Leadership and Leaders in Polybius

The issue of leadership is crucial to Polybius’ desire to explain the rise of Rome over almost the entire known world and provide benefit and utility to readers who may have to assume positions of responsibility. This book focuses on descriptions of leadership behaviors in the Histories, aiming to identify regularly recurring patterns, motifs, and themes in the relevant passages, which could, precisely because of their persistence, heighten our sensitivity to the subtleties of Polybius’ treatment of the subject. Given that the interest in leadership permeates Polybius’ work and engages with his main thematic concerns, this study brings the reader face-to-face with questions of power and control, identity and nationality, the role of fortune, narrative strategies, thereby providing a basis for reading the Histories more generally. At the same time, a major concern throughout the book is with the ways Polybius’ representation of leadership seems to have been influenced by literary depictions of the conquests of Alexander the Great. Polybius’ interplay with his literary context and tradition deepens our understanding of what he is trying to accomplish in the narrative and how he is interacting with the expectations of his audiences.