MR. STRACHAN-DAVIDSON'S " POLYBIUS."* THE editor of these selections from
Polybius has a well- founded confidence in the general accuracy of that honest if unattractive historian. But he gives a little too much weight, perhaps, to the honesty of the worthy Magalopolitan, and expresses too favourable an opinion of his style. For Polybius wrote more than two centuries before Plutarch, and the Bceotian's style is better than the Arcadian's. Polybius, however, was, as Mr. Strachan-Davidson says, "a man of sense and experience, with rare opportunities for knowledge," and we do not care to gauge too curiously the weight and force of his disjointed disquisitions and narratives. His editor's con- ception that Polybius was stimulated and elevated by the greatness of his subject is harmless in any case ; and he has properly made his selections from "the three topics of prime his- torical importance " which the main line of Polybius's narrative embraces. These are "the desperate struggle between Rome and Carthage for the supremacy of the world, the internal structure of the Roman Constitution, and the foreign policy of Rome as revealed in her dealings with the Mediterranean." On the whole, though, his Selections leave room for some differences of opinion. For we can readily believe that he might have inserted his historian's account of the battles of Ticinus, Trebia, and Thrasimene, instead of those tiresome and unedifying "diplomatic controversies of the Greek States from the end of the Second Punic War onwards." These controversies are not, as he himself admits, of first-rate im- portance in themselves. But the battle of the Trebia raises a geographical question of more importance than that which he endeavours with so much pains to solve in connection with the
• Selections from Polybius. Edited by James Legh Straohan-Davideon,ILA. With 3 Maps. Oxford : Clarendon Press. 1888. battle of Cannaa. We cannot, of course, here and now, follow him at all closely into the details from which he has constructed his plan of that battle. But since he recognises the hazard which the Romans would have run in offering their flank to Hannibal, had they marched from the position in which the plan places them to Canusium, he ought perhaps to reflect more cautiously than he does upon the fact that they must already have run that hazard, quite unnecessarily, in reaching that position from Canusium. We are disposed to lay no stress whatever upon the reasons which have led so many authorities to reach different conclusions about the localities of this celebrated battle; but we cannot bring ourselves to believe that the Romans, marching from Canusium to attack Hannibal, poured their vast, and for the most part ill-trained, host round his right flank, and compelled him to fight with his back to Canusium. In saying this, we do not doubt that Mr. Strachan-Davidson is fully justified in saying that "the commanders on both sides" at Cannte "were very indifferent as to their means of retreat, and placed all their hopes of safety in victory." But even so, commanded as the Roman army was, by a pair of Consuls of whom one was as eager to avoid as the other was to force a battle in the neighbourhood of Cann.se, the wonderful flank march necessary to bring it on to the ground where Mr. Strachan-Davidson places it, is to us quite unimaginable. And to counteract the support which is given to Mr. Strachan-Davidson by such competent judges as Mr. H. F. Tozer and Lieutenant-Colonel Crowder, who visited Canna) in 1888, there is hardly more required than to notice the absence of all mention of such a march in any ancient authority. We would add, too—what Polybius and his present editor have left unnoticed—that the Hannibal touch is unmistakable in the preliminary skirmish where his troops were unsuccessful. The Carthaginian, who had become, if we may trust Plutarch's amusing argumentation, more wily than ever after losing his eye, was finessing in that skirmish, as he was in the skirmishes which preluded his victory on the Trebia. And while we are anxious to do full justice to Mr. Strachan-Davidson's careful exposition of Hannibal's tactics in the battle, his contention that the Roman fugitives had nothing to stop them but the Gauls and Spaniards, "whose broken ranks must have shown many a gap," strikes us as quite untenable. The Romans lost this memorable battle because they were " clubbed " by their incapable leader, and nothing more clearly indicated that their defeat was a foregone conclusion than the merry jest with which Hannibal set his staff officers in a roar, when one of them expressed sur- prise at the enemy's enormous numerical preponderance. No similar jest, we are sure, will spring from the lips of the com- mander of that famous host of invaders, 100,000 strong, which can be landed so easily, as the scare-mongers think, on our shores, when he finds himself confronted by 200,000 Volunteers and Regulars of a stock that all experience proves will fight, and beyond all question, win easily, in their thin but deadly and " ne'er-yet-defeated " line formation.
The language of Polybius, as we have hinted, is more blunt and rugged than might have been expected from a writer of his time. Mr. Strachan-Davidson, in the first of his eight interesting and valuable "Prolegomena," deals with "Some Peculiar Uses of Words "in his author. For the most part, his remarks are correct enough ; but we cannot accept his version of the 1:701-6zga CIVET£I20q ZpOalpECTEMA with which Polybius describes Philip of Macedon's oppression of his allies, and his resolution to make war with Rome. That version runs thus, "He had no regard for his own reputation ;" and we have very little doubt that " He failed in his determination," or "falsified his disposition," would be nearer the mark. A Cam- bridge examiner, we believe, would never pass Mr. Strachan- Davidson's "reputation ;" and although he has the support of Professor Nettleship for his translation of Jovem lapidem jurare, his interesting excursus, for we do not like to say "prolegomenon," leaves the reader at liberty to reject it for the translation which is "the one generally adopted by modern scholars." The rest of his " Prolegomena " are chiefly characterised by an erudition that smacks of a dryness that he may have caught from his author. And something of the same kind may not ungently be said of his appendix on "The Site of the Spanish Carthage." But his appendix on "The Life and Writings of Polybius" combines liveliness with accuracy, and deserves unstinted praise. Of his notes we should say that they are insufficient in quantity, and a great
many purchasers of this splendidly printed book would be better pleased with it if the editor had followed the precedents set by Professor Jebb and Mr. Archer-Hind, by appending a translation. The days of " cribs " like Bohn's are waning, but the era of good translation is, we confidently and gladly believe, opening under most favourable auspices. The present editor may possibly see fit to supply what we venture to call a hiatus in his work : and if he does, his Polybius, in all likeli- hood, will become, as on many accounts it deserves to become, a very popular book. It has the merit, in its present state, of supplying a definite want in English classical literature, and it might easily be made to supply that want more attractively as well as more effectually.
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