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

VI

POLYBIUS

211

subjective. He is always on the stage himself,
criticizing, expounding, emphasizing, making points,
dotting the i's and crossing the t's, propounding and
defending his personal views. Thucydides did all
his constructive work beforehand, and presents to
the reader only the syntheses and results. Polybius takes the reader fully into his confidence, and
performs all the processes of analysis in his presence.
Thucydides states in a few sentences the plan of
his work, indicates in a few lines his principles of
historiography; and his rare criticisms on other
historians are confined to a word or two. Polybius
devotes pages to an exposition of the scheme of his
history, at the outset, and reiterates it in another
place. At the end of his work he gave a chronological scheme of the whole plan. He had commenced with the intention of supplying an epitome
of contents at the beginning of each Book, but
afterwards preferred to place at the beginning of
each Olympiad a summary of the events which
occurred in it.' He thus showed a kindly solicitude
that the reader should fully understand the construction of his work. He goes, at length, into the
proper principles and methods of history, frequently
returning to the subject, and he digresses into
elaborate criticisms of other historians, such as
Timaeus and Phylarchus, Ephorus and Theopompus. He is unsparingly didactic and his diffuse
explanations are often wearisome. This feature, as
to which he stands in marked contrast to the early
1 The change was made after Book v. See beginning of Book xi.