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

From the year after the end of the cataclysmic first Punic war to the year before the cataclysmic tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, 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. It might be said also to have marked the end of liberty for Greece and much of the rest of the Mediterranean world: the ‘freedom of the Greeks’ was proclaimed by a Roman general in 196b.c., but in 146 Corinth was sacked and destroyed. A similar fate befell Carthage in the same year, and the end of the period coincides with the destruction of Numantia in Spain. Rome itself and Italy prosper, but wealth and empire brought tensions both within and between these.

This is also a time that produced one of the greatest historians of antiquity, Polybius of Megalopolis, whose subject was the establishment of Roman dominion and the effects of this 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, 88.5-12; II.21-4; III.1-34, 40, 56, 77-8, 106-7, 118; V.101-10; VI.3-18; VII.9; IX.3-9, 11a; XI.4-6; XV.1-2, 9-24; XVI.24-35; XVIII.1-12, 34-52; XXI.11-24, 29-32, 41-6; XXII.3-15, 18; XXIII.1-5, 9, 17; XXIV.6-13; XXV.3-5; XXVII.8-10; XXVIII.6-7, 12-13, 16-17; XXIX.23-7; XXX.1-5, 11-13, 25-32; XXXI.1-2, 21-30; XXXVI.1-6; XXXVIII.1-18; XXXIX.1-8.

All offering this topic are also expected to show a familiarity with the texts listed in the appended Examination Regulations, in translation, from which optional passages for comment will be set.

Lectures on this period of Roman History normally take place in Trinity and Michaelmas terms.