A line drawn into the sand

Open threats to extract concessions, the archetype of nineteenth-century gunboat diplomacy practiced by colonial powers to subjugate new territory to foreign rule and trade, have always had their uses. An anecdote of the Greek historian Polybius illustrates both the antiquity and the essential nature of such threats.

In the summer of 168 BC Antiochus IV Epiphanes, King of Syria, conducted a military campaign against Egypt and Cyprus. The Roman senate, whose legions had just emerged victorious from the Macedonian war against Perseus, dispatched a three-man mission to Alexandria led by Gaius Popilius Laenas as their legate. The senate's decree was that Antiochus should vacate Egypt and Cyprus immediately. Upon meeting Antiochus at the outskirts of Alexandria, Popilius promptly handed him the senate's written demand and, according to Polybius, ‘acted in a manner which was thought to be offensive and exceedingly arrogant’:

Although subtly conveyed, there could not have been much doubt in Epiphanes’ mind that Popilius had afforded him a last opportunity to cooperate.