Risultati di "Polybius" in Tutte le categorie

After 18 years of desperate struggle, Rome has gradually turned the tide against Hannibal, and now the Carthaginian finds himself bottled up in the toe of Italy while Scipio ruthlessly tightens the noose around Carthage on the African mainland. Knowing that Hannibal must sooner or later abandon Italy and come to the aid of his countrymen, the brilliant Roman commander prepares for the inevitable test of strength.

Polybius wrote his Histories "to find out by what means and by what political system the entire world was brought under the domination of Rome." Within the short space of about 50 years Rome went from being a provincial leader of an Italian confederacy to become the Mistress of the Mediterranean. Polybius was one of the first historians to attempt to present history as a sequence of causes and effects, based upon a careful examination of tradition and a keen scrutiny of the facts.

Of the forty books which made up the history of Polybius, the first five alone have come down to us in a complete form; of the rest we have only more or less copious fragments. But the general plan and scope of the work are explained by Polybius himself. His intention was to make plain how and why it was that “all the known regions of the civilized world had fallen under the sway of Rome”. This empire of Rome, unprecedented in its extent and still more so in the rapidity with which it had been acquired, was the standing wonder of the age, and “who,” he exclaims, “is so poor-spirited ...

How did the city state of Rome rise inexorably to become the dominant power in the Mediterranean and much of the Western world? In short, first of all it overcame the established Carthaginian Empire despite the remarkable exploits of Hannibal. And, largely at the same time, it gradually...