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The Causes of Greek Decline1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

F. W. Walbank
F. W. Walbank
Affiliation:
The University of Liverpool
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Extract

In one of the most popular anthology passages in Latin, Servius Sulpicius, writing to console Cicero for his daughter's death, describes how, as he reached Greek waters, sailing from Asia, he began to look about him at the ruins of Greece. ‘Behind me was Aegina, in front of me Megara, on the right the Piraeus, on the left Corinth, cities which had once been prosperous, but now lay shattered ruins before my sight.’ Oppidum cadavera he goes on to call them—corpses of cities! The picture, it will probably be objected, is overdrawn; certainly the ruin of Greece was, by Cicero's time, already a rhetorical commonplace, to be echoed by Horace, Ovid and Seneca in turn. But it was based upon an essential truth. The Saronic Gulf, once the centre of the world, was now, for all that Greece meant, a dead lake lapping about the foundations of dead cities. In that tragic decay—which was not confined to mainland Greece—we are confronted with one of the most urgent problems of ancient history, and one with a special significance for our generation, who were already living in an age of economic, political and spiritual upheaval, even before the bombs began to turn our own cities into shattered ruins.

This, then, is my reason for reopening a subject on which there is scope for such diverse opinion: adeo maxima quaeque ambigua sunt. If any further justification is required, then I will only add that the recent publication of Professor Michael Rostovtzeff's classic study of the social and economic life of the Hellenistic Age is at once an invitation and a challenge.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 64 , November 1944 , pp. 10 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1944

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References

2 See Day, J., An Economic History of Athens under Roman Domination, New York, 1942, 120–4Google Scholar.

3 Rostovtzeff, M., A Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, Oxford, 1941Google Scholar (quoted as HW). I have discussed this masterly work in Class. Rev. lvi 1942 81–4Google Scholar.

4 The earlier volume is, of course, Rostovtzeff's, Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, Oxford, 1926Google Scholar; revised editions in German, Leipzig, 1930, and Italian, Florence, 1933 (quoted, from the English edition, as RE). Cf. also Econ. Hist. Rev. 1930 197–214Google Scholar: ‘The Decay of the Ancient World: its Economic Explanations.’

5 E.g. RE 436 484; cf. 487: ‘Another lesson is that violent attempts at levelling have never helped to uplift the masses.’

6 Reviewing HW in Antiquity xv 1941 398Google Scholar.

7 I have developed this point in an article in Class. Quart. xxxvi 1942 134–5Google Scholar, and xxxvii 1943 1–13, entitled ‘Alcaeus of Messene, Philip V and Rome’; full references are given there.

8 I stress the Laws because this work represents the climax of Plato's political philosophy; but already in the Republic, which was no doubt in the long run far more influential, there is the famous doctrine of the ‘medicinal lie,’ to be employed by rulers ‘for the benefit of the city’ (ii 383 C, the innocent remedial lie; iii 389 B ff., such lies the prerogative of the rulers; 414 B ff., the ‘Phoenician’ lie of class origins; v 459 B.D., marriage lots), the censorship of poetry from Homer onwards (ii 378 C ff.; cf. Laws ii 656 CGoogle Scholar), and a general attitude of authoritarian paternalism.

9 Ehrenberg, V., ‘Aristotle and Alexander's Empire’ in Alexander and the Greeks, Oxford, 1938Google Scholar. This essay should read in conjunction with Rosenberg, A., Rhein. Mus. lxxxii 1933 339–61Google Scholar: ‘Aristoteles über Diktatur und Demokratie (Politik Buch III),’ an acute article which does not, however, in my opinion, serve to invalidate Ehrenberg's thesis.

9a For Athenian policy regarding the granting of citizenship to metics see Balogh, E., Political Refugees in Ancient Greece, Johannesburg, 1943, 48ff.Google Scholar

10 See HW 1115 ff. With misgivings I have kept Rostovtzeff's terminology. It is important to bear in mind that the ‘bourgeoisie’ of the ancient world, as it existed from the time of Plato to the third century A.D., was in vital respects different from the ‘bourgeoisie’ which rose to power in Europe from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries onwards. The sources of wealth and the methods of acquiring and investing it were both different, the industrial basis was never developed, and altogether the ancient class was much less cohesive and purposeful—a difference closely linked up with the use of slave labour power and the backward state of ancient technique. Nevertheless, an alternative expression is hard to find; and provided that this radical difference is borne in mind, there are sufficient analogies to justify and even recommend the use of the same word for both periods.

11 This contrast existed, of course, in such states as Thessaly and Sparta, where a subject race tilled the earth; but the emphasis was on slave and free man, helot and Spartiate, rather than on the specific contrast of town and country.

12 On this topic see Braun, M., History and Romance in Greco-Oriental Literature, Oxford, 1938Google Scholar.

13 Herodotus, vii 102; Aristotle, Politics ii 3. 7. 1265bGoogle Scholar.

14 Cf. HW 1124–5.

15 This is not an absolute rule holding good in every case, as Passerini has shown in Athenaeum xi 1933 309–35Google Scholar; but it is valid as a general account of what happened.

16 Polyb. xxxviii 18. 12 (B-W); cf. Pöhlmann, , Geschichte der sozialen Frage und dts Sozialismus in der antiken Welt. Ed. 3. 1925. I, 335Google Scholar.

17 Plato, , Laws x and xii, 966 C.D.Google Scholar

18 Polyb. vi 56. 6–11. Already Aristotle, Metaph. xii 8. 13. 1074bGoogle Scholar, speaks of the encouragement of the belief in anthropomorphic and theriomorphic gods . In Metaph. ii 3. 1. 995aGoogle Scholar he stresses the strength possessed by even in the face of reason. The context of ideas is, of course, Platonic, The same conclusion is drawn by Plato, in Laws, ii 663Google Scholar E–664 A, where the general belief in myths is put forward by the Athenian as a proof that people can be made to believe virtually anything, to which Clinias' reply is that ‘neither of us could possibly argue against your view.’ Cf. too the view of Critias (of the Thirty) who, in his Sisyphus (Diels, , Fragment, d. Vorsokrat. (ed. Kranz, ), ii 5 p. 386Google Scholar fg. 25), expounded the theory that religion was first invented by some ‘shrewd and wise man’ as a Machiavellian device to preserve men in ways of virtue.

19 For Iambulus' influence on Aristonicus, which may form a partial exception, see HW 808.

20 Baynes, N. H., JRS xxxiii 1943 29–35Google Scholar: ‘The Decline of the Roman Power in Western Europe. Some Modern Explanations.’

21 Cf. also Aristotle, Politics i 13. 13. 1260bGoogle Scholar: ‘The meaner sort of mechanic has a special and separate slavery.’

22 Childe, V. Gordon, Man Makes Himself, London (Thinker's Library), 1941, 231–2Google Scholar.

23 Hasebroek, J., Trade and Politics in Ancient Greece, London, 1933, 40–43Google Scholar. Cf. too Michell, H., The Economic of Ancient Greece, Cambridge, 1940, 10 ffGoogle Scholar.; Aymund, A., Rev. d'hist. de la philosophie etc. (Lille), 1943, 124–146Google Scholar. For the same attitude at Rome see Cicero, de offic. i 150–151.

24 Farrington, B., Modern Quarterly i 1938 23–28Google Scholar: ‘Vesalius and the Ruin of Ancient Medicine’; Proc. Royal Inst. xxxii 1942Google Scholar: ‘The Hand in Healing: a Study in Greek Medicine from Hippocrates to Ramazzini.’

25 This is true to some extent even of the Ionian philosophers: cf. Cornford, F. M., JHS lxii 1942 1–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘Was the Ionian philosophy scientific?’

26 See Last, H., CAH ix 1932 13 and 154Google Scholar.

27 Plato, , Republic viii 6. 551 DGoogle Scholar; cf. Aristotle, , Politics v 12. 1316bGoogle Scholar.

28 Aen. Tact. i 6 ff. xii xiii. See the other similar references quoted by Pöhlmann op. cit. i 335 ff.

29 Cercidas of Megalopolis, the Cynic writer of diatribes, is virtually the only surviving exception; see Dudley, D. R., History of Cynicism, London, 1937, 74–84Google Scholar, and §5 of the article cited in note 7 above.

30 Tarn, W. W., ‘The Social Question in the Third Century’ in The Hellenistic Age (essays by Bury, J.B., Barber, E. A., Bevan, E. and Tarn, W. W.), Cambridge, 1923, 127Google Scholar. One of the few exceptions, Rhodes, was exceptional also in enjoying a particularly favourable economic position.