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The third century before the common era was a time of empire-making and empire-breaking especially in the western Mediterranean, where a conflict was brewing that would shape the future of the known world. |
Ancient Sources
(- threads, 15 posts)
 Polybios
Historical Thread
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"There can surely be nobody so petty or so apathetic in his outlook that he has no desire to discover by what means and under what system of government the Romans succeeded in less than fifty-three years in bringing under their rule almost the whole of the inhabited world, an achievement whihc is without parallel in human history." Polybius, The Histories I.I
We are fortunate that the writings of Polybios have survived somewhat intact. This professional historian was a near contemporary of the Second Punic War, born in the last years of the third century BC. His family was very influential in the Peloponnesian city of Megalopolis with his father, Lykortas, serving as the strategos of the Achaean League. Polybios himself was hipparchos of the League during Rome’s war with King Perseus of Macedonia and was transported to Rome to serve as a political hostage, a sentence that was to last for sixteen years. During his captivity he attracted the attention of the eighteen year-old Scipio Aemilianus. Becoming the “friend and adviser” to the young Aemilianus gave Polybios access to eyewitnesses from both sides of the war and by accompanying his patron on military campaigns to Spain, Africa and Greece, he saw places directly affected by the war . This would have included areas where Hannibal had left his mark including the famous Lacinian inscription he set up on what is now Cape Colonne near Crotone detailing the size and composition of his army .
The history that he produced was separated into forty books of which five survive intact with a large number of fragments meaning that we have about a third of the entire work . In spite of only this fraction being available, what is left fills a large void in Roman history, charting the Roman conquest of the Mediterranean from the First Punic War to the Third Macedonian War. Despite his Roman backing and use of Roman archives, Polybios shows a useful objectivity with no specific pro- or anti-Roman bias. However, it is conspicuous that despite this impartiality he decided to leave certain controversial matters out, most notably the situation of Saguntum’s status with regard to the Ebro Treaty. This neutrality is thanks in no small part to the range of sources that Polybios employed. This included two men, Sosylos of Sparta and Silenus of Kaleakte, who according to Cornelius Nepos, both accompanied Hannibal on his journey . Polybios also mentions the Roman historian Q. Fabius Pictor , the pro-Carthaginian Philinus of Agrigentum and another Sicilian, Timaeus of Tauromenium, who is on the receiving end of a tirade from the great historian . Polybios may well have used several other sources and a cross-referencing of figures for Hannibal’s army with the Roman praetor for Sicily, L. Cincius Alimentus, who was held prisoner by Hannibal and thought to have conversed with the general about the size of his army , cannot be ruled out.
When it comes to reading his work, Polybios comes across as “pedantic” , but nevertheless one cannot help admiring his Thucydidean respect for precision and analysis. His accounts of set piece battles, described by F.J. Lazenby as “the best which have survived from antiquity” , and his insights into the way men thought overshadowing his mistakes on geography, regarding Cartagena , his identifying of L. Cornelius Scipio as Africanus’s elder brother and his own prejudices. Despite never being considered a great historian in antiquity, Polybios has become so well respected that he has been described as the “worthy extant successor to Thucydides” and the “first real historian of the ancient world.”
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Polybius on the Causes of the Third Punic War (* Kunimitsu Ashikaga, Jan 4, 2005 - 07:35 )|
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