The Historians' History of the World 05

“The knowledge that is acquired by reading,” he says, “is gained without any danger or any kind of toil. If a man will only fix his residence in the neighbourhood of a library, or in a city that abounds with written memoirs, he may make his researches with perfect ease; and, reposing himself with full tranquillity, may compare the accounts and detect the errors of former writers. But the knowledge which is drawn from personal examination and inquiry, is attended with great fatigue and great expense. It is this, however, which is the most important, and which gives indeed the chief value to history. Historians themselves are ready to acknowledge this truth. For Ephorus says, that if it were possible for the writers of history to be present at all transactions, such knowledge would be preferable to any other. To the same purpose is that passage of Theopompus: that the experience which is gained in battles renders a man a consummate general; that practice in pleading causes forms the perfect orator; and that the same observation is just with respect to the arts of navigation and of medicine.

“It was said by Plato,” Polybius continues, “that human affairs would be well administered when philosophers should be kings, or kings philosophers. In the same manner I would say: that history would be well composed if those who are engaged in great affairs would undertake to write it; not in a slight and negligent manner, like some of the present age; but regarding such a work as one of the noblest and most necessary of their duties, and pursuing it with unremitted application, as the chief business of their lives; or if those, on the other hand, who attempt to write, would think it necessary also to be conversant in the practice of affairs. Till this shall happen, there will be no end of mistakes in history.”

Scipio and Polybius

(From an old print)

But while thus speaking for men of affairs, Polybius has in mind also philosophers, for he declares that it is impossible to make a clear judgment of the victorious or vanquished by a bare account of events. We must know, he says, the laws and customs of the people, and the passions and circumstances which prevail among them with regard to public and private ends. With regard to the Romans in particular, he hopes by due attention to these things to present such a picture that the people of his own age will be able to discern “whether they ought to shun or choose subjection to the Romans; and posterity to judge whether the Roman government was worthy of praise and imitation or should rather be rejected as vicious and blamable;” for in this, he believes, must consist the utility of his history for his own and future ages.

All this is highly admirable; nor is it in dispute that Polybius attained a large measure of success along the lines he had laid down for his work. Only five of his forty books have come down to us entire, but these sufficiently illustrate his method and its results. It has been said of them that no student of the period can ignore them, but that no one else would willingly read them. This criticism, like most other epigrammatic verdicts, is unjust. There is much in the work of Polybius that anyone who cares at all for historical writings may read with full interest. His descriptions of the major events are by no means so bald and unimaginative as some critics would contend. They do indeed eschew the marvellous and attempt to avoid exaggeration; but this surely is no fault; nor do these limitations exclude picturesqueness. But the really vital fault of Polybius is his method of construction. He uses virtually the plan which Diodorus adopted later of attempting to keep the narrative of events in different countries in the closest chronological sequence. This necessitates a constant interruption of his narrative, through shifting the scene of action from one country to another, until all sense of continuity is lost. Add to this an ineradicable propensity to be forever moralising,—interrupting the narrative of some startling event to explain in detail how startling events should be treated by the historian,—and the reasons are sufficiently manifest why Polybius is hard to read. It is a great pity that he did not, like Trogus Pompeius, find a Justin to epitomise his work; for by common consent he was one of the most dependable historians of antiquity; and he is recognised as the standard source for all periods of which his extant works treat. Indirectly his influence is even more extensive, since Livy made use of him as his authority for the events of the Second and Third Punic wars, and since Appian drew on him freely.