Brian C. McGing is Regius Professor of Greek, and Director of the Centre for Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies at Trinity College Dublin.

• Editors' Foreword


• Acknowledgments


• Introduction


• 1: Contents and Organization of the Work


• 2: The Historian's Task


• 3: Art and History: the Narrative of Books 4 and 5


• 4: The Historian as Homeric Hero


• 5: The Political Theorizing of Book 6: Epilogue Into the Future: the Influence of Polybius' Work in


• Later Times


• Maps


• Appendix: Outline of the Work


• Bibliography of Works Cited


• List of Prominent Persons


• Index

The Histories of the second-century B.C. author Polybius chronicles one of the most exciting, and important, developments in the ancient world-the transformation of Rome from an Italian peninsular state into the first, and only, pan-Mediterranean super-power there has ever been. This volume provides an accessible introduction to this great work, of which forty books survive (of which only the first five are preserved in full) covering the period 264-146 B.C.