Polybius (ca. 200-118 BC) was a Greek historian and political thinker, the son of Lycortas, a leading figure in the Achaean League. Polybius was embarking on his own political career when he was taken to Rome, in 167 BC, as one of the Achaean hostages taken at the end of the Third Macedonian War. There he met many of the leading Romans, particularly Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus and his son Scipio Aemelianus, acting as tutor, and later advisor on his campaigns in Africa and Spain, to the latter.
While in Rome, Polybius embarked on his history of the Roman Empire; unfortunately, only the first five books survive intact, describing the period 200-146 B.C., describing particularly the Third Macedonian War and Third Punic War, culminating with the destruction of Carthage by Scipio Aemelianus in 146 BC, with Polybius an eye-witness. He was still writing in 118 when, it is believed, he died after a heavy fall from his horse.
The Histories has established Polybius as one of the greatest historians of the Roman Republic; while not free from expressing his biases, he was skilled in editing and marshalling his sources, rigorous scholarship, and thorough analysis of cause and effect. For a substantial part of the period, he was an actual eye-witness to events, which increases the importance of his text.
As with Henricpetri’s edition of Strabo , the text was edited by Willem Xylander; unlike many rival editions, Xylander worked from a Greek text. His translation is illustrated with twenty-one maps, seventeen taken from Münster’s edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia … and four from Heinrich Petri’s edition of Johannes Honter’s … De Cosmographiæ Rudimentis …, 1561.
The Münster maps cover Italy, the eastern Mediterranean and the northern Middle East; they include the Ptolemaic world map, with the monogram of the woodcutter David Kandel, Italy, Greece and Asia Minor (all repeated), central North Africa, the Balkans, Russia, Armenia, the Caspian Sea region and Persia. The Honter maps depict Greece (repeated), central North Africa and the Holy Land.
