Book VI of Polybius's Histories interrupts his narrative of the Second Punic War at its darkest moment for Rome, the defeat at Cannae in 216 BC, to explain how a city that had just lost an army could recover and, within fifty-three years, bring nearly the whole known world under its power. His answer is the Roman constitution.
Polybius · AuthorThe Histories, Book VI
Author
Polybius
About Polybius
Polybius (c. 200–c. 118 BC) was born at Megalopolis in Arcadia, the son of Lycortas, a leading statesman of the Achaean League, and served as the League's cavalry commander (hipparch) in 170/169 BC. After Rome's victory over Macedon at Pydna in 168 BC he was one of about a thousand prominent Achaeans deported to Italy as hostages, and in Rome he became the friend and mentor of the young Scipio Aemilianus. He accompanied Scipio to the siege and destruction of Carthage in 146 BC and afterwards helped arrange the settlement of Greece under Roman rule. His Histories, in forty books, told how Rome came to dominate the Mediterranean world; Books I–V survive whole and the rest, including Book VI, in fragments and excerpts.