Leaving The State of Nature Polybius On

Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek AND
ROMAN Political Thought 37 (2020) 9-43

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Leaving the State of Nature: Polybius on

Resentment and the Emergence of Morals and
Political Order
Benjamin Straumann
New York University, NY, USA and University of Zurich, Switzerland
benjamin.straumann@nyu.edu
Abstract
The possibility of cooperation and the stability of political order are long-standing
problems. Polybius, well known for his Histories analysing the expansion of Rome
and his description of the Roman constitution, also offers an intriguing social and
political theory that covers ground from psycho-anthropological micro-foundations
to institution-based political order, providing a genealogy of morals and political order
that is best understood in game-theoretical terms. In this paper I try to give such an
interpretation. Polybius’ naturalistic, proto-game theoretical views show similarities
with Hume, Smith and especially Hobbes’ doctrine of sovereignty by acquisition.
However, Polybius is original in crucial regards, giving a motivationally plausible
account of institutional and especially constitutional solutions to moral and politi-
cal problems. Constitutional order, for Polybius, embodies and makes possible in the
first place a kind of political reason that cannot be had individually. Polybian politi-
cal theory thus offers interesting solutions to problems concerning moral motivation,
collective action, and the conditions for political order, as well as the explanation and
character of institutions.
Keywords
Polybius – Thomas Hobbes – state of nature – cooperation – political order – game

theory
The ideas of the Greek historian Polybius (c. 200-118 BCE) about political
order in general and the Roman constitution in particular are original and
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10 Straumann
anticipate attempts by later political thinkers at understanding the possibility

of political order. Polybius presents an account that is in some regard simi-
lar to, but interestingly different from, those presented by important political
philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), David Hume (1711-1776), or
Adam Smith (1723-1790). Polybius is particular among ancient writers in giv-
ing a view of constitutional order that is interested, primarily, in institutions
as opposed to virtue. He also provides an entirely naturalistic psychological
micro-foundation for his political theory that seeks to explain the very pos-
sibility of constitutional order by way of an evolutionary, gradualist, account
of its genealogy.
Polybius offers us a normatively attractive account of how political order
is possible. He starts with plausible anthropological premises and then for-
mulates a solution to the problem of how humans can transcend the state of
nature and establish a state. Not only does this solution lend itself to being
formulated in game-theoretical terms,1 but also I believe that Polybius himself
can be shown to have understood cooperation and political order in such a
way. His is not a eudaemonistic view of the purpose of the state. Polybius’ solu-
tion to the possibility of political order is attractive insofar as it self-consciously
seeks to stay within the constraints of certain empirical human motivational
traits. If we agree with the philosopher Thomas Nagel in thinking that a politi-
cal ideal is ‘utopian if reasonable individuals cannot be motivated to live by it’,2
Polybius’ views may seem plausible: reasonable individuals can be motivated
to live by it. Polybius provides a subtle moral and political psychology that is
true to what we know about humans but, at the same time, is not ‘completely
tied down to individual motives’.3 Rather, he offers a normative ideal of a moral
theory that can be achieved by way of an institutional solution.
Polybius’ account of moral motivation and justice shows both the pos-
sibility as well as the necessity of political institutions. He solves a range of
moral problems with political means. Political institutions are necessary
in order to implement justice, and an empirically plausible view of moti-
vation makes these institutions possible. A plausible moral psychology
explains, on the micro-level, the enabling conditions of political cooperation:
how the state can come about in the first place. Polybius then goes on to show
the importance of political institutions, as opposed to virtues or individual
1 In this regard, my argument runs counter to E. Posner, ‘The Constitution of the Roman
Republic: A Political Economy Perspective’, John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics
Working Paper, 540 (2010), pp. 1-35, p. 30, accessed Oct. 28, 2019 from http://www.law
.uchicago.edu/Lawecon/index.html.
2 T. Nagel, Equality and Partiality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 21.
3 Nagel, Equality and Partiality, p. 21.
Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek AND ROMAN Political Thought 37 (2020) 9-43
Leaving the State of Nature 11
moral qualities. While his moral psychology anticipates Adam Smith’s account
of the evolution of moral sentiments in some ways, Polybius may at the
same time be said to have anticipated concerns of the ‘new institutionalism’
in social science. The chief task of the historian to Polybius is explanation
(Polyb. 12.25b).4 His interest is in the necessary legal-institutional framework
of a stable political order. Polybius puts forward a concept of constitution that
provides a foundation on which all the other institutions of the state rest. His
political theory, then, covers the whole bandwidth from individual motiva-
tional psychology to a powerful institutional account of the stability and jus-
tice of political order. This is so because according to Polybius there cannot be
an explanation of actions and higher-order phenomena without accounting
for their underlying causes (aitiai). And these causes are the reasons people
have for action, their preferences. For it is (Polyb. 3.6) ‘by these, and the calcu-
lations (sullogismoi) to which they give rise, that men are led to decide upon a
particular line of conduct’.5
This paper is in three sections. The first gives an account of Polybius’ geneal-
ogy of morals and government. As we will see, he in various regards anticipates
concerns of Scottish enlightenment thinkers, but his approach is different in
subtle ways and deserves to be taken seriously in its own right. Polybius also
shows a keen awareness of some of the problems Thomas Hobbes encoun-
tered when trying to account for the establishment of political order, and some
of Hobbes’ ideas will therefore be touched upon. In the second section I dis-
cuss Polybius’ explanation of how the state of nature can be transcended. The
third presents what Polybius claimed was an empirically tested framework for
(limited) political stability and justice: his theory of the balanced constitu-
tion, which gives us a concept of normative constitutionalism that is also the
description of an order in equilibrium.
1 Polybius on the State of Nature
It is a commonplace among historicists that neither our normative conceptual

apparatus nor our emotional makeup is constant. The truth of this Heraclitean
view can safely be admitted, at least when it comes to our nature and our hard-
wired instincts in a time frame large enough to reflect evolutionary change.
However, when we look at the time-frame historians are usually dealing with,
4 Bare facts may be of interest, but it is only when a causal explanation is given that history
becomes useful.
5 This could be seen as the Samuelsonian view that decisions reveal preferences.
12 Straumann
that is to say from the late Bronze Age to the present day, historicist flux no lon-
ger sounds prima facie plausible. The view that human nature is universal and
basically unchanged ever since homo sapiens arrived on the scene has been
eloquently defended, most famously by David Hume.6 Comparing empirical
observations about human behavior, instinct and motivation in our present
day with earlier anthropological views, such as those put forward by Polybius,
may put us in a better position to gauge the extent to which we are indeed deal-
ing with anthropological constants.
Empirical evidence for human cooperation, even in the absence of a state
or other centralised coercive mechanisms, seems to show that a stable amount
of people regularly exhibit resentment vis-à-vis free-riding and other behav-
iour that is perceived to be unjust. Those resentful of free-riding have been
shown willing to punish free-riders and incur costs doing so. This kind of
altruistic punishment, fueled by resentment, helps to explain the possibility
of cooperation even among people who interact without repetition and are
genetically unrelated. A propensity for altruistic punishment has been shown to
exist in recently conducted experiments. As the authors of an important study
explain, if:
those who free ride on the cooperation of others are punished, coopera-
tion may pay … Everybody in the group will be better off if free riding is
deterred, but nobody has an incentive to punish the free riders. Thus, the
punishment of free riders constitutes a second-order public good.
The problem of second-order public goods can be solved if enough
humans have a tendency for altruistic punishment, that is, if they are
motivated to punish free riders even though it is costly and yields no
material benefits for the punisher.7
In other words, the problem of certain public goods may be solvable if enough
people happen to behave altruistically in the relevant sense.8 Of course, this
6 D. Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, ed. T. L. Beauchamp (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 2000), p. 64. Cf. S. K. Wertz, ‘Hume, History, and Human Nature’, Journal of
the History of Ideas, 36.3 (1975), pp. 481-96. Thucydides 1.22 shares the view. For a recent view
that humans might still be genetically evolving, see J. T. Stock, ‘Are Humans Still Evolving?’,
EMBO Reports, 9 Supplement 1 (2008), pp. S51-4.
7 E. Fehr and S. Gächter, ‘Altruistic Punishment in Humans’, Nature, 415 (2002), pp. 137-40,
p. 137.
8 For an argument that cooperation may be possible without strong coercive institutions and
without altruism, see B. Skyrms, The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004). Skyrms argues that the state of nature is not a prisoners’
dilemma, but a coordination game (stag hunt). However, Skyrms does not take into account
study can hardly be said to have universal application, and more recent empir-
ical studies across human societies have shown that there are considerable
cultural differences when it comes to the possibility of altruistic punishment
and the willingness to cooperate.9 They also seem to show that cooperation in
the absence of (altruistic) punishment is impossible to sustain in larger popu-
lations, and cooperation in repeated public goods games could be sustained
by means of altruistic punishment only in some subject pools.10 On the other
hand, Josiah Ober has recently provided further evidence for the possibility of
cooperation and the potential importance of altruistic punishment at least in
some contexts. Ober argues that many of the poleis of ancient Greece managed
to establish cooperation and effective collective action, even in the absence
of a central political authority and third-party enforcement of punishment.11
Altruistic punishment, along with endemic wars, ideology and population size,
Ober believes, may have been a factor which would help to explain Greek moti-
vation to cooperate at scale.12
How is altruistic punishment supposed to work? With the threat of pun-
ishment hanging over their heads, potential free-riders have reason to think
twice. What originally looked like a prisoners’ dilemma could be converted,
through altruistic punishment, into an assurance game with a social optimum
that is also a preferred equilibrium. Here is a two-person13 prisoners’ dilemma:
the difficulties that arise with n-person games; in very large populations, individuals
may always want to shirk, which can turn n-player assurance games back into prisoners’
dilemmas.
9 J. Henrich et al., ‘Costly Punishment across Human Societies’, Science, 312 (2006),
pp. 1767-70.
10 B. Herrmann et al., ‘Antisocial Punishment across Societies’, Science, 319.7 (2008),
pp. 1362-7.
11 J. Ober, The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015),
ch. 3.
12 Ober, The Rise and Fall, p. 68. Of course, the very ability to wage war seems to presup-
pose a certain ability of collective action. There might lurk a hidden variable here: trust
and the shadow of the future due to the presence of state institutions and constitutional
order in the Polybian sense. For an interpretation of archaic Greek tyranny as creat-
ing, unintentionally, the conditions of possibility for democracy, see R. K. Fleck and
F. A. Hanssen, ‘How Tyranny Paved the Way to Democracy: The Democratic Transition in
Ancient Greece’, Journal of Law and Economics, 56.2 (2013), pp. 389-416. Polybius, as we
will see, might have found this view congenial.
13 For an argument why pervasive distrust makes it unnecessary to imagine an n-person
public goods game instead of the two-person prisoners’ dilemma, see A. Hüttemann,
‘Naturzustand und Staatsvertrag bei Hobbes’, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, 58.1
(2004), pp. 29-53.
14 Straumann
I.
Prisoners’ dilemma cooperate defect
cooperate 3, 3 1, 4
defect 4, 1 2, 2
The threat of altruistic punishment reduces the free-riding benefit to the extent
that the socially optimal outcome can at least potentially be achieved. Taking
altruistic punishment into account, we may be able to transform the prisoners’
dilemma into something that would look more like an assurance game (or stag
hunt), where cooperation is more attractive than lone defection (because the
threat of punishment pushes down the expected value of defection):
II.
Assurance cooperate defect
cooperate 4, 4 1, 3
defect 3, 1 2, 2
One can envisage a scenario where altruistic punishment is even more per-
vasive so as to reach not just lone defectors who defect on cooperators and
push down their expected value, but all defectors. Now we find there are no
longer two equilibria, but one unique Nash equilibrium instead, cooperation.14
Cooperation becomes the rational choice no matter what the other
player does:
14 One could even imagine a situation where the reputational problems of defection make
lone defection even less attractive than lone cooperation. This is equivalent to what
Taylor calls ‘pure positive altruism’: M. Taylor, The Possibility of Cooperation (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987).
III.
Cooperation game cooperate defect
cooperate 4, 4 2, 3
defect 3, 2 1, 1
Let us briefly pause to consider the implications. Repetition and altruistic pun-
ishment seem to have the potential to turn a (Hobbesian) state of nature from
an unpleasant prisoners’ dilemma into a cooperative endeavor,15 without the
help of centralised government and outside enforcement. The enforcement
threats are already there, inside the emotional makeup of the inhabitants of
the state of nature. This would also imply that the many problems to do with
how one is to interpret Hobbes’ transformation of the natural pre-political
condition into the artifice of the state would elegantly vanish. Cooperation
arises spontaneously without the state.
Remember that if one interprets Hobbes’ state of nature as a prisoners’
dilemma, the rationality of its inhabitants creates conflict and makes coopera-
tion inconceivable. If we think of irrational passions such as glory-seeking as
the engine of conflict, on the other hand, then it might be that rational indi-
viduals in the state of nature actually converge on a cooperative solution, if it
was not for the interruption of their reasoning by their own passions, or for
the trust problem generated by other people’s irrationality.16 On the account
15 If we interpret Hobbes’ state of nature as a prisoners’ dilemma, which is a plausible but

not of course an undisputed interpretation. Cf. D. Gauthier, The Logic of Leviathan: The
Moral and Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); J. Hampton,
Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986);
G. S. Kavka, Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1986); Hüttemann, ‘Naturzustand und Staatsvertrag bei Hobbes’; P. Piirimäe, ‘The
Explanation of Conflict in Hobbes’s Leviathan’, Trames, 10.1 (2006), pp. 3-21.
16 For a lucid comparison of the ‘rationality account’ of conflict in the state of nature with
the ‘passions account’ of conflict, see Hampton, Hobbes, ch. 2, who argues in favour of
shortsightedness as the most plausible reason for conflict. It is not obvious that the ratio-
nality and passions accounts are inconsistent, as Hampton claims. The passions account
need not necessarily (p. 68) ‘have us think reason actually counsels cooperation’; it may
simply compound the problem posed by the rationality account by compounding the
trust problem in the state of nature. The passions account only supports the rationality of
cooperation if we take Hobbes to accept a theory of iterated prisoners’ dilemma games in
the state of nature, but I doubt he can be so interpreted; Hobbes may well make the case
that given conditions in the state of nature, iteration will be finite.
16 Straumann
presented in the last matrix (III), passions such as altruistic punishment actu-
ally help bring about cooperation, and they are in turn supported by reason.
Altruistic punishment makes payoffs even in one-shot games look less like pris-
oners’ dilemmas, and repetition may help in addition to bring about coopera-
tion through trigger strategies. Conventions and cooperation are established
without the sovereign.
Now let us compare this with Polybius’ theory of the origins of civilisation
and political organisation (politeiai). Polybius is not a philosopher, but he is
an analytic historian who is philosophically educated and convinced of the
timeless importance of analytic historiography.17 He is also concerned with
explaining causal relationships and formulates a political theory based on a
sophisticated and plausible anthropology (Polyb. 6.2.8-9).18 Polybius is there-
fore both historian and political theorist. At first sight, it would seem that there
is a large overlap between Polybius’ view of the pre-political stage of human
development and the one just sketched. Polybius, too, lets resentment or
indignation play an important role and may thus seem inclined prima facie to
support an account of cooperation in the state of nature that can do without
coercive government, if not without some moralised emotions.
Polybius starts out by describing humans governed purely by instinct, like
other animals, and where leadership depended on bodily strength (ischus)
alone. Humans must have lived in herds, Polybius conjectures, like other weak
animals, and they must have subjected themselves to the strongest among
them as their monarchic leader. At some point, however, this purely instinctual
stage is gradually transformed through living together in society, habit and, it
17 Recent scholarship on Polybius includes: N. Miltsios, The Shaping of Narrative in Polybius

(Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013); B. Gibson and T. Harrison (eds.), Polybius and His World:
Essays in Memory of F.W. Walbank (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); C. Smith and
L. M. Yarrow (eds.), Imperialism, Cultural Politics, and Polybius (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2012); F. K. Maier, ‘Überall mit dem Unerwarteten rechnen’: die Kontingenz his-
torischer Prozesse bei Polybios (Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 2012); D. W. Baronowski
and D. Walter, Polybius and Roman Imperialism (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2011);
B. McGing, Polybius’ Histories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); M-R. Guelfucci,
‘Polybe, le regard politique, la structure des Histoires et la construction du sens’, Cahiers
des études anciennes, 47 (2010), pp. 329-57; C. B. Champion, Cultural Politics in Polybius’s
Histories (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); A. M. Eckstein, Moral Vision in
the Histories of Polybius (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). For earlier work,
see F. W. Walbank, ‘Polybian Studies, c. 1975-2000’, in F. W. Walbank (ed.), Polybius, Rome
and the Hellenistic World: Essays and Reflections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002), pp. 1-27; P. Pédech, La méthode historique de Polybe (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1964).
18 In what follows, translations will be by W. R. Paton, rev. by Walbank and Habicht, with
occasional adaptations.
seems, the development of language.19 As a consequence of a slow process that

involves inductive reasoning from observation, the concepts (ennoia) of good-
ness and justice as well as their opposites arise (Polyb. 6.5.4-10).
Since men are at this point in their evolution distinguished from other ani-
mals by their rationality (nous kai logismos), they will – unlike other animals –
notice misbehaviour by others. Such misbehaviour will be felt as a negative
emotion, and will become the object of rational scrutiny and calculation. The
relationship between emotion and reason does not become entirely clear, but
reason seems to have logical priority, enabling humans to notice misbehaviour
in the first place. As an example for misbehaviour Polybius cites lack of grati-
tude (charis) by children towards their parents. This is a lack of reciprocity, as
the parents were seen to take care of their now misbehaving offspring. Another
example is someone who, having been helped in great danger, not only refuses
to show gratitude but tries to hurt (blaptein) his benefactor. It is an indica-
tion of the primitive stage of human development that the examples should
be so egregious.20
Polybius notes that these examples would escape non-rational animals, but
not humans, who will notice behavioural difference (diaphora) and who will
calculate the consequences of themselves meeting the same treatment.21 It is
foresight, the ability to anticipate or infer (sullogizesthai) the future and care
for it, that sets humans apart; in a word, prudence.22 Bystanders and spectators
will sympathise with the injured party. A free-rider who, having been helped
by someone, fails to show gratitude and even seeks to injure his benefactor will
offend others who witness his conduct. These bystanders are now said to resent
the free-rider’s behaviour: they are ‘vexed along with’ (sunaganaktountas) their
injured neighbour and imagine themselves in his place (Polyb. 6.6.1-6).
This sounds a lot like Adam Smith’s famous theory of the impartial spec-
tator, and it has much in common with the role resentment plays in Smith’s
work. Could it be that Polybius puts forward a sentimentalist theory of moral-
ity akin to Smith? Smith thought that ‘the general maxims of morality are
formed, like all other general maxims, from experience and induction’, and he
19 This Polybius does not make explicit, but his terminology (ennoia) makes it clear that he
is thinking in fact of language-based cognition. The term is prominent in Stoic philosophy
(cf. Cic. Fin. 3.21).
20 T. Cole, Democritus and the Sources of Greek Anthropology (Cleveland: Case Western
University Press, 1967), p. 87: ‘[A]t this stage man’s logismos can only be stimulated by
incidents where the violence is of the most shocking kind …’.
21 Cf. T. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. N. Malcolm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), ch. 17,
p. 260: ‘irrational creatures cannot distinguish between Injury, and Damage’.
22 Note, again, the similarities with Hobbes; see, e.g., Kavka, Hobbesian, pp. 30-3.
18 Straumann
has been interpreted as a theorist of the evolution of moral sentiments who

implicitly modeled this evolution on indefinitely repeated prisoners’ dilem-
mas and who saw wide scope for the evolution of cooperative behaviour even
in the absence of government.23 Consider the following claim from The Theory
of Moral Sentiments:
There can be no proper motive for hurting our neighbour, there can be
no incitement to do evil to another, which mankind will go along with,
except just indignation for evil which that other has done to us. To dis-
turb his happiness merely because it stands in the way of our own, to
take from him what is of real use to him merely because it may be of
equal or of more use to us, or to indulge … at the expense of other people,
the natural preference which every man has for his own happiness above
that of other people, is what no impartial spectator can go along with …
As the greater and more irreparable the evil that is done, the resentment
of the sufferer runs naturally the higher; so does likewise the sympathetic
indignation of the spectator …24
Here resentment could be taken to eventually result in an effect similar to that

of altruistic punishment discussed above. Resentment and the sympathetic
indignation of the spectator might lead, that is, to cooperation leading spon-
taneously out of the state of nature, as in matrix III above. Smith was never
entirely clear about the respective importance of reason and sentiment but
remained at least nominally a thorough sentimentalist.25 He thought that only
his (and his friend Hume’s) theory of the motivating character of sympathy
and the moral sentiments could account for the essentially motivating aspect
23 A. Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, eds. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 319. For the game-theoretic interpretation, see A. Ortmann and
S. Meardon, ‘A game-theoretic re-evaluation of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments
and Wealth of Nations’, in Ingrid Rima (ed.), The Classical Tradition in Economic Thought
(Aldershot, UK: Edward Elgar, 1995), pp. 43-61.
24 Smith, TMS 2.2.2.1-2, pp. 82-4.
25 His sentimentalism always seems to depend on a normative viewpoint – the impartial
spectator – which cannot be conceived on strictly descriptive, sentimentalist grounds.
Smith ultimately simply dismisses the question as an unfruitful one, but there are reasons
to think that his positions commit him to a rationalist position. For his wavering, see
Smith, TMS, pp. 318-21; for criticism along rationalist lines, see T. Irwin, The Development
of Ethics. A Historical and Critical Study, Vol. II: From Suarez to Rousseau (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2008), pp. 682-702.
of moral judgments.26 Reason in Smith’s view could not provide the basis
for moral judgments, which consist in sentiments based on the operation of
sympathy.27 Is this Polybius’ view as well?
The similarities between Smith and Polybius have been noticed before.
In 1797, the English translator of Aristotle, John Gillies, suggested that Smith
(who knew Polybius) had taken his account of sympathy and resentment
from Polybius.28 Gillies put forward the following very Smithian translation of
Polybius to make his case (Polyb. 6.6.6):
Thus again, when anyone who has been succoured by another in the time
of danger, instead of shewing the like kindness to his benefactor, endeav-
ours at any time to destroy or hurt him; it is certain, that all men must
be shocked by such ingratitude through sympathy with the resentment
of their neighbour; and from an apprehension also, that the case may be
their own.29
Gillies translates as ‘resentment’ Polybius’ claim that a disinterested specta-

tor is bound to be ‘vexed along with’ their neighbour. It is plausible to render
this as resentment and to think that Smith was influenced by Polybius. But we
should not forget that Polybius was not primarily a philosopher, and should
not expect him to present a worked out systematic moral and political phi-
losophy. Nor should we expect to find the strict dichotomy between reason and
the emotions that underlies 18th-century sentimentalist philosophy in a text
which owes most of its philosophical debts to the Hellenistic schools.30
26 This is the view known as internalism, where moral motivation is seen as internal to
moral judgment. The anti-sentimentalist could always claim, of course, that moral judg-
ments are motivationally inert. See J. L. Mackie, Hume’s Moral Theory (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1980), pp. 53-5.
27 And not, as in Hutcheson and Hume, in a special moral sense; see Irwin, Development of
Ethics, pp. 682-4. Smith seeks to present an entirely descriptive account of morality, but
at times he effectively presupposes normative evaluative judgments that cannot them-
selves be grounded in brute sympathy. For a discussion that distinguishes between moral
motivation and moral knowledge, see B. Straumann, ‘Adam Smith’s Unfinished Grotius
Business, Grotius’s Novel Turn to Ancient Law, and the Genealogical Fallacy: A Reply to
my Critics’, Grotiana, 38 (2017), esp. pp. 218-20.
28 Cf. G. Vivenza, Adam Smith and the Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001),
pp. 44-6.
29 Gillies’ translation is taken from Vivenza, Adam Smith, p. 45.
30 See T. Cole, ‘The Sources and Composition of Polybius VI’, Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte
Geschichte, 13.4 (1964), pp. 440-86; Cole, Democritus, ch. 6. For the cognitive aspects
of emotion in Stoic and Epicurean thought, see M. C. Nussbaum, The Therapy of
20 Straumann
But are there enough similarities to make the comparison enlightening? Is

Polybius, for example, claiming that moral distinctions must be based on sym-
pathy, i.e. on something akin to Smith’s ‘immediate sentiment and feeling’? Is
Polybius committed to the view that moral sentiments can in fact induce peo-
ple to cooperate even in the absence of coercive institutions? What is Polybius’
view of the evolution of morality, cooperation and government, and what roles
do sympathy, resentment and reason effectively play? Polybius shows that the
adoption of the viewpoint of an ‘impartial spectator’ lets men develop con-
cepts (ennoia) of appropriate actions, or duties, that can be justified by reason.
Impartiality, of course, already implies quite a strong normative assumption,
one that would seem to underlie Smith’s theory as well. As Terence Irwin
points out with regard to Smith, the impartial viewpoint is ‘not distorted by
self-interest. In speaking of a distortion we assume that it is possible to form
a true view, and that we can appeal to this true view to correct distortions’.31
Justice is all about such impartiality, according to Polybius (6.6.7).
Polybius’ account should therefore be described as rationalist, not senti-
mentalist.32 It is crucial to notice the kind of sentiments Polybius’ theory rests
on. There are no martial or irrational passions in the genealogy of morals, just
resentment, led by calculation and reason. His notion of resentment depends
on an objective notion of what merits resentment (resentment may have a
cognitive function). We are entitled to feel resentment if there is an injury,
recognition of which is in turn based on moral notions of good and bad.33 The
conceptual apparatus is arrived at by reason. Polybius’ resentment is not merely
a contingent feeling or instinct that cannot be further questioned, but an emo-
tion that presupposes an objective normative judgment – and the validity of
this judgment cannot itself depend on contingent instincts.34 Resentment is
Desire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); for a more recent treatment, see
R. de Sousa, The Rationality of Emotion (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987).
31 Irwin, ‘Development’, p. 697.
32 Smith’s theory, his own protestations to the contrary, is not in the last analysis a sentimen-
talist view either, but presupposes certain objective normative notions (as he at times
seems to admit and as his concept of the impartial spectator, as well as his differentia-
tion between actual praise and praiseworthiness, would seem to imply). See Straumann,
‘Smith’s Unfinished Grotius Business’, pp. 212-20. For a rationalist interpretation of Smith
(while acknowledging the ambiguity), see E. Tugendhat, Vorlesungen über Ethik, 2nd ed.
(Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1994), ch. 15.
33 Cf. Eckstein, Moral Vision, who gives however a more virtue ethical rendering of Polybius
and is mostly concerned with evaluative language quite generally.
34 For a recent game-theoretic social theory that gives resentment due weight, see R. Sugden,
The Economics of Rights, Cooperation, and Welfare, 2nd ed. (London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2004).
thus essentially a normative emotion, akin to the kind of emotion Aristotle

discusses as incorporating a moral judgment.35
Polybius’ initial focus on calculation and reason (logismos) and coopera-
tive passions such as resentment would seem to invite the conclusion that his
state of nature is characterised by Humean conventions and relatively eas-
ily achieved cooperation. But this is not the case. Polybius’ whole account of
rational calculation is designed to give an account of what would be in the
collective self-interest of the inhabitants of the state of nature to achieve.
Resentment, while adding motivational force to this account, is not enough to
achieve this goal.
Resentment and reason are therefore not jointly sufficient for establishing
the outcome that would be in the collective self-interest of people in Polybius’
natural state. They can merely make the optimal outcome knowable; they
can establish, that is, what this outcome looks like and how it might be pre-
served once it is achieved without providing sufficient means to its realisation.
Witnessing free-riding and violence not only breeds resentment but also pro-
duces the epistemological framework for the normative goal: it is how people
in the natural state learn to conceive of the normative goal, but it does not
yet enable them to achieve this goal. People in the state of nature who adopt
the viewpoint of an ‘impartial spectator’ know what a minimally just society
will look like; but nowhere does Polybius say that they can therefore bring it
about. His impartial spectator operates strictly in foro interno, it seems. There
is not enough reciprocity in the state of nature, and Polybius leaves open the
possibility that those who react with moralised emotion to violence in
the state of nature are themselves capable of immoral violence. There may
well be resentful hypocrites seeking to do violence to and free ride on others,
all the while feeling resentment when witnessing this kind of behaviour. There
is plenty of textual evidence for Polybius’ pessimistic views of human nature,
and when discussing the collapse of political orders he (Polyb. 6.9.7) usually
adduces in a very Hobbesian way shortsightedness and irrational vainglory
(aphron doxophagia).36
35 Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.9, 1387b13-21.

36 Cf. the account of corruption operating naturally during anakuklosis: 6.7-9. For a very
pessimistic view of the many, shown to be fickle and full of ‘lawless (paranomon) desires,
unreasoned passion, and violent anger’, see 6.56.11. Cf. also 4.81.12-14; 5.75.2-3; 15.21.3-4;
15.21.5; 20.7.3-4. On Polybius’ increasing pessimism and the limits of human reason, see
Eckstein, Moral Vision, ch. 8 with R. von Scala, Die Studien des Polybios, Vol. I (Stuttgart:
W. Kohlhammer, 1890); against C. Wunderer, Polybios. Lebens- und Weltanschauung aus
dem zweiten vorchristlichen Jahrhundert (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1927); Pédech, La méthode
historique de Polybe; E. Mioni, Polibio (Padua: Casa editrice Dott. A. Milani, 1949); K. von
22 Straumann
I propose that we conceive of Polybius’ moral framework as the upper left

quadrant of one of our game-theoretical matrices, where cooperation resides.
People in the state of nature are able to figure out the social optimum, even if
they cannot achieve it.37 One way to conceptualise this, as hinted above, is to
think of it as something reason identifies and enjoins, akin to Hobbes’ laws of
nature.38 Another would be to think of it along the lines of Henry Sidgwick,
who differentiated between the impartial point of view and the point of view
of individual’s self-interest. Sidgwick thought that a fundamental tension
between the two viewpoints must be acknowledged, a ‘dualism of practical
reason’, as he called it.39 This, too, might be thought of as the tension between
cooperation and defection. Depending on what game we take as our model,
the tie-breaker for Sidgwick’s dualism may have to be political – government –
as it was for Hobbes.
Polybius, I think, had something similar in mind. His unsentimental solu-
tion to the state of nature (discussed further below) suggests that he may have
conceptualised the pre-political state as a prisoners’ dilemma (see matrix I
above). In the absence of a warlord-cum-legitimate-king, resentment alone
cannot achieve cooperation. The attention to the future that people exhibit
makes them risk-averse and leads them to discount the future heavily since
there is no institutional framework that can make their moral framework
stick in foro externo. Almost by definition, a world without institutions is a
world where the present always outweighs the future and impatience reigns
supremely. For cooperation to operate, there have to be legal institutions.
Fritz, The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity: A Critical Analysis of Polybius’
Political Ideas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954); P. Podes, ‘Handelserklärung
bei Polybios’, Ancient Society, 21 (1990), pp. 215-40; see also J. W. Atkins, Cicero on Politics
and the Limits of Reason: The Republic and Laws (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2013), ch. 3, and my discussion of Atkins in B. Straumann, Crisis and Constitutionalism:
Roman Political Thought from the Fall of the Republic to the Age of Revolution (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2016), ch. 4. On Hobbes’ shortsightedness: Hampton, Hobbes,
ch. 3.
37 This, I think, is why Hobbes’ ‘rationality account’ does give an adequate account of in foro
interno validity of the laws of nature, pace Hampton, Hobbes, p. 91: the rational actor can-
not be motivated to act on it, but can see in foro interno where the Pareto-optimal social
outcome lies. It is an epistemological point, without motivational force.
38 Cf. Hobbes, ‘Leviathan’, ch. 17, p. 254: ‘For the Lawes of Nature … of themselves, without
the terrour of some Power, to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our naturall
Passions, that carry us to Partiality, Pride, Revenge, and the like’.
39 H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1907), p. 498: ‘even if a
man admits the self-evidence of the [impartial] principle of Rational Benevolence, he
may still hold that his own happiness is an end which it is irrational for him to sacrifice to
any other’.
Given the injuries and wanton violence witnessed in the state of nature,
and given human nature’s propensity for vainglory, Polybian man is no better
off than Hobbesian man. Shortsightedness could be rational in such a world,
and the temptation to free ride, great.
It may be more plausible, however, to conceptualise Polybius’ state of
nature as an assurance game (matrix II). If resentment is effective in a suf-
ficiently large subpopulation and is applied even in the state of nature, this
may turn – via altruistic punishment – a prisoners’ dilemma into an assurance
game. There will be problems with maintaining cooperation even in this case,
however: people may resent others for the wrong reasons (because they are
vainglorious themselves), or they may punish the wrong people, or they may
take out their resentment in irrational acts of vengeance. More importantly,
as we have seen, resentment at injustice is not the only passion at play in
Polybius’ moral psychology; it is the only passion that can plausibly motivate
moral behaviour, but there are other irrational passions at play, such as vain-
glory, which can cause cooperation and trust to break down easily. The effect
of the vainglorious appetite for eminence, or ‘senseless hunger for reputation’
(aphron doxophagia), for example, may quickly turn the assurance game back
into a prisoners’ dilemma with its unique defection equilibrium:40
IV.
Prisoners’ dilemma II cooperate defect
cooperate 2, 2 -0.5, 2.5

defect 2.5, -0.5 1, 1
In fact, such an appetite for eminence, if large enough, may even transform our
cooperation game (matrix III) into a prisoners’ dilemma.41
What Polybius says about those who resent unjust treatment of their neigh-
bours opens up the possibility of yet another way of describing his state of
nature, which offers perhaps the best interpretation of his view. It may be
that there are inhabitants of the state of nature who exhibit a preference for
40 Polybius’ pejorative view of this ‘senseless hunger for reputation’ or esteem makes it
implausible to assume that he relies for cooperation on what Geoffrey Brennan and Philip
Pettit call ‘the intangible hand’, or a desire for esteem (many thanks to Philip Pettit for
drawing my attention to this).
41 Note that now we generated cardinal payoffs (out of the previous, merely ordinal values).
For a convincing model of such a ‘game of difference’, see Taylor, Possibility, pp. 115-17.
24 Straumann
altruistic punishment and conditional cooperation (provided others cooper-

ate), and then there are those (the ones meting out the unjust treatment) who
prefer to defect, not only when others are defecting but especially if every other
inhabitant cooperates. Reduced once again to a two-person game, this would
yield the following combination of cautious cooperators (here the column
player, C) and unconditional rogues (here the row player, R):
V.
Polybius’ state of nature cooperate defect
cooperate 3 (R), 4 (C) 1 (R), 3 (C)

defect 4 (R), 1 (C) 2 (R), 2 (C)
But now we are back in a state of nature where defection is the only equi-
librium. The cautious cooperator would cooperate without being coerced if
he could count on being protected from the unconditional rogue, who would
cooperate only if coerced. The cautious cooperator lacks a dominant strategy,
but the unconditional rogue has one: defection. And this makes it rational
for the cooperator to choose defection, too, since she must assume that the
rogues will use their dominant strategies. Polybius does not envisage repeti-
tion as a way out. But there are of course good reasons to believe that it is not
a solution given the conditions that obtain in his state of nature. The rogue’s
temptation to defect rises with a larger population of cautious cooperators; if
the state of nature is sufficiently nasty and uncertain, the probability of con-
tinued interaction will be less than 1, maybe even quite low. Uncertainty with
regard to repetition, high discounting of the future and dangers inherent in
trigger strategies such as misdetection of rogues followed by acts of revenge
will make it dubious whether repetition will be able to achieve cooperation
in larger groups in the state of nature.42 Add to this the possibility of strong
aversion to being exploited by rogues – ‘betrayal aversion’ – which can easily
outweigh any desire to cooperate. But this means that cooperation might only
42 Social science seems to confirm Polybius’ intuitions. See J. Grujic et al., ‘Three is a
Crowd in Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemmas: Experimental Evidence on Reciprocal Behavior’,
Scientific Reports, 2.638 (2012), doi: 10.1038/srep00638; P. Dal Bó and G. Fréchette, ‘On
the Determinants of Cooperation in Infinitely Repeated Games: A Survey’, Journal of
Economic Literature, 56.1 (2018), pp. 60-114.
be achieved – according to Polybius’ view of the state of nature as described in

matrix V – by government.
Let me conclude this section by pointing out another interesting aspect of
Polybius’ political theory. It seems to rely on an externalist account of moral
motivation; that is, it does not claim that moral judgments are intrinsically
action-guiding. Rather, Polybius separates motivation from normative practi-
cal reason. We may have reason to free ride, but this does not imply that we
are motivated to do so – those who sympathise with their neighbours when
they suffer injury may not be so motivated. Those shown to injure their bene-
factors may have reason to do what is in society’s interest – for reputational
reasons, say, in a repeated prisoners’ dilemma game – but this does not imply
that they are properly motivated to do so. Polybius adds the proper motivation
by way of a psychological explanation, which can now serve to explain how the
kind of political rule that implements the moral concepts discovered in the
state of nature can achieve consent and stability. Polybius does not, however,
use this motivational apparatus to explain how government comes about in
the first place. Government, as we shall see now, comes first about by force
according to Polybius, and consent follows – not the other way around. As
Hume puts it in an entirely Polybian way:
the first ascendant of one man over multitudes began during a state of
war; … and if the chieftain possessed as much equity as prudence and
valour, he became, even during peace, the arbiter of all differences,
and could gradually, by a mixture of force and consent, establish his
authority.43
2 Polybius’ Way Out: from Coercion to Consent
Polybius offers a plausible combination of self-interested rationality and

instinctual, ‘hard-wired’ emotional altruism. But he realises that under his
premise of self-interest, where people behave cooperatively solely because
they have come to see the advantage (to sumpheron) of cooperation (and
presumably of having a reputation for cooperation), there arises a powerful
temptation of free riding. Polybius offers a solution to this challenge. Part of
the solution relies, as we have seen, on a moral psychology that gives sympa-
thy and resentment – the moral sentiments – their due. However, as we have
43 D. Hume, ‘Of the Origin of Government’, in K. Haakonssen (ed.), Hume: Political Essays
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 20-23, p. 22. Emphasis added.
26 Straumann
now also seen, there are important countervailing forces that prevent Polybius’
moral sentiments from implementing a straightforward cooperative solution
in the absence of government. Some of these countervailing forces are of an
emotional nature, others lie in the kind of rationality advocated by Hobbes’
fool, who would cooperate only if coerced and who makes up a significant part
of Polybius’ population. The presence of unconditional rogues and immedi-
ate threats make for a climate of pervasive distrust and discount the future,
so that even repeated interactions will not bring about anything but the
defection equilibrium.
Polybius claims that behaviour according to the moral concepts that
emerged in the state of nature will be imitated because such behaviour is
advantageous.44 This attempt to reduce moral behaviour to self-interest would
not work in Polybius’ state of nature, interpreted as a prisoners’ dilemma (see
matrix V). But true to this interpretation Polybius considers the collective
implementation of moral conduct (to kalon) to take place only once the inhab-
itants of the state of nature are under the sway of a leader, of some sort of
inchoate government. But how does this leadership come about? As we have
briefly seen, leaders in the state of nature emerge simply by virtue of their
superior bodily strength and their ability to defend their fellows (Polyb. 6.6.8)
‘from danger … and the onslaught of the most powerful beasts’. At some point,
however, one of these warlords will – purely by chance – happen to be more
amenable to the moral framework that had emerged in the state of nature
(Polyb. 6.6.10-12):
Now when in this situation the leading and most powerful man among
the people always throws the weight of his authority on the side of the
aforesaid [notions] in accordance with popular sentiment, and when in
the opinion of his subjects he apportions rewards and penalties to each
according to his due, they yield obedience to him no longer because they
fear his force, but rather because they approve of his good judgment;
and they join in maintaining him his rule even if he is quite enfeebled
by age, defending him unanimously and battling against those who con-
spire to overthrow his rule. Thus, without its being noticed, the monarch
becomes a king, ferocity and bodily strength having yielded to reason.
Legitimate kingship, which, unlike primitive monarchy, is a true constitutional

order (politeia),45 is thus produced by a chance event, a stroke of luck. The
44 For the Epicurean influence, see Cole, Democritus, ch. 6.

45 Cf. Polyb. 6.5.4.
king, by throwing his weight behind the moral concepts people discovered in
the state of nature, no longer rules by force, but by consent – his judgment is
approved of and his subjects defend him from his enemies even in old age.
Now resentment and altruistic punishment can gain traction, along with and
protected by the king’s rule. Imperceptibly (lanthanein: escaping notice),
Polybius writes, courage and bodily strength give way to the sovereignty of rea-
son. The king, unlike the monarch, can live to old age because he no longer
relies on bodily strength and widespread coercion. Consent does not produce
legitimate rule, for Polybius: rather, legitimate rule produces consent.
The most interesting and unique aspect of Polybius’ explanation of the
genealogy of political order is that it is an evolutionary explanation, in
the sense that it is an account of slow, blind change where accidental features
play a crucial role. In this, Polybius is completely original: his account is the
only evidence we have from classical antiquity of a gradualist approach to
the genealogy of morals and social order, of a ‘slow process leading to the social
solidarity which makes kingship and the rule of law possible’.46 Polybius’ focus
is on the conditions for the possibility of political order. In his famous cycle of
constitutions (anakuklosis), the three defective constitutional forms are taken
to be the default, where force, fear, and corruption constitute the bases of rule.47
There is a natural historical development to an improved version, achieved by
the correction of defects (Polyb. 6.4.7), which is in turn followed by inevitable
decline into the defective form. Polybius’ criteria for good and defective orders,
rule by consent and rule by fear, respectively, are original as well.48 Since he
takes consent to be an important criterion for a successful political order (i.e., a
constitutional order in the proper sense, Polyb. 6.4.2), he is interested in when
such consent will be forthcoming.
Polybius assumes individuals will consent to a regime only if it is in their
interest to do so – but interest here will have to be understood in a properly
enlightened, yet not utopian, way. For the proper constitutional order to be
established there has to be a politically powerful vehicle in the first place; once
46 Cole, Democritus, p. 94, n. 23.

47 For anakuklosis (Polyb. 6.4-6.9), see D. E. Hahm, ‘The Mixed Constitution in Greek
Thought’, in Ryan K. Balot (ed.), A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought
(Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 191-3; D. E. Hahm, ‘Polybius’ Applied Political
Theory’, in A. Laks and M. Schofield (eds.), Justice and Generosity: Studies in Hellenistic
Social and Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 7-47;
G. W. Trompf, The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1979), pp. 69-75, 107-109; F. W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on
Polybius, Vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), pp. 645-7; von Fritz, Mixed Constitution.
48 For the contrast with Plato and Aristotle, see Hahm, ‘The Mixed Constitution’, p. 191.
28 Straumann
Polybius’ moral conceptual apparatus can find support from a ruler, coercion
gives way to cooperation and consent and monarchy turns into lawful king-
ship. Legitimacy comes first; consent ensues. But since the state of nature for
Polybius is most likely a prisoners’ dilemma (matrix V), it is impossible
for resentment and other sentiments to push people out of the state of nature
into political society on their own. The state of nature is in equilibrium and
no individual has sufficient incentive to deviate unilaterally; political order
therefore neither emerges nor persists spontaneously. An exogenous shock
is therefore needed, and Polybius provides it in the form of the warlord.
Polybius’ warlord order bears many instructive similarities with Hobbes’ ‘com-
monwealth by acquisition’, his account of the establishment of sovereignty by
virtue of conquest and generally violent means.49
Hobbes’ commonwealth by acquisition is roughly equivalent with Polybius’
description of how monarchy first comes about in his state of nature. Such
rule by force gets the inhabitants of the state of nature out of their equilibrium
and creates a political order based on negative incentives: the threat of force.
This solves one of the key problems of the establishment of political order
that arises on Hobbes’ account of ‘commonwealth by institution’: if people are
entirely rational, they will free ride, and if they are frequently moved by irra-
tional passions contrary to self-preservation, how can there ever be agreement
on the establishment of a sovereign? Polybius explains the way such an incho-
ate political order – really a gang – under a warlord comes about simply by
reference to strength and the desire for protection. The threat of force makes
it individually rational for weaker inhabitants of the state of nature to submit
to the leader of the gang. Crucially, this is no longer a prisoners’ dilemma, but
a coordination problem – who is to be the warlord? The coordination problem
is solved, for now, by the threat of force, but the fact that it can reemerge as
soon as the warlord becomes vulnerable – Polybius mentions old age – shows
that this is not yet a stable exit from the state of nature. For that, we have to
wait, according to Polybius, for a fortuitous event, the emergence of a king. The
original prisoners’ dilemma, however, has been left behind for the time being,
and although this change came about by the rational submission to the threat
of force, Polybius’ solution leaves room for irrational passions as motives for
those who emerge as warlords.
We started out by noting the similarities between Polybius on the one hand
and Adam Smith and David Hume on the other. But now, on second sight, a
more complicated picture emerges. Polybius on this view has more in common
with Thomas Hobbes than any of the Scottish writers. Moral sentiment and
49 Cf. Hobbes ‘Leviathan’, ch. 20, p. 306.
resentment are not on their own able to push humankind out of the state of
nature into a cooperative condition. Humans are trapped in the state of nature
until a chance event takes place, a warlord establishing an inchoate form of
political power by force. This looks like the solution to one of the key problems
faced by Hobbes, that of having to decide on a sovereign. While each inhab-
itant of the state of nature would like to live under a sovereign, each would
presumably also prefer to be that sovereign. What ensues may be described
as an n-person battle of the sexes, where a risk of coordination failure looms.50
Polybius avoids this by having a warlord shock the state of nature into a
new equilibrium and put himself forward as a ‘focal’ sovereign. From political
power by force legitimate power emerges, again by chance; and from legiti-
macy, consent. Nature throws in a certain probability of warlords who acquire
sovereignty by force until a just monarch comes about. Once there is kingly
legitimacy, consent follows:
Coercion Legitimacy Consent
The proper analysis of the relationship between the leader and the people
is therefore that of a sequential agency game, characterised by a strict order
of play with the people moving second and an agency relationship between
leader and people.51 Here the leader is best seen as a kind of employee and the
people as a kind of employer. The leader has the same preferences as a player
in a prisoners’ dilemma, but the people do not; the people’s most favorite out-
come in the agency game is universal cooperation. In the sequential agency
game, the people have the ability, by virtue of moving second, to bring about
their preferred outcome. The leader knows that she will be killed upon reach-
ing old age (this is the people’s second highest preference), while she will be
able to reach her own second highest preference by ruling by consent and liv-
ing to old age. Rule by consent is the (subgame-perfect) equilibrium:
50 See Hampton, Hobbes, ch. 6 for such an analysis; see also B. Barry and C. Cameron,
‘Bargaining with Mr. Hobbes’, manuscript, Center for the Study of Democratic Politics,
Princeton University (April 2004), pp. 1-29, for an ingenious dynamic bargaining model
of sovereign selection in the state of nature yielding a state that guarantees, under
Hobbesian premises, social insurance and guarantees of civil liberties.
51 I borrow my analysis from Hampton, Hobbes, pp. 229-34.
30 Straumann
VI.
depose 2, 3
People
force keep
4, 1
Ruler
depose 1, 2
consent
People
keep 3, 4
The inhabitants of the state of nature will keep deposing their warlords
until one comes around with the required characteristics to implement
legitimacy.52 They move second and have thus gained a better position than
the ruler – they are now the employers in an agency agreement made with
their warlord-employee, and this agreement is such that both parties find it
individually in their self-interest to adhere to it. The ruler will choose rule by
consent. Of course, this leaves open the question with whom consent needs to
be achieved. There is still the option for the king to rule by consent only with a
majority, while co-opting the majority to repress the minority.53 So far Polybius
has given us a convincing game-theoretical explanation for our exit from the
state of nature, under plausible anthropological assumptions, but he still owes
us an account of stable and just political order. Polybius’ Roman constitutional
order with its protection of procedural safeguards (provocatio ad populum)
is thought to provide such stability without merely repressing a minority
52 Cf. Cole, Democritus, pp. 90f.

53 For a model of the microfoundations of self-enforcing constitutional rule of law, which
is shown to depend ultimately on both institutional safeguards and citizen attitudes, see
B. R. Weingast, ‘The Political Foundations of Democracy and the Rule of Law’, American
Political Science Review, 91.2 (1997), pp. 245-63.
(Polyb. 6.16.2).54 It is to Polybius’ description of the ideal constitutional order

that we must now turn.
3 A Trained Athlete: Polybius’ Constitutional Equilibrium55
The improved monarchy Polybius calls kingship is legitimate as well as sta-

ble, as we have seen, but it is stable only to a certain extent. Famously, a cycle
begins and the king’s successors will eventually and inevitably degenerate
and turn into tyrants; aristocracy will arise and degenerate into oligarchy; and
democracy will arise and degenerate into ochlocracy, which sets the stage for
the reemergence of monarchy. The only way to put a break on this naturally
occurring cycle is a constitutional order that combines the three generic con-
stitutional forms in an ingenious way, and for Polybius, the constitution of the
Roman Republic is just such a constitutional order.
It is important to point out right at the outset – notwithstanding volumes
of scholarship and commentary suggesting otherwise – that nowhere does
Polybius in fact speak of the ‘mixed constitution’.56 What Polybius does talk
about is cooperation, conflict and obstruction between constitutional parts.
Polybius uses the language of ‘composition’, ‘competition’, ‘arrangement’, ‘bal-
ance’ or ‘equilibrium’,57 and rightly so, since the legally defined powers that
compose Polybius’ ideal constitutional order are strictly separated, i.e. exactly
not mixed. Two further aspects of Polybius’ constitutional analysis should be
mentioned upfront. Polybius is a comparative historian and political theorist,
and it is by way of comparison (sunkrisis) that he seeks to show the superior-
ity of the Roman constitutional model. Second, and most importantly, unlike
the Greek political theorists preceding him, Polybius is concerned with institu-
tions, not virtue. The entirely natural decline and corruption of constitutional
54 For provocatio and its absolute centrality in Roman political thought, see Straumann,
Crisis and Constitutionalism, pp. 70-2, 129-39, 174f., 279-86.
55 Parts of this section draw on Straumann, Crisis and Constitutionalism, pp. 151-61.
56 See W. Nippel, Mischverfassungstheorie und Verfassungsrealität in Antike und früher
Neuzeit (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1980), p. 19.
57 Polyb. 6.3.5: ‘that which is put together’, a ‘combination’, politeian sunestosan; 6.10.6:
Lycurgus ‘assembled’, or ‘united’ the best features of the simple constitutions, sunethroize;
6.10.7: ‘equally balanced and in equilibrium’, isorropoun kai zugostatoumenon … aei to
politeuma; 6.18.1: ‘arrangement’, he harmoge, which can be used in connection with the
tuning of a lyre and in other musical contexts can be synonymous with ‘harmony’; 6.18.3:
‘competition’, hamillomenon, contending (without necessarily implying rivalry); 6.43.5:
‘the composition of the constitution’, is being opposed to ‘the virtue of the leading men’,
he tes politeias sustasis versus he ton proestoton andron arete.
32 Straumann
orders is due to corruption in the rulers, an ‘inbuilt evil’ (sumphuton kakon),

but this inbuilt evil cannot be rectified by way of moral education, it can only
be met by institutional means (Polyb. 6.10.7).58
Andrew Lintott has convincingly argued that Polybius’ originality is owed,
at least partly, to his ‘contact with Roman politics and Roman ideas’.59 The
most striking effect of Polybius’ novel constitutional analysis lies in the way he,
unlike Greek models, ‘talks of the power of the various organs in relation to one
another, and this is not merely the formal power deriving from law or consti-
tutional tradition, but the secondary power accruing from the exploitation of
formal power in the sectional interest of this particular element’.60 These pow-
ers derive from the constitutional framework, and Polybius’ famous emphasis
on the relationship between these powers, their conflict and cooperation – his
doctrine of checks and balances – in effect presupposes a constitutional order
based on the interplay of various formal legal powers. This interplay imple-
ments a system of justice protected by institutional safeguards.61
The preservation of liberty through stability is another purpose of politi-
cal order for Polybius. Lycurgus’ Spartan constitution preserved liberty
(Polyb. 6.10.11: diephulaxe ten eleutherian). The Romans achieved the same
result, Polybius says, just by a different process. Stability guaranteeing justice
and liberty: this is the specific result of Polybius’ constitutional arrangement
of checks and balances, and it is not quite right to say that ‘each individual and
each part’ in this constitutional order is simply motivated by fear.62 Individuals
will be motivated by self-interest in Polybius’ order, but not simply fear – it is
rule by consent after all. Rather, Polybius’ constitutional composition keeps
the powers institutionally separate and by this arrangement prevents the
office-holders, senators and citizens from moral and ultimately constitutional
degeneration. It is the constitutional balance – institutions, not virtue – that
keeps them from giving in to corruption. The balanced constitution acquires
thereby a distinct normative quality and moral significance.
58 Cf. F. W. Walbank, ‘A Greek looks at Rome: Polybius VI revisited’, in F. W. Walbank (ed.),

Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World, pp. 277-92, p. 281.
59 A. Lintott, ‘The Theory of the Mixed Constitution at Rome’, in J. Barnes and M. Griffin
(eds.), Philosophia Togata II: Plato and Aristotle at Rome (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997),
pp. 70-85, p. 79.
60 A. Lintott, ‘Theory of the Mixed Constitution’, p. 79.
61 Pace Atkins, Cicero, pp. 86f. Atkins is clearly influenced by Walbank’s ‘Machiavellian’
interpretation of Polybius; my own is closer to Kurt von Fritz’s and Eckstein, Moral Vision,
esp. pp. 16-27.
62 Atkins, Cicero, p. 93.
Polybius offers two ways of getting at his constitutional solution – the

Spartan, which proceeds by the lawgiver’s a priori reasoning, and the Roman
way, which is empirical. Both end up with the same result, however, which
consists in a stable constitutional order underwriting justice and liberty. The
fact that the constitutional order can be arrived at a priori shows that Polybius
holds up a constitutional ideal.63 It is not an ideal constitution in the sense
that human beings would have to change radically in order to be able to be
motivated to adhere by it. But the Polybian constitutional arrangement is a
normative ideal in the sense that it is an order that can be found out in prin-
ciple by reason alone.
Most importantly, once installed, Polybius’ constitutional order itself could
be equated with governing reason. By a cognitive process of consistently choos-
ing the better (hairoumenoi to beltion) in light of knowledge (ex autes tes epig-
noseos) gained in the contingent historical process, the Romans arrived at the
same result as the lawgiver Lycurgus did by unaided reason (Polyb. 6.10.12-14).
But this presupposes criteria, and knowing what is better. As I proposed earlier,
we may conceive of Polybius’ criteria, his moral framework, as the upper left
quadrant of our matrices. People in the state of nature are able to figure out
the social optimum, even if they cannot achieve it. Once a political order –
any political order – delivers the required shock, the mechanism to enforce
optimal outcomes in foro externo is in place, and these optimal outcomes
according to Polybius guided the Romans in their historical process toward the
constitutional ideal.
Polybius’ constitutional order is thus not only conceivable, but, as he
is at pains to point out, it is empirically tested as the most stable order.
Polybius explicitly rejects Plato’s Kallipolis as a suitable object of compara-
tive social scientific inquiry: because it is an ‘untrained athlete’, it cannot be
admitted (Polyb. 6.47.7-10) ‘to the competition for the prize of merit, unless
it first give an exhibition of its actual working’. This does not imply, how-
ever, that Polybius’ own model constitutional order is merely a well-trained
athlete that fails to embody any ideal at all. Polybius does put forward an ideal,
not simply of stability and security, but of legitimacy, in the sense that he sepa-
rates the legitimate constitutional orders from the degenerate, illegitimate
ones. The criterion for this distinction lies in the ability of any constitutional
order to provide just rule – giving institutional expression to resentment at
injustice and to the conceptual framework of morality (ennoia) discovered in
the state of nature – and thus giving the citizens reasons to give their consent.
63 Pace Atkins, Cicero, pp. 82, 86f.
34 Straumann
Polybius’ condition of empirical testability is intended to ensure that this

order is not utopian in Thomas Nagel’s sense, all the while holding up an ideal
that does not simply consist in solving a cooperation problem by finding equi-
librium conditions. If this were all there is to Polybius’ constitutional model,
he might as well propose to arrange or compose a constitutional balance out of
the three degenerate, bad simple constitutional forms – they would arguably
guarantee an even more efficient balance of fear, and they would arguably be
more stable. But the reason to establish the composed constitution in the first
place lies in Polybius’ normative preference for a just order; and its empirical
testability ensures that, while just, it is not utopian.
How then can Polybius’ order embody an ideal without, in Nagel’s words,
putting ‘too much pressure on individual motives’? The answer lies in Polybius’
Smithian political psychology, which now, after exiting the state of nature,
comes into its own. Humans are not narrowly self-interested, but rather, as dis-
cussed above, disposed to share (Polyb. 6.6.6) ‘the resentment of their injured
neighbor and imagining themselves in the same situation’. This motivational
foundation makes Polybius’ constitutional order possible in the first place. It is
made necessary, however, by the fact that in the ‘simple’ constitutional orders,
other irrational passions and desires tend to encroach upon the moral motiva-
tions, and this Hobbesian aspect of human psychology has to find expression
in political theory, too. People are, in Nagel’s words, ‘motivationally complex,
and a moral argument cannot transform them into beings of a completely
different kind’. Political theory is therefore ‘hostage to human nature’,64 and
Polybius certainly shared this sensibility. His answer, and the attempt ratio-
nally to constrain the worst passions of human nature in a stable way, con-
sisted in his constitutional balance.
Polybius analyses Rome’s constitution where the three governmental parts,
or partial governments (politeumata), can check each other by veto and there-
fore depend on each other’s consent. The consuls need the approval of senate
and the people; the senate depends on the people and the tribunes; and the
people themselves depend on senate and consuls. Each constitutional part has
the power to stop the others or cooperate with them (kai blaptein kai sunergein),
which ensures constitutional stability even in emergencies and makes this the
best possible order tout court (Polyb. 6.18.1). Polybius’ balanced constitution
can be analysed as in equilibrium, where the multiple checks between mag-
istrates, senate and popular assemblies are not usually needed because each
of the powers will by definition be without incentive unilaterally to deviate
64 Nagel, Equality and Partiality, pp. 26f.
(Polyb. 6.18).65 It could be conceptualised as an iterated prisoners’ dilemma

tilting into an assurance game. Each of the constitutional parts would prefer to
decide unilaterally and ignore the others, but since the interaction is repeated
without any fixed endpoint, defection is easy to detect; since the number of
participants is small, the infinitely repeated prisoners’ dilemma generates a
cooperative equilibrium.
Polybius’ constitutional order is therefore self-enforcing. The institutional
powers are endogenous to the order, and the constitution could be said to be
a coordination device that ‘creates a convention that depends for its main-
tenance on its self-generating incentives and expectations’.66 To do this, the
constitutional order must be ‘sufficiently convergent with the interests of
diverse citizens’ for them to uphold the order, and the constitutional order
‘must have legal attributes’.67 This captures Polybius’ constitutionalism.
Polybius had an extremely long-term horizon, however, and correctly surmised
that this self-enforcing order would eventually decay, notwithstanding its self-
corrective abilities, thus specifying the conditions under which even Rome’s
balanced constitution would eventually decline: increasing prosperity would
turn the aristocratic part of the constitution into an oligarchy given to the dis-
play of wealth, while at the same time pushing the people into the arms of
demagogues and moving them towards mob rule (ochlocracy).68 The people
ultimately dissolve the constitutional order by overstepping the boundaries of
65 The idea of balance can thus be given precision; pace Posner, ‘Constitution of the Roman
Republic’, p. 30. See also J. Ferejohn and R. Hills, ‘Blank Checks and Insufficient Balances’,
Working Paper.
66 R. Hardin, ‘Why a Constitution?’, in B. Grofman and D. Wittman (eds.), The Federalist
Papers and the New Institutionalism (New York: Agathon Press, 1989), pp. 100-120, p. 119.
See also Ferejohn and Hills, ‘Blank Checks’; A. Przeworski, ‘Self-enforcing Democracy’, in
D. A. Wittman and B. R. Weingast (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 312-328; S. Mittal and B. R. Weingast, ‘Self-
Enforcing Constitutions: With an Application to Democratic Stability in America’s First
Century’, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 29.2 (2013), pp. 278-302; for the
argument that ultimately the system as a whole must be self-policing, see K. Binmore,
Game Theory and the Social Contract, Vol. I: Playing Fair (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1994), p. 34; cf. L. Hurwicz, ‘But Who Will Guard the Guardians?’, The American Economic
Review, 98.3 (2008), pp. 577-85. Still, Binmore leaves out what seems like a crucial, inde-
pendent causal factor, namely rules.
67 G. K. Hadfield and B. R. Weingast, ‘Constitutions as Coordinating Devices’, in S. Galiani and
I. Sened (eds.), Institutions, Property Rights, and Economic Growth: The Legacy of Douglass
North (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 121-150, p. 149. Polybius asso-
ciates lawlessness with tyranny; cf. for the same idea Solon’s theory in Herod. 1.59.3ff.;
Anonymous Iamblichi 7.
68 See Hahm, ‘Polybius’ Applied Political Theory’, pp. 41-5.
36 Straumann
their constitutional role. Here the people can be understood as an exogenous

force encroaching upon the constitutional order. Or they may be interpreted as
an endogenous force miscalculating their move.
One might therefore distinguish between exogenous and endogenous
aspects of constitutional sovereignty. Constitutional institutions are exoge-
nous to behavior on the ground and influence the preferences – set the payoff
terms – of certain citizens, thus creating political solutions to moral problems
via, e.g., criminal law. But vis-à-vis cooperative citizens as well as between
the constitutional institutions themselves the constitutional powers are
in equilibrium and therefore not normally constrained by exogenous rules. This
equilibrium must support shocks administered by nature or the environment,
and Polybius assures us that it in fact did absorb such shocks successfully
(Polyb. 6.18).69 The corruption of the rulers, their (Polyb. 6.10.7) ‘inbuilt evils
(tas sumphueis kakias)’, can be seen as exogenous shocks administered by
nature, which easily, and according to Polybius necessarily, subvert equilib-
ria sustained by nothing but virtue. Polybius’ ‘simple’ constitutional orders
are such equilibria sustained only by virtue. Seen this way, the whole point
of Polybius’ anakuklosis is to show the defects of the virtue-based approach.
Polybius’ concept of constitutionalism and his insistence that Roman con-
stitutionalism represents a ‘trained athlete’ is meant to show that the Roman
republican constitution was robust in the required sense. Constitutional insti-
tutions must stand the test of time against change; they must be entrenched.
However, the rules that establish the constitutional powers in the first place
must be normative and thus exogenous.70 They cannot be merely descriptive.
69 See K. A. Shepsle, ‘Old Questions and New Answers about Institutions: The Riker
Objection Revisited’, in D. A. Wittman and B. R. Weingast (eds.), The Oxford Handbook
of Political Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 1031-49. For the argu-
ment that institutions should be interpreted as endogenous, see W. H. Riker, ‘Implications
from the Disequilibrium of Majority Rule for the Study of Institutions’, American Political
Science Review 74 (1980), pp. 432-446.
70 They are ‘constitutive rules’ in the sense specified by J. Searle, Making the Social World
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 9f., ch. 5. Constitutional norms themselves
have much in common with what Bicchieri calls ‘social norms’, where preference to
conform hinges on both empirical and normative expectations regarding the behaviour
of others and on the perceived legitimacy of the relevant norms. The similarity arises
because constitutional norms, although juridical in form, face an enforcement problem.
The ‘constitutive rules’ on which constitutional norms are based are analogous to the
empirical and normative assumptions and beliefs on which social norms are based. See
C. Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 8-28. Social norms, Bicchieri writes (pp. 26f.), cre-
ate games to which they are solutions. So there is a gap between mere behavioural equi-
libria and ‘normative equilibria’ created by institutions, and it would seem that this gap
Constitutional norms rest ultimately on the normative conception of practical

rationality Hobbes and Polybius seek to educate us in.71 The balanced consti-
tution’s subjects have to have a minimal knowledge of the reasons for valuing
the constitutional order. It is only then that they have ‘incentives to abide
by the constitution and … participate in decentralized enforcement of the
constitution’.72 Yet now it looks as if this brings us back to the preferences of
citizens on the first level. Maybe this could be conceptualised as follows: con-
stitutional institutions act as exogenous constraints on what we above called
‘unconditional rogues’, while simply acting as a coordination device for those
we called ‘cautious cooperators’. At the same time the cautious cooperators
have reasons for valuing the constitutional order, and these cooperators with
their reasons in turn act as an exogenous, constitutive force on constitutional
institutions.73
Here is another way of putting the last point: institutions depend for their
existence on a certain conceptual apparatus, and there ultimately has to be
widespread agreement on the rationality of that apparatus. As Hobbes pointed
out, ‘the Power of the mighty hath no foundation but in the opinion and beleefe
of the people’.74 Even Hobbes’ theory is normative in the sense that it seeks
needs to be filled with some kind of normative attitude, be it recognition of constitutive

rules (Searle), or ‘anchoring’ of ‘frame principles’ (B. Epstein, The Ant Trap: Rebuilding the
Foundations of the Social Sciences [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015]). Constitutive
and regulative rules cannot be conflated (pace F. Guala, Understanding Institutions: The
Science and Philosophy of Living Together [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016],
ch. 5). Nor can incentives and rights (pace Guala, Institutions, p. 83): someone may well
have an incentive, but no right, to do X.
71 For a convincing argument that Hobbes’ concept of natural reason is normative, not
descriptive, see B. Gert, ‘Hobbes on Reason’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 82.3-4 (2001),
pp. 243-57. See also P. Pettit, Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 87: self-preservation ‘is really and not just
apparently good’, and this claim ‘is central to Hobbes’s philosophy’.
72 Hadfield and Weingast, ‘Constitutions as Coordinating Devices’, pp. 148f. For a game-
theoretic model of sovereign-constituency coordination, see Weingast, ‘Political
Foundations’.
73 For a recent survey of the literature on institutions, with criticism of Searle and a proposal
to combine an institutions-as-rules approach with an institutions-as-equilibria approach,
see Guala, Institutions. However, Guala (ch. 4) is not satisfying on rules as an independent
causal factor (see J. Searle, ‘Status Functions and Institutional Facts: Reply to Hindriks and
Guala’, Journal of Institutional Economics, 11 [2015], pp. 507-14, p. 511). A prisoners’ dilemma
in equilibrium, too, could be formulated as ‘rules-in-equilibrium’, but, as Guala concedes
(p. 51), this hardly amounts to an institution. Rules have to be exogenous in order to have
a causal effect on the game, which brings us back to an ‘institution-as-rules’ approach, as
Guala seems to admit (pp. 80-82).
74 T. Hobbes, Behemoth, ed. P. Seaward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 128.
38 Straumann
to educate us to choose enlightened egoism and thus peace and cooperation

over vainglory and war.75 And even for Hobbes in the last resort the possibil-
ity of cooperation is grounded, not in a coercive power, but in the cognitive
conditions that enable this power; hence the need for education, as stressed
in Leviathan Chapter 30. Similarly, Polybius attaches great importance on the
educational value of his Histories. Given certain anthropological premises and
given the historical record he lays out for us, Polybius urges us to recognise the
necessity of a certain legal-institutional framework.
An irreducibly normative aspect is built into institutions. When we think of
the ontology of institutions, we have to take this normative aspect into account.
Institutions can be thought of as the product of those speech acts the philoso-
pher John Searle calls ‘declarations’, and they cannot ultimately be conceived
let alone sustained but for collective intentionality, the collective assignment
of status functions. Declarations have ‘world-to-word fit’. As opposed to asser-
tions, which aim to describe the world and thus seek to have ‘word-to-world
fit’, speech acts such as orders or promises express an intention to make the
world fit to our orders or promises. The making of the key constituents of
the social world, namely artificial kinds such as consuls or constitutional rules,
requires such declarations.76 They combine simultaneously word-to-world
and world-to-word fit. They ‘change reality to match the propositional content
of the speech act’, but do this by simultaneously ‘represent[ing] the reality as
being so changed’.77 It is easy to see that such declarations require concepts
that define the artificial kinds the declarations create. Searle contends that all
of institutional reality, both contemporary and historical, owes its existence to
such declaration speech acts.78
This gives us a useful framework to think about the big picture within which
we should situate Polybius’ constitutional ideas, which can be taken to analyse
75 See Gert, ‘Hobbes on Reason’. The glory-seeking inhabitants of the state of nature are not
sufficiently rational; it is not until the sovereign educates them – until they read Hobbes –
that they become sufficiently rational and drop glory-seeking; Hobbes’ is a normative
argument in favour of self-preservation.
76 J. Searle, ‘A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts’, in K. Gunderson (ed.), Language, Mind and
Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975), pp. 344-69. For the irre-
ducible normativity of social conventions, see also Gilbert, ‘Social Facts’, p. 350.
77 Searle, Social World, p. 12.
78 This seems to imply that to a certain extent history has to consist of the history of ideas.
The concepts involved, especially when they are used as ‘bricks’ in the construction of
institutions, are an irreducible part of social scientific explanations in general and his-
torical explanations in particular. On this irreducibility, see R. Tuomela, ‘Collective
Acceptance, Social Institutions, and Social Reality’, American Journal of Economics and
Sociology, 62.1 (2003), pp. 123-65, p. 160.
declarations. Concepts are building blocks of institutional reality and have

themselves a certain normative force, or energy.79 It may also suggest that
methodological individualism, when understood as an explanatory device,
cannot afford to overlook institutions and thus concepts as irreducible con-
stituents of the ontology of institutionalised, i.e. legally constituted, political
orders.80 This should again speak to our concern whether institutions should
be described as (exogenous) constraints, or (endogenous) equilibria. Our view
of (constitutional) institutions as the result of declarations and ‘constitutive
rules’ may entail that they can be viewed as constraints on unconditional
rogues in the medium term, and, as rogues’ preferences get crowded out, as
equilibria in the long term.81 Here is a visualisation of the model sketched so
far, without the time dimension:
act as coordinating
device for
act as exogenous
constraint on
Constitutional Unconditional Cautious

Institutions Rogues Cooperators
- hold beliefs that provide exogenous

foundations for
- make ‘declarations’ that produce
79 See B. Straumann, ‘The Energy of Concepts: The Role of Concepts in Long-Term

Intellectual History and Social Reality’, Journal of the Philosophy of History (2019), https://
doi.org/10.1163/18722636-12341417, where a proposal is developed for long-term intellec-
tual history that recognises the causal efficacy of concepts.
80 See M. Mandelbaum, ‘Societal Facts’, British Journal of Sociology, 6 (1955), pp. 305-17.
On methodological individualism, see now Epstein, Ant Trap; but cf. still A. C. Danto,
Analytical Philosophy of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), ch. 12, for
an excellent discussion of what is at stake.
81 If institutions can act as constraints at least in the medium term, one might wonder
where this leaves the most cherished ‘primitive’ unit of rational-choice theorists, i.e.
40 Straumann
In some respects, then, constitutional institutions can be said to be exoge-

nous, in others, endogenous. Similarly, preferences of those subject to the con-
stitutional order can be said to be endogenous to and shaped by it, but there is
a set of exogenous preferences that the constitution be there, based on prior
beliefs that it is good and should be there.
4 Conclusion: Polybius’ Prospective Glasses
Polybius helps to answer the question why the Roman Republic was con-
sidered to be of such overwhelming importance throughout the history of
political theory. Unlike Athens or Thebes, Polybius claims (Polyb. 6.43.5-44.1)
that the Romans achieved stability and success not due to the ‘virtue of their
leading men (he ton proestoton andron arete)’, but because of the ‘composi-
tion of their constitution (he tes politeias sustasis)’.82 Polybius’ concept of
constitutionalism was further taken up and developed by Cicero during the
late Roman Republic, in a time of institutional collapse and the downfall of
the republican system. Cicero thought that had the hitherto largely inchoate,
implicit constitutionalism of the Roman Republic been more explicit, it could
have provided the remedy against the Republic’s demise. His own reworking
of Polybian premises can be described as a last-ditch effort to prevent the
Republic from collapsing by way of a spelled-out body of higher-order con-
stitutional norms, his treatise De Legibus. This effort was of course doomed,
but the normative concept of constitution he and Polybius had developed sur-
vived and was to become important again in the hands of political theorists
from the late Middle Ages onward.83 The concept became especially salient in
preferences. Are they truly sovereign, or exogenous? An historical account suggests that
they are not – paradoxically, the idea that subjective utility is an exogenous given may
itself be the outcome of a process of reform and education, the kind of education Hobbes
sought to provide. A certain normative kind of self-interested rationality (fear of death,
value of peace) would be difficult to imagine without the success of Hobbes’ normative
argument against glory, pride and ambition, and without some Hobbesian institutions of
government. For an intellectual history of that shift, see A. O. Hirschman, The Passions and
the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1977). For an argument that preferences are endogenous, see S. Bowles,
‘Endogenous Preferences: The Cultural Consequences of Markets and Other Economic
Institutions’, Journal of Economic Literature, 36.1 (1998), pp. 75-111.
82 Of course, he may well have been wrong about this. It is difficult to overstate the institu-
tional sophistication of the Athenian constitution in the 4th century BC, for example.
83 For a theory of how such conceptual continuity should be conceived, see Straumann, ‘The
Energy of Concepts’.
the 18th century when large-scale territorial republics were, for the first time
since the Roman Republic’s fall, again considered an actual, viable option
and when the concept was put to use and eventually institutionalised with
the efforts of the Framers of the US Constitution.84 If the authors of the
Federalist can be called political scientists, Polybius, who according to Arnaldo
Momigliano should have been ‘recognized as one of the founding fathers of
the USA’, can be considered an even earlier political theorist of empirical and
even game-theoretical bent.85
Both Polybius and Cicero believed that a properly conceived constitutional
order would be able to bring stability as well as a modicum of justice to the
state; neither believed that virtue could do that by itself. Polybius stresses
the role of consent, and at times does seem to operate with a proto-Hobbesian
assumption of enlightened rational self-interest, crucially supplemented
with a role for natural resentment at injustice; other passages, however, do
acknowledge the overwhelming role of immoral passions and desires (see,
e.g., 6.56.11), as we have seen, and allow for optimism only insofar as Polybius’
constitutional engineering, embodying reason itself, checks these passions by
countervailing powers.86
Where do Polybius’ theory of constitutional order and his ultimately pessi-
mistic anthropological views leave us with regard to the possibility of political
84 See Straumann, Crisis and Constitutionalism, Part III.

85 See J. Ferejohn and R. Hills, ‘Publius’s Political Science’, in J. N. Rakove and C. A. Sheehan
(eds.), The Cambridge Companion to The Federalist (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, forthcoming 2020), pp. 515-556; A. Momigliano, Essays in Ancient and Modern
Historiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), p. 77.
86 This tension between the role of rational self-interest and the acknowledgment of the
crucial role of irrational passions and desires in Polybius’ thought must, in my view, be
resolved similarly to the way the tension can be resolved in Hobbes’ thought: enlight-
ened self-interest is indeed rational, but it is a normative aim, and cannot be assumed
as empirically valid. Indeed, to an extent Polybius’ aim in writing his Histories might
be said to lie – again, similar to Hobbes’ aim – in a normative attempt at educating his
readers towards a more rational, enlightened self-interest. In this limited sense, then,
Polybius cannot be said to be much more ‘pragmatic’ than his Greek predecessors. In
this Polybius and Hobbes may be said to overlap, but Polybius’ notion of natural resent-
ment of injustice is quite different from Hobbes’ anthropology and goes beyond it. On
my interpretation, then, Polybius emerges as much more of a Smithian and Hobbesian
than a Machiavellian. See on the educational, normative aspect of Hobbes’ doctrine
N. Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 543-5; see
also N. Malcolm, Reason of State, Propaganda, and the Thirty Years’ War: An Unknown
Translation by Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 114f.; and
D. Herzog, Happy Slaves: A Critique of Consent Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1989), pp. 85f.: ‘Egoism … serves Hobbes as a reforming proposal. Men may not cur-
rently be egoists, but they should be: others would be better off if they were’.
42 Straumann
order and cooperation? The empirical studies of repeated public goods games
cited at the beginning of this paper seemed to show a mixed picture. Polybius
may plead that our ability to cooperate reflects where in the constitutional
cycle we find ourselves. His account also suggests that the constitutional back-
ground – rather than cultural differences – might be the key and partially
hidden variable explaining the rather mixed outcomes in the empirical stud-
ies conducted across contemporary human societies referenced above at the
outset.87 One of the studies seems to show that cooperation and voluntary
contribution to a public good are positively correlated with a certain amount
of institutionalised government.88 The economist and game theorist Samuel
Bowles has tried to demonstrate that this can be explained by the effect of the
rule of law. By reducing risk and promoting trust, the rule of law transforms a
coordination game so that cooperation becomes risk-dominant.89
But by ‘rule of law’ Bowles seems to mean political orders that generate sta-
bility through a hierarchy of legal rules and feature a higher-order law that
governs the formulation of lower-level rules. If this is correct it would seem to
show that those who find themselves in balanced constitutional orders that
enable cooperation and lend their weight to pre-existing altruistic motives
are the beneficiaries of government’s Hobbesian efforts to banish ‘senseless
vainglory’ and violent passions. Polybius’ normative emphasis on enlightened
self-interest and prosperity (6.50.6) leads in the same direction.90 The state is
necessary and sufficient for Polybius, as it is for Hobbes, to implement natural
87 Henrich et al., ‘Costly Punishment’; Herrmann et al., ‘Anti-social Punishment’. For

an account of cultural norms and customs as informal institutions in Polybius, see
G. Nelsestuen, ‘Custom, Fear and Self-Interest in the Political Thought of Polybius’, History
of Political Thought, 38.2 (2017), pp. 213-38.
88 Herrmann et al., ‘Anti-social Punishment’.
89 S. Bowles, ‘Is Liberal Society a Parasite on Tradition?’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 39.1
(2011), pp. 46-81, pp. 73f. This, as well as the behavior of the Hadza hunter-gatherers in
Henrich et al., ‘Costly Punishment’, seems to provide support for a Polybian-Hobbesian
argument in favour of legal enforcement institutions. This is against Taylor, Possibility,
pp. 162f., who argues that cooperation ‘even when the society is so large that the ordinary
game is a Prisoners’ Dilemma’ may ‘yet be rational if the individual discount rates are not
too great’. But without government, discount rates are likely to be too great. Elsewhere,
Bowles argues that the ‘good citizen’ – virtue – is a key determinant of trust and coopera-
tion and in danger of being crowded out by market forces. But since (as he acknowledges,
calling it a ‘puzzle’) trust and cooperation tend to be high in market-based, liberal politi-
cal orders, Hobbesian institutions might provide the hidden variable here. They create
the conditions without which neither markets nor trust would be conceivable. S. Bowles,
The Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives are no Substitute for Good Citizens (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2016), ch. 5.
90 Prosperity as consequence of Roman constitutional order; cf. also 6.7.4.
law, i.e. Polybius’ ennoia as discovered in the state of nature. Polybius’ Histories,
then, can be thought of as ‘prospective glasses’, no less than Leviathan. Like
Hobbes, Polybius seeks to influence his readers’ preferences on the margins in
favour of upholding what he thinks is the empirically validated mechanism for
implementing these moral concepts:91 the balanced constitution, a normative
equilibrium.92
91 This is not to impute to either Hobbes or Polybius a version of Gauthier’s argument that
only ‘constrained maximizers’ qualify as rational (D. Gauthier, Morals by Agreement
[Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986]). Hobbes and Polybius need not be interpreted as going
very far beyond the weak criteria of rationality required by game theory, namely consis-
tency. They do go somewhat beyond those criteria (if not as far as Gauthier) in insisting
on self-preservation and a long-term time horizon as normative goals. For criticism of cur-
rent preference revisionism that simply includes other-regarding concerns into people’s
utility functions, see V. J. Vanberg, ‘On the Economics of Moral Preferences’, American
Journal of Economics and Sociology, 67.4 (2008), pp. 605-28.
92 Drafts of this paper were presented at the Ethics and Politics, Ancient and Modern
(EPAM) Workshop at Stanford University and at the Political Philosophy Colloquium at
the University of Zurich. I would like to thank Francis Cheneval, Chris Bobonich, and
Josiah Ober for inviting me, the audiences, Francis Cheneval, Dan Edelstein, and Johan
Olsthoorn for comments and criticisms, and Josiah Ober for his incisive comments. Many
thanks also to Andreas Gyr and Eva Kim for helpful discussion, suggestions, and help with
diagrams.

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Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek AND

ROMAN Political Thought 37 (2020) 9-43

Leaving the State of Nature: Polybius on

Polybius – Thomas Hobbes – state of nature – cooperation – political order – game

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/20512996-12340256

anticipate attempts by later political thinkers at understanding the possibility

1 Polybius on the State of Nature

It is a commonplace among historicists that neither our normative conceptual

6 D. Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, ed. T. L. Beauchamp (Oxford:

Prisoners’ dilemma cooperate defect

Assurance cooperate defect

Cooperation game cooperate defect

15 If we interpret Hobbes’ state of nature as a prisoners’ dilemma, which is a plausible but

17 Recent scholarship on Polybius includes: N. Miltsios, The Shaping of Narrative in Polybius

seems, the development of language.19 As a consequence of a slow process that

has been interpreted as a theorist of the evolution of moral sentiments who

Here resentment could be taken to eventually result in an effect similar to that

Gillies translates as ‘resentment’ Polybius’ claim that a disinterested specta-

But are there enough similarities to make the comparison enlightening? Is

thus essentially a normative emotion, akin to the kind of emotion Aristotle

35 Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.9, 1387b13-21.

I propose that we conceive of Polybius’ moral framework as the upper left

Prisoners’ dilemma II cooperate defect

cooperate 2, 2 -0.5, 2.5

altruistic punishment and conditional cooperation (provided others cooper-

Polybius’ state of nature cooperate defect

cooperate 3 (R), 4 (C) 1 (R), 3 (C)

be achieved – according to Polybius’ view of the state of nature as described in

2 Polybius’ Way Out: from Coercion to Consent

Polybius offers a plausible combination of self-interested rationality and

Legitimate kingship, which, unlike primitive monarchy, is a true constitutional

44 For the Epicurean influence, see Cole, Democritus, ch. 6.

46 Cole, Democritus, p. 94, n. 23.

49 Cf. Hobbes ‘Leviathan’, ch. 20, p. 306.

Coercion Legitimacy Consent

52 Cf. Cole, Democritus, pp. 90f.

(Polyb. 6.16.2).54 It is to Polybius’ description of the ideal constitutional order

3 A Trained Athlete: Polybius’ Constitutional Equilibrium55

The improved monarchy Polybius calls kingship is legitimate as well as sta-

orders is due to corruption in the rulers, an ‘inbuilt evil’ (sumphuton kakon),

58 Cf. F. W. Walbank, ‘A Greek looks at Rome: Polybius VI revisited’, in F. W. Walbank (ed.),

Polybius offers two ways of getting at his constitutional solution – the

63 Pace Atkins, Cicero, pp. 82, 86f.

Polybius’ condition of empirical testability is intended to ensure that this

64 Nagel, Equality and Partiality, pp. 26f.

(Polyb. 6.18).65 It could be conceptualised as an iterated prisoners’ dilemma

their constitutional role. Here the people can be understood as an exogenous

Constitutional norms rest ultimately on the normative conception of practical

needs to be filled with some kind of normative attitude, be it recognition of constitutive

to educate us to choose enlightened egoism and thus peace and cooperation

declarations. Concepts are building blocks of institutional reality and have

Constitutional Unconditional Cautious

- hold beliefs that provide exogenous

79 See B. Straumann, ‘The Energy of Concepts: The Role of Concepts in Long-Term

In some respects, then, constitutional institutions can be said to be exoge-

4 Conclusion: Polybius’ Prospective Glasses

84 See Straumann, Crisis and Constitutionalism, Part III.

87 Henrich et al., ‘Costly Punishment’; Herrmann et al., ‘Anti-social Punishment’. For

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