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

VI

POSEIDONIUS

223

principles or methods, and in some respects he
represented a retrogression from Polybius. His
fragments show that general Cultzrgeschichte was a
conspicuous feature of his work; and he seems to
have aimed at suggesting a contrast between the
rude but fresh manners of barbarians like the Gauls
and Parthians, and the decadent civilisation of
Egypt and Syria. We cannot form any definite
idea of his general treatment, but we may say with
probability that Poseidonius had qualities which
entitled him to be reckoned among those historians
to whose works men go, not for rhetoric or sentiment, but for the illumination of the past by
reasonable thought.1
1 Some interesting aspects of the work of Polybius, on which I have
not been able to touch in this lecture, are brought out in Mahaffy's
valuable chapter on the historian in Greek Life and Thought.