When Polybius conceived of his own work as a universal history he was thinking partly in geographical terms. Unlike former historians who dealt with ‘‘the history of one nation, such as Greece or Persia,’’ Polybius himself had ‘‘undertaken to describe the events occurring in all known parts of the world’’ (2.37.4). Indeed, he seems to imply that a genuine universal history was impossible before the rise of the Roman empire. He does at one point acknowledge that other historians have made ‘‘the same boast as myself, that they write general history (ta katholou graphein) and have undertaken a vaster task than any predecessor’’ - and he is prepared to make one exception, Ephorus, ‘‘the first and only writer who really undertook a general history’’ (5.33.1-2). But in the introduction to the work as a whole Polybius claims that ‘‘previously [before 220 bce] the doings of the world had been, so to say, dispersed, as they were held together by no unity of initiative, results or locality; but ever since this date history had been an organic whole (somatoeides), and the affairs of Italy and Africa have been linked with those of Greece and Asia’’ (1.3.3-4). The implication of this passage is that even a work of Ephorus’ breadth (covering some 700 years: below, p. 172) does not have the same universality as Polybius’, since the geographically separate events treated by Ephorus were not causally interconnected. Indeed, the word Polybius uses for the affairs of the world before the rise of Rome - ‘‘dispersed’’ (sporades) - is common in anthropological accounts of humankind that trace a progression from the life of primitive men living in scattered dwellings to the creation of the earliest settlements and ultimately of fortified cities. Polybius implies that historical works covering events before the rise of Rome are primitive by comparison with his own historiographical project.
Polybius offers further criticism of historical monographs when he explains that only a universal history can bring out adequately the workings of Tyche (1.4.7):
He indeed who believes that by studying isolated histories he can acquire a fairly just view of history as a whole, is, as it seems to me, much in the case of one, who, after having looked at the dissevered limbs of an animal once alive and beautiful, fancies he has been as good as an eye-witness of the creature itself in all its action and grace.
The severed limbs of monographs contrast, it is implied, with the organic unity of Polybius’ work - a unity made possible by the fact that history had become an ‘‘organic whole’’ (somatoeides) with the rise of Rome. Indeed, when Polybius concludes that the benefit and pleasure of his universal history lie in the ‘‘study of the interconnection of all the particulars’’ (tes hapantOn pros allela sumplokes, 1.4.11), he again hints at the link between the form and the content of his work: the task of ‘‘interconnection’’ (sumploko) here enjoined upon the reader mirrors the ‘‘interconnection’’ (sumploko) of historical events brought on by the rise of Rome.
Polybius’ defense of his universal history offers valuable evidence for the types of argument used to defend war monographs. Polybius’ critique of the dissevered limbs of the monograph is a response to the claim that the more limited scope of war monographs gave them a greater unity. The attractions of the unified war monograph do nonetheless make themselves felt within Polybius’ work. He does sometimes break his usual structuring principles - and on one occasion he breaks them precisely for the sake of the organic unity that he claims for his work as a whole (14.12.4-5):
It struck me that my narrative would be easier both for me to write and for my readers to
Follow if I performed this part of my task not by merely alluding every year to small
Events not worth serious attention, but by giving once for all a unified picture so to speak of this king’s [sc. Ptolemy Philopator IV’s] character.
Here Polybius uses of a section that breaches his normal rules the same adjective sOmatoeide (‘‘unified’’) that he had applied to the contents of his work as a whole (1.3.4). And this unified section on Ptolemy IV did presumably include a coherent account of a native revolt (‘‘a war which, apart from the mutual savagery and lawlessness of the combatants, contained nothing worthy of note, no pitched battle, no sea-fight, no siege’’) that would have seemed negligible if split up according to Polybius’ usual principles.
While his own conception and execution of universal historiography is not free from tensions, Polybius had further criticisms of monographs. It is not just that monographs lack the virtues of universal histories: they are also liable to distinctive faults of their own. Polybius argued that ‘‘those who write narratives of particular events (hoi tas epi merousgraphontes praxeis), when they have to deal with a subject which is circumscribed and narrow, are compelled for lack of facts to make small matters great and to devote much space to matters really not worthy of record’’ (7.7.6). So too later he claims that they work up elaborate set-piece descriptions of battles, sieges, and places (29.12). The greatest weakness of particular historians lay, however, in their treatment of causation: ‘‘it is impossible to get from writers who deal with particular episodes ( ten tas kata meros historiasgraphonton) a general view of the whole process of history (ton ton holon oikonomian)" (8.2.2). Here we do find Polybius using one of the terms picked up by Jacoby - kata meros - though the noun attached to the phrase is historiai, not suntaxeis. More significant, perhaps, is the fact that Polybius here uses a word for the process of history - oikonomia - that was commonly used for the arrangement of individual histories. The implication is that a particular arrangement of a historical text is required to bring out the arrangement of the historical events described within it. This is borne out by Polybius’ argument that readers of particular histories can learn how the Romans took Syracuse and how they occupied Spain, but not the circumstances that led to their acquiring universal empire: readers who ‘‘study separate histories’’ (dia tOs ton kata meros suntaxeos) cannot hope to become familiar with ‘‘the general history of the world as a whole’’ (8.2.11).
Why did Polybius fail to devote any attention to the critical problems posed by the war monograph? One reason may be that there were in fact few historians who devoted works to a single war. We have seen that Thucydides wrote a history of a single war. But he had surprisingly few followers. More commonly different wars and battles would be thrown together in a narrative of contemporary Greek affairs - on the model of Xenophon’s Hellenica, which starts as a continuation of Thucydides’ work but then extends down to 362 bce. It is telling, indeed, that some of the accounts of specific wars known to us were written by poets: Choerilus of Samos wrote a verse account of the Persian Wars towards the end of the fifth century bce; Hegemon of Alexandria wrote a Leuctrian War (FGrHist 110); and the Simonides of Magnesia who wrote The Deeds of Antiochus and the Battle against the Galatians (FGrHist 163) is, like Hegemon, described as an epopoios (writer of hexameter verse).
One war that did attract treatment in prose was the Third Sacred War (356-346 bce): accounts were written by Cephisodorus (FGrHist 112), Leon of Byzantium (FGrHist 132), and Callisthenes (FGrHist 124), who also wrote a ten-book Hellenica covering 386-356 bce and an account of the early stages of the expedition of Alexander, whom he accompanied as historian until his execution in 327 bce. Perhaps, however, one reason for the popularity of this war was precisely its epic resonances: like the Trojan War, it lasted for ten years and could be presented as arising from a dispute over women.
The claim that it was their rareness that made Polybius neglect the specific problems posed by war monographs will not quite do. The next major wars to attract monographs were both wars that Polybius described himself - and his descriptions show that he made use of the available monographs: the First Punic War, treated by Philinus of Acragas (FGrHist 174), and the Second Punic War, handled by another Greek historian from Sicily, Silenus of Caleacte (FGrHist 175) as well as by Coelius Antipater, author of the first Roman monograph (HRR I.158-177). Polybius was also familiar with the works of the Sicilian historian Timaeus, who wrote a separate work on Pyrrhus in addition to his long Sicilian history; presumably Timaeus’ work on Pyrrhus was not, however, a strict war monograph but rather focused around Pyrrhus’ foreign expeditions (compare Zeno’s work entitled Pyrrhus’ Expedition to Italy and Sicily, FGrHist 158), on the model of Xenophon’s Anabasis and the Alexander historians as well as the early stages of Herodotus’ account of Xerxes’ expedition against Greece. Even if one discounts Timaeus, Polybius’ silence on the war monograph may seem even more surprising when one considers that he himself later wrote a monograph on the Numantine War (143-133 bce).
It seems more likely that the reason Polybius did not analyze the specific elements of war monographs is that he did not distinguish between war monographs and other forms of contemporary history writing. Like Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War, the ‘‘monographs’’ mentioned above were all written by contemporaries (though there is some danger of circularity in making this assumption for writers about whom we have no clear biographical evidence). The monograph treating a past event was a later development, best represented among surviving works by Arrian’s account of Alexander (for an earlier treatment of Alexander by an imperial author, note Potamon, FGrHist 147 - if this was a historical work) and in Latin historiography by Sallust’s Jugurthine War and by Curtius Rufus’ history of Alexander.
While Polybius does not expressly engage with the war monograph in his discussions of earlier historians, the treatment of specific wars does enter into his defense of universal history. In Book 3, after answering the charge that his book is more difficult to acquire and read than particular histories (3.32 - tas ton kata merosgraphonton suntaxeis - again close to but not quite the phrase Jacoby favored for the monograph), and complaining that such histories ‘‘mostly give different accounts of the same matter,’’ Polybius turns again to the advantages of universal history for the analysis of causation (3.32.7-9):
I regard the war with Antiochus as deriving from that with Philip, the latter as resulting from that with Hannibal, and the Hannibalic war as a consequence of that about
Sicily.. .All this can be recognised and understood from a general history, but not at all from the historians of the wars themselves... unless indeed anyone reading their descriptions of the battles alone conceived that he has acquired an adequate knowledge of the management and nature of the whole war.
Without the proper analysis of causation, Polybius further argues, ‘‘what is left is a clever essay (agOnisma) but not a lesson (mathema), and while pleasing for the moment (parautika men terpei) of no possible benefit for the future’’ (3.31.13). Polybius’ criticism that looking at a war in isolation will lead to a misrepresentation of its place in broader causal patterns is particularly striking because his language echoes in various ways Thucydides’ claims on the conflicting accounts given by different informants and on the utility of his history of a single war (1.22). Polybius uses Thucydidean criteria against the type of history written by Thucydides himself.
Polybius clarifies his criticism of the monograph further when he handles separate wars in his own narrative. The moment he chooses for the beginning of his work (220 bce) is marked by wars in different parts of the world - the Social War in Greece, the war fought for Coele-Syria between Antiochus and Ptolemy Philopator, the Second Punic War in Italy, Africa, and neighboring areas - and in the early stages of his narrative Polybius does in fact devote long sections to single wars (Book 3, for instance, covers the origins and opening years of the Second Punic War). It is only when events in different parts of the world have become, in his view, causally related (the ‘‘interweaving’’ or sumploke:, which occurred in 217 bce) that he starts to adopt a strict annalistic arrangement. This change ofpractice in the course ofthe work brings out how misleading it would have been for him to continue with the earlier arrangement. Yet Polybius still leaves open the possibility that monographs were fine for periods when there was not the same degree of causal interaction as at the time of the rise of Rome.
The potential advantages and shortcomings of the monograph form are still more clear from Polybius’ preliminary account of events preceding the start of his history proper (the prokataskeuO, covering Books 1-2). Included in the introduction is a long narrative of the First Punic War (1.16-63) justified by the claim that ‘‘it is not easy to name any war which lasted longer, nor one which exhibited on both sides more extensive preparations, more unintermittent activities, more battles, and greater changes of fortune’’ (1.13.11, cf. the closing comment at 1.63.4). Focusing as it does on continuity and length, this explanation recalls Thucydides’ criteria for judging the greatness of the Peloponnesian War (1.23). The narrative of the First Punic War is followed by accounts of the carthaginian war against the mercenaries (1.65-88) and by Rome’s war against the Gauls (2.1-36) that both close with narratorial claims about their greatness: the Mercenary War ‘‘far excelled all wars we know of in cruelty and defiance of principle’’ (1.88.7) while the Gallic War was ‘‘second to no war in history’’ in ‘‘the desperation and daring of the combatants and the numbers who took part and perished in the battles’’ (2.35.2). By making claims generally used to magnify a historian’s overall subject in relation to wars that are only part of his introductory books, Polybius underlines the even greater importance of the subject of the main part of his work - and so further undermines the potentiality of the monograph.
Polybius’ historiographical criticisms are notable for their lack of a historical dimension. He weighs up earlier historians against his own standards without exploring developments in history writing over time. His criticisms are notable, too, for their focus on historians writing in the second half of the fourth century bce and afterwards - historians whose works do not survive intact and are in some cases largely known through the distorting lens of Polybius’ presentation of them. How do Polybius’ claims about ‘‘particular’’ histories work if we turn to the earlier historians whose works do survive - Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon? Did Polybius present a skewed account of the potentialities of monographs or ‘‘particular’’ histories? To answer these questions it may be helpful to start by looking to one of the main inspirations for the early historians - the presentation of war in Homeric epic.
World History
