208 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY. [CHAP.

writer regarded geography with a philosophical mind, and read
almost like the criticisms of a later and more advanced age.

Polybius, however, is the author in whom geography first ob-
Poi bius tained full recognition as the handmaid of history.
drc. 210-128 The reason of this is to be found partly in the
B'c' character of the age in which he lived, and partly

in the circumstances of his own life. The period which he repre-
sents is that in which the history of Greece was first merged in
universal history. Before that time, and especially during the era
which preceded the rise of Macedonian influence,
the interests of Greece had been self-centered,

stances of his and it was the function of her historians to record
the struggles, whether external or internal, of her
several states, and to draw from them the lessons which they
suggested. The actors on this stage were animated by fresh
vigour and intense energy, and for this reason, as well as on ac-
count of the genius and originality of the writer, the work of
Thucydides is immeasurably superior to that of Polybius ; but at
the same time the events which Polybius describes exercised a
wider influence on the ages that followed, since the spirit of
Hellenic thought had then begun to permeate the world at large,
and the current of its history was being blended with a wider
stream. The occurrences, also, which took place during the life-
time of "the historian of the Decline and Fall of Ancient Greece,"
as Polybius has been aptly called1, were such as it has been the
lot of but few persons to observe. Born at Megalopolis in Arcadia,
when the Achaean League was still powerful, he witnessed the
subjugation of Greece by the Romans, and through the intimacies
which he contracted with leading politicians at Rome during his
long residence as a hostage in that city, he was able to obtain
some concessions from the conquerors in behalf of his country-
men. He was present at the destruction of Carthage, and thus
beheld the final overthrow of the most powerful enemy of the
Roman state. At an earlier period he had watched the downfall
of the Macedonian monarchy, and the practical, though not
formal conquest of that of Syria by the same power. In the
1 Freeman, History of Federal Government, i. p* 227.