Erskine Andrew. In: Dialogues d'histoire ancienne. Relations culturelles et diplomatie. The Greek historian Polybius was a contemporary observer of Roman expansion in the eastern Mediterranean. Comprendre les Romains : Polybe et le point de vue grec. University of Edinburgh andrew. One of the problems with the study of empires is that so often we know more about the viewpoint of the ruler than we do about what the subject people thought. The Roman empire is no exception. We can read at great length what Julius Caesar wrote about his conquest of Gaul, why he went, what he thought of the Gauls, how he put down rebellions, but we have little idea what the Gauls at the time thought of him or of Rome, apart from what he himself tells us.
This is frequently the case with empires, the perspective of the conquered is overwhelmed by the ruling power. In the case of Gaul it is Rome that shapes how things are viewed, so much so that even on the famous 19th C.
These are uplifting words but it is Caesar who speaks for Vercingetorix and for France. What interests me here is Rome as it moves into an area rather than the experience of living under Roman rule β in other words at the point when Rome is first encountered. There are indeed opportunities for studying this but to take advantage of them it is necessary to look to the East.
With its long tradition of writing, the East gives us valuable first impressions of Rome and the Romans. These are not exclusively Greek first impressions; the Jews too provide a record of their developing relationship with Rome, but the focus in this paper will be on Greeks and on one man in particular. Polybius and Rome. This is the Greek historian Polybius.
He came from Megalopolis in the Peloponnese, an important city in the federation known as the Achaean League, its regional aspirations perhaps clear from its name, Big City or even Great City. Only about a quarter of his forty-book history survives, but there is enough remaining to get a reasonably good idea of how he viewed Rome and the Romans, even if scholars are not agreed on what that idea is.
