Ἱστορίαι
The Histories
Polybius Πολύβιος · c. 200 – c. 118 BCE
Librarian’s score8.6Claude · AI
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A Greek hostage in Rome asks how the Romans came to rule nearly the whole known world in about fifty-three years. Of forty books only the first five survive whole, yet they hold the Punic Wars and, in Book VI, his account of the Roman mixed constitution, which later political thinkers read closely. He is dry and argumentative, scornful of writers who never saw a battlefield, and careful about cause.