The Age of Polybius

The life and work of the historian Polybius brings us to the 2nd Century BC and the growing troubles of the Roman state. What were these troubles?
1. Carthage and the Punic wars that had just concluded. Now with vast areas of the Mediterranean were in Roman hands.
2. There was Roman social turmoil that would feed the Gracchi revolution (Gracchi = Roman brothers leading a radical movement.
3. The "Social Wars"(the word here "social" refers to the Latin "social" meaning allies, the confederation of Italian states opposed to Rome.
4. Slaves, slavery, and the Spartacus slice rebellion.

Polybius c. 200 – c. 118 BC was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic period. He is noted for his work The Histories, which covered the period of 264–146 BC and the Punic Wars in detail. Polybius is important for his analysis of the mixed constitution or the separation of powers in government, his in-depth discussion of checks and balances to limit power, and his introduction of "the people", which influenced Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws, John Locke's Two Treatises of Government, and the framers of the United States Constitution. The leading expert on Polybius for nearly a century was F. W. Walbank (1909–2008), who published studies related to him for 50 years, including a long commentary of his Historiesand a biography.