BMCR 2009.06.44: Quillin on Eckstein, Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome

Arthur M. Eckstein, Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise
of Rome.  Berkeley:  University of California Press, 2006.  Pp. 369.
ISBN 9780520246188.  $49.95.

Reviewed by James Quillin, Lake Forest Academy ([email protected])
Word count:  3123 words
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In a body of scholarship spanning three decades, Arthur Eckstein
(hereafter "E.") has established himself as one of the world's foremost
scholars on Roman imperialism in the middle republican period. His new
book is dedicated to his teacher, Erich Gruen, and continues the
tradition of Gruen's masterly The Hellenistic World and the Coming of
Rome (1984) by emphasizing the agency of Rome's neighbors in explaining
Roman military policy. On one level, both works are critiques of
William Harris' highly influential War and Imperialism in Republican
Rome (1979), which saw Roman imperialism as the result of the uniquely
bellicose culture of the Roman people. However, E.'s new book breaks
sharply with Gruen's in its espousal of a reductive explanation for
Roman behavior. While Gruen tended to look to the particulars of every
situation in explaining Roman decisions to go to war, E. presents us
with a single fundamental reason for Roman militarism and aggression,
namely, the anarchy of the Mediterranean interstate system.

In critiquing Harris, E. asks a crucial question: How can one argue
that Roman aggressive militarism was somehow exceptional without
explicitly comparing Rome to its Mediterranean contemporaries? E.
concludes that, while Rome was extremely warlike and brutal, it was in
no way uniquely so, and the equally or even surpassingly aggressive
nature of its Mediterranean neighbors necessitated that it be so. But
E. is no mere Roman apologist--he argues that all the states of the
ancient Mediterranean were trapped in the same "cruel logic", a logic
that was imposed by the lack of any effective law or order within the
Mediterranean community of states. To demonstrate, E. presents a series
of chapters surveying interstate relations among the city-states of
classical Greece (Chapter 3), the Hellenistic kingdoms (Chapter 4), and
the communities of Italy and the western Mediterranean prior to the
second century BCE (Chapter 5). Chapter 6 situates Roman culture within
this Mediterranean context. Finally, E. builds on this foundation to
make a strong case for the "nonexceptionalism" of Rome's response to
the threats from Philip V and Antiochus III, which precipitated the
extension of its imperium into the eastern Mediterranean in the early
second century (Chapter 7). The great attraction of his argument lies
in its ability to synthesize Harris' strongest evidence, which reveals
the centrality of warmaking in Roman culture, with Gruen's most
convincing case studies, which tend to demonstrate the lack of
conscious imperialism in Roman decision-making. As E. notes repeatedly,
his insight is not new (Mommsen made a number of similar points long
ago), but E. articulates his argument so clearly and supports it with
such a wealth of evidence that no future analysis of Rome's rise to
power will safely ignore it.

In Chapter 1, "Political Science and Roman History", E. anchors his
explanation in the influential Realist tradition of international
relations theory, exemplified by the work of Kenneth Waltz. The states
of the Mediterranean found themselves in a world without a higher power
to enforce international law and adjudicate disputes, that is, in a
situation of interstate anarchy. Under these conditions, so the
Realists argue, a state's very survival depends on its ability to
compete militarily. Realists argue that there is no security without
power, and that all states are therefore involved in a desperate
competition for power. Thus, it was ultimately the international system
in which Rome found itself that was the primary cause of its behavior.

Chapter 2 ("Realist Paradigms of Interstate Behavior") usefully
summarizes the Realist model for the readers who are not political
scientists. In a nutshell, security comes only through power, and, as
one state achieves the extra margin of power necessary to create the
impression of security in the awareness of its own imperfect knowledge
of the world, this results in a corresponding reduction of perceived
security among the other states, creating a "security dilemma."
Interstate politics is understood by the participants as a zero-sum
game. In such a world, it is "natural" for states to seek power, and
differences between states lie not in their motivations but only in
their capabilities. All states are equally "revisionist" in their quest
for power and essentially imperialist in their intentions. Occasionally
"unlimited revisionist" states, which seek universal dominion, emerge,
such as Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany, which do exhibit
exceptional militarism, but E. insists that Rome never fit this mold.

In Chapter 3, "Interstate Relations in Classical Greece", E.
demonstrates the inadequacy of norms, arbitration, and treaties for
ameliorating the evils of interstate anarchy and shows that war and
militarized competition were virtually constant. Thus, classical Greece
was a "militarized and multipolar anarchy" (47), approaching bipolarity
in the run-up to the Peloponnesian War and a weak unipolarity
immediately following, but at other times reverting to multipolarity.
E. certainly presents some supportive statistics (forty known cases of
states being destroyed (53); Athens at war two out of every three years
from 497 to 338 (47)), but in general this chapter is based less on the
accumulation of in-depth case studies than one might have hoped. A
great weight is placed on the analysis of Thucydides, including his
confirmation of the Realist principles that all states are functionally
similar, that fear is the predominant motivator of policy decisions,
and that the structure of the interstate system is the primary cause of
conflict. Yet, as E. himself admits, most modern Realist theorists
consider Thucydides their "intellectual ancestor" (48) and so his
analysis of events should take a second position to the testimony of
other sources as way of avoiding circularity. E. does exploit
Herodotus, Plato, and other sources, but not in the systematic manner
with which he approaches Thucydides, and some rich veins are left
virtually untouched, including Aristotle and the Attic orators. In
fact, it was a common claim among ancient observers that external
threats promote internal stability, presumably by lessening the
relative urgency of centrifugal forces within the state such as class
and status inequalities (e.g., Plato Laws 698b-c; Aristotle Pol. 1308a
20-30, 1334a 5-9; Pol. 6.18 and 57; Livy 34.9.4). This would imply a
powerful domestic incentive for political leaders to err on the side of
belligerence in interstate relations.[[1]]

In Chapter 4, "Interstate Relations in the Hellenistic Age", E.
demonstrates that the situation of militarized interstate anarchy that
prevailed in the classical period persisted into the Hellenistic age.
He sides with Pierre Le/ve^que and M. M. Austin against earlier
interpretations that saw a rough balance of power and curtailment of
limitless ambitions on the part of the diadochoi after about 280. On
the contrary, international law continued to be ineffective, and the
need for self-help and reputation-building among rulers was greater
than ever. Furthermore, the behavior was no more indicative of a
"status quo" attitude among the smaller federal states, kingdoms, and
city-states.

In the same chapter, E. attempts to place Polybius "among the ancient
founders of the realist approach" (117). He argues that the plan of
Philip V and Antiochus III to build a bipolar imperial system in the
eastern Mediterranean was flawed by the monarchs' failure to perceive
that the entire Mediterranean had now become interconnected, forming a
single geopolitical system--a point emphasized by Polybius. The reading
of Polybius is persuasive, but the attribution of the Realist label
will fail to convince many. For instance, does not Polybius' deep faith
in the importance of moral conduct and education ("a fund of moral
exemplars" 117) open an obvious case for counting him among the ancient
founders of Neoliberalism or Contructivism? If Polybius were really an
ancient Realist, what would be the point of such moral teachings?
Still, E. is correct to point out that Polybius has been largely
ignored by modern theorists, and it will be a welcome development if
E.'s book brings more attention from modern theorists to this important
text. The story of Rome's expansion to the East and, importantly to my
mind, the story of the changes wrought on Rome's domestic politics as a
result of imperial expansion have received relatively little attention
from modern political scientists.

Chapter 5, "Terrores Multi", focuses on Rome and its rivals in Italy
and continues the style of detailed analytical narrative begun in
Chapter 4 with the discussion of the crisis in the Hellenistic world
after 207. In separate sections on Rome's interactions with the
Etruscans, Celts, Samnites, Tarentines, and Carthaginians, E.
convincingly supports his main points: Rome's militarism was not
exceptional among the communities of Italy and the western
Mediterranean; the anarchic conditions of the system created a security
dilemma for all of the states within it; and international law,
treaties, and diplomacy were ineffective in creating security. E.'s
survey of the dense history of Italy through the third century offers a
wealth of cases illustrating various dynamics and models of interstate
behavior. He is most effective when pointing out the similarities in
the behavior of Rome and its neighbors. However, he has a tendency to
go beyond this and try to create the impression of Rome not only as
unexceptional but also as exceptionally moderate in terms of its
aggressiveness. Thus, E. points out that Rome was apparently considered
by the Capuans to be a less threatening great power than the Samnites,
but he fails to acknowledge that the same logic reveals that, for
instance, by the time of the battle of Sentinum, Rome was considered by
a large coalition of Italians to be a threat of unprecedented
magnitude. Examples like this seem to me to obscure the essential
Realist argument that even seemingly unprovoked aggression can be
understood as a "natural" response to the perpetual quest for power
under conditions of interstate anarchy.

Chapter 6, "Rome and Roman Militarism", presents a theoretical attack
on unit attribute theory, the practice of explaining wars as the result
of particular features of individual states. E. points out that "large
and enduring structures that have developed over time are at least as
likely to influence the behavior of individual actors within those
structures as the other way around" (187) and that, therefore, the
anarchic interstate system is more likely to influence the behavior of
individual states than the reverse.

E. also appeals to the internal discourse of Rome concerning the
importance of iustum bellum and the pax deorum, the necessity of
fighting only defensive wars, and the emphasis on salus as evidence
that the Romans did not seek war for its own sake. The absence of such
discourse among, say, the Hellenistic monarchs does tend to make Rome
appear the more moderate. But E. goes too far in citing examples where
domestic opponents of war in Rome criticized wars on the grounds that
they were unjust as proof that the Romans did not seek war for its own
sake (226-28). These same examples have been used by others to prove
the opposite. Furthermore, the fact that one does not find such
criticisms directed at the Hellenistic monarchs undoubtedly has as much
to do with the different types of political discourse allowable in
monarchies and republics as with a distinction in popular attitudes
toward war. Similarly questionable is his argument from silence to
demonstrate the lack of moral discourse about war in other ancient
states (239).

E. also argues against the idea that Rome was transformed into an
imperialist machine in the mid-fourth century. Here again his strongest
argument is the lack of exceptionalism in the Roman case: these
pressures may have been felt, but the overwhelming motive for war was
still security, and Rome's behavior was still little different from
that of its peers.

In the final chapter, "Roman Exceptionalism and Nonexceptionalism", E.
provides his explanation for why, if Rome was not exceptional in its
dedication to making war, it nevertheless was exceptionally successful
in the interstate competition for power in the Mediterranean. His
answer is persuasive. The exceptional principle that provided the
foundation for this state was "the divorce of citizen status from
ethnicity or geographical location", an idea which allowed the Romans
to create a polity whose population dwarfed that of any other ancient
city-state (254-55), and that, as Mommsen long ago observed, came
closer than any other ancient polity to creating a "unified
nation-state" (257).

The remainder of the chapter is devoted to demonstrating how
"nonexceptional" Rome's decision to make war on Philip V in 200 was.
This decision was, arguably, the great pivot point, when Rome made its
first major intervention into the Greek world, which inevitably led to
further entanglements and eventually imperial domination. E.'s
interpretation is based on his arguments in favor of the historicity of
the pact between Philip V and Antiochus III, which I find compelling,
and in favor of the sincerity of the Roman fear of Hellenistic
aggression, which I find at least plausible. Yet, while I can accept
E.'s basic reconstruction of events, I find his analysis incomplete in
a significant way. Ultimately, everything that I find unconvincing in
this book derives from E.'s consistent assumption of states as unitary
decision-making actors.[[2]] For instance, if one accepts the
historicity of P. Sulpicius Galba's speech to the voters prior to the
centuriate assembly's vote for war in 200, as E. does (281-82), then
one must also accept that Galba seems to have distorted the Senate's
reasons for going to war, exaggerating the immediacy of the threat of
an invasion of Italy.[[3]]

In my opinion, E.'s application of Realist theory to the case of Rome's
rise presents a major breakthrough in the discussion and challenges the
assumptions and conclusions not only of Harris but also of most other
previous scholarship, including, ironically, E.'s own interpretations
of Roman behavior. He differs from Maurice Holleaux and Arnold J.
Toynbee in that the fear of the Hellenistic kings, which they saw as
irrational, E. sees as essentially well-founded. Gruen's is the best
example of the pericentric argument, which holds that Rome was drawn
into universal empire unwillingly and on an ad hoc basis by the
interstate rivalries of the Greek East. However, Realist theory implies
that there was a more consistent underlying logic to Roman
policymaking. Finally, E. himself argues consistently for the validity
and sincerity of Roman fear and defensive thinking. Yet if the Realist
model of interstate anarchy does apply here, and if the unavoidable
fact of life in that world was that military dominance was the only
guarantee of a state's survival, then it would not necessarily be the
case that every aggressive act on the part of Rome had a specific
threat and a sincere defensive rationale behind it. But E. never admits
a case like this. It is significant in this regard that E.'s analysis
stops after the Syrian War of 191-188 BCE. Consideration of later
developments, such as the Third Punic War and the wars in Spain of the
later second century, would have forced him to deal with these
complexities.

E. has done an admirable job of paying close attention to the indirect
implications of Realist theory and finding correlations in the ancient
evidence. For instance, this study demonstrates well that states with
highly diverse forms of government, from democratic Athens to the
Hellenistic monarchies to Republican Rome, all exhibit "functional
similarity" in terms of their behavior within the interstate system,
which is a key prediction of Realist theory. His logical rigor in
testing the implications of a modern theory against the ancient
evidence is commendable and all too uncommon among works of ancient
political history. However, E. also states his intention to use the
evidence from the ancient Mediterranean to "test" the Realist model
against several alternative modern theories of international politics.
This project is less successful since falsifying alternative theories
requires more than simply demonstrating the anarchy and warfare that
Realism predicts. While an entire chapter is devoted to elucidating the
logic of Realist theory, the alternatives each receive a mere paragraph
of explanation, followed quickly by a review of the Realist rebuttals
(29-33). An effective falsification of a theory requires a good faith
effort to match it to the evidence, a function not adequately fulfilled
by the cursory discussions sprinkled throughout the empirical chapters.


In addition, the analytical emphasis on states as irreducible actors
seems invalid, for what are states but the larger systems within which
decision-makers, be they individuals, dominant factions, or winning
coalitions, act? Thus, while it is true that the interstate system
weighs heavily on the actions of states, so must the intrastate system
weigh on the actions of decision-makers. In other words,
decision-makers serve at least two masters at the system-level, the
pressures of either of which may be determinative at any given moment.
The tragic inability of certain states (such as Corinth and Tarentum)
to avoid precipitating their own downfalls at the hands of much
stronger states strikes me as evidence that the security of the state
was not always the primary motivator of state actions. E. sees support
for the opposite conclusion in the fact that Roman warmaking slows down
and Roman elite culture becomes less militaristic as the pax Romana
comes into existence in the later second century (188). Yet this could
just as easily be explained as the result of a change in the intrastate
system that rendered military aggression less attractive to domestic
decision-makers. In fact, the relative frequency of war even after the
establishment of unipolarity in the Mediterranean, including seemingly
elective wars like the Third Punic War, the Spanish Wars of the later
second century BCE, Caesar's Gallic campaign, and Crassus' Parthian
expedition, raises more difficulties for the Realist explanation than
the partial demilitarization of the Roman elite solves.

In spite of my reservation about the Realist model as E. employs it,
his critique thoroughly demolishes the argument that Rome's rise was
due to an exceptional bellicosity and militarism. E.'s collection of
comparative evidence for militarist cultural and institutional features
in ancient states from throughout the Mediterranean is very convincing.
Each piece of evidence of Rome's supposedly exceptional dedication to
aggressive expansion is placed in the context of an impressive
abundance of similar evidence from other Mediterranean states.

Realism is a highly pessimistic view of the world. It argues that we
can only hope for two possible situations: frequent war or imperial
domination. When political leaders accept this formula, the theory
becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet E. is correct to assert that
Realism is the dominant paradigm in international relations today. As a
classicist, I read E.'s book with delight, but as a political
scientist, I am concerned about its influence on a non-specialist
audience whose worldview the book too confidently reinforces. Thus I
hope that this book will stimulate the production of other similarly
sophisticated studies of ancient international relations that give full
consideration and a fair hearing to alternative theories that envision
the possibilities for developing a world that is more reasonable,
cooperative, and non-zero-sum.

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Notes:


1.   On the centrality of stasis in ancient Greek political thought,
see J. Ober, "Political Conflicts, Political Debates, and Political
Thought", in R. Osborne (ed.), Classical Greece 500-323 B.C. (Oxford
2000), 111-38.

2.   A measure of just how far E. has internalized the "single actor"
assumption of the Realists is revealed by his use of Elijah Anderson's
analysis of the behavior of inner-city youths (Code of the Street [New
York 1999]) as a model for the behavior of individual states. See A.
Eckstein, "Brigands, Emperors, and Anarchy", Int. Hist. Rev. 22 (2000):
862-79.

3.   See J. Seibert, "Invasion aus dem Osten: Trauma, Propaganda, oder
Erfindung der Roemer?" in C. Schubert and K. Broderson (edd.), Rom und
der griechische Osten. (Stuttgart 1995), 237-48; J. Quillin,
"Information and Empire: Domestic Fear Propaganda in Republican Rome,
200-146 B.C.E.", The Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics
160 (2004): 765-85; and J. Quillin, "The Authenticity, Impact, and
Sincerity of the Speech of P. Sulpicius Galba (Livy 31.7)" (unpublished
paper; email me for a draft).