Chapter Six
Which Constitution Is Best at War?
The hoplite organization was supposed to produce both the best type of army and the best type of state. Its dramatic success over the Persian superpower early in the fifth century helped to inspire the precocious development of Greek political speculation, in which the relationship between the constitution and warfare was a central theme. Herodotus is our earliest source for this. Although his poetic conventions required him to explain events mostly in terms of personal intention, he also registers glimpses of impersonal and collective factors, for which the only general concept he had was nomos (law or custom), a term much discussed by the Sophists. A halfhidden constitutional theory can be discerned in Herodotus, less articulated than the more archaic levels of explanation in terms of personal motivation and moral values. He includes a long and implausible debate (3.80ff.) among three Persian nobles on whether Persia should adopt monarchy, oligarchy, or isonomia (government by free and equal citizens of the Greek type). As the faults attributed to monarchy in this debate are the faults later exemplified by Xerxes, Herodotus seems to hint that the mistakes committed by Xerxes in his invasion of Greece sprang from weaknesses inherent in absolute government. He leaves no doubt at all that the Greek victory was a result of their isonomie constitutions, which enabled them to fight as free men against slaves. The king of Sparta tells the king of Persia that the Spartans “are free— but not altogether so. They have as the despot over them Law, and they fear him much more than your men fear you. At least whatever he bids them do, they do, and he bids them always the same thing: not to flee from the fight before any multitude of men whatever, but to stand firm in their ranks and either conquer or die” (7.104 [trans. Grene]).
This is as close as Herodotus comes to historical explanation in institutional terms, and the earliest literary expression of the ideal I have described as civic militarism. He implies that monarchies of the Oriental type are prone to overexpansion, whereas a Greek city of free citizens is best at fighting just wars. Some have suggested that Herodotus meant to imply that the Greeks would now conquer the Persians and become the next in the succession of world empires, but I doubt that. The constitutional theory, which comes to the fore in the European sections of Herodotus, does not fit well into the succession-of-empires theory, which provides the scaffolding for the earlier Asiatic narrative. In Herodotus’s view, revolutions of the cosmic wheel cause monarchies to overextend themselves and start unjust wars that destroy them; but free cities only fight just wars and so should be free from that temptation. In the speech Herodotus gives to the Spartan king, the purpose of Greek military prowess is to protect Greek freedom, not to dominate others. In fact, the hoplite ideology was essentially defensive and capable only of limited wars, hence to some extent it probably acted as a brake on the natural aggressiveness and vindicativeness of the Greek just war code.
Herodotus wrote about the traditional Greek way of war, which assumed a constitution dominated by the hoplite class, essentially a broad oligarchy. But after the Persian Wars there appeared an alternative constitutional model: the naval democracy of Athens. The hoplite model was associated with old-fashioned chivalrous and ritualistic warfare, but the naval model was linked with imperialistic expansion, a capacity for long-range strategic planning, and a degree of ruthless acquiescence in raison d’état. The treatise on The Constitution of Athens written probably around 425 B.C. by the unknown author often called the “Old Oligarch”—the earliest surviving prose treatise on political thought in Greek—makes explicit the connections between military organization and constitutional form: Hoplite powers like Sparta are oligarchic and good, sea powers like Athens are democratic and unjust, but regrettably more successful at warfare and hegemony. The writer has an exaggerated view of the effectiveness of sea power: He assumes land powers have a very limited reach, whereas a navy is free to sail anywhere and land anywhere, blockade any city it wants, and conduct raids against the land with impunity.1 The capacity of ancient fleets to do any of these things was in fact strictly limited, and this is one of the reasons for dating this tract early in the Peloponnesian War, before the limitations of sea power had been demonstrated.
In Thucydides, the idea that the Peloponnesian War was a conflict between two constitutional-military systems is a leitmotiv, and at least in his early books, he seems to share the illusions of the Old Oligarch about the superiority of sea power. His concept of nomos is more sharply defined than Herodotus’s. To Herodotus, nomoi (laws or customs) might mean almost anything, but Thucydides thinks of the nomoi of a city as a cultural complex inculcated by education, as a distinctive national character. Much more than Herodotus, he recognizes a kind of motivation that is collective and civic rather than personal. He had to, of course, since Herodotus’s story was largely about kings, and Thucydides’s is largely about citizen bodies. Even in Thucydides, there is much narrative of the Herodotean type, especially in campaign narratives, which focus on the plans and actions of individual commanders. But Thucydides also uses a collective or civic type of narrative that personifies cities: Instead of individuals, he writes of the plans and actions of “the Athenians” or “the Corinthians.” Each of these constitutions has its distinctive nomoi. Thucydides’s orators repeatedly contrast the volatile, ambitious, curious Athenian character with the stolid, stable, disciplined character of the Spartans, making the implicit assumption that the first is typical of naval democracies and the second, of hoplite oligarchies. And Thucydides sometimes implies that the naval state is prone to imperialism (see the speech of the Corinthians at Sparta, Thucydides 1.68ff.).
The debates in Thucydides suggest that in the late fifth century, Sophists and orators spent much time comparing constitutions, with their military aspects in the foreground. Whenever we encounter this theme, there is an obvious question: Which system is better at war? In the fifth century, the future seemed to lie with naval power, which awed not only democrats but enemies of democracy like the Old Oligarch. But after the Athenian debacle in 404 B.C., Sparta became the model for imitation, and the traditional hoplite ideal was revived. There appeared a number of writers who praised the Spartan system on the grounds that it was best suited for war and conquest. Aristotle argues against them in Politics 7.14. The only surviving example of this pro-Spartan literature, Xenophon’s Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, declares at the start what was doubtless the common thesis of this school: Spartan military success proves the superiority of the peculiar Spartan institutions. We often forget that the communistic and militaristic ideal state depicted in Plato’s Republic is based ultimately upon a simple military argument— Sparta is better at war than any other city, and therefore the best city must have a professional warrior elite of the Spartan type. But these assumptions were soon undermined. The Spartan hegemony proved even more fragile than the Athenian. Sparta was too dedicated to the egalitarian hoplite ideal to produce an imperial elite. Soon after Plato wrote the Republic, the Thebans destroyed Spartan armies at Leuctra (371) and Mantinea (362) and with them the myth of Spartan invincibility on land. A decade after that, the rising power of Macedon threw its lengthening shadow over all the city-state armies.
Authors with conservative views long continued to pay lip service to the hoplite tradition. Isocrates blamed the fifth-century Athenian empire for its unjust wars and mistreatment of allies and attributed these crimes to the corrupting effects of sea power, which he thought always tempted men to excessive ambition; upon inheriting the Athenian sea empire after the Peloponnesian War, Sparta became equally corrupted: Dominion over the sea is dominion over misfortune (On the Peace 101). The cowardly policy of the Periclean democracy, which allowed the land of Attica to be ravaged repeatedly, is contrasted with the valiant hoplite ethic of the old Athenians, who always went out to meet the enemy in pitched battle (On the Peace 77, 84). Isocrates accuses the democrats of being careless of their own possessions and covetous of the possessions of others. It is more surprising to find the same attitudes in Xenophon, who was deeply knowledgeable about the new military art of the fourth century and wrote a treatise on cavalry in addition to his military histories. Yet in his Oeconomicus (On Estate Management 6.6-6.7), this seasoned commander made Socrates argue for the superiority of the agricultural life on the grounds that when an enemy invades, the artisans and merchants would want to stay behind the city walls, while the hoplite farmers would vote to march out to battle—as he puts it, those who tilled the soil could be trusted to defend it. (Fourth-century democratic orators did not, of course, share these views. Demosthenes even turned the traditional argument upside down, claiming that democracies are always peaceful and just, in contrast with land-grabbing monarchies like Macedon [On the Chersonese 40-43].)
But even traditionalists had to face reality. The traditional civic militarist ideal simply no longer worked. In Plato’s Laws, written about 350 B.C., the ideal state is still a hoplite oligarchy, albeit more realistic than in the Republic, but no longer is it claimed that it will invariably be successful in war. Instead, the solution is to isolate the ideal city from outside contact as much as possible. The proposed city must not be on the seacoast, so that it might avoid the corrupting effects of navies and democrats. It must be unwalled like Sparta, so that the citizens will not be tempted to cower behind their walls like the Athenian democrats in the Peloponnesian War, and its defenders will march out to meet invaders in traditional hoplite fashion (Laws 778). The speakers in the Laws still feel that the hoplite way of war is good for the city morally, but they have lost confidence that it will be successful militarily.
In Plato’s Laws, we can discern the beginnings of a divorce between the internal and external affairs of the city-state. Greek political thought has begun to concentrate almost exclusively on the internal constitution; foreign affairs is no longer considered a fit subject for philosophy because it is too unpredictable and unmanageable. In the works of Aristotle, this divorce becomes pronounced.2 Aristotle thought Plato’s solution inadequate because a city cannot live in isolation—it must live the life of a city, not that of a hermit—and even if it does not pursue an active foreign policy, it must have sufficient military force to repel and deter invaders (Politics 2.6). Aristotle was aware, in other words, that a stable constitution required a successful foreign policy. He was as aware as his predecessors that the form of the constitution is largely determined by warfare and military organization. His own ideal constitution is essentially a hoplite city of the traditional sort (Politics 3.7, 4.8-9, 4.11-13). He knew Plato’s ideal of an unwalled city was totally obsolete, yet he retained vestiges himself of the traditional chivalrous code: “Doubtless there is something dishonourable in seeking safety behind strong walls, at any rate against an enemy equal in number or only very slightly superior” (Politics 7.11, 1330, trans. Sinclair and Saunders). But Aristotle never pretends that this type of constitution will be more successful at war than any other. He was aware of how complicated warfare had become in the late fourth century. He knew that an army consisting of nothing but a hoplite phalanx was hopelessly outmoded: A modern military establishment must also have light infantry, cavalry, a fleet, and a siege train (Politics 6.7, 7.6, 7.11). He seems to be aware that the traditional hoplite army was becoming obsolete militarily, and as a result, his prized hoplite constitution was becoming politically obsolete. But he suggests no way to adapt the hoplite ideal to new conditions. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle had called the study of warfare and interstate relations an important branch of political science and had recommended the reading of historical works for information about these matters. But in the Politics, the most systematic and sophisticated treatment of political life in ancient literature, warfare and interstate relations go practically untreated. Aristotle summarizes traditional views about the ethical and constitutional implications of warfare, but he has no solutions to the problems of war. He thinks that wars between Greeks are bad, but he suggests no way to end them. He says that certain military factors produce good constitutions, but he suggests no way to bring them about. He did not believe that history could explain anything of philosophical value by the time he wrote the Poetics: “Poetry is more akin to philosophy and is a better thing than history; poetry deals with general truths, history with specific events. The latter are, for example, what Alcibiades did and suffered, while general truths are the kind of thing which a certain type of person would probably or inevitably do or say” (Poetics 9, 1451b, trans. G.M.A. Grube).
In the late fourth century, Greek political discourse was taking on a marked “introspective” quality, as Sheldon Wolin puts it.3 From that time on, it would essentially be a study of the internal affairs of the state, with little attention to its external affairs in war or peace. Just at the time when Greek philosophy was rising to its climax in the work of Plato and Aristotle, war dropped out of philosophy, and the promising start made in the fifth century in the exploration of warfare and empire was not followed through. If the Greeks were losing faith in their ability to control warfare by the time of Aristotle, the best explanation would appear to be that warfare was in fact becoming uncontrollable. The decisive change came around the middle of the fourth century, when the new siegecraft, added to the already formidable armies of Macedon, put an end to the self-sufficiency of the city-state and removed the forum that had cultivated the unique political culture of classical Greece.
The Constitutional Theory of History: Polybius
Historians, as well as philosophers, seem to have lost interest in the study of constitutions in the fourth century The subject hardly appears in the historical works of Xenophon. In the second century B.C., the discussion was revived by Polybius, but the nature of the question had changed. No one asked any more what constitution was best at war in the short run, for the Greek wars had shown that no constitution could be consistently successful. But then came the Roman conquests, which seemed to impose once again a certain order, pattern, and direction on the meaningless flux of history. The rise of Rome suggested to Polybius that there was something after all to the old notion that only one type of constitution could be supremely successful at war; but it also suggested that this would become obvious only in the very long run. Polybius was the first and only historian to make constitutional theory the main key to history and the ultimate cause of the rise and fall of states, rather than an occasional factor among many others.
Polybius said his main purpose was to show “by what means, and by virtue of what political institutions” Rome had become lord of the world, for “it is from this source [the constitution], as if from a fountainhead, that all designs and plans of action not only originate but reach their fulfillment” (6.2, trans. Scott-Kilvert; compare 1.1). He speaks as though the internal constitution determines external events. He sometimes seems to believe that these events are controlled either by constitutional factors or by pure chance, and if by pure chance, then he concludes that such events are not a fit subject for a serious and realistic historian. On these grounds, Polybius dismisses the histories of Athens and Thebes: The short-lived hegemonies won by those cities were mere gifts of Fortune, nothing else being possible in a democracy owing to the fickleness of the masses (6.43-44). In his view, the Spartan constitution was admirable for its domestic stability but was incapable of ruling other states (6.48-50); his own Achaean League had a much superior constitution, capable of both domestic and foreign success (2.37-42); but the most successful of all constitutions in both foreign and domestic affairs was the Roman.
We may pass briefly over Polybius’s analysis of the Roman constitution. He mistook it for an Aristotelian “mixed constitution,” a combination of several different constitutional types—the usual ideal of Greek conservative thinkers. Rome, as will be explained, was nothing of the sort but rather an oligarchy of peculiarly militaristic and expansionist character. The misconception was of great importance for the later history of Western political thought, which never really emerged from this mirage of the mixed constitution, but that need not concern us here. Polybius tries to give this abstraction some explanatory power by proposing the odd theory (which he wrongly attributes to Plato) that all constitutions have to pass through the same cycle, beginning in monarchy and ending in extreme democracy. How Rome could fit into such a cycle is not clear, because Polybius’s treatment of early Roman history is lost. He probably claimed that the cycle could be arrested at some point by adopting a mixed constitution and that Rome had managed this at some point in its early history
Why was so sensible a man captive to such a theory? It is likely that the clue lies in his remark that every state “is liable to decline from two sources, the one being external, and the other due to its own internal evolution. For the first we cannot lay down any fixed principle, but the second pursues a regular sequence” (6.57, trans. Scott-Kilvert). Polybius could not escape from the philosophers’ teaching that no meaning could be found in the flow of events unless these could be reduced to a fixed predictable pattern. Interstate relations were not considered philosophical because they were not predictable. The notion that a constitution must follow a predetermined cycle is a reductio ad absurdum of this notion, probably borrowed from some earlier Hellenistic writer equally determined to show that history could be philosophical. When he could escape from the influence of his philosophy lectures, Polybius had no difficulty in making sense of the flow of events. But by his time, history and philosophy tended to get in one another’s way; and both were passing into the hands of the Romans, whose political culture was never so open to rationalism as that of the Greeks.
Notes
1. Constitution of the Athenians 2, trans. in The Greek Historians, vol. 2, ed. F.R.B. Godolphin (New York, 1942).
2. The lack of attention to interstate affairs in Greek thought has often been noticed. Different interpretations of it have been offered by Arnaldo Momigliano, “Some Observations on the Causes of War in Ancient Historiography,” in his Studies in Historiography (New York, 1966), 112-126; Peter Manicas, “War, Stasis, and Greek Political Thought,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 24 (1982), 673-688; M. I. Finley, “War and Empire,” in Ancient History: Evidence and Models (Trowbridge, England, 1985), 67-87. The interpretation I offer here is defended at length in my forthcoming article “Aristotle on War and History.”
3. Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Berkeley, 1960), 73.