Ancient Historians · Part 15 · Rome · C1
Polybius: The Rise of Rome
Part 15 of Ancient Historians: Polybius was a Greek cavalry commander taken to Rome as a hostage, who became the friend of Rome’s greatest general and the historian of Rome’s rise to world power. He asked one question: how, in less than fifty-three years, did almost the whole known world fall under the rule of a single city? He walked Hannibal’s route over the Alps, and he stood beside Scipio as Carthage burned. Cause and effect (as a result, consequently, owing to, which led to, thereby), and the language of political systems, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight’s historian explains the world we live in. Philo, who rules Alexandria today?
Rome, of course. Since Octavian defeated Antony and Cleopatra, Egypt has been Rome’s.
And how did one city in Italy come to rule from Spain to Syria? A Greek called Polybius asked exactly that question, and he was in the perfect position to answer it: he was a prisoner in Rome who became the friend of its leaders. Tonight’s grammar is cause and effect, because Polybius wanted above all to explain why things happened.
Greece, Rome, Spain and Carthage, about 200–118 BCE
Polybius (about 200–118 BCE) was a leading politician and cavalry commander of the Achaean League in Greece. After Rome defeated Macedonia at Pydna in 168 BCE, a thousand leading Achaeans, including Polybius, were taken to Italy as hostages. In Rome, he became the teacher and close friend of the young Scipio Aemilianus, and spent sixteen years among the Roman ruling class.
His Histories, in forty books (five survive complete), ask how and why Rome conquered almost the entire known world in less than fifty-three years, from 220 to 167 BCE. His answer is partly Rome’s army and discipline, and partly its constitution: a mixed constitution that combined monarchy (the consuls), aristocracy (the Senate) and democracy (the assemblies), so that each part checked the others. He believed that history should be pragmatic, useful for statesmen, and he insisted on seeing places himself:…
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