Polybius

born c.
200 bc, Megalopolis, Arcadia, Greece
died c. 118
Greek
statesman and historian who wrote of the
rise of Rome to world prominence.
Early
life
Polybius was the son of Lycortas, a
distinguished Achaean statesman, and he
received the upbringing considered
appropriate for a son of rich
landowners. His youthful biography of
Philopoemen reflected his admiration for
that great Achaean leader, and an
interest in military matters found
expression in his lost book, Tactics. He
enjoyed riding and hunting, but his
knowledge of literature was rather
specialized (apart from the historians)
and his acquaintance with philosophy
superficial.
Before
170/169, when he was hipparch (cavalry
commander) in the Achaean Confederation,
almost nothing is known of his career.
But he then became involved in critical
events. Encumbered by their war with
Perseus of Macedonia, the Romans were
watching for disloyalty in the Greek
states. Although Polybius declared for
open support of Rome and was sent as an
envoy to the consul Quintus Marcius
Philippus, Achaean help was rejected.
After Perseus’ defeat at Pydna in 168,
Polybius was one of 1,000 eminent
Achaeans who were deported to Rome and
detained in Italy without trial.
Residence in Rome
At Rome, Polybius had the good fortune
to attract the friendship of the great
Roman general Scipio Aemilianus; he
became Scipio’s mentor and through his
family’s influence was allowed to remain
in Rome. 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. Shortly afterward,
when his political detention had ended,
Polybius joined Scipio at Carthage and
was present at its siege and destruction
in 146; and it is likely that he then
undertook a voyage of exploration in the
Atlantic, which is related in Pliny the
Elder’s Natural History.
Meanwhile, hostilities had broken out
between Achaea and Rome, and Polybius
was in Corinth shortly after its
destruction, in 146. 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.”
Of
Polybius’ life after 146 little is
known. At some date he visited
Alexandria and Sardis. He is known to
have discussed political problems with
Scipio and Panaetius of Rhodes. He wrote
a history of the Numantine War,
evidently after 133 bc, and also a
treatise on the habitability of the
equatorial region; but when he composed
the latter is unknown.
Polybius’ history of Rome
The Histories on which his reputation
rests consisted of 40 books, the last
being indexes. Books I–V are extant. For
the rest there are various excerpts,
including those contained in the
collection of passages from Greek
historians assembled in the 10th century
and rediscovered and published by
various editors from the 16th to the
19th century.
Polybius’ original purpose was to
narrate the history of the 53 years
(220–168 bc)—from Hannibal’s Spanish
campaign to the Battle of Pydna—during
which Rome had made itself master of the
world. Books I–II form an introduction
covering Roman history from the crossing
into Sicily against the Carthaginians in
264 and including events in various
other parts of the world (especially
Achaea) between 264 and 220. In Book
III, Polybius sketches a modified plan,
proposing to add an account of how the
Romans exercised their supremacy and to
extend coverage to the destruction of
Carthage, in 146.
The
events of 168–146 were related in Books
XXX–XXXIX. Polybius probably conceived
his revision after 146, having by this
date completed his narrative down to the
end of the Second Punic War. 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.
Conception of history
“All historians,” according to Polybius,
have
insisted that the soundest education and
training for political activity is the
study of history, and that the surest
and indeed the only way to learn how to
bear bravely the vicissitudes of fortune
is to recall the disasters of others.
Practical experience and fortitude in
facing calamity are the rewards of
studying history and are stressed
repeatedly throughout the work. History
is essentially didactic. Pleasure is not
to be wholly excluded, but the scale
comes down sharply on the side of
profit. To be really profitable, history
must deal with political and military
matters; and this is pragmatiké
historia, in contrast to other sorts of
history (IX, 1–2)—genealogies and
mythical stories, appealing to the
casual reader, and accounts of colonies,
foundations of cities, and ties of
kindred, which attract the man with
antiquarian interests. Its nature is
austere, though it may include
contemporary developments in art and
science. He stands in contrast to the
sensationalism of many of his
predecessors, who confuse history with
tragedy.
In Book
II, in which he attacks the Greek
historian Phylarchus for practices that
might be called unprofessional today,
Polybius states:
A
historian should not try to astonish his
readers by sensationalism, nor, like the
tragic poets, seek after men’s probable
utterances and enumerate all the
possible consequences of the events
under consideration, but simply record
what really happened and was said,
however commonplace. For the object of
history is the very opposite of that of
tragedy. The tragic writer seeks by the
most plausible language to thrill and
charm the audience temporarily; the
historian by real facts and real
speeches seeks to instruct and convince
serious students for all time. 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.
This
attack on Phylarchus is not isolated.
Similar faults are castigated in other
historians judged guilty of
sensationalism (cf. II, 16, 13–15; III,
48, 8; VII, 7, 1–2; XV, 34, 1–36). Nor
are these their only weaknesses. Many
historians are prone to exaggeration—and
that for a special reason. As writers of
monographs whose subjects are simple and
monotonous, they are driven “to magnify
small matters, to touch up and elaborate
brief statements and to transform
incidents of no importance into
momentous events and actions” (XXIX, 12,
3). 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).
Polybius believed that he had a
particular reason for adopting a
comprehensive view of history, apart
from his own predilection for such a
view. He wrote:
Hitherto the affairs of the world had
been as it were dispersed . . .; since
this date [220 bc] history has formed an
organic whole, and the affairs of Italy
and Africa have been interlinked with
those of Greece and Asia, all tending
towards one end (I, 3, 3–4).
Indeed,
only universal history is capable of
adequately treating Rome’s rise to world
power—the historian’s synoptic view
matches the organic character of history
itself:
What
gives my work its peculiar quality, and
is nowadays most remarkable, is this.
Tyche [Fortune] having guided almost all
the world’s affairs in one direction and
having inclined them to one and the same
goal, so the historian must bring under
one conspectus for his readers the
operations by which she has accomplished
her general purpose. For it was chiefly
this consideration, coupled with the
fact that none of my contemporaries has
attempted a general history, which
incited and encouraged me to undertake
my task (I, 4, 1–2).
The
role here allotted to Fortune is
somewhat unusual. For clearly the value
of history as a source of practical
lessons is diminished if cause and
effect are at the mercy of an
incalculable and capricious power.
Usually, although Polybius uses Fortune
to cover a variety of phenomena, ranging
from pure chance to something very like
a purposeful providence, much of the
apparent inconsistency springs from his
use of purely verbal elaboration or the
careless adoption of current Hellenistic
terminology, which habitually made
Fortune a goddess. Here, however,
Fortune seems to be a real directive
power, which raised Rome to world
dominion—because Rome deserved it.
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. 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.
Sources of information
Polybius defines the historian’s task as
the study and collation of documents,
acquaintance with relevant geographical
features, and, finally, political
experience (XII, 25e); of these the last
two are the most essential. And he
practiced what he preached, for he
possessed good political and military
experience and had traveled widely
throughout the Mediterranean and beyond.
Nor did he neglect written sources;
indeed, for his introductory books,
covering the period from 264 to 220,
they were essential. For the main part
of his history, from 220 onward, he
consulted many writers, Greek and Roman,
but, following precedent, he rarely
names them.
He had
access to private sources; for example,
Publius Cornelius Scipio’s letter to
Philip V of Macedonia describing the
capture in Spain, in 209 bc, of New
Carthage (X, 9, 3), and a letter of
Scipio Nasica to some Hellenistic king
about the campaigns of the Third
Macedonian War (XXIX, 14, 3). He almost
certainly consulted the Achaean record
office and must have drawn on Roman
records for such material as the treaty
between Carthage and Philip V (VII, 9).
It has not been proved that he had
access to the Rhodian records. His
detailed figures for Hannibal’s troop
formations in Italy came from an
inscription left by Hannibal, which he
found in the Temple of Juno on the
Lacinian promontory.
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. Anything else
would be “hearsay at one remove,” a safe
foundation for neither judgments nor
statements.
Style and qualities as a historian
Writing in the 1st century bc, Dionysius
of Halicarnassus reckons Polybius among
those who “have left behind them
compositions which no one endures to
read to the end”; that his successors
shared this view of Polybius’ style is
confirmed by the failure of his works to
survive except in an incomplete form.
The infelicity of Polybius’ Greek (which
frequently reproduces the conventional
phrases of the Hellenistic chancelleries
familiar from contemporary inscriptions)
lies in its awkward use of long and
cumbersome circumlocutions, vague
abstract nouns, and pedantic
repetitions. To the scholar his style
is, however, no great obstacle; and,
though in his anxiety to improve his
reader he moralizes and belabours the
obvious, the perennial interest and
importance of his theme will always
ensure him a following among those who
can enjoy a historian who is accurate,
serious, and sensible, who understands
the events of which he writes, and,
above all, who asks the right questions.
Frank W. Walbank