Polybius

(c. 200 BC - c. 120 BC)

A Greek hostage arriving in Rome around the age of thirty-five, Polybius became the tutor and later friend of the prominent general Scipio Africanus the Younger, with whom he traveled to Spain and Africa. Of the original forty books of his history, only the first five are extant in their entirety. He observed that “the object of history is the very opposite of that of tragedy,” that a historian ought not “try to astonish his readers by sensationalism” but rather “simply record what really happened and was said, no matter how commonplace.”