Marriage of Convenience: How Greeks & Romans Became Graeco-Romans

A History of Mankind (189)

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The flow of victorious Romans into Greek lands, and of Greek hostages and slaves into Rome, had a huge impact on the Greek-loving city. Painters, sculptors, bankers and architects made an impression among the unsophisticated Latins. There were so many Greek scholars and doctors in the city that Pliny the Elder later categorized teaching and medicine as low-income semi-servile occupations¹.

Few, however, made as big a splash as the historian Polybius of Megalopolis (200-118 BC), a young Achaean noble. The youngster arrived in Rome as a hostage and gained employment in the Scipio propaganda apparatus after he became friendly with Scipio Aemilianus – one of the sons that Paullus took to visit Greece – and other high-ranking Romans, taking advantage of the Roman love of patronage.

Patronage was all pervasive in Roman society and letters of recommendation are the most common form of literature to survive from antiquity; the Scipios were the undisputed masters of the art, at least until Cicero. Supported by Scipio generosity – he traveled onto the Atlantic in a ship paid for by his benefactors – Polybius wrote his Histories in Rome, recalling events he had lived through and personally witnessed, and researching others for his crucial work, the best analysis of the political history of the Mediterranean from 264-146 BC.