The Rise of Rome - Folio Society Edition

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The most complete history of one of the world’s great empires, The Rise of Rome has influenced thinkers from Machiavelli to the Founding Fathers of the United States. It comprises five surviving books and two partial volumes from Polybius’ Histories, an ambitious, and originally vast work that explained how Rome conquered all the known regions of the civilised world. A leading politician, Polybius was born in Arcadia, Greece, in 200 BC and died around 117 BC. As the historian and broadcaster Michael Scott says in his new preface, this made him ‘an eyewitness to one of the greatest power shifts in Mediterranean history’.

Unlike that of other Roman historians, Polybius’ work was firmly anchored in his own lifetime. In fact, his first books were written so soon after the events they described, that – widely read by Greek and Romans alike – they may even have influenced the course of Rome’s ascension. Deported to Rome from his homeland after the Battle of Pydna in 168 BC, Polybius belonged to the vanquished. He adapted by forming friendships with powerful Romans, such as the general Scipio Aemilianus, alongside whom he witnessed the destruction of Carthage. Remarkably, he was also a trusted advisor to the Greeks as they reconstructed his homeland.

The Rise of Rome opens with a summary of the First Punic War , the 20-year battle between Rome and Carthage that marked the beginning of Rome’s evolution from Republic to Empire and concluded with a subdued Carthage signing a peace treaty. The narrative begins in earnest in 220 BC, with the second clash between the two powers underway – the Carthaginians led by the tenacious Hannibal. The Romans gained control of the Western Mediterranean and moved east to conquer Greece. Polybius concludes with the destruction of Corinth in 146 BC, the year in which Carthage was finally obliterated. Mixing biography, ethnography, geography, historical narrative, and political and military analysis, The Rise of Rome is a fascinating meditation on how to govern and how to learn from history. This edition includes photographs, specially commissioned from the British Museum, of coins bearing portraits of prominent figures, such as Philip V of Macedon, and Marcus Claudius Marcellus, consul of the Roman Republic and military leader during the Second Punic War.