ἱστορίαι Historiai
Witness — the source, profiled; every claim below carries its ground or says it has none

Polybius of Megalopolis

c. 200 – c. 118 BCE · life dates approximate · 1 work served · 1,252 episodes · 402,985 words receipt — the witness cards

No ancient record gives either year; both are reckoned from his offices and from the tradition that he died at eighty-two after a fall from his horse — a tale carried by a source not on this shelf.

Who he was — as the tradition carries it; the grounds are named
His office enters his own ledger in the third person: cavalry commander of the Achaean League, the year Rome and Perseus went to war.
It was thereupon decided that Archon should go without delay to his duties as Strategus, and Polybius to those of Hipparch. Plb. 28.6 The Histories · Polybius
The vantage — what he could know, and from where

An Achaean statesman's son: cavalry commander of the League, then seventeen years a hostage in Rome after Pydna — where detention became the vantage. Tutor and friend to Scipio Aemilianus, he watched Rome's machine from inside its ruling house, and stood beside its general at the burning of Carthage.

At burning Carthage he stands beside the general — his former pupil — close enough to ask what the Homer meant.
And on my asking him boldly (for I had been his tutor) what he meant by these words, he did not name Rome distinctly, but was evidently fearing for her, from this sight of the mutability of human affairs. Plb. 39.5 The Histories · Polybius
The record's most intimate receipt: the destroyer of Carthage gripping his historian's hand, afraid for Rome.
he immediately turned round and grasped me by the hand and said: “O Polybius, it is a grand thing, but, I know not how, I feel a terror and dread, lest some one should one day give the same order about my own native city. Plb. 39.5 The Histories · Polybius
The interviewer's habit survives even mid-fragment: he talked to the people in his stories.
Polybius says that he conversed with the woman at Sardis, and was struck with her dignified demeanour and intelligence. Plb. 21.38 The Histories · Polybius
His method, in his own words — verbatim from the served record; every quote linked to its episode
The program: the parts mean nothing apart — history must be written whole, or the reader learns episodes and calls it knowledge.
it is only by the combination and comparison of the separate parts of the whole,—by observing their likeness and their difference,—that a man can attain his object: can obtain a view at once clear and complete; and thus secure both the profit and the delight of History. Plb. 1.4 The Histories · Polybius
Universal history, claimed in so many words — with the predecessors put on notice.
For since I have undertaken to write, not a particular, but a universal history, and have ventured upon a plan on a greater scale, as I have already shown, than any of my predecessors Plb. 5.31 The Histories · Polybius
The impartiality law, stated as a duty of office: praise enemies, denounce friends, when the facts demand it.
But directly a man assumes the moral attitude of an historian he ought to forget all considerations of that kind. There will be many occasions on which he will be bound to speak well of his enemies, and even to praise them in the highest terms if the facts demand it: and on the other hand many occasions on which it will be his duty to criticise and denounce his own side, however dear to him Plb. 1.14 The Histories · Polybius
His audit of the library historian: eyes before ears — the field-worker's charter against the armchair, aimed at Timaeus by name.
Nature has bestowed on us two instruments of inquiry and research, hearing and sight. Of these sight is, according to Heracleitus, by far the truer; for eyes are surer witnesses than ears. And of these channels of learning Timaeus has chosen the pleasanter and the worse Plb. 12.27 The Histories · Polybius
What survives, what is lost — the shelf's own shape, stated plainly

Of forty books, the first five came through whole; the rest survive as excerpts in later compilations. The shelf serves books 1–16, 18 and 20–39 in the served edition's numbering, gaps standing open — book 17 does not survive at all.

The shape of the loss is the shelf's own shape. Books 1–5 whole; books 6–39 as excerpts and quotations gathered by later compilers, served here in the edition's own fragment numbering with the gaps left visible. Book 17 is lost outright; book 19 came through without usable numbering and is not served.
How the record has read him — the reception's words, never the house's verdict
Rome's own historian files him as an authority — with a jurisdiction note attached.
we have followed Polybius, who is no untrustworthy authority on Roman history especially when the scene of it is in Greece. Liv. 33.10 The History of Rome · Livy
And cites him by weight where the parades are in question.
Polybius, an authority of considerable weight, says that this king was led in the procession. Liv. 30.45 The History of Rome · Livy
His shelf in the house — the served works; every edition credited
The deeds he witnesses — curated events his works attest; the accounts face each other in each room
battle of Aegospotami — 405 BCE battle of Leuctra — 371 BCE battle of Issus — 333 BCE battle of Lake Trasimene — 217 BCE battle of Cannae — 216 BCE siege of Syracuse — 213-212 BCE battle of Pydna — 168 BCE destruction of Carthage — 146 BCE
Inside the record
the record itself

He also stands inside the record — named by the other witnesses. Polybius, the figure.

The record here: 166 works · 12,119 episodes served · profiles carry claims, claims carry grounds — episode, page, or an honest open

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