The first of these, antiquarianism, was apparent in Roman historiography from the beginning. The obvious Greek example for the
Romans was Timaeus of Tauromenium (Taormina), a Sicilian writer of the early third century B.C., who in the course of his
histories of Sicily and the western Mediterranean had become in effect the first historian of Rome. Secondly there was the 'tragic'
approach associated with certain Hellenistic writers, whose chief features were pathos, sensationalism, and the cult of the bizarre.
The third influence was Polybius of Megalopolis, a Greek taken to Italy as a political detainee in 168 B.C., who became a close
friend of Roman aristocrats there and set himself to describe how 'almost the whole inhabited world had come under the sole rule of
the Romans within fifty-three years'. He aimed to write 'pragmatic' history, a political and military history, which would be of
practical value for the serious reader, both because it explained the links of cause and motivation between events and because it
judged critically the behaviour of men under stress as examples for future conduct. Because the whole history of the Mediterranean
had become united through Roman power, he believed it was possible to write a universal history which was at the same time
coherent and had explanatory value. Polybius' work was thus the culmination of Hellenistic historiography, in that politico-military
history, traditionally focused on the city-state, was given the breadth of a universal chronicle. His narrative, chronologically based
on Olympiads and their constituent years, dealt successively with the different regions of the world known to the Greeks, cross-
cutting in order to keep parallel stories in step with one another and stressing their interrelation and convergence. At the same time
he transformed Greek historiography because his central theme was the rise of an alien empire.
Like Thucydides (above, pp. 193 f.), he is a historian's historian, self-conscious about the principles and methodology of his craft,
but more ready to discuss openly problems such as the selection of material, composition of speeches, portrayal of character, and
explanation of causes. His approach is in essence a re-affirmation of Thucydides' first priority, the search for the truth from the most
authentic evidence possible-autopsy, the questioning of eyewitnesses, and the sifting of their accounts. However, he extended his
researches to the past, especially the generation before his own, and he made critical use of other men's writings. Yet he also stresses
the historian's personal contribution to history and, while in abhorring the fabulous and over-emotional he distances himself from
both the antiquarians and the 'tragic' writers, he shares the latter's preoccupation with making an impression on his readers. He
reconciles these beliefs by a theory centering on the Greek term emphasis, which covers the authoritative impression given by a
writer, the vivid significance of the events he recounts, and the powerful impression left in the reader's mind. He believes that it is
the truth of events which influences a reader more than rhetorical devices. Yet this requires the historian as a medium, selecting and
presenting events with appropriate comment on motive, cause, and outcome. On the other hand, the historian's ability derives from
his own political and military experience either in the events themselves or other events like them. So the good historian is writing
out of his own experience, whatever he relates, and the resulting authenticity and explanatory power makes the impact on the reader,
without which history is useless for the man seeking instruction.
The instruction Polybius gives is often explicit. He discusses technicalities such as the computation of the size of cities and the use
of fire-signals; he moralizes on the fortitude of Regulus in disaster, the foolish presumption of the Aetolians, the arrogance of Philip
V of Macedon; he illustrates the dangers of using mercenaries. One book is devoted to the relative merits of the Roman,
Carthaginian, and Spartan constitutions. Individual political decisions are analysed directly: he claims to have avoided fiction in
speeches, but to have selected from the available material the central arguments, on whose background and outcome he adds his own
comments. His treatment of the causes of war is perhaps not quite sophisticated enough. Although he carefully distinguishes the
preliminary acts of a war and the pretexts alleged by the combatants from the causes proper, he finds the latter only in the mental
disposition of the aggressor and the circumstances which had so disposed him. No allowance is made for occasions when there is no
long-term resolve to fight, but the diplomatic interaction of the two parties drives one or both of them over the brink, nor is enough
weight given to complicity in the state attacked, for example Rome in the Second Punic War, when it acquiesces in, and plans for,
the attack threatening it. Like Thucydides, Polybius refused to attribute to chance what can be rationally explained. However, he
shared the fascination of his Hellenistic and classical predecessors with the paradoxes of fortune (tyche), that is, rapid changes in
human circumstances, whose particular components can be rationally explained, but whose cumulative effect is unpredictable and
awe-inspiring. Most strikingly, he states that the rise of Rome to world-domination was directed by tyche, though he argues
elsewhere that chance played no part in Roman success, but it was to be expected in the light of their power, political stability, and
enterprise. This apparent inconsistency can be explained. Polybius seems to have regarded Rome as the worthy victor in a contest
which had, as it were, been promoted by tyche through the coincidence in time of several great and ambitious powers. But it was
chance that the conflict in the West between Rome and Carthage, which had a causal nexus of its own, coincided in time with the
expansion of Philip V and Antiochus III, and so political processes throughout the Mediterranean became enmeshed with each other.
The Late Republic
Roman historians did not share Polybius' interest in theory, nor did they match his universality in treating events. Nevertheless, he
had put Rome firmly in the centre of world history, and the practical educational aim he ascribed to history would have ensured its