Hi there, you're listening to the Hellenistic Age podcast.

Episode 41, Polybius of Megalopolis, historian of the Hellenistic Age.

History is written by the victors.

At least that's how the saying goes.

In truth, this tends to be a fairly accurate appraisal, at least in our dealings with the ancient world.

There are no surviving accounts of the Gauls who were conquered by Julius Caesar, but Caesar's commentaries are some of the most long-lasting and

widely read literature from any classical author. The various peoples depicted on the Behistun

inscription cannot protest the claims of their submission of earth and water to derise the first,

and on the inverse,

there are no account from Persia that chronicle the conquests of Alexander the Great.

However, exceptions to this maxim do exist.

Josephus, one of the only surviving members of a band of Judeans who rebelled against the Roman Empire,

wrote a history of his defeat by the

future emperors Vespasian and Titus. In the context of the Hellenistic world, we have Polybius

of Megalopolis. Megalopolis was a city of the Achaean League, a political body centered in the

region of Achaea in Greece that was forced to submit to the up-and-coming Roman Republic during

the middle 2nd century BC, with Polybius serving as a political hostage in Rome.

Because of his unique position, Polybius sought to write a universal history to explain to his

fellow Greeks how the Romans managed to conquer the known world in 50 years, and is perhaps the finest historian

to emerge following Thucydides and his account on the Peloponnesian War.

While perhaps not as stirring as the patriotic livy, nor possessing the cynical wit of Tacitus,

Polybius surpasses both as a master of his craft, actively emulating Thucydides in an attempt to provide

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