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Polybius' Histories (Oxford Approaches to Classical Literature) 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

by Brian C. McGing (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.1 8 ratings

Part of: Oxford Approaches to Classical Literature (9 books)

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Polybius' Histories is one of classical antiquity's great political narratives. Written in 40 books (of which only the first five are preserved in full), it originally set out to explain the dramatic rise of Rome in the half century from the war against Hannibal to the defeat and abolishment of the Macedonian kingdom in 167 BC. At a later stage, Polybius extended his coverage down to the Roman destruction of Carthage and Corinth in the year 146 BC. Although written in an ordinary Greek style, the work was composed with great care, clarity and skill, and provides a fascinating discourse on the politics of power. The author was himself a leading Greek politician and general who moved at ease among the most powerful men of the day and participated in many of the events that he describes. This volume provides an accessible introduction to this important work of classical literature. Beginning with an outline of its contents and organization, Brian McGing goes on to examine Polybius' theoretical approach to writing history and the careful artistry behind his work. Later chapters discuss Polybius' eventful life and how it affected his views on history and politics, and analyze the influential theorizing of book six of the Histories. In an epilogue, McGing chronicles the fate of Polybius' work after his death, from classical antiquity to the Renaissance to the American Revolution and up to the present. The volume includes detailed maps and a list of prominent persons.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is an excellent book--comprehensive, balanced, and thought-provoking. It even helps readers understand some of Polybius's annoying characteristics: his relentless assault on other historians and his cruel attacks on contemporaries (powerful Romans excluded). McGing is well aware of Polybius's shortcomings and questionable practices, but he shows that, beyond them, there is a genuine, interesting historian." --HISTORY: Reviews of New Books

"McGing's book provides a thorough and usually thought-provoking introduction to the Histories that should interest and encourage any reader who is approaching Polybius for the first time." --Bryn Mawr Classical Review

About the Author

Brian C. McGing is Regius Professor of Greek, and Director of the Centre for Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies at Trinity College Dublin.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00TPL97PE
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; 1st edition (March 24, 2010)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 24, 2010
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 9377 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 286 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #2,089,521 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #464 in Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism (Kindle Store)
- #827 in Historiography (Kindle Store)
- #2,116 in Ancient Roman History (Kindle Store)

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Christian Potholm

Ancient History Renewed

Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2018

Brian McGing, Polybius’ Histories (London: Oxford University Press, 2010). This marvelous study in the Oxford Approaches to Classical Literature series provides the reader with a very good overview of Polybius’s 40 volume study of the rise of Rome. Like Xenophon – but unlike Thucydides – he has no problem inserting himself into the events which altered and illuminated the times in the 2nd century BCE period. Of considerable importance is Book 18 in which Polybius gives the reasons for Roman success over the Greeks and in the process (the Battle of Cynoscephalae against the Macedonians had been fought and won in 167 BCE), he highlights the advantages of the Roman infantry sword formation over the Greek phalanx: the phalanx is only invincible in very specific circumstances where flexibility on the part of opponents is not possible, requiring as it does “a ground that is plain and naked and free from obstacles of every kind.” He goes on,
“The Roman order, on the contrary is never attended even on such occasions with any disadvantage. Among the Romans every single solder, when he is once armed and ready for service, is alike fitted to engage in any time or place, or on any appearance of the enemy, and preserves always the same power and the same capacity in action whether in separate companies or man to man. As the parts, therefore, in the Roman order of battle are so much better contrived for use than those in the other, so success in action must also be greater in the one than the other.”

Quite a lesson that!

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Greg Taylor

A useful, solid intro or companion to Polybius

Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2010

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This useful volume is a member in the Oxford Approaches to Classical Literature series. The volumes in this series are devoted to individual works of classical literature, in this case the Histories of Polybius. If all of the other volumes in the series are as good as McGing, it will be a very strong series.

Polybius' Histories is our earliest surviving history of Rome during the Republic. It was a major source for Livy and Plutarch. Later on, it was influenced the thinking of Machiavelli, Montesquieu and our Founding Fathers.
McGing's book provides many things. First, it provides a useful scholarly apparatus. There is an excellent bibliography, two good maps, a list of the prominent people mentioned in the Histories with brief biographies and an outline of the Histories by book and chapter. At the end of each chapter is a guide to further reading. All of this is useful to any student of the work but especially to first timers like myself.

Amazon's listing allows you to see the Table of Contents but I want to give you a little more idea of what each chapter offers.
The first chapter provides an overview to the purpose and organization of the Histories. McGing introduces Polybius' idea that he is writing a "universal" history because he is writing about the first period of time in which all the events of the known world can be related to the history of one nation. Polybius wrote about the brief period of sixty or so years during which Rome expanded out from Italy and came to dominate the whole of the Mediterranean and beyond. McGing discusses various literary devices that Polybius uses throughout the work.

The second chapter deals with the subject of Polybius as an historian. McGing examines what influence predecessors like Thucydides, Herodotus and Xenophon had on Polybius as well as suggests what is unique or new to Polybius. McGing discusses the Polybius' intended audience (the political class of both Rome and Greece) as well as his fascination with accurate geographic detail. His attitudes toward some of his contemporaries and their methods are also discussed. This is one of the best chapters of the book.

The third chapter is a close examination of the rhetoric and writing techniques used in Books 4 and 5 of the Histories. This is best read after having read those sections of Polybius first. I suggest as always the Loeb Classical Library edition of Polybius as it the only complete edition and you will miss none of the detail of McGing's exposition. (By the way, from what I read in the intro to the Penguin edition, those maroons completely eliminate those two books from their edition of Polybius.)

The fourth chapter is a fascinating look at Polybius life and at the sort of man that he felt the historian had to be. This is structured around Polybius' remark that a historian had to be the same sort of man as was Odysseus. This discussion leads to a more general one focused on whether Polybius felt that the Greece or the Rome of his own time was in decline.

The fifth chapter is an excellent summary and discussion of Book 6 of the Histories. This is probably the most famous section of the Histories. In it, Polybius discusses the "constitution" of the Roman Republic. I use quotation marks because the way the word constitution was used in Polybius's time is different from our own. Rome, of course, did not have a written constitution in the modern sense. It did have a governmental structure that had evolved over several hundred of years, a body of laws, a largely shared religion and outlook through which most of its citizens saw the world. All this and more constituted its "constitution". Polybius' theory suggested that there were three main types of government, each type of which had a good form and a degenerate form. The pairing were king-tyrant, aristocracy-oligarchy and democracy-mob rule. Mob rule culminated in a struggle of demagogues which led to chaos and civil strife out of which a king would emerge and the whole cycle would start over again. Polybius' suggestion was that what made Rome different was its mixed constitution. For it had evolved a governmental form that combined the best qualities of the king, the aristocracy and democracy. McGing sets this out very lucidly and discusses problems with the theory in terms of its consistency and use by Polybius. He also discusses possible influences on Polybius and outlines some of the people Polybius' discussion influenced. This book more than any other is Polybius' claim to fame and McGing makes it clear why. This chapter alone justifies the book.

The last chapter discusses the history of the text of Polybius, some of the difficulties of reading ancient texts and suggests some ways in which Polybius can still be usefully read today for reasons other than antiquarian.

My only real doubts center around McGing's discussion of Tyche (Fortuna) and the explanatory role of the goddess. McGing largely sees Tyche as a shorthand for "stuff we don't know about yet". Everything that we can understand we must exert every effort to gather all the evidence and experience that is necessary to do so. On p. 200 he does mention that sometimes Tyche is used as a sort of avenging fury. I think this is another case where a contemporary scholar misses the point of an ancient text because they cannot quite take the ancient's religion seriously.
But this is one short section (pp.195-201) and, doG knows, I may be completely wrong.

All in all a very good book which will serve most readers as a useful guide and companion. There are really only two books in English that currently could serve as an intro to Polybius. One is the Sather Lecture that F.W. Walbank delivered on Polybius (I promise a review soon). But that was published back in 1972 and has none of the scholarly apparatus that I mentioned earlier. So here is my suggestion based on what I know now. Read several of the Loebs, read McGing, more of the Loeb Polybius, the Walbank and so on. Sounds like a lot of work? So? Anything good takes time. Rome wasn't built in a day. Just ask Polybius.

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John

Right now I am disappointed. I thought I was getting a translation of ...

Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2018

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I may wind up being impressed. Right now I am disappointed. I thought I was getting a translation of Polybius' Histories. The title is misleading. This is a guide to the Histories, not an actual translation of the work.

9 people found this helpful

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