Polybius between Greece and Rome iar to his educated readers. It is worth stressing how detailed a familiarity
with Greek history he seems to presume. ‘‘Who had not read,’’ he says at one
point, ‘‘that when the Athenians, in conjunction with the Thebans, entered
on a war against the Lacedaimonians, sending out a force of ten thousand
men and manning a hundred triremes, they decided to meet the expenses by
a property-tax, and made a valuation for this purpose of the whole of Attica
including the houses and other property?’’ (, , –). Whether his audi-
ence really did have an immediate recall of this episode or not, it belonged,
once again, in the fourth century, to be precise in ..,atthemoment
of the foundation of the Second Athenian Confederacy.
When he applies Greek history to Roman history for dating purposes,
he normally selects points of reference which were more familiar. So, for
instance, the year of the earliest treaty between Rome and Carthage is iden-
tified not only as the first year of the annual pair of consuls at Rome, and the
year after the expulsion of the Roman kings; it was also ‘‘twenty eight years
before the crossing of Xerxes into Greece’’ (, , –)—that is, in our terms,
..Or again, when the Gauls captured all of Rome except the Capitol,
it was the nineteenth year after the battle of Aegospotamoi (which ended
the Peloponnesian War, in ..), the sixteenth year before the battle of
Leuktra (in ..), the same year as the Peace of Antalcidas with Persia,
and also the same year as that in which Dionysius I, the tyrant of Syracuse,
was besieging Rhegium, ..(, , ). These multiple references can only
have been helpful to an audience to whom the details of fourth-century his-
tory were familiar. Thanks to the Sicilian historian Timaeus, Polybius’ Greek
history in the fourth and third centuries also embraced the history of Sicily.
One of the many revelations of his history, if we think of it as a Greek his-
tory, is that it gives us something rather rare, a perspective which is decidedly
non-Athenian, and is instead, firstly, Peloponnesian and, secondly, Sicilian.
In the third century too, he can use the same anchoring device, relating
the Roman victory at Lake Vadimon in ..both to Pyrrhus’ crossing
into southern Italy in ..and to the defeat of the Gauls at Delphi in
..(, , ).
More significant, however, was the use of examples from Greek history
as points of reference for historical and political judgements. Once again,
such examples can only be useful if they are familiar and are charged with
some meaning for their readers. For example, it might be right, Polybius
suggests, to see Hannibal in the light of persons, or whole peoples, whom
circumstances had caused to act variably, or contrary to their real charac-
ter. For instance, Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse in –.., had been