The ancient Greek historians (Harvard lectures) by J. B. Bury.

IVT

POLYBIUS

193

war and the previous history of the Achaean
League. Thus, so far as the lands of the Western
Mediterranean are concerned, his history began
where Timaeus had left off, as he expressly notes.'
He signalises the motif of his work in imposing
phrases. "Our own times have witnessed a
miracle, and it consists in this. Fortune moved
almost all the affairs of the world towards one
quarter and constrained all things to tend to one
and the same goal. And so it is the special note
of my work to bring under one purview for my
readers the means and the manipulations which
fortune employed for this end. This idea was
my principal motive and stimulus. It was an
additional reason that in our time no one had
attempted a universal history."2
Subsequent events, the fall of Carthage and the
annexation of Greece in 146 B.c., led Polybius to
extend his plan and fix this later year as the term
of his history. In its augmented form it reached
the considerable bulk of forty Books, of which
only the first five have been preserved completely,
though of many of the others we possess long
excerpts. He seems to have finished the composition of the whole work about the year 134,
but he continued to insert many additions and
corrections up to 120 B.c. These supplements are
often in contradiction with other passages, for he
died without submitting the book to a systematic
revision. Indeed, he had allowed the original
1 i.... 2 i. 4. 1.
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