고려대학교

초록/요약

This paper is intended as an introduction to the major historiographical aspects of Polybios’ Histories. Firstly, biographical details conducive to understanding author’s qualification and decision in launching into the task of recording the contemporary events of huge historical significance are briefly outlined: his youthful experience as a leading official in his fatherland (Megalopolis, a leading polis of the Achaean league); his detention in Rome for more than 15 years as an ill-fated sequel to Achaean league’s alignment with the Macedonian king Perseus whose challenge against Rome’s supremacy was decisively shattered in the third Macedonian war of 171∼168 B.C. And the general content of the Histories is also delineated with particular emphasis on the change of the composition plan: while the post quem of the work remained the same (220 B.C.), the ante quem (168 B.C.) was replaced by a new one of 146 B.C., thus requiring 10 more to the original 30 books. Secondly, the thematic uniqueness (universal history)of the work is illuminated: the author endowed with the vantage viewpoint at Rome judged himself to witness the emergence of an unprecedented world empire, namely Rome’s rise to the master of the Mediterranean world, thus being privileged to write a universal history of the sort that his predecessors had never attempted. The other aspect, namely pragmatike historie, is equally emphasized as one of the cardinal characteristics of the work. The purpose of author’s historical writing lies not just in the magnitude of the res gestae, but also in author’s expectation of his work’s effective lessons for the future men of state affairs (pragmata). Thirdly, a few typical narrative techniques are analyzed, which the author contrived as necessary schemes to strengthen the validity of the lessons the Histories aimed at giving: aitiologia (causal explanation), apodeiktike diegesis (demonstrative narrative) and parekbasis (digression). Last but not least, author’s frequent use of the word tyche is also noted as revealing the way he conceived of history: this paper rejects the conventional interpretation that some providential or fateful powers intervening in human history were insinuated at thereby, instead proposing that tyche functioned in the Histories either as a gimmick for narrative economy or as a convenient substitute for author’s intuitive grasp of the development of universal history.