Lives and Works of Polybius and Poseidonius

Professor J. B. Bury, M.A., Litt.D., LL.D., Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, delivered the fifth of his lectures on the Greek Historians last night in the Fogg Lecture Hall dwelling especially on Polybius and Poseidonius.

Polybius, Professor Bury said, appeals most strongly to men interested in political science, for he is the one historian who realized the importance and influence of the political institutions of a country. He takes for the starting point in his history the period of the three great wars, namely--Rome and Carthage, the Leagues in Greece, and Antiochus and Ptolemy. His forty books, of which five are completely extant, are the first books of universal, connected history, treated in a chronological order. As Thucydides was an artist, so was Polybius a teacher. The historical value of the writings of Polybius cannot be too highly valued because of their accuracy and impartiality.

Poseidonius, who closely followed Polybius, is becoming more and more recognized as one of the great historians. He was a stole and a close friend of Pompey, with whom he travelled extensively. Besides being a historian, Poseidonius was a philosopher, a geographer, an astronomer, and a mathematician, and played an important part in the political life of his times.