Polybius between Greece and Rome What determines Polybius’ perspective is both a national tradition of Greek
patriotism and, as this passage illustrates, a historiographical tradition.
As it happens, the surviving text of Polybius nowhere names Herodo-
tus, on whom of course the tradition of the defeat of Xerxes depended. The
writers of the later fifth, fourth, and third centuries, Thucydides, Xenophon,
Ephorus, Theopompus, Callisthenes, and Timaeus, to name only the major
figures, represented for him a continuous tradition of Greek history writing,
to which he constantly makes explicit reference. Indeed, his choice of the
date .., with which he opens his preliminary narrative of Roman his-
tory, before he comes to the great conjunction of events in –..,was
determined partly by the fact that it was then that Roman forces first crossed
into Sicily; and partly by the fact that it was in that year that Timaeus’History
had stopped (, , ; , , ). Nor was there any doubt what the proper and
central subject of a Greek history should be. This is made quite clear in what
he says of Theopompus’History, which covered the period from ..to
the reign of Philip of Macedon:
No one could approve of the general scheme of this writer. Having
set himself the task of writing the history of Greece from the point at
which Thucydides leaves off, just when he was approaching the battle
of Leuctra and the most brilliant period of Greek history, he abandoned
Greece and her efforts, and changing his plan decided to write the his-
tory of Philip. Surely it would have been much more dignified and
fairer to include Philip’s achievements in the history of Greece than to
include the history of Greece in that of Philip. (, , –)As we shall see at the end, the tension between monarchic power, with its
varied threats and possible benefits, and the freedom of the Greek cities was
one of the fundamental issues which shaped Polybius’ historical conscious-
ness. There is a very real sense in which the period of Greek history within
which Polybius most fully ‘‘belongs’’ is that which begins in the very late
fifth century, and is marked by the rise and influence of monarchs, whether
tyrants, like Dionysius I the tyrant of Syracuse (–..), or kings, like
Philip of Macedon and his successors.^10 If we allow ourselves to gain a sense
of Polybius’ historical consciousness, we might begin to feel more sympa-
thy for the suggestion made by Hermann Bengtson that we should use the
term ‘‘Hellenistic’’ not just of the period after Alexander, but from the first
half of the fourth century onwards.^11 What Polybius does not do, however,
. For this theme, see esp. J. K. Davies,Democracy and Classical Greece(), chap. .
. H. Bengtson,Griechische Geschichte^5 (), ff.