Sources of information of Polybius

Polybius defines the historian’s task as the study and collation of documents, acquaintance with relevant geographical features, and, finally, political experience (XII, 25e); of these the last two are the most essential. And he practiced what he preached, for he possessed good political and military experience and had traveled widely throughout the Mediterranean and beyond. Nor did he neglect written sources; indeed, for his introductory books, covering the period from 264 to 220, they were essential. For the main part of his history, from 220 onward, he consulted many writers, Greek and Roman, but, following precedent, he rarely names them.

He had access to private sources; for example, Publius Cornelius Scipio’s letter to Philip V of Macedonia describing the capture in Spain, in 209 bce, of New Carthage (X, 9, 3), and a letter of Scipio Nasica to some Hellenistic king about the campaigns of the Third Macedonian War (XXIX, 14, 3). He almost certainly consulted the Achaean record office and must have drawn on Roman records for such material as the treaty between Carthage and Philip V (VII, 9). It has not been proved that he had access to the Rhodian records. His detailed figures for Hannibal’s troop formations in Italy came from an inscription left by Hannibal, which he found in the Temple of Juno on the Lacinian promontory.

Polybius regarded oral sources as his most important, and the questioning of witnesses as the most vital part of a historian’s task; indeed, this is one reason why he chose to begin his main history at the year 220. Anything else would be “hearsay at one remove,” a safe foundation for neither judgments nor statements.

Style and qualities as a historian

Writing in the 1st century bce, Dionysius of Halicarnassus reckons Polybius among those who “have left behind them compositions which no one endures to read to the end”; that his successors shared this view of Polybius’ style is confirmed by the failure of his works to survive except in an incomplete form. The infelicity of Polybius’ Greek (which frequently reproduces the conventional phrases of the Hellenistic chancelleries familiar from contemporary inscriptions) lies in its awkward use of long and cumbersome circumlocutions, vague abstract nouns, and pedantic repetitions. To the scholar his style is, however, no great obstacle; and, though in his anxiety to improve his reader he moralizes and belabours the obvious, the perennial interest and importance of his theme will always ensure him a following among those who can enjoy a historian who is accurate, serious, and sensible, who understands the events of which he writes, and, above all, who asks the right questions.