Polybius between Greece and Rome and partly because recovery from disaster had often come swiftly. This time,
by implication, no recovery was in sight (, –).
To Polybius the role of the historian was not just to record, though a his-
tory which recorded events on a universal scale gained great significance
from that alone. The historian’s role was to judge, to put events in a wider
context, and to provide lessons for the future. For that of course the historian
must himself have political and military experience; Polybius had a leading
role in a major Greek league. Second, he must be able to see the events he is
recording in perspective and, by setting them in context, to bring out their
meaning and significance. In the quotation from the first two pages of Poly-
bius with which I began, he suggests that no one could be so indolent as not
to want to understand how Rome had achieved universal domination. The
significance of that domination would become clear, however, by compari-
son with the empires of the past:
The Persians for a certain period possessed a great rule and dominion,
but so often as they ventured to overstep the boundaries of Asia they
imperilled not only the security of their empire but their own exis-
tence. The Lacedaimonians, after having for many years disputed the
hegemony of Greece, at length attained it but to hold it uncontested
for some twelve years. The Macedonian rule in Europe extended but
fromtheAdriaticregiontotheDanube....Subsequently, by over-
throwing the Persian empire they became supreme in Asia also. But...
they never even made a single attempt to dispute possession of Sicily,
Sardinia, or Libya, and the most warlike nations of Western Europe
were, to speak the simple truth, unknown to them. (, )In this last sentence he is emphasising a distinctive feature of Roman domi-
nation. It is not of course wrong to see Polybius as a historian of Rome and
its empire. Indeed when Penguin Books brought out in a one-volume
selection of Polybius, they called itThe Rise of the Roman Empireand made
the selection in such a way as to concentrate almost entirely on Roman his-
tory. However, to do that, though it has its uses, is to lose sight of Polybius’
vastly wider geographical perspective of events from India to Asia Minor,
to Syria, Egypt, Crete, and Macedonia. But above all it is to neglect the real
historical perspective which Polybius brings to the events of his age. That
is the perspective, first, of the Greek historical tradition of the classical and
Hellenistic periods. It is worth reminding ourselves that these words, ‘‘clas-
sical’’ and ‘‘Hellenistic,’’ are our terms, not his. They can, moreover, be seri-
ously misleading. Within the past half-century books have occasionally been
published which announce that the death of Alexander the Great in ..