r drawing from original sources so completely as Polybius.
The compass of his task is completely clear and present to him
at every moment; and his eye is fixed throughout on the real
historical connection of events. The legend, the anecdote,
the mass of worthless chronicle-notices are thrown aside; the
description of countries and peoples, the representation of
political and mercantile relations--all the facts of so infinite
importance, which escape the annalist because they do not admit of
being nailed to a particular year--are put into possession of their
long-suspended rights. In the procuring of historic materials
Polybius shows a caution and perseverance such as are not perhaps
paralleled in antiquity; he avails himself of documents, gives
comprehensive attention to the literature of different nations,
makes the most extensive use of his favourable position for
collecting the accounts of actors and eye-witnesses, and, in fine,
methodically travels over the whole domain of the Mediterranean
states and part of the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.(28)
Truthfulness is his nature. In all great matters he has no
interest for one state or against another, for this man or against
that, but is singly and solely interested in the essential
connection of events, to present which in their true relation of
causes and effects seems to him not merely the first but the sole
task of the historian. Lastly, the narrative is a model of
completeness, simplicity, and clearness. Still all these uncommon
advantages by no means constitute a historian of the first rank.
Polybius grasps his literary task, as he grasped his practical,
with great understanding, but with the understanding alone.
History, the struggle of necessity and liberty, is a moral problem;
Polybius treats it as if it were a mechanical one. The whole alone
has value for him, in nature as in the state; the particular event,
the individual man, however wonderful they may appear, are yet
properly mere single elements, insignificant wheels in the highly
artificial mechanism which is named the state. So far Polybius was
certainly qualified as no other was to narrate the history of the
Roman people, which actually solved the marvellous problem of
raising itself to unparalleled internal and external greatness
without producing a single statesman of genius in the highest
sense, and which resting on its simple foundations developed itself
with wonderful almost mathematical cons