The Flottenprofessoren Polybius & Mommsen: The First Punic War as a Matter of Strategy

The ongoing debate about Roman imperialism is often hampered by scholars who take the evidence at face value. The same can be said of our use of 19th century scholarship. In the words of Momigliano: “If you want to understand Greece under the Romans, read Polybius and whatever you may believe to be Posidonius; if you want to you want to understand Rome ruling Greece, read Plautus, Cato – and Mommsen.” (Momigliano 1971, Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization). Using a historiographical approach, this paper will attempt to answer the following question: Can we use the approaches of Polybius and Mommsen (in the Römische Geschichte) to recalibrate and revitalise the modern study of Roman imperialism? From the perennial debates about defensive or aggressive imperialism to a reconstruction and approach based on an understanding of Roman strategies - in the plural - and geostrategy, while at the same time accepting that Polybius was describing what he thought was positively an imperialist Roman state and that Mommsen was a German imperialist. Indeed, both Polybius (Fabius Pictor) and Mommsen could easily have been Flottenprofessoren! Rather than the traditional debates about defensive or aggressive imperialism, strategy - as an analytical tool – is about the interaction of military means with political ends (Freedman 2023), as a “link between political aims and the use of force, or its threat” (Heuser 2010). It is about choices made! A more nuanced view of the past, both that of Rome and that of Polybius and Mommsen, may help us to get closer to what actually happened around the time of the First Punic War.