Book, Polybius: pragmatic history[LS]

In this volume, professor Breno Battistin Sebastiani brings the translation of Polybius' Pragmatic History, of all the remaining material from the work of the Greek geographer and historian, who sought to study and understand the functioning and military and cultural success of the Roman empire. Divided into three parts, it begins with accounts of wars prior to 216 BC. C., then moving on to the presentation of the constitutional-military apparatus of the victors, until finally arriving at the sequence of wars and interventions, emerging in Roman political-military sovereignty. Polybius's work was based on the sudden interruption of his political career, and he writes Histories after the betrayal of the Greek ambassador Callicrates, who incriminates his opponents for supporting the Macedonian king. Fixed by the attempt to understand the institutional means by which the sovereignty of the Roman empire came to be what it was, Polybius unifies his writings around the theme of the Greek defeat, in an attempt to protect dignity in dealing with the victors and avoiding greater suffering for the defeated. An unprecedented work, a unifying theme of universal history had never before been given to a historian.