In 168 BCE, the ancient Greek calvary officer and historian Polybius was arrested along with 1,000 other Achaeans and held as a prisoner for 16 years. Rome had conquered the major Greek cities and taken a privileged position of power. Greece had fallen, and Rome was the political star. Although many of his compatriots were imprisoned or killed, Polybius was well-connected, and his privileged life allowed him to live out his sentence as a mentor, advisor, and scholar for the Roman elite. He used his access to Roman officials and his freedom to travel as the foundation for his research, thereby giving birth to a new way of thinking about political and social power.

Polybius was not the first to examine history through a critical lens. Herodotus examined the Greco-Persian War in his Histories. Thucydides studied the Peloponnesian War, seeking insight into human nature. Plato’s Republic blended philosophy and historical analysis. Aristotle’s Politics outlined different forms of government and their corrupt counterparts. However, Polybius’s approach in Histories, a collection of 40 volumes covering 264 BCE to the end of 146 BCE (of which only five volumes remain), was entirely new.