[285] According to Suidas, these were light vessels used by pirates: but whether the name arose from their construction, capacity, or the number of their oars,
seems uncertain. According to Hesychius they had two banks of oars
(δίκροτος ναῦς· πλοῖον μικρόν).
[286] See ch. 95.
[287] This language is so vague that we might suppose from it that the Achaeans elected Timoxenus in the summer of B.C. 217 to come into office in the following spring. But there is nowhere else any indication of such an interval at this period, and we must suppose Polybius to be speaking in general terms of the result of the peace during the next ten months. Agelaus was elected Aetolian Strategus in the autumn of B.C. 217.
[288] Euripides, fr. 529. Ed. Nauck.
[289] Some disconnected fragments which are usually placed at the end of the first chapter, and form the second chapter of this book, I have placed among the minor fragments at the end of these volumes.
[290] Aristotle’s classification is kingship, aristocracy, πολιτεία, democracy, oligarchy, tyranny (Pol. 4, 2). This was derived from Plato (Pol. 302, c.) who arranges the six (besides the ideal polity) in pairs, kingship, tyranny,—aristocracy, oligarchy,—democracy, good and bad. Plato has no distinct name except δημοκρατία παράνομος, for the bad democracy which Polybius calls ὀχλοκρατία, “mob-rule.” Polybius’s arrangement is this—
| Kingship (arising from a natural despotism or monarchy) | degenerates into Tyranny. |
| Aristocracy | degen”erates intoOligarchy. |
| Democracy | degen”erates intoMob-rule. |
[291] εὐθύνας. Polybius uses a word well known at Athens and other Greek states, but the audit of a Consul seems to have been one of money accounts only. At the expiration, however, of his office he took an oath in public that he had obeyed the laws, and if any prosecution were brought against him it would be tried before the people. See the case of Publius Claudius, 1, [52].
[292] This refers primarily to the consilium of the quaesitor in any special quaestio, which up to the time of the lex judiciaria of Gracchus, B.C. 122, was invariably composed of Senators. The same would apply to the Quaestiones perpetuae, only one of which existed in the time of Polybius, i.e., de repetundis, established in 149 B.C. by the lex Calpurnia. Other single judices in civil suits, though nominated by the Praetor, were, Polybius intimates, almost necessarily Senators in cases of importance.
[293] Casaubon altered this to “two hundred.” In 3, 107, Polybius certainly states that the ordinary number of cavalry was 200, raised in cases of emergency to 300, and Livy, 22, 36, gives an instance. But both authors in many other passages mention 300 as the usual number, and any alteration of this passage would be unsafe.