The Ambassadors: From Ancient Greece to the Nation State. Jonathan Wright

Nicator (358–281 BC), established a dynasty that would survive until the Roman invasion in 64 BC. Seleucus dreamed of emulating Alexander’s military forays into northern India. Unfortunately, in the period since Alexander’s death a formidable new power had arisen in that region.

       ii. Megasthenes

      The Mauryan Empire does not enjoy the place it deserves in the popular historical imagination. Between 321 and 180 BC, the Mauryans ruled over 500 million people, easily matching the grandeur of either the Moghul Empire or the British Raj. By the fifth century BC the numerous tribal groups of India had been reduced to four dominant monarchies, or mahajanpadas, who set about battling for primacy. By the beginning of the fourth century BC. the kingdom of Magadha, with its capital at Pataliputra, had emerged victorious. In the wake of Alexander’s military adventures in India, Chandragupta Maurya ascended to the Magadhan throne and, along with his successors, established the first genuine Indian empire, ranging from the borders of Persia to those of Afghanistan and Bengal.

      Pataliputra (on the site of present-day Patna) was likely the largest city in the world at the time. Surrounded by 570 towers and a 900-foot moat, it boasted elegant houses, ponds and orchards, plentiful food and hardly any crime. With an army of 3,000 cavalry, 9,000 war elephants and 600,000 foot soldiers, the Mauryans were fully equipped to repulse any Greek invasion. Seleucus realized that his plans to conquer India were stillborn. After suffering military defeat in 305 BC, he instead made a treaty with the Mauryans, abandoning claims to the Punjab in exchange for several hundred battle elephants. With the prospect of hostilities averted, diplomacy was able to flourish.

      In 302 BC a Macedonian ambassador named Megasthenes was sent to formalize relations between two civilizations recently at war. He travelled down the Kabul Valley, over the Khyber Pass, and headed across the Ganges Valley towards the Mauryan capital. He would stay there for ten years. While the workaday detail of his diplomatic encounters has vanished, the reports he took home would define the West’s understanding of India for centuries to come, and would be endlessly cited, if not always uncritically, in the works of historians and scholars like Arrian and Pliny. India was suddenly more tangible: a land ‘of such vast extent, it seems well-nigh to embrace the whole of the northern tropic zone of the earth’. It had ‘many huge mountains which abound in fruit trees of every kind, and vast plains of great fertility’.

      The Indian people were not hapless savages but, ‘distinguished by their proud bearing’, were ‘well skilled in the arts, as might be expected of men who inhale a pure air and drink the very finest water’. They were generally frugal, but entirely capable of appreciating finery, favouring robes ‘ornamented with precious stones’ and ‘flowered garments made of the finest muslin’. They had ‘a high regard for beauty, and avail themselves of every device to improve their looks’.

      There was much to admire in Mauryan culture. Even during military campaigns, those who worked the land were left unmolested, ensuring a steady supply of food. There were no slaves anywhere in the empire and visitors like Megasthenes were guaranteed courteous treatment: ‘officers are appointed even for foreigners whose duty is to see that no foreigner is wronged. Should any of them lose his health, they send physicians to attend him…and if he dies they bury him, and deliver over such property as he leaves to his relatives. The judges also decide cases in which foreigners are concerned, with the greatest care, and come down sharply on those who take unfair advantage of them.’

      The sophistication of Indian thought was perhaps the greatest revelation. ‘Truth and virtue they hold alike in esteem. Hence they accord no special privileges to the old unless they possess superior wisdom.’ Death was ‘a very frequent subject of discourse. They regard this life as, so to speak, the time when the child within the womb becomes mature, and death as a birth into a real and happy life for the votaries of philosophy.’ And when the old finally passed on, the Indians did not raise monuments in their honour but considered ‘the virtues which men have displayed in life, and the songs in which their praises are celebrated, sufficient to preserve their memory after death’.

      Like so many later visitors, Megasthenes was especially fascinated by Brahmin priests, men who ‘abstain from animal food and sexual pleasures, and spend their time in listening to serious discourse, and in imparting their knowledge to such as will listen to them’. They were much revered, and any man who came to listen to their discussions was ‘not allowed to speak, or even to cough, and much less to spit, and if he offends in any of these ways he is cast out from their society that very day, as being a man who is wanting in self-restraint’.⁴

      Megasthenes’ epic survey of Indian life, his Indika, did not survive antiquity intact. All that remain are fragments and the countless references to his work by later authors. His influence was profound, though not uncontroversial. Megasthenes would be criticized for his inaccuracies and wilder speculations. Unversed in Indian languages, he only ever heard stories and reports in presumably imperfect translation. He certainly made gross generalizations about a society made up of hundreds of millions of people, and gave too much credence to the more fabulous stories he heard. He told the Greek world about races of Indians who lacked noses, others whose feet pointed backwards, and still others who had heads like dogs and communicated by barking. He spoke of ants that were the size of foxes, which dug for gold, and of bizarre flying serpents.

      All such legends died hard. But Megasthenes also provided accurate accounts of Indian political and social life, Indian philosophy, the Indian judiciary, the Indian diet of rice and richly spiced meat, and he depicted a mighty city about which almost nothing had previously been known. His description of the Indian caste system was flawed – he mistakenly divided society into seven rather than four groups – but the truly momentous thing was that he introduced the West to this hierarchy for the very first time. Ultimately, it did not matter how good or bad his narrative was – although, on balance, it was remarkably good. The justified carping of some critics aside, it was believed, and one civilization’s understanding of another was forever transformed. India was suddenly far more than the mysterious place from which an occasional parrot arrived.

      Greek diplomacy was capable of outreach. Far more so, in fact, than its Roman equivalent. On the face of things, the ancient Roman worldview was unapologetically inclusive. Yes, Roman legions might tramp across most of the known world, but in due course conquered peoples would be exposed to the cultural and economic blessings of Roman civilization. The conquered, more often than not, could even aspire to Roman citizenship. Rome’s lawyers had seemingly developed a code of international encounter that defined the procedures for waging war and making peace – the only good war was a just war.

      All of this was true, but it hardly dampened Roman superiority and xenophobia. Diplomacy existed solely to expand the sphere of Roman influence. It did have much in common with its Greek counterpart. There was no specialized branch of government dedicated to foreign affairs, and ambassadors were chosen as the need arose, usually from the senatorial class. Like their Greek peers, they were given specific instructions and discouraged from showing undue initiative, and any agreements they reached had to be ratified by politicians back in Rome before coming into effect. Clearly, with such a vast empire, Rome was obliged to despatch many ambassadors, whether to seek alliances, to mediate disputes or to deal with administrative problems. Sometimes, in the field, an emperor such as Marcus Aurelius even conducted his own negotiations.

      Ultimately, though, Roman diplomacy was ruthlessly straightforward. There were two preferred ways to deal with enemies and rivals. Ideally, they were to be terrified into submission, either through war or the threat of war. Alternatively, they could be bribed. The notion of cautious, respectful negotiation was often frowned upon. Diplomacy, by many accounts, was the poor, even dishonourable, relation to military conquest, the refuge of the weak emperor. In March 218, as one example among many, the senator Fabius Buteo and four other legates travelled to Carthage in North Africa. They announced that either Hannibal and his counsellors were to be handed over or Rome and Carthage would be in a state of war. They avoided all discussion or negotiation and, when the Carthaginians refused to comply with the Roman demands, they blithely announced that the Second Punic War had now begun. Buteo ‘let