Description

For students of ancient Greek historiography the Histories of Polybius, devoted to the important theme of Rome's rise to world power in the second century B.C., are a unique source of information. The work contains many references to, and quotations from, forerunners active in the preceding two and a half centuries, whose works no longer survive. Because that precious information is freqently couched in highly polemical terms, with Polybius moulding the evidence in accordance with his personal views, its value is hard to assess. The fifteen papers in this volume, delivered to an international conference held at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in the Fall of 2001, offer a systematic investigation into Polybius' many critiques and attempt to assess their potentially distortive effects. The historian of Megalopolis emerges as a towering personality who has cast a long shadow over the badly damaged landscape of Hellenistic historiography.