Note 855 — Chapter XII · THE SWORD IN ANCIENT ROME; THE LEGION AND THE GLADIATOR.

Polybii Historiarum quæ supersunt. The voluminous and luminous writer, a contemporary of Scipio Africanus, and a captain who witnessed the destruction of Carthage, was born a.u.c. 552 (b.c. 204), nearly three centuries after the Latin conquest of Etruria. He was called ‘Auctor bonus in primis,’ and Scipio said of him, ‘Nemo fuit in requirendis temporibus diligentior’ (Cicero, De Off. iii. 12, and De Rep. ii. 14).