The best place to start this valuable study of Polybius’ views on empire, imperialism and Rome is at the end, with the ‘Conclusions’ (164–75). Here, Baronowski is at his most effective, confident in presenting a lively summary of his own views and meticulously careful readings of his author. For B., Polybius was, like almost all intellectuals of the period, an unquestioning believer in the whole enterprise of imperialism, but had firm opinions on how it should be conducted, how empire is best retained, and particularly on how weaker states should react to superpowers. Aggression was fine, as long as it was accompanied by convincing and respectable explanations and had a realistic chance of success. Empire would be retained by the same qualities of dignified and intelligent moderation and benevolence that won it in the first place. On the whole Rome met these simple standards, and on the whole Polybius admired Rome, while remaining at heart a Greek and an Achaean. He moved in the highest circles of Rome's best and brightest, but maintained an intellectual distance that absolves him from De Sanctis’ accusation of treachery. Rome's opponents, on the other hand, were not very good imperialists, and even worse as minor powers in Rome's world, especially after Pydna, they completely failed to understand how to negotiate a relationship with the new superpower. I do not think the Polybius that emerges is strikingly new, but B. brings good sense to many of the topics that have exercised scholars for generations.

Rather like Polybius himself, B. provides a great deal of background material (1–60). I am not convinced how much of it is really helpful. Part I (15–60) collects the literary data concerning the attitude of philosophers, poets and historians to Roman dominion to provide an intellectual context for Polybius, but it seems to me that it is almost another book in the distance it takes us from anything that has closely to do with Polybius. For example, the detailed, but highly speculative, discussion and lengthy endnotes on Book 3 of Cicero's De Re Publica (17–27) and its sources are a long way removed from Polybius. Yes, the ethics of imperialism may have been discussed by some philosophers in the second century b.c., but Polybius’ interest was a very general and unphilosophical one. The same applies to what poetry and prophecies had to say about Roman imperialism (ch. 2), an interesting collection of material. Polybius did, of course, engage with his predecessors and contemporaries in the world of history writing, but even in ch. 3 where the subject is analysed, the relevance to Polybius of a long discussion on Posidonius (55–63), whose work was written after Polybius’ death, is not clear. This is all meticulously careful scholarship which undoubtedly gives an overall impression of imperial discourse; I am just not sure it gave me new insights into the work of Polybius.

Part II (61–163) is the meat of the book, with six chapters devoted to various aspects of Polybius’ attitude to Roman dominion. Only the four pages of ch. 8 (‘Polybius, Rome, Barbarism and Fate’) disappoint. Fate (Tyche) is an odd concept for such a humanist as Polybius, but it ties up in some way with his ideas on empire, and less than a page of analysis is a strange brevity. The rest is full of close reading and interesting argumentation. There is a good discussion, for instance, of the pretexts for war (prophaseis) (73–7). If pretexts are ‘decent’ (euskhemon) they create ‘the veridical appearance of justice’, which brings with it practical advantages. Is B. perhaps too anxious to exonerate the Romans? His interpretation of fragment 99 B-W is certainly benign: he argues that it means ‘the Romans took great care not to commit injustice and aggression, but to make people see that they were in fact acting in self-defence’ (73). A darker alternative seems much more convincing to me. Unbelievable pretexts seem to annoy Polybius. The Aetolian excuse for inviting the intervention in Greece of Antiochus III — they wanted to free the Greeks (3.7.3) — was particularly unreasonable and false, but I am not sure I agree with B. (92) that it was false because Polybius believed the Greeks were already free (after Flamininus’ declaration). Polybius just did not like the Aetolians and their actions manifestly had nothing to do with freeing anyone: they were relentlessly aggressive and now seeking to get back at Rome for what they regarded as her mistreatment of them.

The freedom of the Greeks does raise an interesting problem which B. recognizes: how can Rome have extended its dominion over Macedon at the same time as leaving the Greeks free? (92) I am not convinced that Polybius was distracted by his pleasure in seeing the Antigonids and Selucids removed from the Greek sphere. Missing from the intellectual context set out in such detail in Part I is any discussion of what ‘freedom’ meant — and the discourse had a long history, as manifested both in literary texts and inscriptions. What did Polybius understand by the term ‘freedom’? Could you, in fact, be free while under Roman rule? Philopoemen seems to have thought not (24.11–13), and I do not think Polybius had reconciled empire and freedom either.

There is much that is old-fashioned about this book. But B. has spent a career studying his author, and his detailed arguments on this important topic warrant our closest attention.