THE

HISTORIES OF POLYBIUS

PREFACE

This is the first English translation of the complete works of Polybius as far as they are now known. In attempting such a task I feel that I ought to state distinctly the limits which I have proposed to myself in carrying it out. I have desired to present to English readers a faithful copy of what Polybius wrote, which should at the same time be a readable English book. I have not been careful to follow the Greek idiom; and have not hesitated to break up and curtail or enlarge his sentences, when I thought that, by doing so, I could present his meaning in more idiomatic English. Polybius is not an author likely to be studied for the sake of his Greek, except by a few technical scholars; and the modern complexion of much of his thought makes such a plan of translation both possible and desirable. How far I have succeeded I must leave my readers to decide. Again, I have not undertaken to write a commentary on Polybius, nor to discuss at length the many questions of interest which arise from his text. Such an undertaking would have required much more space than I was able to give: and happily, while my translation was passing through the press, two books have appeared, which will supply English students with much that I might have felt bound to endeavour to give—the Achaean league by Mr. Capes, and the sumptuous Oxford edition of extracts by Mr. Strachan-Davidson.

The translation is made from the text of Hultsch and follows his arrangement of the fragments. If this causes some inconvenience to those who use the older texts, I hope that such inconvenience will be minimised by the full index which I have placed at the end of the second volume.

I have not, I repeat, undertaken to write a commentary. I propose rather to give the materials for commentary to those who, for various reasons, do not care to use the Greek of Polybius. I have therefore in the first five complete books left him to speak for himself, with the minimum of notes which seemed necessary for the understanding of his text. The case of the fragments was different. In giving a translation of them I have tried, when possible, to indicate the part of the history to which they belong, and to connect them by brief sketches of intermediate events, with full references to those authors who supply the missing links.

Imperfect as the performance of such a task must, I fear, be, it has been one of no ordinary labour, and has occupied every hour that could be spared during several years of a not unlaborious life. And though I cannot hope to have escaped errors, either of ignorance or human infirmity, I trust that I may have produced what will be found of use to some historical students, in giving them a fairly faithful representation of the works of an historian who is, in fact, our sole authority for some most interesting portions of the world’s history.

It remains to give a brief account of the gradual formation of the text of Polybius, as we now have it.

The revival of interest in the study of Polybius was due to Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455), the founder of the Vatican Library. Soon after his election he seems to have urged Cardinal Perotti to undertake a Latin translation of the five books then known to exist. When Perotti sent him his translation of the first book, the Pope thus acknowledges it in a letter dated 28th August 1452:—1

“Primus Polybii liber, quem ad nos misisti, nuper a te de Graeca in Latinam translatus, gratissimus etiam fuit et jucundissimus: quippe in ea translatione nobis cumulatissime satisfacis. Tanta enim facilitate et eloquentia transfers, ut Historia ipsa nunquam Graeca, sed prorsus Latina semper fuisse videatur. Optimum igitur ingenium tuum valde commendamus atque probamus, teque hortamur ut velis pro laude et gloria tua, et pro voluptate nimia singulare opus inchoatum perficere, nec labori parcas. Nam et rem ingenio et doctrina tua dignam, et nobis omnium gratissimam efficies; qui laborum et studiorum tuorum aliquando memores erimus.... Tu vero, si nobis rem gratam efficere cupis, nihil negligentiae committas in hoc opere traducendo. Nihil enim nobis gratius efficere poteris. Librum primum a vertice ad calcem legimus, in cujus translatione voluntati nostrae amplissime satisfactum est.”

On the 3d of January 1454 the Pope writes again to Perotti thanking him for the third book; and in a letter to Torelli, dated 13th November 1453, Perotti says that he had finished his translation of Polybius in the preceding September. This translation was first printed in 1473. The Greek text was not printed till 1530, when an edition of the first five books in Greek, along with Perotti’s translation, was published at the Hague, opera Vincentii Obsopaei, dedicated to George, Marquess of Brandenburg. Perotti’s translation was again printed at Basle in 1549, accompanied by a Latin translation of the fragments of books 6 to 17 by Wolfgang Musculus, and reprinted at the Hague in 1598.

The chief fragments of Polybius fall into two classes; (1) those made by some unknown epitomator, who Casaubon even supposed might be Marcus Brutus, who, according to Plutarch, was engaged in this work in his tent the night before the battle of Pharsalus. The printing of these began with two insignificant fragments on the battle between the Rhodians and Attalus against Philip, Paris, 1536; and another de re navali, Basle, 1537. These fragments have continually accumulated by fresh discoveries. (2) The other class of fragments are those made by the order of Constantinus Porphyrogenitus (911-959), among similar ones from other historians, which were to be digested under fifty-three heads or tituli; one of which (the 27th) has come down to us, discovered in the sixteenth century, containing the selecta de legationibus; and another (the 50th) de virtute et vitio. The printing of the first of these begins with the edition of Fulvius Ursinus, published at Antwerp in 1582. This was supplemented in 1634 (Paris) by an