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Walbank's Philip V of Macedon
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
Three or four years after the publication of Mr. Walbank's book it would be idle to join in the chorus of praise which the most eminent authorities on the history of the Hellenistic Age have unanimously and deservedly showered upon it. But the time has come to show how far the author has succeeded in combining pioneer-work in a new province with the results which a former generation of scholars had already been able to achieve. Nothing, indeed, can better testify to the vitality, timeliness, and many-sidedness of the present book than its author's efforts to put to the test, in his most recent writings, the conclusions which he had already reached, to enlarge and revise, if need be, some points he had not previously dwelt upon with all the desirable minuteness, and to sound again the principles on which this volume rests. Hence one might justifiably describe it as a Janus-like portrait of Philip V. On one side it connects with and reflects the labours of Mr. Walbank's predecessors, chiefly the late Maurice Holleaux. But its other face looks to a basically different treatment of the history of the late third and early second centuries B.C.— more in agreement with the intellectual requirements and the tenets of a new school of historical writing. In this way, if I may venture to use these words, Mr. Walbank's book partakes of the past and the future; and it is, I submit, a merit, and perhaps its strongest attraction, that it should stimulate the reader to recollect the experiences of its forerunners, and to work out new solutions for old problems.
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- Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1943
References
1 Cf. e.g., Tarn, W. W., JRS 1941, XXXI, pp. 172–3Google Scholar; McDonald, A. H., C.R. 1942, LVI, pp. 123–5Google Scholar; Larsen, J. A. O., Class. Phil. 1943, XXXVIII, pp. 56–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As to Dr. A. Momigliano's review in the Oxford Magazine of 12th February, 1942, cf. Walbank, C.Q. 1942, p. 134, n. 1.
2 Prof. De Sanctis has himself given an extremely vigorous presentation of his theory in his summary outline of the history of ancient Greece in Encicl. Hal. XVII, cols. 823 ff. Both his theory and his criticisms of Holleaux are accepted by Prof. J. V. A. Fine in his chapter on the Antigonids, in The Greek Political Experience, 1941, especially pp. 137, 141Google Scholar. For a general survey of the two theories, cf. Zancan, L., Atti 1st. Ven. t. XCV, p. II, 1935–6, pp. 541 ff.Google Scholar For an acute but unduly aggressive criticism of Holleaux (cf. REA, 1935, p. 137Google Scholar; Bickermann, E., Rev. Phil. LXII, 1936, p. 288)Google Scholar see Kolbe, W., Die Kriegsschuldfrage v. 218 (Heidelberg. Sitz.-ber., 1934, 4 Abh.), pp. 25 ff.Google Scholar A masterly presentation of Holleaux's theory, though with some essential modifications, in Rostovtzeff's, History, I, pp. 47 ff.Google Scholar, 55 ff.; II, pp. 1311–12; III, pp. 1318–19. A different approach was suggested by Altheim, F., Epochal d. röm. Gesch. 1935, II, pp. 91, 95 ff.Google Scholar
3 The quotation is from Prof. Cary's, M.Hist. Greek World, 1932, p. 406Google Scholar; cf. Walbank, p. 12, n. 4; Larsen, loc. cit., pp. 57–8.
4 Mr. Walbank (p. 79) rightly rejects the story of the poisoning of Aratus as one of the usual inventions of war propaganda. Yet the story has a ‘symbolic’ value as a reflection of the contradictions and incompatibilities between Macedon and the League, autocracy and republican federalism, monarchical demagogy and oligarchic conservatism, to which the Achaean statesman fell a victim. See the excellent comments of Ferrabino, Arato, 1921, p. 240.
5 Strangely enough, Mr. Walbank has, so far as I can see, neither quoted De Sanctis's formula (St. d. Rom. IV, 1, p. 255Google Scholar; Propylden-Weltgesch. 1931, II, p. 305Google Scholar; Encicl. Ital., XV, p. 315Google Scholar) nor commented upon it. I gave it as a title to a short notice of Walbank's, Mr. book in the Contempora Review for March 1941, pp. 357–8Google Scholar; and lest I should be accused of self-contradiction for agreeing with Mr. Walbank in rejecting it, may I add that in the review I stressed the impossibility for Philip V, as King of Macedon and heir to the victor of Chaeronaea, of ever becoming the embodiment of Greek national resistance against the Roman invasion.
6 Thereby I do not mean to say, of course, that there was no revival of reminiscences of the Persian Wars (which, incidentally, Mr. Walbank has so ably dwelt upon in C.Q. 1942, pp. 141–2; 1943, pp. 2, 9–10). What I mean is that the issue at stake was felt to be different, and that the reaction was accordingly different.
7 That Demetrius's raid was chiefly directed against Rhodes, or the islands under Rhodian control, is shown by Pol. IV, 19, 8. As far as one can speak of a hold by a naval Power (cf. Bikerman, E., REA 1938, XL, pp. 380, 382 f.Google Scholar), and aside from the few islands which were under Macedonian sovereignty, the Rhodians were at the time supreme in the Aegean: Holleaux saw it long ago (BCH 1907, XXXI, pp. 107 ff.Google Scholar). But what of the relations between Macedon and Rhodes? On the rather tenuous evidence of Pol. V, 89, 6-7 (gifts to Rhodes after the earthquake of ca. 227 B.C.), Mr. Walbank (C.Q. 1942, p. 137; cf. JHS 1942, LXII, p. 8Google Scholar) suggests that Doson's ‘policy towards Rhodes was friendly.’ In any case, his Carian expedition, which Mr. Walbank rightly dates to 227 (p. 12, n. 5; JHS 1942, pp. 8–9, 12–13Google Scholar; cf. Fine, AJPh 1940, p. 165, n. 164Google Scholar), suffices to prove that Rhodes did not, or did not want to, challenge Macedon's brief return to sea-power policy. The relations were also friendly during the War of the Allies, as the references collected by Holleaux, p. 110, n. 2, abundantly show. But it is significant that in 220, while Demetrius was raiding the Aegean, the Byzantines, at war with Rhodes and the king of Bithynia, supported the restoration to his father's throne of the exiled Bithynian prince Zipoites, who had found sanctuary in Macedon, and whose attempted return—he died on the way—was evidently approved of, or permitted, by Philip V (cf. Pol. IV, 50, 8–9; 51, 7). The simultaneousness of the two episodes is probably no chance coincidence, and seems to confirm (pace Walbank, pp. 28, n.7; 30, n. 3) Holleaux's contention that Philip had instigated the expedition of Demetrius. It proves, if anything, Philip's interest in seapower, even before Rome's intervention came to remind him of its relevance for the future of Macedon.
8 Philip, p. 351; C.Q. 1942, p. 145, n. 3; 1943, pp. 8, 10; in spite of the case for the traditional date forcibly made out by Momigliano, A., JRS 1942, XXXII, pp. 57 ff.Google Scholar; cf. Altheim, F., Epochen, I, p. 212Google Scholar (in a vigorously drawn sketch of the relations between Rome and the Hellenistic states at the end of the Pyrrhic War). My main objection to Momigliano's dating is that the evidence so far produced seems to me insufficient to prove that ‘rule over land and sea’ is merely a formula, a flattering compliment (id., pp. 54 ff.; Walbank, C.Q. 1942, PP. 135–6).
9 Whatever the chronology of the Aetia, whether we believe that the original (as maintained by Coppola, G., Cirene e il nuovo Callimaco, 1935, pp. 120–1, 174 ff.Google Scholar) or an enlarged edition of it, including as its final poem the Lock of Berenice (cf. besides the authorities collected by Altheim, , Epochen, II, p. 125, n. 12Google Scholar, his further remarks in Welt als Gesch., II, 1936, pp. 77–8Google Scholar, and Maas, P., Pap. Milano 1937, I, p. 171Google Scholar) was published ca. 245, I cannot help feeling that the Court of Alexandria was no doubt far more awake to and interested in the achievements of Rome ca. 270 than some twenty-five years later, when Ptolemy III was engaged on the Third Syrian War and Rome was passing through the hardest years of the First Punic War.
As to the bon mot (Dieg. col. V, 26 ff., in Pap. Milano, I p. 97)Google Scholar, I suggest that Callimachus (or, though less probably, the author on whom he drew) applied to the mother of the Roman ‘Gaius’ a saying (Plut., , De A.M. fort. aut virt., I, 9, 331 bGoogle Scholar) which he found in the biographical tradition on Alexander the Great (so rightly Pohlenz, M., Phil. 1935, XC, pp. 120–1Google Scholar; Pasquali, G., Studi ital.fil. cl. 1939, N.S., XVI, pp. 74–5Google Scholar, but it may be doubtful whether the similar Spartan story had already been circulated ‘in the latter half of the fourth century’). Incidentally, the primary sources of Plutarch's treatise (with the exception of the probably wrong quotation from ‘Phylarchus,’ II, 11, 342 d; and cf. I, 3, 327 e) are, generally speaking, prior to the middle of the third century. On the purpose of Callimachus's action, see De Sanctis, G., Riv. Fil. 1935, N.S., XIII, pp. 299–300Google Scholar, followed by Pasquali, loc. cit., p. 74. For the ‘symbolical’ Gaius, cf. Altheim, , Epochen, II, p. 143Google Scholar.
10 Cf. Pasquali, , Studi ital. 1939, pp. 72 ff.Google Scholar; Momigliano, , JRS 1942, pp. 60 ff.Google Scholar, who should not have denied (p. 62, n. 32) the historicity of the Roman embassy to Alexander the Great, unless we are prepared to admire even more Clitarchus's far-sightedness in inventing the episode out of sheer interest (towards the close of the fourth century B.C.!) in Roman affairs. On the other hand, any attempt at a compromise solution (cf. e.g., Kornemann, E., Die Alexandegesch. d. Kön. Ptol., 1935, p. 93, n. 173Google Scholar) should be unhesitatingly rejected, and the tradition accepted or dismissed in toto.
11 It is, as is well known, an obviously exaggerated theory of Gelzer, M. (Hermes 1934, LXIX, pp. 46–55)Google Scholar that Roman historiography ‘was born pragmatic and Greek at the end of the second Punic war’ (so Momigliano, A., JRS 1943, XXXIII, p. 102)Google Scholar; and cf. Vogt, J., Gnomon 1936, XII, pp. 525–6Google Scholar. But the very fact that such a theory was conceived, and by such an authority as Prof. Gelzer, affords, I maintain, the best possible example of ‘Greek incubation.’ On Gelzer's theory, cf. Mr. Walbank's remarks in his forthcoming article on Philinus (C. Q. 1944).
12 For bibl. on political pamphleteerism, see Gelzer, M, Hermes 1933, LXVIII, p. 131, n. 4Google Scholar (whose chronology— ‘aus den Jahren des Antiochoskrieges’—is probably unsound). Holleaux, M. (Rev. Phil. 1930, LVI, p. 305, n. 2Google Scholar) was, I submit, far too sceptical in his comments on Reinach's, A. J. theory (BCH 1910, XXXIV, pp. 281–2Google Scholar) that it is Perseus who is meant by the allusion to the Κοίρανος ʻΗπειρώτης (Phlegon, , FGrH 257, frg. 36, 7, line 8Google Scholar), a reference in any case suggesting a date prior to the battle of Pydna and the massacre of the Epirotes. On the relevance of the problem cf. Bickermann, E., Gnomon 1931, VII, p. 278Google Scholar.