McGing Brian. C. - Polybius Histories

OXFORD APPROACHES TO

CLASSICAL LITERATURE

SERIES EDITORS

Kathleen Coleman and Richard Rutherford

OVIDS Metamorphoses

ELAINE FANTHAM

PLATOS Symposium

RICHARD HUNTER

CAESARS Civil War

WILLIAM W. BATSTONE

CYNTHIA DAMON

POLYBIUS Histories

BRIAN MCGING

BRIAN MCGING

2010

Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford Universitys objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education.

OxfordNew York
AucklandCape TownDar es SalaamHong KongKarachi
Kuala LumpurMadridMelbourneMexico CityNairobi
New DelhiShanghaiTaipeiToronto

With offices in
ArgentinaAustriaBrazilChileCzech RepublicFranceGreece
GuatemalaHungaryItalyJapanPolandPortugalSingapore
South KoreaSwitzerlandThailandTurkeyUkraineVietnam

Copyright 2010 by Oxford University Press, Inc.

Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.

198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016

www.oup.com

Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McGing, B. C.

Polybius Histories/Brian C. McGing.

p. cm.(Oxford approaches to classical literature)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-19-531032-0; 978-0-19-531033-7 (pbk.)

1. Polybius. Historiae. 2. History, AncientHistoriography. 3. PolybiusCriticism and interpretation. 4. PolybiusInfluence.

I. Title.

D58.P8M352010

937'.04dc22 2009042624

The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have seen a massive expansion in courses dealing with ancient civilization and, in particular, the culture and literature of the Greek and Roman world. Never has there been such a flood of good translations available: Oxfords own World Classics, the Penguin Classics, the Hackett Library, and other series offer the English-speaking reader access to the masterpieces of classical literature from Homer to Augustine. The reader may, however, need more guidance in the interpretation and understanding of these works than can usually be provided in the relatively short introduction that prefaces a work in translation. There is a need for studies of individual works that will provide a clear, lively, and reliable account based on the most up-to-date scholarship without dwelling on minutiae that are likely to distract or confuse the reader.

It is to meet this need that the present series has been devised. The title Oxford Approaches to Classical Literature deliberately puts the emphasis on the literary works themselves. The volumes in this series will each be concerned with a single work (with the exception of cases where a book or larger collection of poems is treated as one work). These are neither biographies nor accounts of literary movements or schools. Nor are they books devoted to the total oeuvre of one author: our first volumes consider Ovids Metamorphoses and Platos Symposium, not the works of Ovid or Plato as a whole. This is, however, a question of emphasis, and not a straitjacket: biographical issues, literary and cultural background, and related works by the same author are discussed where they are obviously relevant. Authors have also been encouraged to consider the influence and legacy of the works in question.

As the editors of this series, we intend these volumes to be accessible to the reader who is encountering the relevant work for the first time; but we also intend that each volume should do more than simply provide the basic facts, dates, and summaries that handbooks generally supply. We would like these books to be essays in criticism and interpretation that will do justice to the subtlety and complexity of the works under discussion. With this in mind, we have invited leading scholars to offer personal assessments and appreciations of their chosen works, anchored within the mainstream of classical scholarship. We have thought it particularly important that our authors be allowed to set their own agendas and to speak in their own voices rather than repeating the ides reues of conventional wisdom in neutral tones.

The title Oxford Approaches to Classical Literature has been chosen simply because the series is published by Oxford University Press, USA; it in no way implies a party line, either Oxonian or any other. We believe that different approaches are suited to different texts, and we expect each volume to have its own distinctive character. Advanced critical theory is neither compulsory nor excluded: what matters is whether it can be made to illuminate the text in question. The authors have been encouraged to avoid obscurity and jargon, bearing in mind the needs of the general reader; but, when important critical or narratological issues arise, they are presented to the reader as lucidly as possible.

This series was originally conceived by Professor Charles Segal, an inspiring scholar and teacher whose intellectual energy and range of interests were matched by a corresponding humility and generosity of spirit. Although he was involved in the commissioning of a number of volumes, he did notalaslive to see any of them published. The series is intended to convey something of the excitement and pleasure to be derived from reading the extraordinarily rich and varied literature of Greco-Roman antiquity. We hope that these volumes will form a worthy monument to a dedicated classical scholar who was committed to enabling the ancient texts to speak to the widest possible audience in the contemporary world.

Kathleen Coleman, Harvard University

Richard Rutherford, Christ Church, Oxford

The opportunity to write most of this book was provided by a years leave in 2006. The leave was paid for by Trinity College Dublins Centre for Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies (of which I am the director), a project funded by the Irish Governments Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions. This funding has enabled us to undertake and promote exciting work that would otherwise have been impossible; and I would like to acknowledge our great debt to the Higher Education Authority for the generous support they have given us.

I have tested out various parts of this book on students, among whom I thank particularly Helen Stonehouse, Duncan Macrae, Charlotte Finnegan, Kevin McGee, and Jessie Evans. Perhaps they were just being kind to me, but they seemed to enjoy reading Polybius, an author not very commonly read on Classics set-book courses; and I certainly enjoyed their company in our Polybian investigations. I am also very grateful for the response to papers I delivered at my own institution, Trinity College Dublin, and at Manchester, Maynooth, Exeter, and Liverpool (where Bruce Gibson generously made available before publication his own excellent paper on Polybius debt to Xenophon). I am very fortunate to have had the map-drawing expertise of Patrick Florance at my disposalmy thanks to him for including me in his busy schedule. I owe most, however, both to Andrew Erskine, who kindly took the time to read and correct the whole text, an act of scholarly