*** Welcome to piglix ***

The Histories (Polybius)


PolybiusHistories (Greek: Ἱστορίαι Historíai) were originally written in 40 volumes, only the first five of which are extant in their entirety. The bulk of the work is passed down to us through collections of excerpts kept in libraries in Byzantium. Polybius, a historian from the Greek city of Megalopolis in Arcadia, was taken as a hostage to Rome after the Roman defeat of the Achaean League, and there he began to write an account of the rise of Rome to a world power.

Polybius' Histories begin in the year 264 BC and end in 146 BC (Polybius was born around 200 and died around 117 BC). He is primarily concerned with the 53 years in which Ancient Rome became a dominant world power. This period, from 220–167 BC, saw Rome subjugate Carthage and gain control over Hellenistic Greece. Books I through V cover the affairs of important states at the time (Ptolemaic Egypt, Hellenistic Greece, Macedon) and deal extensively with the First and Second Punic Wars. In Book VI he describes the Roman Constitution and outlines the powers of the consuls, Senate and People. He concludes that the success of the Roman state was based on their mixed constitution, which combined elements of a democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. The remainder of the Histories discusses the period in which Rome came to dominate the Mediterranean, from the defeat of Hannibal in 201 B.C. to the destruction of Carthage and the Greek city-state of Corinth in 146 B.C.


...
Wikipedia

...