The study of emotions in the ancient world has grown significantly over the past few decades, establishing itself as a vibrant field of research.[1] Loehr’s Emotion and Historiography in Polybius’ Histories adds to this momentum by examining emotions from a historiographical and post-Classical perspective. It makes a timely contribution to Polybian scholarship, challenging longstanding assumptions about Polybius’ views on emotion, his critique of Phylarchus, and the notion of ‘tragic’ historiography. The volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on modern psychological and sociological theories of emotion to analyse passages in Polybius’ work. Despite the inherent challenges of bridging disciplines, Loehr demonstrates how ancient history can benefit from, while also testing and enriching, ideas and frameworks from other disciplines.
In the Introduction, “Effective Emotion in Historiography”, Loehr begins by addressing Polybius’ well-known critique of Phylarchus for his sensationalist historical writing and disregard for truth, causation, and methodology (Polybius 2.56–63). She then outlines three central arguments that challenge traditional interpretations of this critique and shed new light on Polybius’ purpose. First, Loehr argues that emotions played a significant and legitimate role in Polybius’ conception of history, and that their presence, in his mind, did not inherently undermine the truthfulness of a historical account. Second, she contends that pragmatism, rationality, and morality were not in opposition to emotion in Polybius’ conception; instead, emotions functioned as motivators or causes of action, intrinsically linked to morality and rationality. Finally, she asserts that Polybius saw emotion as a vital and deliberate outcome of reading well-written history, teaching readers to experience emotion appropriately and respond with reason.
Chapter 1, “Fundamentals of Emotion: Social Science, History, and Human Behavior”, then establishes the theoretical groundwork for the volume. Loehr argues that, despite differences in terminology and conceptualisation, modern definitions and theories of emotion can provide useful heuristic frameworks with which to analyse emotion in ancient historiography. Ancient terminology (πάθος, θυμός) and philosophies of emotion are then explored, including divergences in the genres of ancient history and philosophy. Loehr then asserts that Polybius demonstrates both a universalist and a social constructivist conception of emotion. On the one hand, in the Histories all people seem to feel the same emotions regardless of culture, no emotion is a fixed trait of a group or identity (Greek, barbarian), and emotions happen to a person rather than describe one’s inherent nature. On the other hand, Polybius evaluates emotions based on the reasons behind them, their expression, and the response they provoke—elements influenced by social structures and cultural norms. As Loehr observes, in Polybius’ view, “the stereotypical ‘barbarian’ peoples may feel anger similarly to representatives of civilization, but they display barbaric behavior when they express emotion inappropriately, misdirect their response, or respond disproportionately” (p. 33).
Chapter 2, “Individual Emotions in Context: Polybius, Aristotle, and the Classical Historians”, then addresses the individual emotions that appear in the Histories, how they function, how they are distinguished from each other, and whether they are unique to Polybius. It is a section important for its presentation of the empirical evidence that Polybius did not criticize Phylarchus simply for his inclusion of emotion, but rather for the way he that portrayed and used it. Loehr organises her analysis into four categories based on an emotion’s social function: 1) emotions of disapproval, the most prominent cognitive category in Polybius and one which is often connected with moral evaluation—anger, hatred, resentment, indignation, and shame; 2) emotions of anticipation, the emotional terms used most often by Greek historians and ones often connected with political and military affairs—fear and hope; 3) emotions of positive affect, which tend to lack a causal function, but denote the fruition of an action and may lead to negative evaluations—joy and gladness, gratitude, gentleness, and love; and 4) reflective emotions, which function similarly to negative emotions in their connection with moral evaluation, but draw in and teach readers to understand and relate to one another – sympathy, empathy, and pity. Loehr highlights how emotions, particularly anger and hatred, are shown to motivate action and shape the Histories’ narrative by driving political change and instigating war—themes explored further in Chapters 3 and 4. She also considers differences across genres and developments across time: Polybius’ historical and Hellenistic perspective is argued to complicate and broaden the more restrictive definitions of emotion in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, and to expand the use and complexity of emotions seen in his Classical predecessors (Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon), since Polybius depicts them as transient processes rather than fixed traits, and not inherently good or bad. Finally, Polybius is noted as unique for his greater focus on hope, gentleness, and the reflective emotions of sympathy, empathy, and pity.
Chapters 3 and 4 then explore how emotions have an important causal role in Polybius’ Histories. Chapter 3 “Internal State Change: The People’s Moral Emotions” turns to how collective, combined emotions can impact politics with detailed discussion of two key passages from the Histories: 1) Polybius’ theory of state development and change (anacyclosis) in book 6, which most closely approximates the investigations of modern social scientists; and 2) the historical narrative of increasing collective emotion which led to the violent end of the Ptolemaic minister Agathocles and his family. While the first focuses on theoretical conceptions, the latter illustrates the growth and effect of collective emotions from a practical and more messy perspective. In both passages the positive and negative emotions of the people coalesce with reason and morality and lead to changes in governance and improvements in political affairs. Emotions are, therefore, preservers of social morality and catalysts of change. This chapter counters the persistent assumption that emotions for Polybius could only be irrational and detrimental to one’s benefit, instead suggesting that they can present positive ways for a community (even a restrictive, undemocratic one) to develop a sense of collective identity and challenge and affect leadership.
Chapter 4, “Emotions at War: Causal Anger and Justifying War”, examines the role of emotions in warfare and argues that Polybius regarded anger, under certain conditions, as a morally justifiable and rational motivation for war. Importantly, Polybius did not see anger as inherently opposed to strategic prudence or expediency; rather, he believed the two could function in tandem. For example, Carthaginian anger at the injustices of the First Punic War was, in Polybius’ view, a legitimate cause of the Second Punic War, especially as it was combined with strategic planning. Conversely, the anger of the mercenaries during the Libyan or Mercenary War was condemned for its prematurity, rashness, and foundation on personal grievances and self-interest. Expanding on this causal theme, Loehr shows how Polybius viewed emotion as a connective force linking events and wars across time and space. For instance, anger serves as a thread uniting the series of wars between Rome and Carthage, Macedonia, and the Seleucid Empire. In this way, emotion becomes a vital structural element in Polybius’ conception of universal history, providing a causal link that underpins the interconnected nature of historical events.
Chapter 5, “Learning from History: Audience-based Emotion and Conclusions”, is focused on Polybius’ views on the didactic purpose of emotion in history, in terms of how readers should feel about and respond to certain situations, and how they might learn to persuade others to empathize or share emotions with them (Polybius 3.31.10). The investigation explores two of Polybius’ strategies to guide his readers in this regard: 1) using the indefinite pronoun (τις) at key moments to represent the emotional responses of a “normal” person; and 2) documenting the emotional reactions of internal and external observers, who serve as intermediaries between the historical text and the reader. Both methods encourage readers to follow the emotional responses of the characters in the text and of the author. In terms of justifying the latter, Loehr notes that Polybius seems to argue that to write clearly and persuasively with retrospective understanding, a historian must first process their own emotional responses to past events. The key passage of discussion here is Polybius’ account of the Achaean War in Book 38 (pp. 206-208), which speaks to Polybius’ complex understanding of pity and his attempt to persuade his readers (Greeks and Romans) that the Achaeans should be pitied more than the Carthaginians following the Achaean War, because they now had to live with the consequences of their actions. The conclusion to the volume then follows. As Routledge publications place the endnotes and bibliographies at the end of each chapter, only the Index and Index of Passages comprise the end matter.
Inevitably, there are some weakness: there is quite a heavy reliance on anglophone scholarship, and the author omits certain key studies and engages only minimally with developments in the political and literary strands of Polybian studies.[2] It would have been interesting to consider, even if briefly, how the conclusions about emotions here may be complicated by Polybius’ political, rhetorical, and literary aims in certain episodes – his comments on Aristomachus (2.59-60), on Philip at Thermum (5.9-12), and on traitors (18.13-15) are, for instance, all politically loaded and rhetorically shaped. Would his presentation of emotion and character responses have been impacted by these aims? Although it would have been somewhat speculative, there could also have been some consideration of how Polybius’ own experiences influenced his emphasis on anger, resentment, sympathy, empathy, and pity. Are these emotions ones that he felt himself, or ones he wanted to inspire in his captors and readers? Loehr is vague on this matter, despite noting that Polybius paid more attention to these emotions than earlier historians, that anger could be morally just, that he tried to teach readers how to inspire empathy in others (“the greatest aid to life”; Polybius 3.31.10), and that a good historian needed to have processed his own emotional responses to events before writing about them. Finally, the placement of the main conclusion at the end of Chapter 5, rather than in a dedicated concluding section, feels somewhat unsatisfying. The Index is also a bit too light-touch, as it lacks entries for the individual emotions discussed in the volume, which would have enhanced its usability.
Overall, however, Loehr persuasively demonstrates the importance and validity of emotion in Polybius’ Histories, contributing to the revision of his reputation as a historian with little tolerance for emotion in his work. She bolsters the argument that morality held a central position in his historical narrative and enriches our understanding of his didactic purpose, his use of cultural politics, and his psychological approach. Loehr also offers fresh interpretations of well-studied sections of Polybius, including his critique of Phylarchus, the anacyclosis and mixed constitution, the First and Second Punic Wars, Philip V’s sack of Thermum, Agathocles’ violent downfall, and the Achaean War. Her work challenges the enduring notion of “tragic” historiography and underscores the nuanced role of emotion within Polybius’ historical methodology.
Notes
[1] See, for instance, D. Konstan (2006), The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature; A. Chaniotis (2012), Unveiling Emotions; Chaniotis & P. Ducrey (2013), Emotions in Greece and Rome; D. Cairns & D. Nelis (2017), Emotions in the Classical World: Methods, Approaches, and Direction; Cairns (2019), A Cultural History of the Emotions in Antiquity; D. Spatharas (2019), Emotions, Persuasion, and Public Discourse in Classical Athens; Chaniotis (2021), Arousal, Display, and Performance of Emotions in the Greek World; G. Kazantzidis & Spatharas (2018) Hope in Ancient Literature, History, and Art and (2024) Memory and Emotion in Antiquity.
[2] For instance, Moreno Leoni’s 2017 Entre Roma y el mundo griego, and John Thornton’s 2020 Polibio, are missing, as well as Giannopoulou’s article “Emotions and politics in Polybios’ Book Six” and Giannopoulos’ article “‘Autopatheia’: personal empathic experience, didactic mission, and reader-shaped empathy in Polybios” in Chaniotis (2021) (n. 1 above).