Badian_oost-philip v and Illyria

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Philip V and Illyria: A Reply

Author(s): E. Badian and Stewart Irvin Oost

Source: Classical Philology, Vol. 55, No. 3, (Jul., 1960), pp. 182-186

Published by: The University of Chicago Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/266358

Accessed: 30/06/2008 07:42

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NOTES AND DISCUSSIONSPHILIP V AND ILLYRIA: A REPLY

In an article discussing Roman policyin Illyria down to the outbreak of theSecond Macedonian War1 I suggested thatPhilip's actions in Illyria during the period205-201 B.C. and the Senate's reaction tothem were an important factor in bringingabout that war, the causes of which havebeen so much discussed. This suggestion,which soon received the seal of J. P. V. D.Balsdon's auctoritas,2 has found somefavor; but it has now been rejected, withboth caution and courtesy, by S. I. Oost.3I am afraid he has not convinced me; butthe points he raises require detailedtreatment, and there is no space for thathere. I shall confine myself to taking issuewith him on a crucial passage, my inter-pretation of which he rejects and to which,indeed, he rightly devotes the greater partof his article. For this, I believe, is aproblem that both requires solution andcan be solved by fairly brief consideration.In 198 B.C., according to Polybius(18. 1. 14), Philip, asking for peace, wasbidden rou6 xzcxa r'jV IXXup8oc7ro,UJ ncapa-o05vatl Pofodot, Xuvyyov? xp4Log -zr& rq'v 'HreLpc 8vXovaezqs.he passage is trans-lated by Livy (32. 33. 3f.), not with com-

plete accuracy;4 and, as Oos+ rightlyreminds us, Livy's translation of Polybiusis not always helpful in an enquiry intothe latter's meaning. But are we right inrejecting his version (surely at first sightobvious and inevitable) of erT... . . &CXaUEcqas "post pacem in Epiro factam" and,with it, the important implication thatPhilip had made some gains in Illyriaafter the Peace of Phoenice (205 B.C.)?

Zippel first suggested that we should doso, but he found little support until hisviews were adopted by Holleaux. Hol-leaux's fiat--expressed, as so often, in amagistral and misleading note--at oncebecame the orthodox faith.5 The proposalof these scholars was to take ueTzin thispassage as meaning "after and in accord-ance with";6 that is, Philip was asked togive up the gains he

had made in thePeace of Phoenice and there is no impli-

cation that he had made any since. AsOost makes clear, this slight change ininterpretation can have a seemingly quitedisproportionate effect upon the modernhistorian's whole view of the spread ofRoman power in Greek lands.7 Seldom,surely, even in the paucity of sources towhich the student of ancient history be-comes accustomed, has so much dependedupon the meaning of a preposition.Unfortunately, the new interpretation ofuErC,: strained and improbable as it mustin any case seem to the unprejudicedreader (as I was in 1952), appears to beimpossible if we consider the context inPolybius-a thing that neither Zippel norHolleaux had done, at least explicitly.For Polybius at once adds another demand:

LoLcoq 8k? xKC HrTOx?,ocILCTXi ro6Xe &q 7roxoC-TIC7OC tracq 7g prxppi-pc"fa,rX vOvHIIozs-[ioTO,zo&ilXortopo5 00&vrov (probably204 B.C.). Not only are the two phrasesstrikingly parallel, but the parallelism isreinforced with 6gLooS; and since erz&Tv... .Ocvcrov cannot mean "after and inaccordance with" ("nach und gemaB,"etc.) Ptolemy's death, it seemed to me in1952 that z-i?Tr- ... 8.oc&6zS cannotmean "after and in accordance with" thePeace of Phoenice.8If my discussion, at the time, was notthorough enough, that is largely due tothe flimsiness of the case I was trying tomeet. Oost has now taken note of thecriticism and, going more deeply into thematter, tried to revive Zippel's paradoxicalrendering. I do not think he has succeeded;but his careful study certainly needs morecareful refutation than the earlier versionof the case he has revived.We must, for a start, be careful to keepout all extraneous considerations-oldproblems like that of the reliability ofAnnalistic accounts, or questions of histori-cal probability, such as whether it waslikely that Philip, in 198, would not beasked to surrender the gains of Phoenice,or that the Senate would not have specifi-cally asked for the return of gains made

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NOTES AND DISCUSSIONSrefers to legal title cannot be supported atall: x6pLos and its derivatives, in Polybius,mean de facto control, quite often withsinister implications of violence and impro-priety.15 There is no justification fordistinguishing it from 7TapYp,oTtl; nd Livy,who translated both terms by occupare, isfor once quite right. Similarly 8atxoCCeS.Oost says it can refer to "almost any kind[sic] of agreement, including a treaty ofpeace." This is going too far: it mustsurely always be an agreement to endhostilities. For this purpose it is, insingular or plural, Polybius' favoriteterm.16 Naturally, it cannot always bedemonstrated that it means a formaltreaty of peace; but it does mean a properend to a war, and it is often quite clearlyequivalent to a formal peace or peaceterms, being used interchangeably withother terms (auvOJxalc,cooXoyLe, ELp;vrt)that mean this, while it can be contrastedwith "armistice" and is never used inter-changeably with it.17Polybius' usage thus makes it clearthat, when he speaks of the 8ocXu6ec inEpirus, he does mean the peace terms

agreed there. The fact that these terms, likeall terms offered by Roman commandersin the field, had to be ratified (and mightbe modified) in Rome is incontestable, asis the unsatisfactory nature of our evidenceon the Peace of Phoenice. But as far, atany rate, as we can gather from thisPolybian passage (and, for what it isworth, from Livy's failure to report theratification which we know took place),the terms ratified in Rome were essentiallythose agreed at Phoenice, and we have noreason to change the name by which wecommonly know the Peace.18It has been the purpose of this note toshow that we must recognize that, ac-cording to Polybius, Philip acquired someterritory in Illyria after the Peace ofPhoenice. It is on the basis of this reliableevidence that we must proceed to argueabout the more general problems to whichOost has rightly drawn attention. Theyprovide enough material for volumes ofdiscussion. Let us bury Zippel and get onwith it.

E. BADIANUNIVERSITY OF DURHAM

NOTES1. Papers of the British School at Rome, XX (1952), 72f.at 91f.; cf. now my Foreign Clientelae (Oxford, 1958),pp. 60f.2. CQ, XLVII (1953), 158f.; JRS, XLIV (1954), 30f.at pp. 163 and 35 respectively.3. "Philip V and Illyria, 205-200 B.C.," CP, LIV (1959),158f., henceforward cited as Oost.4. Thus rtcpaSo5vacs rendered restituere.5. For references see Oost, p. 163, nn. 7 and 10; PBSR,loc. cit.6. "nach und gemaJ3"Zippel), "en vertu et a la suite de"(Holleaux).7. Oost, p. 159-a point well worth stressing.8. Similarly Balsdon, locc. citt.9. The passage has usually been discussed in the lightof these considerations, with the inevitable result.Holleaux'shighly rhetorical note is a warning example.10. See Oost, p. 159.11. "The meaning of Polybius' text must be determinedfrom his own Greek alone," as Oost rightly warns us(p. 160).12. See (with some reservations) M. Holleaux, Rome(Paris, 1922), pp. 278f.; a summary in F. W. Walbank,Philip V (Cambridge, 1940), p. 103.13. Not even if x6UpLo y?yove referred to legal title, butin fact it does not (see n. 15 below).14. To take an example at random (from the summaryof a treaty): &xXcopeivSLxeXaS a&rdcnai Koapx8oviouS xaiuL 7ToXZELeViIipovL -nWS' TCrLCpeIV SoXa upaxooLoL.

(1. 62. 8). See also n. 17 below.15. They are among his favorite terms for this. A few

striking cases: 9. 28. 3: iy6vcro x6upLo-of Philip II'sconquest of the Greek cities in Thrace, in an indictment ofPhilip (similarly 9. 33. 2); 9.29. 12: xupLsucavor ; T;Src6Xeoc oU &lTpTXaCav; 9. 33. 4: 'Ov6otapxoS xaci Dl6[zvq-Xo... ..aop3c; xxai 7apaov6to,u; lyivovro x6pLioi Tcv TOUeoUXpOiJarcov; 21. 15. 7: Ts; i; rTnv Xepp6vioov elo68ou xupLoS

V.7;pXo v.16. The art. on the word in LSJ is not much use forour purpose.17. A small selection of examples must suffice (it can beextended by ten minutes' reading anywhere in Pol.):11. 4. 1: rT&;UerTpacS; SLX6oE;eL--2: U7TTpTr; Et?lpvS;;18. 9. 1: 7Tavcov... 8uo pLoTou6kvoov-T & aXuaeL (Philip'sterms). One of the most striking cases is 18. 42, on theratification of Flamininus' peace with Philip: 1: Ixov...7pCa[3TPE. . U 'cp rTV Trp6o;DIXLrrTOVuvOiixCv. 2: ... T.ouyxXrc)T.. .. i86xec 3PEaiouv rTCq 6 LoXoyiLc;. 3: ... Mdp-xos.. . avT-Xeye xcal oXXjv T7xoLELrOrou8'v Ei; T6O axO6ioLrTa ouv067xa;. 4: ou uj]v aXX' yE 8t,os. . .tEcxjpooaerTa& 8 L oXc L;. The word SasXumo is common with xup6oand its compounds, e.g., in addition to the above, 21. 17. 5;25. 2. 2 (a treaty between kings). But other terms, ofcourse, can be used, e.g., 6yooXoyiLa and auvOixaL (21. 17. 9;24. 3). l&AXuoL;pposed to avoXac Polybius' usual term for"armistice"): 21. 5. 7.18. The suggestion hesitantly made in Oost's n. 5 thatsome of the events Livy places at Phoenice may have takenplace in Rome is quite untenable. Nor should Meloni'sviews on Appian be accepted without careful scrutiny:the Macedonica must continue to rank pretty low as asource.

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NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS* * *

To Mr. Badian's arguments for an anti-"Holleauxiste" view I answer as follows:1. "In other words (and to put it bluntly),[sIET can mean 8dv." Examples are legionfrom all western literature. An instance is

Polybius 1. 17. 9ff., where a sally of theCarthaginians in Akragas against theRoman besiegers is described. Both sidesinflicted heavy losses on the other; 1. 18. 1continues: i a 8ser-aca both sides weremore careful. Is this mere succession intime, or is a causal relationship suggested ?Does not IrTOCere imply 8id ? The as-sumption post hoc, ergo propter hoc is acommon one in our reasoning and in ourlanguages; if it were not, it would not benecessary for logicians continually towarn us against the fallacies to which itoften leads.1 This idea is hardly original,much less "revolutionary." "Standardlexica" frequently leave connotations un-explained; they commonly do not tell uswhy it is wrong to say that "the girl helda posy in her beautiful fist." LSJ, s.v.pjier, C. III, however, recognizes a meaningrelated to the causal significance. Through-out, Badian fails to recognize a distinctionbetween meaning and implication orconnotation. My argument is based on thelatter, and I noted that ter means "after"(p. 161).2. It is correct that verbal ambiguitylies at the root of this matter. It is am-biguous that "after this" frequentlyimplies "because of this"; "acquisition"is also ambiguous, for it can refer eitherto legal, or to actual, coming into posses-sion, or both. Law and fact need have nocorrelation. The public law of Egypt stillregards that country as in a state of warwith Israel. Other powers refuse to rec-ognize this status as a real part of inter-national law. So legalistic a people as theRomans would not recognize a transferof sovereignty until it was admitted intheir law (the most striking examples arelate: the relations between the Empireand the barbarian successor states in thefifth century). Why can we not conceive

that the negotiations at Phoenice "led to"Philip's legal acquisition of territories healready possessed de facto? This legalcondition was not achieved in the view ofRoman public law until the last formalityhad been complied with at Rome.2 In anyevent, the distinction between "led to"as applying to legal acquisition and "ledto" as referring to actual acquisitionseems without substance.3. It was not my intent to offer alter-native explanations of the vexatiouspassage in Polybius. Rather, I wanted todemonstrate what implication [eie- mightwell carry, and then by combining Appian'sand Livy's versions of the termination ofthe First Macedonian War to suggest thatthere was evidence of historical fact tosupport the implication drawn fromPolybius. The meaning and implication of,u?rTOmust be determined no matter howwe interpret 8LoXU6?at;(cf. my article,p. 162).4. I did not say that Polybius variedhis usage of auv0qxoct nd &cAXu6aeLor thesake of elegance or any other reason in thepassages discussed, but that Polybiusused the latter to decribe the settlementat Phoenice, while Appian used theformer to apply to the settlement whichhe puts at Rome. One cannot maintainthat Polybius always uses auvO0xoc for aformal treaty (in 7. 9 he uses 6pxoS inwhat may be a translation of a documentoriginally drawn up in Phoenician), but hefrequently does, and repeatedly uses thisterm for the Roman-Carthaginian treaties(3.22.4, 24. 1, 14, 25. 1, 26. 1, 3, 4, 7, 27. 1[cf. 7]; it might be significant that heshifts to 8LouoXoyaty7 when referring tothe Ebro arrangement) in a long passagewhich shows no "elegant variation" whereone would naturally expect it. It is pre-cisely this Polybian trait that vexesstudents of Greek literature, but endearshim to modern historians. In the examplesof rhetorical variants adduced by Badian(nn. 14, 17) there seems to be no changein the sense caused by the substitutions of

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NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS

partial synonyms, except where the con-text removes any ambiguity, as self-evidently the context of 18. 1. 14 doesnot.5. As for xupIoS and related words, Iknow of no passage in which the wordcarries a pejorative connotation or mean-ing by itself (e.g., like rupocvvog in laterGreek), although like any neutral word itcan acquire such a sense from its context,as it does in the examples cited in Badian'snote 15, perhaps significantly (except forthe last) found in speeches. The last ex-ample merely states that Philip controlscertain territory which he did acquire by

dubious means. But in 18. 1. 14 whenPolybius uses Tap.pralu, in which apejorative sense is ordinarily latent, it islikely he intends a contrast with theneutral expression used in the precedingclause; for surely the Greek language isnot so poor that y?yov xzupLogand 7xppr,pTc,Lare the only possible choices for the sakeof variation. And when Polybius is atpains to be exact (as he regularly is whendealing with important matters) and toavoid ambiguity (21. 41. '10), as in givingthe text of the treaty with Antiochus, heuses xupiocvof sovereignty in a context(a formal state document-21. 42. 25)where it is certainly neutral, withoutpejorative significance. I omit passagessuch as 7. 9. 13 where the colorlessness ofthe term might be open to dispute.Accordingly, I do not think that Badianhas very much reduced the probability ofthis argument.NC

1. Two examples from our own tongue: "After his[Pyrrhus'] return to Greece they [Rome and Carthage]were free to resume their activity..." (Badian, ForeignClientelae,p. 34). Again: "After the Bishop of Lincoln hadpronounced and a Royal Commission had sat, this was thepenalty which, in perpetuity, was then imposed" (DacreBalsdon, Oxford Life [Fairlawn, N.J., 1958], p. 175).2. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo did lead to theannexation of Texas by the United States, as far as validinternational law was concerned. If the mere de facto

6. On 8LaX6r7l, I should have saidmore precisely that it can mean almostany kind of agreement after disagreement.For the rest, Badian seems to oppose viewswhich I have not advanced. I stated thatthe "proper" end of the war was atPhoenice, but that auvOxacL is morespecifically a treaty. As Badian observes,8aoCXu?oeL can indicate cuvO-xoa, but thelatter is much more specific: All S can beD, but not all D can be S. Hence whenPolybius uses D (in a context which doesnot contradict the inference), the possi-bility that it indicates non-S cannot beexcluded. Other evidence concerning thenegotiations at Phoenice and Rome seemedto show that D in fact was non-S. I in-tentionally avoided the term "armistice,"which is Badian's own innovation, re-ferring to "negotiations . .in two stages."Finally (Badian, n. 18), the positiverejection of even the possibility that someof the things Livy says were done atPhoenice were done instead at Rome(my n. 15) would seem to reveal undueconfidence in Livy's account of thetransactions at Phoenice.

Apparently Mr. Badian feels that thisis a simple problem which can be solvedeasily by the application of right reasoning.I am less sanguine, and remain contentto balance probabilities in judging thepresence or absence of a given connotationin the famous preposition.STEWART IRVIN OOST

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO)TES

possession had been sufficient after the unilateral Resolutionof Annexation, it would not have been necessary to specifythe new boundary between the United States (includingTexas) and Mexico, in the future tense, in Article V of theinstrument (H. S. Commager, Documents of AmericanHistory4 [New York, 1948], I, 313). And although thetreaty was irregularly negotiated, it became legally bindingby the ratification; cf. T. A. Bailey, Diplomatic History ofthe American People4(New York, 1950), p. 276.

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