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Polybius: The Histories

The Author, the Manuscripts

As with most ancient authors, not that much is known of Polybius, and the Loeb edition's introductory material, by H. J. Edwards, is about as good as one can get. The principal manuscripts of the Histories are also treated there; but only very summarily.

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As almost always, I retyped the text rather than scanning it: not only to minimize errors prior to proofreading, but as an opportunity for me to become intimately familiar with the work, an exercise I heartily recommend. (Well-meaning attempts to get me to scan text, if success­ful, would merely turn me into some kind of machine: gambit declined.)

I ran a first proofreading pass immediately after entering each book, and also benefited from the sustained help of several other readers, so that the text of all the books is quite good already. I've now started final proofreading: in the table of contents below, books the text of which I believe to be completely errorfree are shown on blue backgrounds.

Since I put this English text of Polybius online, a Greek text and a different English translation (Shuckburgh 1889) are now available at Perseus. Readers have alerted me, however, that there are problems with that Web transcription; for example: "it's amazingly user-unfriendly; when I try to move through it to another chapter, it regularly delivers a blank page". Students who wish to read the Shuckburgh translation more conveniently, though, will find photostatic copies of the two printed volumes at Archive.Org:

Books 1‑9 • Books 10‑39

Edition Used

Loeb Classical Library, 6 volumes, Greek texts and fa­cing English translation: Harvard University Press, 1922 thru 1927. Translation by W[illiam] R[oger] Paton.

Now in the public domain pursuant to the 1978 revision of the U. S. Copyright Code, since the copyright on the earlier volumes has lapsed and that on the later volumes was not renewed in the appropriate years, between 1950 and 1955. (Details here on the copyright law involved.)

For citation purposes, the Loeb edition pagination is indicated by local links in the sourcecode.

Images with borders lead to more information. The thicker the border, the more information. (Details here.)
My warm thanks to Alan Arthur • Adam Favaro • Peter Kordas • Jeffrey Sherrill • Russell Towle for sharing in the labor of proofreading this Web transcription.
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