author
Polybius
A Greek statesman turned historian, he set out to explain how Rome rose so quickly to power. His surviving work is one of the clearest ancient accounts of the Mediterranean world in the third and second centuries BC.
2 Audiobooks
The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 1 (of 2)
by Polybius
The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 2 (of 2)
by Polybius
About the author
Born in Megalopolis in Arcadia around 200 BC, Polybius was active in the Achaean League before being taken to Rome as a hostage after Rome’s victory over Macedon. In Rome he moved in powerful circles, especially through his connection with Scipio Aemilianus, and that experience gave him an unusually close view of Roman politics, warfare, and expansion.
He is best known for The Histories, a wide-ranging work that traces Rome’s rise to dominance in the Mediterranean, especially from 264 to 146 BC. Polybius cared deeply about causes and consequences, and he argued that history should help readers understand how events happen, not just what happened.
His writing is still valued for its practical, analytical approach. He combined eyewitness experience, travel, and political knowledge in a way that made him one of antiquity’s most important historians, and his ideas about mixed government and the cycle of political systems influenced many later thinkers.