Polybius, Rome and the Mediterranean: 241 BC to 146 BC

From the end of the cataclysmic first Punic war to the year of Rome’s final obliteration of her old enemy Carthage and the great Greek city Corinth, this period saw the Roman conquest of Greece and much of the Hellenistic east, and indeed the development of Rome into an imperial state exercising dominion throughout the Mediterranean world. It saw also the developing effects of this process, upon the Romans and, not least, upon those with whom they dealt, in Italy itself and overseas. This time marked the beginning of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic. The ‘freedom of the Greeks’ was proclaimed by a Roman general in 196 B.C., but in fact these years marked the end of liberty for Greece and much of the rest of the Mediterranean world. Rome and its allies in Italy all prospered, but wealth and empire brought rapid social and economic change and mounting political tensions.

This period shaped the views of one of the greatest historians of antiquity, Polybius of Megalopolis, who made his subject precisely the ambition of the Romans for universal conquest and the effects this had upon the lives of all the peoples involved. A contemporary of the events, and detained in Rome in the 160s and 150s, he enables (and enlivens) productive study of this period, which saw, amongst so much else, the beginnings of Roman history writing, some of the early development of which there will be opportunity to trace. Inquiry is aided by an increasing number of surviving inscriptions and an increasingly detailed archaeological record.

If you offer this period as a text-based subject, passages for compulsory comment and translation will be set from:
Polybius I.1-4, 62-5; II.1-13, 21-4; III.1-34; V.101-10; VI.3-18; VII.9; XI.4-6; XVI.24-35; XVIII.1-12, 34-52; XXI. 29-32, 41-6; XXIII.1-5, 9, 17; XXIV.8-13; XXX.1-5, 30-1; XXXI. 21-30; XXXVI.1-6, 9, 17; XXXVIII.1-18.
A document on WebLearn (‘Documents Roman HistoryI.4.doc’) lists key documents, some of which will be set (with a translation) among the optional gobbets (qu. 16). Lectures on this period of Roman History will normally take place in Trinity and Michaelmas terms.

Choosing your combinations - this period makes a natural pair with the following one, since it offers a deep understanding of the mature Roman Republic in its apparently stable state before the crises of its last century, and many insights into the nature of the aggression which won Rome its empire. Anyone who has enjoyed getting to grips with Herodotus and/or Thucydides will find the encounter with Polybius especially rewarding. Since Rome in this period was integrated to a much wider world this period makes a very imaginative and stimulating pair with I.9 The Hellenistic world: societies and cultures.