ABSTRACT
This chapter traces that beginning to three particular judgements that Polybius made about history: first, that it is concerned with the universal; second, that we can discern universals through rigorous acts of sensory perception; and third, that while our own sensory perceptions are to be trusted more than the claims of others, our perceptions have limits. It charts that struggle, and in so doing exposes the mutual interest of historians and philosophers of the ancient Greek world in finding the limits of our attempts to make the most general sense of things. The chapter introduces questions about what is knowable and what is unknowable, what is accessible and inaccessible to sensory perception, what is natural and what is supernatural, and what is universal and what is particular. It introduces Polybius to us as an historian who was interested in transcendence. The chapter highlights a lesser appreciated form of entanglement, between history and metaphysics.
