been realised. During the third century BC Rome became imbued with Greek culture. She created a new literature of her own upon a Greek basis, written, to begin with, by Greeks Or by Italians from Greek-speaking areas. We now know that a passage of Plautine comedy full of Greek touches is not necessarily a translation from the Greek original, because Plautus himself was steeped in the Greek atmosphere. The legend that Cato learned Greek at eighty is absurd; not only does his treatise on agriculture depend on Greek handbooks, but in his time leading Romans often spoke the language of international diplomacy. The first Roman historian was the aristocrat Fabius Pictor, who wrote in Greek. From the time of the defeat of the great Greek commander Pyrrhus by the Romans about 280 BC, the Greeks had to take serious account of Rome. The Ptolemies were in touch With her; the Sicilian historian Timaeus (c.346-250 BC) gave much information about her. During the second century BC, when Rome became the dominant power inside Greece itself, Greek interest in her naturally increased. Polybius lived in Rome as a hostage from 167, and became intimate with the younger Scipio and with other leading Romans. He described the Roman aristocracy and the institutions upon which its strength depended; Posidonius, superior in intelligence and in literary skill, continued his work. The importance of their Presentation of Rome has been generally recognised; Momigliano, following in the tracks of Mommsen, now reminds us of its limitations. Deceived by the superficial similarity of Rome to a Hellenic polls — the Philosopher Heraclides Ponticus had called her that as early as the fourth century BC — they failed to look at her through the ethnological telescope which gave Polybius so clear a view of Alexandria and Posidonius of the Celts. They failed to perceive the radical differences that separated the Romans from themselves. Neither described the workings of the military system as it affected Rome's Italian allies, or reFognised the need to keep the allies busy by constant war that drew Rome irresistibly into her career of conquest. Mommsen, Momigliano reminds us, saw the superficiality of Polybius' theory that Rome had a "mixed constitution" and that her success was due to this.
Greek contacts with the Jews began earlier; King David employed Cretan archers, Cretans or Carians ,fought for Joash in the ninth century, and Greek pottery existed at Samaria during the eighth. Greek connections with Egypt and with Persia brought about connections with Judaea. Yet the Jews are not mentioned in classical Greek literature; only after Alexander did the Greeks take account of their existence. Jewish writings mention the Greeks as early as the seventh century, but take serious account of them only after Alexander, when Palestine came under Greek control. During the third century it was part of the Ptolemaic kingdom, and many Jews settled in Alexandria; in 198 BC it passed to the Seleucids. The Jews of Alexandria not only translated their scriptures, but created a whole literature in Greek, poetry as well as prose — we have fragments of two epics and a tragedy on early Jewish history — in order to explain their history and religion. The Greeks remained indifferent, Ptolemy Philadelphus did not really Command the making of the Septuagint, nor did the Greeks read it or any of the Greek literature the Jews produced. From the fourth had the Greeks were aware that the Jews nad a singular religion, and credited them with being philosophers; but they showed no real
curiosity about their institutions: the conflict between the Jews and the Seleucid monarchy during the sixties of the second century was partly due to this incomprehension. At this time and later there was a considerable Hellenising party among the Jews, but this did not succeed in informing the Greeks about Jewish institutidns, and Hellenism among the Jews continued • to be on the surface. The Jews learned too little and too late about the Romans; and the Greeks, who might have informed both of these peoples about the other, did not attempt the task.
From the middle of the sixth century, when the Persian Empire advanced to the shores of the Aegean, the Greeks were in direct contact with the Persians. In our time two distinguished scholars, Walter Btirkert and Martin West, have argued strongly for the influence of Persian religion upon early Greek philosophy; but as Momigliano warns us the theory is by no means established. The Greeks hardly maintained the promise of an understanding of the Persians shown by the history of Herodotus. Their victories over Persia in 480-79 BC bred contempt for "barbarians"; the accounts of Persia given by fourth-centurY Greeks who had good opportunities to understand its culture, like Ctesias and Xenophon, remain superficial. Plato and Aristotle show little interest in Persian history and institutions, and Momigliano is wisely cautious about what is alleged to be an Arabic version of a letter from Aristotle to Alexander recommending the deportation of the Persian aristocracy in aid of the establishment of a universal state. The influence of Zoroastrian thought on Plato has been believed in by four great scholars; yet Plato's dualism and respect for the Sun can be explained without this supposition. Momigliano rightly says that in later Greek thought the name of Zoroaster, like that of Hermes Trismegistus (identified with the Egyptian god Thoth), attracted any kind of speculation relating to astrology, the after-life or the mysteries of nature. The Greeks could not read Persian texts, and there were no translations; they were at the mercy of forgeries, of which there was no lack. From the foundation of the Parthian empire about the middle of the third century BC there were Greeks living under Parthian rule. Some of them tried to explain Parthian history and customs to their compatriots, and after the defeat of Carrhae the Romans paid attention to their writings; but the Greeks took little interest.
Greek culture had grown up without the need to study any foreign language, and the great Greek writers had the advantage given to Shakespeare by his little Latin and less Greek. To learn a foreign language must have been very difficult indeed for any Greek. Their obstinate refusal to take account' of Roman literature is an astonishing fact of cultural history; only during the last few years has it been established that Greek poets even as late as the fourth and fifth centuries AD knew Latin poetry. The modern case that most illuminates the problem is surely that of the French. There have of course been periods when French culture has undergone strong foreign influence. But relatively few French people find it easy to speak a foreign language; most pay for the immense advantage of being French the price of being enclosed in a wholly French way of thought and feeling. The ancients used to say that life was tolerable neither with women nor without them. Perhaps life is tolerable neither if you are not nor if you are French. A Roman might have said that about the Greeks, with better reason.
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