MICHAEL FRONDA -- Ph.D. Ohio State University -- Professor at McGill University

Jonathan,

In short, yes I agree with your suspicions, but I would have to qualify this.  In
my own work on city-states/interstate relations, I have tended to adopt the
so-called Realist position, which assumes that states behave more or less as
rational, unitary actors. States tend to seek to maximize their own resources
and security, and tend to place self-preservation (or self-enhancement) above
all other criteria when deciding policy.

In other words, I have a hard time believing that a state--especially a smaller
state--would go to war simply for factional reasons, when such a policy were
clearly at odds with the interests of the state, or indeed posed an existential
threat to the community itself  (i.e., faction X is not going to decide to go to
war with Rome just to stick it to faction Y, when going to war with Rome means
sure obliteration).

This being said, it does appear to me that factional/family/personal
rivalries/competition do crosscut policy decisions in several instances.  I also
suspect that when a policy decision is difficult and the outcome is hard to
predict ("should we side with Hannibal or Rome"), it is likely that individuals
(or groups) convince themselves that their own interests and those of the
community are in sync....

I agree with your suspicions, but it is hard to locate explicit evidence.

Best,

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AAGE WESTENHOLZ -- M.A. -- Professor at Copenhagen University

Dear Mr. Kolkey,

         take it that you are interested in internal factional politics within any given city-state.  I know of no evidence for such phenomena from third millennium Mesopotamia; but the Amarna letters testify rather clearly to the presence of pro-Egyptian and anti-Egyptian parties within the city of Byblos and other Levantine cities during the middle of the second millennium.  Similarly, the Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions describe vividly that in the Babylonian cities of the first millennium, there were people who put their money on the Assyrians, while others followed the rebels (notably Marduk-apal-iddina, who must have been a phenomenal politician).  Of course, the Assyrians described the rebels as "sinners", which indeed they were, insofar as they violated sworn treaties.  The general tendency seems to be that, when you have several competing influences from the outside, the result is disagreement within the city on which magnet is the stronger....

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PHILIP C. SCHMITZ -- Professor at Eastern Michigan University

Dear Dr. Kolkey,

Nothing from Carthaginian or other Mediterranean texts in Punic can be linked
reliably to the strategy or circumstances of the wars.

However, Philip Schmitz does discuss a curious Carthoginian inscription that he dates at 405 B.C.,  which appears to touch upon some of the factional issues that I raise. 

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