Polybius Polybius (; grc-gre, Πολύβιος, ; ) was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic period. He is noted for his work , which covered the period of 264–146 BC and the Punic Wars in detail. Polybius is important for his analysis of the mixed ...

’ ''Histories'' ( grc-gre, Ἱστορίαι ''Historíai'') were originally written in 40 volumes, only the first five of which are extant in their entirety. The bulk of the work was passed down through collections of excerpts kept in libraries in the

Byzantine Empire The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

. Polybius, a historian from the Greek city of Megalopolis in Arcadia, was taken as a hostage to

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus ( legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

after the Roman victory in the

Third Macedonian War The Third Macedonian War (171–168 BC) was a war fought between the Roman Republic and King Perseus of Macedon. In 179 BC, King Philip V of Macedon died and was succeeded by his ambitious son Perseus. He was anti-Roman and stirred anti-Roman ...

(171–168 BC), and there he began to write an account of the rise of

to a

great power A great power is a sovereign state that is recognized as having the ability and expertise to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess military and economic strength, as well as diplomatic and soft power i ...

Content

Polybius' ''Histories'' begin in the year 264 BC and end in 146 BC (Polybius was born around 200 BC and died around 117 BC). He is primarily concerned with the 53 years in which

Ancient Rome In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom ...

became a dominant world power. This period, from 220–167 BC, saw Rome subjugate

Carthage Carthage was the capital city of Ancient Carthage, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the classi ...

and gain control over Hellenistic Greece. Books I through V cover the affairs of important states at the time ( Ptolemaic Egypt, Hellenistic Greece,

Macedon Macedonia (; grc-gre, Μακεδονία), also called Macedon (), was an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, and later the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece. The kingdom was founded and initially ruled ...

) and deal extensively with the First and Second

Punic War The Punic Wars were a series of wars between 264 and 146BC fought between Rome and Carthage. Three conflicts between these states took place on both land and sea across the western Mediterranean region and involved a total of forty-three yea ...

s. In Book VI he describes the Roman Constitution and outlines the powers of the

consul Consul (abbrev. ''cos.''; Latin plural ''consules'') was the title of one of the two chief magistrates of the Roman Republic, and subsequently also an important title under the Roman Empire. The title was used in other European city-states throu ...

s, Senate and

People A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...

. The differences between the first set of states, namely,

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates a ...

and Thebes, and the second set which consists of those of

Sparta Sparta ( Doric Greek: Σπάρτα, ''Spártā''; Attic Greek: Σπάρτη, ''Spártē'') was a prominent city-state in Laconia, in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (, ), while the name Sparta referr ...

Crete Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, ...

, Mantinea and

he asserted, on the ground that the states of

and Thebes followed an "abnormal" growth. By "abnormal" Polybius means that these states due both the rise to the pinnacle of their power and the downfall to the caprice of fortune. It's chiefly because the Athenians had such leaders as Themistocles, and the Thebans Pelopidas and Epaminondas, that the two states have on their side the favors of fortune for a time. Interestingly, the view of Polybius on the age of Pericles might, to some extent, be considered as contrary to what most modern historians thought was the Golden Age of Greece. He then compares the political system of the Roman state to that of the Cretans, the Spartans, and shows in what aspect the laws of Rome are superior to those of the Carthaginians. He concludes that the success of the Roman state was based on their mixed constitution, which combined elements of a

democracy Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation (" direct democracy"), or to choose g ...

aristocracy Aristocracy (, ) is a form of government that places strength in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocrats. The term derives from the el, αριστοκρατία (), meaning 'rule of the best'. At the time of the word' ...

, and

monarchy A monarchy is a form of government in which a person, the monarch, is head of state for life or until abdication. The political legitimacy and authority of the monarch may vary from restricted and largely symbolic ( constitutional monar ...

. The remainder of the ''Histories'' discusses the period in which Rome came to dominate the Mediterranean, from the defeat of

Hannibal Hannibal (; xpu, 𐤇𐤍𐤁𐤏𐤋, ''Ḥannibaʿl''; 247 – between 183 and 181 BC) was a Carthaginian general and statesman who commanded the forces of Carthage in their battle against the Roman Republic during the Second Pu ...

in 201 BC to the destruction of

and the Greek city-state of

Corinth Corinth ( ; el, Κόρινθος, Kórinthos, ) is the successor to an ancient city, and is a former municipality in Corinthia, Peloponnese, which is located in south-central Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform, it has been part ...

in 146 BC.

Polybius on tyche

Tyche Tyche (; Ancient Greek: Τύχη ''Túkhē'', 'Luck', , ; Roman equivalent: Fortuna) was the presiding tutelary deity who governed the fortune and prosperity of a city, its destiny. In Classical Greek mythology, she is the daughter of Aphrod ...

, which means fate or fortune, plays an integral role in Polybius’ understanding of history. Tyche takes on a double meaning in his work. It can mean fortune or happenstance, but tyche was also personified as a goddess according to

Hellenistic In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...

convention. The exploration of Tyche is also the impetus for Polybius beginning his work, in that he discusses the fortunate events that led to

’s domination of the Mediterranean.

Polybius on government

In Book VI Polybius digresses into an explanation of the Roman

constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these pr ...

and he shows it to be mixed. The purpose for this is involved in the Hellenistic nature of the work, particularly his Greek audience. Greeks at this time believed that the strength of a state is manifested in the strength of its constitution. The mixed constitution was touted as the strongest constitution as it combined

Aristotle's Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...

three integral types of

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government i ...

and

. Polybius, again in imitation of Aristotle, makes further distinction in the forms of government by including the nefarious counterparts to the ones mentioned above; tyranny,

oligarchy Oligarchy (; ) is a conceptual form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people may or may not be distinguished by one or several characteristics, such as nobility, fame, wealth, education, or corporate ...

, and ochlocracy. These governments, according to Polybius, cycle in a process called

anacyclosis The political doctrine of anacyclosis (or ''anakyklosis'' from el, ἀνακύκλωσις) is a cyclical theory of political evolution. The theory of anacyclosis is based upon the Greek typology of constitutional forms of rule by the one, the ...

or kyklos, which begins with monarchy and ends with ochlocracy.

Polybius in English

The first

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

translation, made by Christopher Watson, was published in London in 1568 as ''The hystories of the most famous and worthy cronographer Polybius''. F. W. Walbank wrote a comprehensive commentary on the ''Histories'' in three volumes, which was published between 1957 and 1979.

References

Bibliography

Editions of ''The Histories''

*Polybius; Frank W. Walbank, Ian Scott-Kilvert (1979). ''The Rise of the Roman Empire''. Penguin Classics. .

Modern works

* Mogens Herman Hansen 1995, ''Sources for the Ancient Greek City-State: Symposium'', August, 24-27 1994, Kgl. Danske, Videnskabernes Selskab, 376 pages * Robert Pashley, ''Travels in Crete'', 1837, J. Murray *C. Michael Hogan, Cydonia, Jan. 23, 2008, ''The Modern Antiquarian'

* F. W. Walbank, Frank William Walbank, ''A Historical Commentary on Polybius'', Oxford University Press, 1957–1979. *——, ''Polybius'', Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1972. *——, ''Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World, Essays and Reflections'', Cambridge University Press, 2002. *

Brian McGing Brian C. McGing is a papyrologist and ancient historian, who specialises in the Hellenistic period. He is Regius Professor of Greek (Dublin), Regius Professor of Greek at Trinity College, Dublin, Trinity College, Dublin. He is editor of the colle ...

, Polybius' Histories. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010.

External links

English and Greek version The Histories

{{DEFAULTSORT:Histories Ancient Greek works 2nd-century BC history books Roman-era Greek historiography