Polybius between Greece and Rome precedented geographical range, from Antiochus III’s campaigns in northern
India in the last decade of the third century to the Roman wars in Spain.
The work was also on an enormous scale in itself. Had it survived complete,
it would have run to over , printed pages of a Teubner text, or twenty
Loeb volumes. As it is, what remains occupies six Loeb volumes. This always
has to be remembered when we speak of what Polybius thought—or what
he seems to have omitted.
One reason the work was so long was that Polybius changed his mind
about where it should end. The original stopping point was to be the de-
struction of the Macedonian kingdom in ..But at the beginning of
book he describes why he changed his mind:
Now, if from their success or failure alone we could form an adequate
judgment of how far states or individuals are worthy of praise or blame,
I could here lay down my pen....Fortheperiodoffifty-three years
finished here and the growth and advance of Roman power was now
complete....Butsincejudgments regarding either the conquerors or
the conquered based purely on performance are by no means final...I
must append to the history of the above period an account of the sub-
sequent policy of the conquerors and their method of universal rule, as
well as of the various opinions and appreciations of these rulers enter-
tained by the subjects. (, )He therefore, in this second introduction, sketches the events which were to
occupy the last ten books (–), covering the years from to ..The
culminating point was to be the war of –.., in which the Achaean
league rose in revolt against Rome and was destroyed. It is crucial to his
whole historical perspective that he chose the tragic end of his own league
as his conclusion; this, along with the Roman defeat of a renewed revolt in
Macedon, was ‘‘the general disaster of all Hellas’’ (, , ).
Polybius’ second intention, in his original plan, had been not merely to
describe how all these complex events interlocked but to explain why the
Romans had been successful. The explanation, as the quotation with which
this essay begins indicated, was to be in terms of the Roman constitution or
political structure, thepoliteia: ‘‘Who would not wish to find out...what
sort ofpoliteiahad enabled the Romans to achieve domination of the whole
civilised world?’’ The reference is of course to the famous analysis of the
working of the Roman constitution and political system in book , which he
placed just after the Romans’ most crushing defeat, by Hannibal at Cannae
in ..This in other words was the moment when, if there were weak-
nesses in the system, they would show up. In fact the Roman system, with its