Updates? Get exclusive access to content from our 1768 First Edition with your subscription. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). At least Books I–VI seem to have been published by about 150; there is no information as to when the rest of the work, including the revised plan in Book III, appeared. Polybius regarded oral sources as his most important, and the questioning of witnesses as the most vital part of a historian’s task; indeed, this is one reason why he chose to begin his main history at the year 220. It is probable that Polybius accompanied Scipio to Spain in 151, went with him to Africa (where he saw the Numidian king Masinissa), and crossed the Alps in Hannibal’s footsteps on his way back to Italy. The role here allotted to Fortune is somewhat unusual. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. In contrast to such practices, Polybius stresses the universal character of his own theme, which is to narrate “how and thanks to what kind of constitution the Romans in under 53 years have subjected nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government—a thing unique in history” (I, 1, 5). He devoted himself to securing as favourable a settlement as possible for his countrymen and to reestablishing order; and, as the geographer Pausanias states, Achaean gratitude found expression in the erection of statues in his honour at Tegea, Pallantium, Mantineia, Lycosura—where the inscription declared that “Greece would never have come to grief, had she obeyed Polybius in all things, and having come to grief, she found succour through him alone”—and Megalopolis, where it was recorded that “he had roamed over all the earth and sea, had been the ally of the Romans, and had quenched their wrath against Greece.”. Normally, Polybius lays great emphasis on causality, and his distinction (III, 6) between the causes of an event (aitiai) and its immediate origins (archai) is useful up to a point, though it is more mechanical than that of the great Greek historian Thucydides and allows nothing for the dialectical character of real historical situations. An important place in Polybius’ work is occupied by his study of the Roman constitution and army and the early history of the city in Book VI. There it is the probable that counts, even though it be false, the object being to beguile the spectator; here it is the truth, the object being to benefit the student. His analysis of the mixed constitution, which had enabled Rome to avoid the cycle of change and deterioration to which simple constitutional forms were liable, is full of problems, but it has exercised widespread influence, from Cicero’s De republica down to Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Pleasure is not to be wholly excluded, but the scale comes down sharply on the side of profit. Please select which sections you would like to print: Corrections? Polybius, (born c. 200 bce, Megalopolis, Arcadia, Greece—died c. 118), Greek statesman and historian who wrote of the rise of Rome to world prominence. Polybius was the son of Lycortas, a distinguished Achaean statesman, and he received the upbringing considered appropriate for a son of rich landowners. Rathbone Professor Emeritus of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology, University of Liverpool.
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