Polybius between Greece and Rome
*I would like to begin with some much-quoted words of Polybius himself
(, , ). ‘‘For who is so worthless or so idle as not to wish to find out by
what steps and overcome by what sort of political structure almost all parts
of the inhabited world have, in the space of hardly fifty-three years, fallen
under the domination of the Romans, a thing which is not found ever to
have happened before?’’
The fifty-three years which Polybius refers to were those which began
in .., the moment when, in his view, events in all parts of the Helle-
nised world, previously separate, began to be interconnected; they ended in
.., when, at the battle of Pydna, Rome destroyed the first of the great
Hellenistic monarchies, that of the Antigonids, which had ruled Macedonia
for a little over a century. By ‘‘domination’’ (archē) Polybius did not mean
what we often mean when we think of the formation of the Roman Empire:
the creation of territorial provinces and the imposition of tribute. He meant
military victory, the right to decide whether or in what form a city or a king-
dom might keep its independence, and the ability to command obedience
by the threat of force.^1
That same year, .., saw the most spectacular of all examples of the
exercise of Roman domination in this sense. Antiochus IV, the ruler of the
Seleucid kingdom, based on Syria and Babylonia, had invaded Egypt, had
defeated the Ptolemies, had claimed the kingship of Egypt for himself,^2 and
*First published in J. A. T. Koumoulides, ed.,Greek Connections: Essays on Culture and Di-
plomacy(Bloomington, Ind., ), –. The translations in the text are those of the Loeb
edition.
. See P. S. Derow, ‘‘Polybius, Rome and the East,’’JRS (): .
. For the decisive evidence that he had, see J. D. Ray,The Archive of Hor(), .