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

214 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS LECT.

characterize a man when he first appears on the
stage, or to infer his whole character from particular
acts. The right method is to criticize his actions
as they occur.1 The same man must be praised as
well as blamed; he is changed by vicissitudes of
affairs; his conduct, for instance, may become
better or worse.2 Characters such as that of Philip
III. of Macedon, which seems to have specially
attracted him as a problem, impressed him with the
necessity of adopting this principle; and in the
treatment both of Philip and of Hannibal we must
admire the conscientious fairness of Polybius in
endeavouring to understand and estimate their
characters.
Psychology indeed was a subject on which Polybius seems to have reflected much. We can see
his interest in it, for example, in the account which
he gives of the mental process of learning to read;3
in his observation that in fighting those have
an advantage who have a stronger will to conquer,
so that a battle is in a certain measure a contest
of wills;4 in his insistence on the importance of
personal experience (avroraO8ELa); or in such a remark
as that change from one kind of activity to another
is a relief. His psychological ideas have furnished
material for a treatise to a German scholar. One
principle must specially be noticed because he
applies it to his own work: the importance of
1 On this principle he only draws general portraits of subordinate
persons who appear but once or twice. The preliminary account of Scipio
in x. 2 is concerned only with his youth.
2 xvi. 28. 3 x. 47. ' Fr. 5S.