Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World: The idea of decline in Polybius

INTRODUCTION As the historian of Rome's rise to world power Polybius was not particularly interested in the concept of decline. His main concern was to analyse why Rome had got to where she was. But one essential element in his analysis was to assess the merits of the Roman constitution and compare it with other constitutions; and consequently, as a political theorist, Polybius was brought up against decline as a problem. His views on this are interesting for the light they throw on the quality of his political thought and also for the traditions on which he draws. In order to set his views in a proper context, I shall first give a brief sketch of the attested stages in the composition of the Histories . Polybius conceived and began his Histories while detained at Rome. After the Third Macedonian War, which ended in the destruction of the Macedonian monarchy in 168, many Greeks, Polybius among them, were summoned to Rome and refused permission to return to their homes until 150. While at Rome Polybius lived on close terms with Scipio Aemilianus, a member of a leading noble family, and having come to appreciate Roman political greatness and to understand its sources (or so he believed) he resolved to write a history, primarily for his fellow-Greeks, which would explain ‘how and thanks to what sort of constitution the Romans in less than fifty-three years had succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sway’.