Polybios von Megalopolis

In his ‘Histories’, the Greek historian Polybius, a hostage of Rome for about 17 years, pursued the question of ‘how and thanks to what kind of constitution the Romans … [had] subjected nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government’. His main merit for political science was that he analysed the history of his world under the hermeneutic primacy of constitutional thought, thereby uniting historical empiricism and political theory. The articles collected in this volume elaborate a multifaceted profile of this political thinker between the world of Greek poleis and the Roman res publica. His main concepts and narratives are thoroughly investigated in terms of themselves as well as their political reception from Polybius’ own time to the 21st century’s High Theory. With contributions by Frank Daubner, Boris Dreyer, Martin Gronau, Lisa Hau, Felix K. Maier, Stefano Saracino, Philipp Scheibelreiter and Jonas Scherr.