The Ambassadors: From Ancient Greece to the Nation State

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 war fall from his toga’5.

And if there had to be diplomacy, if a foreign nation or tribe had something urgent to relate, the onus was on them to initiate proceedings. In the accounts of his military campaigns in Gaul, Julius Caesar makes few references to the despatching of Roman ambassadors: rather, we are told of foreign envoys, often weeping and prostrated, coming to the Roman camp. Foreign ambassadors, the bearers of congratulations, condolences, requests or apologies, were expected to come to Rome, not vice versa. When the senate was in session, there were regularly hundreds of envoys in the capital, the most illustrious among them being housed and fed, at the state’s expense, in the Villa Publica.

Roman rulers took the number of envoys they received as an index of their prestige and power. Ambassadors from Germany, North Africa and Greece were unexceptional. More noteworthy were the princes who acted as their own representatives – as when Tiridates of Armenia visited Nero to receive his crown from the emperor’s own hands. The exotic ambassador was yet more desirable. If envoys came from as far away as Ceylon, as happened in the reign of Claudius, this was a sure indication of an emperor’s extraordinary fame.

The Roman view of the ambassador’s role lacked nuance. It did not make for the inquisitive, scholarly ambassador. For the most part, while Greece was busy with the inter-state rivalries of Athens, Thebes and Sparta, neither did the Greek notion of diplomacy. But in the person of Megasthenes, at least, a moment of genuine, lasting cultural dialogue had been achieved.

The Greeks were bemused by just how advanced and cultured Indian society seemed. Megasthenes was particularly impressed by its bureaucracy, by the number and quality of officials who oversaw a staggering range of domestic tasks. There was more to the Mauryan genius than this, however. Any fledgling empire, however exuberant, was obliged to look beyond its borders, to potential allies and likely adversaries. History in the West will always flatter classical Greece, but classical India had begun to hone its own ambassadorial skills and to meditate on the nature and ends of diplomacy. Mauryan civilization reached conclusions about its place in the world that were as startling as they were brilliant. Enter Kautilya.

CHAPTER III A Sanskrit Machiavelli

i. Debating Diplomacy

Thus speaks the Beloved of the Gods: Dhamma is good. And what is Dhamma? It is having few faults and many good deeds, mercy, charity, truthfulness, and purity. I have given the gift of insight in various forms. I have conferred many benefits on man, animals, birds, and fish, even to saving their lives, and I have done many other commendable deeds. I have had this inscription of Dhamma engraved that men may conform to it and that it may endure. He who conforms will do well.

Second Pillar Edict of the Mauryan King Asoka1

Asoka, Beloved of the Gods, was the greatest of the Mauryan emperors. His reign (273–232 BC) began with a string of bloody military campaigns but, tortured by pity for the fallen and displaced, he renounced martial glory and took to the peaceful, reflective path of Buddhism. Legend tells of the Buddhist monk Nigrodha who went strolling in the gardens of the royal palace one day and enchanted Asoka with his calm, almost beatific demeanour. Everyone else struck Asoka as being confused in mind, like perturbed deer, but the monk seemed utterly at ease, perhaps possessed of some wondrous transcendent vision. The emperor invited the monk into his palace and listened to his account of a Buddhist faith that, after his conversion in c.260 BC, Asoka would help to spread across the region.2

He decreed that a series of edicts should be promulgated across his dominions, as far as present-day Pakistan, Nepal and Afghanistan. Sometimes etched on rock faces, sometimes on towering pillars, these inscriptions proclaimed Asoka’s dedication to a life of virtue, his dream that he, ‘his sons, his grandsons and his great grandsons will advance the practice of Dhamma until the end of the world’.

It was a benign vision. Charities, hospitals and veterinary clinics were to be established, prisoners were to be treated more decently, and even the lot of dumb animals was to be improved: ‘formerly in the kitchens [of Asoka], many hundreds of thousands of living animals were killed daily for meat. But now, at the time of writing this inscription, only three animals are killed, two peacocks and a deer, and the deer not invariably. Even these animals will not be killed in the future.’ The edicts spoke of imperial officers who were to tour the countryside every five years to instruct people in the laws of piety, urging them to honour their parents and friends, to live frugally, and to maintain a bare minimum of personal property. Earlier kings might have indulged in endless ‘pleasure tours, consisting of hunts and similar amusements’, but Asoka would only travel in order to meet his people, to talk to the elderly, discourse with Brahmin priests and distribute gifts.3

The rock-and-pillar edicts were tools of propaganda, and we might question whether Asoka was quite as saintly as he wished history to believe. That he was enlightened and, by the standards of the time, compassionate cannot be doubted, however. He claimed that his task was to ‘promote the welfare of the whole world’, and so he did. He abolished the death penalty, established a sprawling network of wells and rest houses for travellers, and planted shady trees along trade routes. As for ambassadors, they were to continue in their usual tasks – forging alliances and seeking tribute – but they were also to carry medicinal herbs to foreign lands.

The defining diplomatic policy of Asoka’s reign had little to do with military aggrandizement or economic progress; it consisted rather of missionary-envoys being sent to Syria, Egypt, Macedonia and Nepal to preach the tenets of Buddhism. And as we will see in the missions of men like John of Plano Carpini in the thirteenth century, the tradition of the monkish ambassador had a vibrant future ahead of it. When a new king, Tissa, came to the throne of Sri Lanka, he sent envoys to Asoka informing the emperor of his accession. Asoka responded by despatching his son, Mahinda, as an ‘ambassador of righteousness’, charged with winning the new king for the Buddhist faith. He succeeded, and King Tissa was soon erecting a Buddhist reliquary in one of the royal gardens.

Tissa’s sister was an even more impassioned acolyte and announced that she desired to become a Buddhist nun. Lacking the authority to invest her in holy orders, Mahinda sent for his own sister Sanghamitta, who was already a nun. She arrived in Sri Lanka with the requisite paraphernalia and a golden vase containing a branch of the Bodhi tree, under which the Buddha had meditated for seven years before receiving enlightenment. The sapling was planted on a terrace in the royal gardens and to this day remains an object of veneration.

If this was one way to encounter the rest of the world, Asoka’s grandfather had espoused quite another. Chandragupta (reigned 321–298 BC), the founder of the Mauryan dynasty, was a man of humble origins: by some accounts, the son of a peacock farmer. One, presumably apocryphal, story perfectly encapsulates his fearful reputation. Ever wary of assassination attempts, Chandragupta was in the habit of taking a daily draught of poison with his meals, hoping to immunize himself against its effects. One day, when his pregnant wife accidentally imbibed some of the poison, the emperor immediately chopped off her head (hoping to stop the toxins progressing any further), ripped the unborn child from her belly and placed the embryo in the womb of a goat.4

Such ruthless efficiency pervaded Chandragupta’s entire political career. It was captured for posterity by one of his most trusted ministers, named Kautilya, who wrote an intricate treatise on how a wise king ought to govern. Kautilya’s Arthasastra was not simply an abstract meditation on devious statecraft, but an account of actual political practice. It is one of the finest works of political philosophy ever written, though it remains undervalued in the West. Its radical meditations on the nature and exercise of political power led the sociologist Max Weber to conclude that, by comparison, ‘Machiavelli’s The Prince is harmless.’5 It made a refreshingly candid contribution to an enduring debate, and one that any history of the ambassadors is obliged to fathom. What was diplomacy for? By what rules should it be governed? Which is more important when conducting foreign affairs: moral rectitude or naked self-interest, courtesy or cunning, the urbanity of an envoy or the subtle skills of an assassin? Realism or idealism?

The great Roman orator Cicero (106–43 BC) offered one prescription: ‘There will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and for all times, and there will be one master and one ruler, that is, God, over all, for He is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge.’6 When expounding the rules and rubrics of diplomacy, the idealist insists, one must abide by the dictates of a universal moral order. This might be Cicero’s God, Asoka’s dhamma, or even the modern notion of a binding Law of Nations, but in all cases ethical imperatives govern the parleys between societies. Of course, rulers invariably engage in diplomacy to further their own best interests, but there is still a right way and a wrong way to conduct foreign affairs. Justice and fair play are not only worth pursuing in and of themselves; they also foster dynamic, respectful relationships.

Realists regard this as naïve, and look instead to self-interest and contingency. Higher justice is a chimera, they suggest, and rather than genuflecting to a benign Law of Nations, political leaders ought to abide by the grittier realities of the Law of Nature. The strong will always dominate the weak, the pursuit of power and influence is both noble and necessary, and if you do not strive to rule over others, then, in time, others will assuredly strive to rule over you.

Classical Athens, to look backwards for a moment, is often credited with an uncompromisingly realist outlook. In 416 BC, during the Peloponnesian War, the city launched an expedition against the island of Melos, a Spartan colony that stubbornly refused to ally itself with the Athenian Empire. Envoys were sent to treat with the island’s governors. ‘On our side,’ the Athenians began, ‘we will not use fine phrases,’ nor claim that Athens deserves its empire because of past services to the Greek world. When reaching their decision, the Melians should eschew moralizing and ‘try to get what it is possible for you to get…When matters are discussed by practical people,’ the just outcome is always determined by the fact that ‘the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept’.

In the present instance, ‘we rule the sea and you are islanders, and weaker islanders than the rest.’ Any appeal to ‘such a thing as fair play and just dealing’ was given short shrift. The ‘path of justice and honour’ led to danger the path of self-interest to safety. ‘There is nothing disgraceful in giving way to the greatest city in Hellas when she is offering you such reasonable terms – alliance on a tribute-paying basis and liberty to enjoy your own property.’ Athens was simply behaving as a great power ought to: expanding its influence so that it might flourish.

The Melians were unconvinced. ‘Our decision, Athenians, is just the same as it was at first. We are not prepared to give up in a short moment the liberty which our city has enjoyed from its foundation for seven hundred years. We put our trust in the fortune that the gods will send…and in the help of men – that is, of the Spartans.’ That trust was misplaced and, after a period of siege, ‘the Melians surrendered unconditionally to the Athenians, who put to death all the men of military age, and sold the women and children as slaves.’7

This account of the so-called Melian dialogue comes from the histories of Thucydides (460–400 BC), who is often claimed as a founding father of realist theorizing. Undoubtedly, he offers a skewed account of Greek statecraft. He had a particular view of the nature of Greek political life, a precise (and, to some tastes, compelling) theory about how the affairs of men were governed, and he shaped his histories accordingly. But if he exaggerated, Thucydides, as great an historian as the world would ever know, was surely correct in diagnosing naked self-interest as one of the engines of Greek politics. However, the tradition he inaugurated (which would be carried forward by philosophers such as Niccolò‘ Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes) had a less familiar, but no less vibrant, counterpart in the East, which brings us back to Kautilya’s Arthasastra.

ii. The Arthasastra

According to Kautilya’s theory, in the Mauryan political world everything turned on the character of the king. If he ‘is energetic, his subjects will be equally energetic. If he is reckless, they will be reckless likewise.’ Kautilya advised any reputable monarch to divide his day into segments of one and a half hours. His night-time hours were to be every bit as regimented.

During the first one-eighth part of the night, he shall receive secret emissaries; during the second, he shall attend to bathing and supper and study; during the third, he shall enter the bed-chamber amid the sound of trumpets and enjoy sleep during the fourth and fifth parts. Having been awakened by the sound of trumpets during the sixth part, he shall recall to his mind the injunctions of sciences as well as the day’s duties; during the seventh, he shall sit considering administrative measures and send out spies; and during the eighth division of the night, he shall receive benedictions from sacrificial priests, teachers, and the high priest, and having seen his physician, chief cook and astrologer, and having saluted both a cow with its calf and a bull by circumambulating around them, he shall get into his court.

An approachable king was likely to be a popular king. ‘When in the court, he shall never cause his petitioners to wait at the door, for when a king makes himself inaccessible to his people and entrusts work to his immediate officers, he may be sure to engender confusion in business, and to cause public disaffection.’ He should, therefore, ‘personally attend to the business of gods, of heretics, of Brahmans learned in the Vedas, of cattle, of sacred places, of minors, the aged, the afflicted, the helpless, and of women’. Indeed, the Arthasastra is, in many ways, a primer in enlightened monarchy. Domestic affairs were to be conducted with justice and despatch; measures were to be put in place to protect the population from natural disasters and to safeguard the rights and privileges of merchants.

Justice was never to be arbitrary, but it could sometimes be severe. Torture was a legitimate investigative technique, although it was not to be employed against certain classes of people: pregnant women, priests, ‘ignoramuses, youngsters, the aged, the afflicted, persons under intoxication, lunatics, persons suffering from hunger, thirst, or fatigue from journey, persons who have confessed of their own accord, and persons who are very weak – none of these shall be subjected to torture’.

A terrifying variety of punishments awaited everyone else:

blows with a cane: twelve beats on each of the thighs; twenty-eight beats with a stick of the tree; thirty-two beats on each palm of the hands and on each sole of the feet; two on the knuckles, the hands being joined so as to appear like a scorpion…burning one of the joints of a finger after the accused has been made to drink rice gruel; heating his body for a day after he has been made to drink oil; causing him to lie on coarse green grass for a night in winter.

Those adjudged guilty lost all hope of clemency. Anyone who stole a chicken, mongoose, dog or pig could either pay a hefty fine or have the tip of his nose severed. ‘He who castrates a man shall have his generative organ cut off,’ while ‘any person who aims at the kingdom, who forces entrance into the king’s harem, who instigates wild tribes or enemies against the king, or who creates disaffection in forts, country parts, or in the army, shall be burnt alive from head to foot.’

The flinty character of domestic politics extended to the Mauryans’ dealings with other kingdoms. The empire’s fortunes were not determined by the randomness of fate, Kautilya insisted, but by the decisions rulers made. Kautilya offered a simple but elegant analysis of Indian geopolitics. The king ought to regard his immediate neighbour as his enemy, and the neighbour beyond that as his ally, and so on in a system of concentric circles. He should adjust his policy according to his potency and resources; when strong, he should strike, and when weak he should temporize.

At all times, however, he should do everything possible to gather reliable intelligence, both at home and abroad. A motley collection of spies were to be recruited to test the loyalty of his ministers and to infiltrate subversive factions within society. The state should ‘employ spies disguised as persons endowed with supernatural power, persons engaged in penance, ascetics, bards, buffoons, mystics, astrologers, prophets foretelling the future…physicians, lunatics, the dumb, the deaf, idiots, the blind, traders, painters, carpenters, musicians, dancers, vintners, and manufacturers of cakes, flesh and cooked rice, and send them abroad into the country for espionage’. Agents should also be posted abroad to reconnoitre and sow discord. Astrologers might be despatched to convince dissidents that it was an especially auspicious time to mount a coup. Prostitutes could be sent to seduce rival generals and foment animosity between them.

Ambassadors also had a vital role to play. An envoy’s first duty was to ‘make friendship with the enemy’s officers such as those in charge of wild tracts, of boundaries, of cities, and of country parts. He shall also contrast the military stations, sinews of war, and strongholds of the enemy with those of his own master. He shall ascertain the size and area of forts and of the state, as well as strongholds of precious things and assailable and unassailable points.’ The ambassador’s reception was an excellent way of gauging the intentions of a rival monarch. Promising signs included respectful treatment, being given a seat close to the throne, and enquiries after the health of the emperor: ‘all these shall be noted as indicating the good graces of the enemy and the reverse his displeasure.’

Whatever welcome the ambassador received, he was not to be cowed by the ‘mightiness of the enemy’ and he should ‘strictly avoid women and liquor…for it is well-known that the intentions of envoys are ascertained while they are asleep or under the influence of alcohol’. During his mission he should establish his own network of spies ‘to ascertain the nature of the intrigue prevalent among parties favourably disposed to his own master, as well as the conspiracy of hostile factions’. If this proved impossible he could ‘try to gather such information by observing the talk of beggars, intoxicated and insane persons, or of persons babbling in sleep’. The precise objective of a mission would vary according to circumstances, but likely duties included ‘the maintenance of treaties, the issue of ultimatums, gaining of friends, intrigue, sowing dissension among friends, carrying away by stealth relatives and gems, [and] gathering information about the movements of spies’.

Of course, Kautilya realized that other potentates were always likely to send their own devious ambassadors, so it was important to remain vigilant. There were constant dangers associated with being a Mauryan emperor, and the risk of assassination was taken especially seriously, as Chandragupta’s wife could attest, with poisoning the regicide’s preferred method. The alarm was to be raised whenever

the vapour arising from cooked rice possesses the colour of the neck of a peacock, and appears chill as if suddenly cooled; when vegetables possess an unnatural colour, and are watery and hardened, and appear to have suddenly turned dry…when utensils reflect light either more or less than usual, and are covered with a layer of foam at their edges; when any liquid preparation possesses streaks on its surface; when milk bears a bluish streak in the centre of its surface; when liquor and water possess reddish streaks; when curd is marked with black and dark streaks, and honey with white streaks; when watery things appear parched as if overcooked and look blue and swollen; when dry things have shrunk and changed in their colour; when hard things appear soft, and soft things hard…when carpets and curtains possess blackish circular spots, with their threads and hair fallen off; when metallic vessels set with gems appear tarnished as though by roasting, and have lost their polish, colour, shine, and softness of touch.

Poisoners were also apt to give themselves away, and the king’s attendants should always be suspicious of ‘hesitation in speaking, heavy perspiration, yawning, too much bodily tremor, frequent tumbling, evasion of speech [and] carelessness in work’. Whenever the king was presented with ‘water, scents, fragrant powders, dress and garlands’, servants ‘shall first touch these things by their eyes, arms and breast’.

It was a fitting response to a cynical political milieu. The Mauryans knew of every potential danger because of an unflinching willingness to employ dubious strategies of their own. Just as ambassadors were expected to spy and to agitate, so agents were sometimes sent to kill off troublesome rivals. Pacts and pledges could be negotiated, but it was also entirely legitimate to break them. A trusted policy in the ancient world was for powers to exchange hostages – often including a ruler’s relatives – when they made treaties; this provided some guarantee that the parties would abide by the terms of an agreement. Kautilya recognized the usefulness of such arrangements, but saw not the slightest reason to honour them. If a prince had been offered up as a hostage, that prince should do everything in his power to engineer his escape.