Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/428

Rh 412 POLYBIUS Scipio and Fabius (xxxii. 9), who seem to have made his acquaintance in Macedonia, At any rate Polybius was received into ^Emilius s house, and became the instructor of his sons (Appian, Pun., 132). Between Scipio, the future conqueror of Carthage, and himself a friendship soon sprung up which ripened into a lifelong intimacy. To the last Scipio so constantly relied upon the advice and counsel of Polybius that it could be said by the country men of the latter that Scipio never failed when he followed the advice of his friend (Pausan., viii. 30). To Polybius himself his friendship with Scipio was not merely the chief pleasure of his life but of inestimable service to him throughout his career. It protected him from interfer ence, opened to him the highest circles of Roman society, and enabled him to acquire a personal influence with the leading men, which stood him in good stead when he after wards came forward to mediate between his countrymen and Rome. It placed within his reach opportunities for a close study of Rome and the Romans such as had fallen to no historian before him, and secured him the requisite leisure for using them, while Scipio s liberality more than once supplied him with the means of conducting difficult and costly historical investigations (Pliny, N. H., v. 9). In 151, after seventeen years of banishment, the few surviv ing exiles were allowed to return to Greece. But the stay of Polybius in Achaia was brief. The estimation in which he was held at Rome is clearly shown by the anxiety of the consul Mamilius (149) to take him as his adviser on his expedition against Carthage. Polybius started to join him, but broke off his journey at Corcyra on learning that the Carthaginians were inclined to yield and that war was unlikely (xxxvi. 3). But when, in 147, Scipio himself took the command in Africa, Polybius hastened to join him, and was an eye-witness of the siege and destruction of Carthage (Appian, Pun., 132). During his absence in Africa, the Achseans had made a desperate and ill-advised attempt to assert for the last time their independence of Rome, a passionate outbreak which Polybius had dreaded, and which his presence might have prevented. As it was he returned in 146 to find Corinth in ruins, the fairest cities of Achaia at the mercy of the Roman soldiery, and the famous Achaean league shattered to pieces (Pol. ap. Strabo, p. 381). But there was still work to be done that he alone could do. All the influence he possessed was freely spent in endeavour ing to shield his countrymen from the worst consequences of their rashness. The excesses of the soldiery were checked, and at his special intercession the statues of Aratus and Philopoemen were preserved (xxxix. 14). An even more difficult task was that entrusted to him by the Roman authorities themselves, of persuading the Achaean to acquiesce in the new regime imposed upon them by their conquerors, and of setting the new machinery in working order. With this work, which he accomplished so as to earn the heartfelt gratitude of his countrymen (xxxix. 16), his public career seems to have closed. The rest of his life was, so far as we know, devoted to the great history which is the lasting monument of his fame. He died at the age of eighty-two of a fall from his horse (Lucian, Macrob., 22). Of the forty books which made up the history of Polybius, the first five alone have come down to us in a complete form ; of the rest we have only more or less copious fragments. But as to the general plan and scope of the work there is no room for doubt thanks mainly to the clearness with which they are explained by Polybius hims&amp;gt;-lf. The task which he set himself was that o making plain, for the instruction of his own and future generations, how and why it was that &quot;all the known regions of the civilizei world had fallen under the sway of Rome&quot; (iii. 1). This empire o Rome, unprecedented in its extent and still more so in the rapidity with which it had been acquired, was the standing wonder of thl age, and &quot; who,&quot; he exclaims (i. 1), &quot;is so poor-spirited or indolent s not to wish to know by what means, and thanks to what sort of constitution, the Romans subdued the world in something less 220 (the point at which the work of Aratus ended) and 168 B.C., and extend therefore from the outbreak of the Hannibalic war to the defeat of Perseus at Pydna. To this period then the main portion of his history is devoted from the third to the thirtieth book nclusive. But for clearness sake he prefixes in books i. and ii. such a preliminary sketch of the earlier history of Rome, of the first Punic War, and of the contemporary events in Greece and Asia, as will enable his readers more fully to understand what follows. This seems to have been his original plan, but at the opening ot book iii., written apparently after 146, he explains that he thought it desirable to add some account of the manner in which ment and policy, and of the final catastrophe which destroyed &quot;arthage and for ever broke up the Achaean league (iii. 4, 5). To this appendix, giving the history from 168-146, the last ten books are devoted. Whatever fault may be found with Polybius, there can be no question that he had formed a high conception of the task before him, and of the manner in which it should be executed. He lays repeated stress on two qualities as distinguishing his history from the ordinary run of historical compositions. The first of these, its synoptic character, was partly necessitated by the nature of the period with which he was dealing. The interests, fortunes, and doings of all the various states fringing the basin of the Mediter ranean had become so inextricably interwoven that it was no longer possible to deal with each of them in isolation. The his torian must deal with this complex web of affairs as a whole, it he would be able either to understand or to explain it properly. Polybius therefore claims for his history that it will take a compre hensive view of the whole course of events in the civilized world, within the limits of the period with which it deals (i. 4). In doing so he marks a new point of departure in historical writing, &quot;for we have undertaken &quot; he says &quot;to record, not the affairs of this or that people, like those who have preceded us, but all the affairs of the known world at a certain time.&quot; In other words, he aims at placing before his readers at each stage a complete survey of the field of action from Spain in the West to Syria and Egypt in the East. This synoptic method proceeds from a true appreciation of what is now called the unity of history, and to Polybius must be given the credit of having first firmly grasped and clearly enforced a lesson which the events of his own time were especially well cal culated to teach. Posterity too has every reason to be grateful, for, though, as will be seen later, this synoptic method frequently inter feres with the symmetry and continuity of his narrative, yet it has given us such a picture of the 2d and 3d centuries before Christ as no series of special narratives could have supplied. The second quality upon which Polybius insists as distinguishing his history from all others is its &quot; pragmatic &quot; character. It deals, that is, with events and with their causes, and aims at an accurate record and explanation of ascertained facts. This &quot;pragmatic method &quot; (ix. 2) has a double value. First of all it makes history intelligible by explaining the how and the why ; and, secondly, it is only when so written that history can perform its true function of instructing and guiding those who study it. For the great use of history according to Polybius is to contribute to the right conduct of human life (i. 35), by supplying a storehouse of experience for the assistance of those who will use it. But this it can only do if the historian bears in mind the true nature of his task. Above all things he must not content himself with merely writing a pleasant tale. He must remember that the historian should not write as the dramatist does to charm or excite his audience for the moment but to edify and instruct all serious students in the future (ii. f&amp;gt;6). He will therefore aim simply at exhibiting events in their true light, setting forth &quot;the why and the how&quot; in each case, not con fusing causes and occasions, or dragging in old wives fables, prodi gies, and marvels (ii. 16 ; iii. 48). He will omit nothing which can help to explain the events he is dealing with : the genius and tem perament of particular peoples, their political and military systems, the characters of the leading men, the geographical features of the country, must all be taken into account. To this conception of the aim and methods of history Polybius is on the whole consistently faithful in practice. It is true that his anxiety to instruct leads often to a rather wearisome iteration of his favourite maxims, and that his digressions, such as that on the military art, are occa sionally provokingly long and didactic. But his comments and reflexions are for the most part sound and instructive (e.g., those on the lessons to be learnt from the revolt of the mercenaries in Africa, i. 65 ; from the Celtic raids in Italy, ii. 35 ; and on the Roman character), while among his digressions are included such invaluable chapters as those on the Roman constitution (book vi.), the graphic description of Cisalpine Gaul (book ii.), and the account of the rise and constitution of the Achsean league (ii. 38 sq.). To his anxiety again to trace back events to their first causes we owe, not only the careful inquiry (book iii.) into the origin of the
 * han fifty-three years ? &quot; These fifty-three years are those between
 * he Romans exercised the power they had won, of their tempera