The history of Rome

Their histories were either purely outward records, or they were pervaded by the verbiage and sophistries of Attic rhetoric and only too often by the venality and vulgarity, the sycophancy and the bitterness of the age. Among the Romans as among the Greeks there was nothing but histories of cities or of tribes. Polybius, a Peloponnesian, as has been justly remarked, and holding intellectually a position at least as far aloof from the Attics as from the Romans, first stepped beyond these miserable limits, treated the Roman materials with mature Hellenic criticism, and furnished a history, which was not indeed universal, but which was at any rate dissociated from the mere local states and laid hold of the Romano-Greek state in the course of formation. Never perhaps has any historian united within himself all the advantages of an author drawing from original sources so completely as Polybius. The compass of his task is completely clear and present to him at every moment; and his eye is fixed throughout on the real historical connection of events. The legend, the anecdote, the mass of worthless chronicle-notices are thrown aside; the description of countries and peoples, the representation of political and mercantile relations - all the facts of so infinite importance, which escape the annalist because they do not admit of being nailed to a particular year - are put into possession of their long-suspended rights. In the procuring of historic materials Polybius shows a caution and perseverance such as are not perhaps paralleled in antiquity; he avails himself of documents, gives comprehensive attention to the literature of different nations, makes the most extensive use of his favourable position for collecting the accounts of actors and eye-witnesses, and, in fine, methodically travels over the whole domain of the Mediterranean states and part of the coast of the Atlantic Ocean[28].

Truthfulness is his nature. In all great matters he has no interest for one state or against another, for this man or against that, but is singly and solely interested in the essential connection of events, to present which in their true relation of causes and effects seems to him not merely the first but the sole task of the historian. Lastly, the narrative is a model of completeness, simplicity, and clearness. Still all these uncommon advantages by no means constitute a historian of the first rank. Polybius grasps his literary task, as he grasped his practical, with great understanding, but with the understanding alone. History, the struggle of necessity and liberty, is a moral problem; Polybius treats it as if it were a mechanical one. The whole alone has value for him, in nature as in the state; the particular event, the individual man, however wonderful they may appear, are yet properly mere single elements, insignificant wheels in the highly artificial mechanism which is named the state. So far Polybius was certainly qualified as no other was to narrate the history of the Roman people, which actually solved the marvellous problem of raising itself to unparalleled internal and external greatness without producing a single statesman of genius in the highest sense, and which resting on its simple foundations developed itself with wonderful almost mathematical consistency. But the element of moral freedom bears sway in the history of every people, and it was not neglected by Polybius in the history of Rome with impunity.

His treatment of all questions, in which right, honour, religion are involved, is not merely shallow, but radically false. The same holds true wherever a genetic construction is required; the purely mechanical attempts at explanation, which Polybius substitutes, are sometimes altogether desperate; there is hardly, for instance, a more foolish political speculation than that which derives the excellent constitution of Rome from a judicious mixture of monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements, and deduces the successes of Rome from the excellence of her constitution.