ABSTRACT
Polybius’ history of the Roman conquest, most of which was composed during the period of his “soft” captivity in Rome (167–150 BCE), has interested scholars for its historiographical stance. Polybius self-consciously places himself in the line of pragmatic rather than “tragic” historians, Thucydides serving as his exemplar. But recent scholarship questions this assertion. Following this line, the chapter suggests that Polybius’ rhetoric in the earlier books reveals a traumatic subtext, traceable to his experience as a Greek hostage in Rome. Polybius represses his traumatic experiences as he criticizes other historians for their expression of emotion in graphic accounts of conquest. But in later books, composed after the Roman decimation of Carthage and Corinth, Polybius offers a more forthright account of the suffering and loss so carefully contained in the early books.
