POLYBIUS (c. 20I—C. 120 B.C.), Greek historian, was born at Megalopolis in Arcadia, being the son of Lycortas, friend and successor of Philopoemen as leader of the Achaean League. The precise dates of his birth and death are not known, but they can be inferred approximately. We have his own state ment (xxiv. 6) that in 181 B.C., when he was appointed along with Lycortas and Aratus as an ambassador to Egypt. he was still under the legal age, which appears to have been 3o (xxix. 9). According to Cicero, Ad Fain. v. I2, Polybius wrote a special his tory of the Numantine War, which ended in 132 B.C. Lastly in Lucian, Macrob. 22 we read that he died in consequence of a fall from his horse at the age of 82.
The more notable events of his life may be briefly stated. On the death of Philopoemen in Messenia (182 B.c.) he took a leading part in conveying home the urn which contained his ashes (Plu tarch, Philopoem. 21). In 169, during the war between the Romans and Perseus of Macedonia, when it was decided to send an Achaean force to assist the consul Q. Marcius, Polybius was appointed to command the cavalry. He was among the envoys sent to consult with the consul, and, although the proffered assistance was declined, he remained for a time in the Roman camp (xxviii. 13). The turning point in his life came when Perseus was finally defeated by the Romans at Pydna in 168. Polybius was one of I ,000 leading Achaeans who were carried to Rome, at the instigation of Callicrates, on the charge of having been lukewarm in their support of the Roman cause.
While the others were distributed among the Italian towns, Polybius was allowed, through the influence of L. Aemilius Paul lus, and his sons Fabius (Q. Fabius Maximus Aemilianus) and Scipio (P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus minor) to remain in Rome (xxxii. 9., Pausan. vii. Io. 2). With Scipio he formed a close friendship and to his influence with Scipio it was due that in 151 B.c., the remnant of the Achaean exiles obtained permission to return to their homes (xxxv. 6). Polybius himself, after a short stay in Achaea, joined Scipio in Africa in 147 and was present at the siege and destruction of Carthage in 146. Meanwhile the mistaken attempt of the Achaean League to assert its independ ence of Rome had ended in disaster and the remaining public work of Polybius was devoted to alleviating so far as possible for his countrymen the consequences of their policy, and to facilitating the establishment of order under the new regime (xl. 8-1o).
The manner in which he accomplished this was such as to earn the gratitude of his compatriots, as was attested by the statues erected in his honour at Mantineia (Pausan. viii. 9. I.), Pal lantium (Pausan. viii. 44. 5), Tegea (Pausan. viii. 48. 8), Megal opolis (Pausan. viii 30. 8)—where the inscription recorded that he "had roamed over all the earth and sea, and had been the ally of the Romans and had made them cease from their anger against Greece"—Acacesium, the inscription declaring that "Hellas would never have come to grief, if she had obeyed Polybius in all things, and, having come to grief, she found succour through him (Pausan. viii. 87. 2). The base of a statue erected to him by Elis was discovered at Olympia in 1877 with the inscription: 7) rats 'HXdow TIoXbi3cop AvOpra MeyaXoroX14-nv.
The Histories (`IaropLat), on which his reputation as a historian now rests, were in 4o books. Of these the first five are extant. For the remaining books we have excerpts from a collection of passages from the Greek historians, which was made by the order of Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the loth century; excerpts of vi.–xviii. contained in another compilation of uncertain date, first printed at Basle in 1549; and a fragment of xi., 13-16, in a Berlin papyrus (3rd century A.D.).
The original intention of Polybius was to narrate the history of the 5.5 years (22o-168 B.c.)—from the beginning of the Han nibalic War to the defeat of Perseus at Pydna—in which Rome made herself mistress of the world. The first two books are prefatory—a "preparation" (rpoicaracrIcEvii I. 3)—dealing with the earlier history of Rome, the first Punic War, and contempo rary events in other parts of the world. But the opening chapter of Book III. indicates an intention to modify his original plan by adding an account of the manner in which the Romans exer cised their supremacy down to the destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C. Thus the history of the period 168-146 B.c. appears to have occupied the last ten books.