Polybius

During the second century BCE, the Greek Polybius was sent to Rome as a prisoner, where he became the client of Scipio Aemelianus. Polybius, along with Panaetius, brought Stoic beliefs in reason and traditional morality to Rome, which had a profound impact on the Roman worldview. Polybius came to admire the Romans, who had already embraced a lifestyle very much like the Stoics; he brought his Stoic didacticism to the writing of a universal history of his time. Polybius’s Histories narrates the rise of Roman power throughout the Mediterranean from the third to the second centuries BCE. His work was pragmatic and ecumenical, examining all affairs relating to Rome and the Mediterranean during this time.

Russell M. Lawson, Science in the Ancient World: An Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004), 199.