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Lycortas, an Arcadian, the father of POLYBIUS, became General of the Achæan League on the death of Philopœmen, at whose obsequies Polybius carried the funeral urn. The young man was early entrusted with high military and diplomatic functions. The condition of Greece had now become more frightful than at any period of her past history. Relieved by Rome from the pressure of Macedon, she was torn by incessant petty wars which had degenerated into mere brigandage. In fact, she was rapidly relapsing into barbarism. In the final struggle between Rome and Macedon, Polybius wisely advised the League to side with Rome. Nevertheless, after the decisive battle of Pydna, when the Senate determined to transport all the leading men of Greece to Italy, Polybius was among them. Here he became an honoured inmate of the house of Paullus, and a warm friend of his son, the worthy Scipio Æmilianus. Filled with respect and admiration for the qualities and career of Rome, and judging them with a large philosophic insight not at that time to be found among the Romans themselves, he conceived the design of writing his great historical work on the rise, growth, and causes of the Roman supremacy. The fragments of this which have been preserved are among the most valuable relics of antiquity. "Under Theocracy history was merely biographical. In the freer atmosphere of Greece it improved by assuming a collective character. On the other hand, it lost by becoming a simple narrative, without any social purpose, and therefore less fraught with moral significance than the biography which it superseded. Roman thinkers, trained in the arena of public life, gave it, once for all, a decided if emperical tendency, to grasp the true filiation of events affecting humanity. The connecting link between the two methods is furnished by the great Polybius. He was the last organ of Greek sociology; but his qualities were developed under the ascendancy of Rome, with which he nobly identified himself, and from which he acquired the universality which is his distinguishing feature" (Pos. Pol. iii. 335). Returning to Greece, after seventeen years of exile, Polybius strove to prevent his countrymen from rushing into their last mad struggle with Rome; and after their final subjugation his influence at Rome was used to alleviate the terms imposed upon them. The settlement and organization of the new province was indeed largely intrusted to him, and in carrying it out he earned the warm gratitude of his countrymen.
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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