The Histories by Polybius Robin; Waterfield Robin; McGing Brian

Author:Polybius, Robin; Waterfield, Robin; McGing, Brian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2010-04-14T04:00:00+00:00

For although in the short term he seemed to be giving good advice, it soon emerged that nothing could have been more disgraceful or more pernicious than the policy he advocated.* There is no possession in the world as beautiful or as valuable as a just and fitting peace, but there is also nothing more disgraceful and pernicious than peace that is tainted by iniquity and cowardice.

[32] The oligarchs who formed the Messenian government only ever consulted their short-term interests and were always rather too eager to avoid war. Hence, although they had their fair share of crises and emergencies, and occasionally met with threatening and dangerous situations, they always slipped through the interstices. But this policy of theirs meant that the odds were always stacking up against them, and they became responsible for Messenia’s being racked by terrible calamities.

The way to understand this is, I think, as follows. The Messenians have as their neighbours two of the greatest peoples of the Peloponnese, if not of all Greece—the Arcadians and the Laconians. The Laconians have always been their implacable enemies,* ever since their occupation of Messenia, whereas the Arcadians have always been their friends and protectors. But the Messenians have consistently shrunk from fully accepting the consequences of either their enmity with the Spartans or their friendship with the Arcadians.

So whenever the Spartans were distracted by internal or external warfare, the Messenians were all right, since they remained at peace and enjoyed ‘fair weather’, because Messenia is somewhat out of the way. But when the Spartans had time on their hands and nothing better to do, they fell back on injuring the Messenians. Since the Messenians were incapable of standing up to Spartan military might on their own, and had also failed to take the precaution of ensuring that their friends really would stand by them under all circumstances, they were compelled either to bear the burden of slavery to the Spartans, or to avoid slavery by fleeing with their families, as refugees from their land. This is something that has happened to them several times in the past, within a relatively short period of time.

I hope and pray that the current settled condition that has been grafted, so to speak, onto the Peloponnese may take, and so that the advice I am about to give is redundant. But if things ever change, and there is a recurrence of unrest, I can see only one way in which the Messenians and Megalopolitans can hope to retain their lands, and that is if they federate, which is what Epaminondas wanted to see, and choose full cooperation in each and every situation and endeavour.

[33] This idea may perhaps gain some support from ancient history. For one of the Messenians’ many donations to the Arcadians was a stele that they set up by the altar of Zeus Lycaeus during the

c.650

time of Aristomenes, according to Callisthenes,* with the following inscription:

Time never fails: he has brought to justice the wicked king;

Time and Zeus have brought to justice the traitor of Messene.

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