And this is exactly what Polybius has done as well as
Thucydides. For, as has been well remarked, there is in the works
of these two writers a certain plastic unity of type and motive;
whatever they write is penetrated through and through with a
specific quality, a singleness and concentration of purpose, which
we may contrast with the more comprehensive width as manifested not
merely in the modern mind, but also in Herodotus. Thucydides,
regarding society as influenced entirely by political motives, took
no account of forces of a different nature, and consequently his
results, like those of most modern political economists, have to be
modified largely (20) before they come to correspond with what we
know was the actual state of fact. Similarly, Polybius will deal
only with those forces which tended to bring the civilised world
under the dominion of Rome (ix. 1), and in the Thucydidean spirit
points out the want of picturesqueness and romance in his pages
which is the result of the abstract method ([Greek text which
cannot be reproduced]) being careful also to tell us that his
rejection of all other forces is essentially deliberate and the
result of a preconceived theory and by no means due to carelessness
of any kind.
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