By Angry Tortfeasor
There is a lesser-known character in the American Revolution whose influence in the framing of our constitution cannot be understated. This individual lived in the second century BC and had been dead for about 1900 years at the time of the drafting of the American Constitution. Despite this remote location in time, his writings were studied very carefully by the Founding Fathers and it could be argued that he exerted more influence on our system of government than any individual who was living at the time.
Polybius happened to live during a pivotal time in history. Polybius, a Greek scholar, was born into a world dominated by Greece, and died in a world dominated by the Roman Republic, who the Greeks of the time had difficulty viewing as anything other than backwater barbarians. After the Romans came to dominate the Greek homeland, Polybius was in his 30s and he was sent to Rome as a sort of hostage, where he ultimately became well connected in Roman society and found himself fascinated by Rome’s meteoric rise over the last century.
Polybius is known most for his works on Roman history. He is one of two major historical sources that has survived the ages for Rome’s rise to global dominance. The other source is Livy, who lived almost 200 years later and was part of a propagandistic push to mythologize Roman History under the reign of Augustus. Polybius presents the more factually accurate account of this period, with a much more scientific approach to history and having lived through many of the events he describes himself.
However, Polybius’ histories are not the subject of this article. He was also very interested in the Roman political system, which has turned out to be a fortunate resource since the other surviving major political science text from this era was Aristotle’s, and Aristotle wrote before Rome was worth mentioning in the history books, at least from a Greek perspective. To both Polybius and our Founding Fathers, the separate but equal powers of three branches of government which Rome invented was far superior to the Athenian Democracy which was often held up in earlier Greek scholarship as the ideal form of government.
It was Polybius’ admiration for the system of government from the Roman Republic which was the inspiration for the three separate but equal branches we have today. Polybius observed that the Romans had three separate branches of government, which counteracted and balanced one another. First, you had the two consuls, officials who held the executive power and were elected to one-year terms. To limit their power, consuls could only serve one year each decade. Second, you had the Senate, which was largely an advisory body but heavily influential made up of former officeholders. Finally, you had the popular assemblies who passed laws and elected officials by the vote of the people.
I think it is fair to attribute the observation of this separation and balances as Polybius’ novel observation. It is far from clear that the Romans viewed their own political system this way, it would probably be more accurate to describe their own views as pieces of a puzzle working together rather than competing powers. To the Romans, this might have looked like a similar revolving door that many complain about in our modern political system. This Constitution was never written down in the same way that ours is today. Polybius’ observations about the checks and balances operating in tandem in the context of this system are the earliest record of such an analysis we have.
Nearly all the biggest contributors to our political system were heavily influenced by these views. John Adams referred to him as one of the most important teachers of constitutional theory. Thomas Jefferson also gave Polybius credit for these ideas and famously sent Polybius’ writings to James Madison and insisted he read them. Numerous others, including James Monroe, Benjamin Franklin and James Otis also cited Polybius’ work extensively in their own writings.
This is not to suggest that either Polybius or the Founding Fathers thought the Constitution of the Roman Republic was the ideal constitution, or that it could not use improvement. They merely acknowledged that, both in Polybius’ time, and the time of the Founding Fathers, which was still dominated by monarchies, that it was the best system that had yet been invented. They took this Constitution, two millennia later, and made many improvements to surpass the Roman Republic and take a new attempt at making the now-existing best Constitution that has ever been drafted.
That’s not to say the Founders wanted to adopt this system in its entirety. They took what worked and changed what did not. For instance, the Roman Republic was actually too Democratic in the views of the founders. The power given to the popular assemblies was far too Democratic and ultimately led to runaway mob rule and empowered tyrants near the end of the Republic. To remedy this, the founders took away the power of the people to vote directly on legislation, instead choosing to elect representatives to vote on proposed legislation. This was not a new idea at the time of the drafting of the US Constitution, but in conjunction with other innovations, it created a fundamentally new and better political system than any that had existed before.
We should learn from Polybius and not be so arrogant as to think our Constitution cannot be improved. Now, almost 250 years on, we have the benefit of hindsight to do a realistic self-assessment about what has worked for our country, and what flaws have been exposed. For example, the Founders never envisioned such a powerful executive as we have today. Surely, the fact that this has been possible exposes a flaw in our system.
This was probably the greatest flaw in the Constitution of the Roman Republic too. Polybius would not live to see it, but the last executive of the Roman Republic would take absolute power and turn a constitutional republic into a dictatorship. While this hasn’t happened to us (yet), clearly the level of executive power is going in a direction that we can no longer control, and the system cannot provide checks against effectively.
How to address this problem is a tougher nut to crack. How can we design a better executive that can be controlled? I don’t have a good answer to that question, but we should all consider it. Perhaps, however, that is the wrong question. We might do better to ask ourselves whether we really need an executive at all. Maybe the reason both the United States and the Roman Republic struggled with this is because it is inherently impossible to build checks into the system to keep the executive from winning the inevitable power struggle.
This is just one example of the many kinds of issues we should consider this Fourth of July. I firmly believe that our Constitution is the best attempt yet. We should not be so arrogant as to believe it is perfect. The Founders clearly didn’t as they built in mechanisms for future generations to amend the constitution. Nonetheless, it is an undertaking that we should take great care with. There is a very strong risk of making things worse when we change things. However, we cannot reach improvements if we are unwilling to critically consider them. It takes a lot of thought, debate, study and the ability to divorce ourselves from divisive politics in order to arrive at solutions to these structural problems.