Historians Made Elsewhere Than at Rome: Polybius and Josephus on the Roman Empire

This First Friday Lecture examined the familiar saying that history is written by the winners and asked what happens when it is written by the losers. Polybius was a Greek general brought to Rome as a hostage who became a trusted advisor to Scipio Africanus; Josephus was a Jewish military commander who surrendered to Vespasian and spent the rest of his life in Rome as a client of the Flavian emperors. The lecture examined what these two historians had in common: both wrote in Greek, both drew on their own experience as soldiers and politicians, and both placed more blame for their peoples’ defeats on their own leaders than on Rome. It considered how each historian portrayed the Roman army, what they attributed Rome’s success to, and how each tried to navigate writing honestly about a power they had lost to and now lived under. It concluded by comparing how the two men were remembered, Polybius celebrated in Greece for helping his people after the conquest, and Josephus condemned by his own people as a traitor who never returned home.