Dějiny IV (Polybios) – Polybios (2022)

Antique Library No. 81 The previous three volumes of Polybius's Histories (I, AK 78; II, AK 79; III, AK 80) covered eighteen of the forty books of his historical work. This fourth volume brings together everything significant that has survived from the remaining twenty books, i.e., XIX to XXXIX. In these, Polybius recorded and described events from 196 to 144 BC, characterized by the consolidation of Rome's hegemony across the vast Mediterranean and Near Eastern territories. During this time, the Romans gradually dominated Greece and Macedonia, seized northwestern Africa after the defeat of Carthage, and brought the Seleucid Empire and Ptolemaic Egypt under their influence. Like the third volume, this fourth one is composed of fragments preserved from excerpts of Polybius's work, which were made in the 10th century, and quotes from authors who drew from it. Despite their fragmentary and incomplete nature, these fragments contain a wealth of valuable information about contemporary events and the author's insights into the connections between them, creating an authentic picture of the happenings in the then-known 'inhabited world.' This volume completes the corpus of Polybius's historical work in the Antique Library, which is published for the first time in Czech translation thanks to Professor Pavel Oliva.