Polybius (pronounced puh-LEE-bee-us; Ancient Greek: Polýbios; about 200–118 BC) was an ancient Greek historian who lived during the middle Hellenistic period. He is best known for his work called Histories, which is a history covering many regions and events in the Mediterranean during the third and second centuries BC. This work includes details about events in Italy, Iberia, Greece, Macedonia, Syria, Egypt, and Africa. It also describes major events such as the Punic Wars and the Macedonian Wars.
Polybius’s Histories is important because it is the only Hellenistic historical work that has survived in a significant way. It also includes detailed discussions about how governments change over time and the idea of a mixed constitution. His ideas about dividing government powers, balancing them to prevent abuse, and the role of the people in government helped shape the writings of later thinkers, including Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws, John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, and the writers of the United States Constitution.
Polybius was a close friend and teacher to the Roman leader Scipio Aemilianus, also known as Scipio Africanus the Younger. His relationship with Scipio had a long-lasting effect on Scipio’s decisions and life.
Early life
Polybius was born around 200 BC in Megalopolis, Arcadia, a city that was part of the Achaean League. The city had been revived, along with other Achaean states, about a century before his birth. His father, Lycortas, was an important landowner and politician who belonged to the ruling class and later became strategos (military leader) of the Achaean League. Because of this, Polybius had the opportunity to witness the political and military activities of Megalopolis during his first 30 years, gaining experience as a statesman. In his youth, he traveled with his father as an ambassador. He also enjoyed equestrianism and hunting, activities that later helped him earn the trust of his Roman captors.
In 182 BC, Polybius was honored with the task of carrying the funeral urn of Philopoemen, one of the most respected Achaean politicians of his time. In 170 or 169 BC, he was elected hipparchus (cavalry officer) and was expected to assist Rome during the Third Macedonian War, though this did not happen. This position was the second-highest in the Achaean League and often led to being chosen as strategos (chief general). However, in 168 BC, Polybius’s political career ended when 1,000 Achaeans, including him, who were suspected of having uncertain loyalties, were sent to Rome and its surrounding areas following the defeat of the Antigonid dynasty in the Third Macedonian War.
Personal experiences
Polybius’s father, Lycortas, believed that staying neutral was important during the Roman war against Perseus of Macedon from 171 to 168. Because of this, Lycortas drew the attention of the Romans. As a result, Polybius was among the 1,000 Achaean nobles taken to Rome as hostages in 167. He remained there for 17 years. In Rome, Polybius was welcomed into important families, especially that of Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus, the Roman general who won the Third Macedonian War. Paullus gave Polybius the responsibility of educating his sons, Fabius and Scipio Aemilianus (who had been adopted by the eldest son of Scipio Africanus). Polybius kept good relations with his former student, Scipio Aemilianus, and was part of the Scipionic Circle.
When Scipio defeated the Carthaginians in the Third Punic War, Polybius continued to serve as his advisor. The Achaean hostages were released in 150, and Polybius was allowed to return home. However, the next year, he joined Scipio Aemilianus on a military campaign to Africa and was present during the destruction of Carthage in 146, which he later wrote about. After Carthage was destroyed, Polybius likely traveled along the Atlantic coast of Africa and Spain.
Following the destruction of Corinth in 146, Polybius returned to Greece. He used his connections with the Romans to help improve conditions in the region. Polybius was given the challenging task of organizing new governments in Greek cities. In this role, he earned widespread recognition.
At Rome
In the years following, Polybius lived in Rome, continuing his work on his history. He sometimes traveled long distances across Mediterranean countries to help with his history, especially to learn about historical places directly. He talked to veterans to understand details of the events he wrote about and was also allowed to see old records. Little is known about Polybius's later life; he likely went to Spain with Scipio and served as his military advisor during the Numantine War.
He later wrote about this war in a lost book. Polybius probably returned to Greece later in his life, as shown by many statues and inscriptions of him there. The last event described in his Histories is the building of the Via Domitia in southern France in 118 BC. This suggests that the writings of Pseudo-Lucian may be true when they say, "[Polybius] fell from his horse while riding up from the country, got sick because of it, and died at the age of eighty-two."
The Histories
The Histories is a history that covers many regions and explains how the Roman Republic became a powerful empire in the ancient Mediterranean world. The work describes political and military events in the Hellenistic Mediterranean from 264 to 146 BC. Later parts of the book include detailed accounts of the destruction of Carthage and Corinth in 146 BC, and the Roman takeover of mainland Greece after the Achaean War.
The Histories covers the time period from 264 to 146 BC, but it focuses mostly on the years between 221 and 146 BC. It explains how Rome became the dominant power in the Mediterranean by defeating its rivals: Carthage, Macedonia, and the Seleucid Empire. Books I and II introduce the work, describing events in Italy and Greece before 221 BC, such as the First Punic War, Rome’s wars with the Gauls, the rise of the Achaean League (which Polybius helped shape), and the return of Macedonian power in Greece under Antigonus III Doson and Philip V of Macedon. Books III to XXXIX describe political and military events in major Mediterranean states, including Rome, Carthage, Greece, Macedonia, and the Seleucid Empire, showing how these regions became connected and how they helped Rome rise to power. Only Books I to V survive completely; the rest are damaged or incomplete.
Three sections on politics, how history is written, and geography are included in the work. Polybius believed that historians should only write about events they could verify by speaking directly with people who experienced them. He was one of the first to emphasize writing accurately and truthfully. For example, he interviewed people who fought in the Second Punic War, including some who knew Hannibal, a key Carthaginian leader. In Book XII, he described a historian’s job as analyzing documents, studying geography, and using political knowledge. In his time, being a historian required political experience (to tell facts from fiction) and knowledge of geography to write accurately about events.
Polybius followed these rules because he traveled widely and had political and military experience. He used written sources to cover events between 264 and 220 BC, such as treaty documents from the First Punic War, the writings of the Greek historian Phylarchus, and the Memoirs of Aratus of Sicyon, an Achaean leader. For events after 220 BC, he studied treaties, writings by Greek and Roman historians and leaders, eyewitness accounts, and reports from Macedonian court officials. However, he rarely named the sources he used.
As historian
Polybius wrote many works, most of which are no longer available. His earliest work was a biography of the Greek leader Philopoemen. This text was later used by Plutarch when he wrote his Parallel Lives, but the original version by Polybius is lost. Polybius also wrote a long work called Tactics, which may have explained Roman and Greek military methods. Some parts of this work might still exist in his major work, the Histories, but the full text is missing. Another lost work was a historical study about the Numantine War. His largest work was the Histories, of which only the first five books are fully preserved, along with much of the sixth book and pieces of the remaining books. Along with Cato the Elder (234–149 BC), Polybius is considered one of the early founders of Roman historical writing.
Livy used Polybius’s Histories as a source in his own writings. Polybius was among the first historians to try to explain history as a series of causes and effects, based on careful study and analysis of traditions. He wrote about events he had witnessed firsthand. The Histories describe many aspects of human behavior, including nationalism, fear of outsiders, dishonest politics, war, cruelty, loyalty, bravery, intelligence, and problem-solving.
In addition to the main story of events, Polybius included three sections of unrelated topics. One section, Book 34, focused on geography and criticized Eratosthenes for spreading common but incorrect ideas. Another section, Book 12, discussed how to write history and included quotes from lost historians like Callisthenes and Theopompus. The most important section was Book 6, which described Roman political, military, and moral systems. Polybius believed these systems were key to Rome’s success, as they combined elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy in a balanced way. This balance helped Rome avoid the repeated cycles of political instability that affected other societies. While others had suggested this idea before, Polybius’s explanation was the clearest for later historians.
A major theme in the Histories is good leadership. Polybius spent much time explaining how a good leader should be rational, informed, virtuous, and calm. He used the example of Philip II of Macedon, whom he believed showed strong military skill, diplomacy, and moral strength. Polybius disagreed with another historian, Theopompus, who described Philip as immoral and reckless in private life. Polybius thought it impossible for such a capable leader to have lived that way. The Histories also show the negative effects of poor leadership. For example, Philip V of Macedon, a later ruler, became increasingly cruel, unreasonable, and disrespectful to religious traditions after early successes. This, Polybius believed, led to his loss of support from Greek allies and his defeat by Rome in 197 BC.
Other important themes in the Histories include the role of luck in national events, how leaders should handle changes in fortune with dignity, the value of history in teaching lessons through cause and effect, and the idea that historians should be active participants in life to understand political and military matters better.
Polybius is seen by some as a successor to Thucydides in terms of fairness and logical thinking, and as a pioneer of detailed, scientific historical research. His work is praised for its clarity, depth, and focus on geography as a factor in historical outcomes. Modern historians admire how he used sources, especially written evidence, and how he quoted other historians. His reflections on the nature of historical writing in Book 12 are also respected. His work is considered one of the greatest examples of ancient historical writing. A book called The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (1937) praised him for his "earnest devotion to truth" and his careful study of causes and effects.
As a hostage in Rome, then as a supporter of the Scipios, and later as a collaborator with Roman rule, Polybius likely could not freely criticize Rome. Historian Peter Green suggests Polybius wrote about Roman history for Greek readers to explain why Roman rule was inevitable. However, Green still considers the Histories the best source for that time period. Ronald J. Mellor believes Polybius was a strong supporter of Scipio and unfairly criticized Scipio’s enemies. Adrian Goldsworthy uses Polybius’s work to study Scipio’s military skills but notes Polybius’s bias in favor of Scipio. H. Ormerod thinks Polybius was not completely unbiased in his descriptions of groups like the Aetolians, Carthaginians, and Cretans. Some historians see bias in Polybius’s account of Crete, but others, like Hansen, note that his work, along with writings by Strabo and Scylax of Caryanda, helped locate the lost city of Kydonia.
Cryptography
Polybius created a helpful tool for sending messages using a numerical system known as "the Polybius square," as described in Hist. X.45.6 ff. This method can also be used for secret codes and hiding messages. Today, in languages like English, Spanish, French, German, and Italian, the Polybius square uses the Roman alphabet. However, Polybius wrote in Greek, so he would have used the Greek alphabet for his cipher square. Both versions are shown here.
In the Polybius square, letters of the alphabet are placed in a grid that is 5 rows tall and 5 columns wide. When using the 26-letter Latin alphabet, the letters I and J are combined into one space. When using the Greek alphabet, which has one fewer letter than the number of spaces in the square, the last space, labeled "5,5," is used to represent spaces between words. It can also mark the end of a sentence or paragraph when writing without breaks.
Numbers 1 through 5 are written along the top of the square and along the left side. To find a letter, the numbers from the top and side are matched to locate its position in the grid.
In the Histories, Polybius explained how this cipher could be used with fire signals. By raising and lowering torches, long-distance messages could be sent by showing the column and row of each letter. This was an improvement over earlier fire signals, which only allowed for prearranged messages, such as "if we light the fire, it means the enemy has arrived."
Other writings by Polybius include detailed descriptions of machines Archimedes built to defend Syracuse against the Romans. Polybius praised Archimedes’s engineering skills highly. He also discussed how astronomy could help generals in their work, as noted in the Histories.
Influence
Polybius was thought to be a poor writer by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who said that no one has the patience to finish reading Polybius’s history. However, his work was widely read by Romans and Greeks. His writings were used by Strabo, who lived in the 1st century BC, and Athenaeus, who lived in the 3rd century AD.
Polybius focused on explaining why events happened, not just describing them. This approach influenced the historian Sempronius Asellio. His work was referenced by Cicero and used as a source of information by Diodorus Siculus, Livy, Plutarch, and Arrian. Much of the surviving text from the later parts of The Histories was kept safe in collections made by the Byzantines.
Polybius’s writings returned to the Western world during the Italian Renaissance in Florence. His ideas were studied in Italy, though early Latin translations were not very accurate, which made it harder for scholars to study his work properly. These translations, however, helped shape discussions about history and politics in the city. Niccolò Machiavelli, in his Discourses on Livy, showed knowledge of Polybius’s work. Translations of his writings into French, German, Italian, and English first appeared in the 16th century. By the late 16th century, more educated people began reading his works. Studies of letters from scholars like Isaac Casaubon, Jacques Auguste de Thou, William Camden, and Paolo Sarpi show that interest in Polybius grew during this time. Even though his works were available in printed books and studied more, Polybius remained a favorite among historians rather than being widely read by the general public.
Only a few translations of his work were printed in everyday languages: seven in French, five in English (John Dryden wrote an enthusiastic introduction for a 1693 edition by Sir Henry Sheers), and five in Italian.
Polybius’s ideas about politics influenced thinkers from Cicero to Montesquieu and the Founding Fathers of the United States. For example, John Adams believed Polybius was one of the most important teachers of constitutional theory. Since the Age of Enlightenment, Polybius has mainly appealed to those interested in Hellenistic Greece and early Republican Rome. His political and military writings have lost popularity in academic circles. Recently, detailed study of his Greek text and historical methods has improved understanding of his work as a historian.
According to Dawn Finley and Virginia Tufte, Polybius was a key source for Charles Joseph Minard’s diagram showing Hannibal’s journey to Italy during the Second Punic War.
In his Meditations On Hunting, the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset called Polybius “one of the few great minds that the turbid human species has managed to produce” and said the damage to The Histories is “without question one of the gravest losses that we have suffered in our Greco-Roman heritage.”
The Italian version of his name, Polibio, was used as a male first name, such as by the composer Polibio Fumagalli, though it was not common.
The University of Pennsylvania has a group called the Polybian Society, named after him. It serves as an unbiased place for discussing societal issues and policy.