“Polybius on Speeches in Timaeus: Syntax and Structure in Plb. 12.25a.” Classical Quarterly 64.1, 2014, pp. 121-135 (original) (raw)

Polybius on Speeches in Timaeus: Syntax and Structure in Histories 12.25A

The Classical Quarterly, 2014

The most famousand most discussedancient statement on speeches in historiography is probably Thucydides 1.22.1, but Polybius' discussion of speeches in Timaeus in Book 12 of his Histories follows closely. 1 Although Polybius' criticism of Timaeus has been fruitfully studied from very different angles, the meaning and implications of many of his statements are still debated. 2 This paper is part of an ongoing project that systematically (re-)examines the role of speeches in both the methodological and the narrative passages of Polybius' Histories. This project was prompted by a chapter on the speeches in the third book of Polybius' * I should like to thank my friends and colleagues Dr Thomas Riesenweber and Professor Otto Zwierlein for their criticism; thanks are also due to the anonymous reader for drawing attention to points that needed clarification, and to my partner, Pam Hutcheson, for diligent proofreading of the manuscript and indispensable linguistic advice. 1 The standard treatment of speeches in Polybius is still P.

On the Translation of Polybius 1.1.2

Histos, 2014

This paper deals with the meaning of the words πάντες ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἀρχῇ καὶ τέλει κέχρηνται τούτῳ in the proem to Polybius' Histories (..). Unlike previous translations, the reading should be: 'all of them [sc. the previous historians], from beginning to end, so to speak, made use of it [sc. praised history]'. In particular, ἀρχῇ καὶ τέλει should be linked to πάντες, and, together with it, referred to the insistence with which previous historians addressed the praise of history in their historical narratives, and to the community of earlier historians at whom Polybius looks back, albeit in a cursory way.

The Shaping of Narrative in Polybius

Contents acquired universal reputation as a historian but he has not gained the same recognition or received the same attention as a writer.⁵ The relative lack of scholarly effort in this direction can be attributed to two main reasons. The first and most obvious is the fragmentary character of the Histories. Of its original forty books only the first five survive complete, while for the remaining thirty-five we rely on Byzantine excerpts and the use of the work by later writers. The fragments of these books are often very substantial, but still, with so much of the text missing, it is difficult to fully appreciate the literary art that has created it. The second reason is related to a characteristic feature of Polybius, namely, his unusually overt narratorial presence that can be felt throughout the story due to his frequent commentary on the unfolding events.⁶ This feature of the Polybian narrator, which is much more prominent than in other ancient Greek historians, has directed scholarly interest toward his argumentative passages, with the result that the value of a comprehensive literary analysis of his narrative has been overlooked. And yet, Polybius' work, in spite of its gaps, exhibits a narrative complexity that would make it a good candidate for an analysis of this kind. His Histories, composed in order to explain Rome's rise to universal domination, is indeed a prime example of an intricately structured narrative. In his attempt to portray the growing interconnection of political events throughout the Mediterranean area, Polybius uses an annalistic method which consists in treating the events of the various geographical regions in a fixed order. He begins with the events in Italy, and then recounts what happened within the same Olympiad year in Sicily, Spain, Africa, Greece and Macedonia, Asia, and Egypt.⁷ This sequence, which from book 7 onwards constitutes the standard structural framework of the Histories, enables Polybius to describe how the events of the oecumene after Olympiad 140 start to become intermingled and to influence each other, thus promoting the expansion of Roman rule. The impressive diligence with which Polybius weaves together his multiple narrative threads into a coherent whole indicates his interest in issues of structure and narrative form, suggesting that the analysis of his work from a narratological perspective may be an avenue of inquiry worth pursuing. This book is a study of Polybius' narrative. It examines the Histories as a narrative text, focusing on the various techniques used by Polybius in shaping his historical account. The shape of the narrative is the result of choices that Poly- See Foucault 1972, 201 for references to unfavourable assessments of Polybius' prose.  On the intrusiveness of the Polybian narrator see below, ch. 1 n. 15.  See below, pp. 60-64.

The Historian's Sins of Omission and Commission: Polybius' Sounds of Silence

Brill's Companion to Polybius (Final Version), 2024

Readers of history judge historians for what they say. But what about historians' silences, what they have left unsaid? Giving attention to this dimension of an historian's writing can pay rich dividends. By looking at specific omissions we may gain understanding about what historians wanted us to believe, how they attempted to manipulate their readers, and how they arranged their narratives to achieve their objectives. In this chapter, I pursue this line of inquiry concerning the history of the Greek historian Polybius. As a political hostage at Rome, Polybius necessarily offered a foreigner's perspective on Roman imperial power. Despite his well-deserved reputation as an ancient historian of the first order 1 , several bewildering aspects of his treatment of Rome, especially in the sixth book, have

Narrative Structures in Polybius' Histories

This thesis builds upon recent scholarship that has analyzed Polybius' Histories as a literary work both to offer an interpretation of the narrative structures that define the text and to analyze the implications of these structures for our reading of the text as a historical source. It investigates the challenges of narrative that Polybius encountered as he wrote the Histories, how he coped with these obstacles, and what effects his solutions to these problems imposed on his presentation of the real world. The relationship between the didactic purpose of the Histories and Polybius' selection and presentation of historical content is also examined. The primary conclusions drawn by this thesis is that the Histories is a literary presentation of the real world, and that readers must always approach the text as a subjective interpretation of the past-not as an authoritative narrative of events. The purpose of this investigation is not to discover what actually happened around the Mediterranean in the third and second centuries B.C.E., but to better understand the literary representation of this world created by Polybius. iv