Rome, the Greek World, and the East, Vol. 3 - The Greek World, the Jews, and the East

 The Hellenistic World and Rome

lution, and the theme had coherence and dramatic force. As Peter Derow
showed some years ago, what Polybius meant byarchēwas not the formation
of Roman provinces, but the developing capacity to defeat some peoples or
rulers, and to give instructions to others.^3 Both aspects of Roman domination
are perfectly exemplified in book , which would have formed the original
conclusion: the defeat of Perseus at the battle of Pydna, and the famous scene
outside Alexandria when the Roman commander, Popilius Laenas, ordered
the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes to abandon the siege of the city
andgohome.^4 Polybius could not of course know that, in historiographi-
cal terms, this moment had already acquired a significance even greater than
it manifestly had as a historical event. For the author of Daniel had already
made it the latest event to be recorded in the Hebrew Bible (:): ‘‘For the
ships of Chittim will come against him; therefore he will be disheartened
and return.’’
The connections and contrasts between Polybius and Daniel are far more
profound, however, than this accidental conjunction. In Polybius’ concep-
tion of history, the Romans were seen as taking their place in a succession
of world rulers: first the Persians, then the Spartans, then the Macedonians,
and now the Romans (, ). Moreover, it was in his originally planned final
book, , that Polybius included an extended quotation of the reflections of
Demetrius of Phalerum, meditating on the destruction of the Persian Empire
by Alexander:

For if you consider not countless years or many generations, but merely

the last fifty years, you will read in them the cruelty of Fortune. I ask

you, do you think that fifty years ago either the Persians and the Per-

sian king or the Macedonians and the king of Macedon, if some god

had foretold the future to them, would ever have believed that at the

time when we live, the very name of the Persians would have perished

utterly—the Persians who were masters of almost the whole world—

and that the Macedonians, whose name was formerly almost unknown,

would now be the lords of it all?^5

The idea that the history of mere ‘‘events’’ was something superficial or insig-
nificant would have amazed Demetrius and his contemporaries in the Greek
world, just as it would have surprised later observers in the Near East who
reflected on the devastating impact of Alexander’s conquests. One such was

. P. Derow, ‘‘Polybius, Rome, and the East,’’JRS (): –.

. Polybius , .

. Polybius , , –, Loeb trans.