The Greeks had certainly exhibited historical research and had written history; but the conceptions of nation and state had been so completely lost amidst the distracted times of the Diadochi, that none of the numerous historians succeeded in following the steps of the great Attic masters in spirit and in truth, or in treating from a general point of view the matter of world-wide interest in the history of the times.
Their histories were either purely outward records, or they were pervaded by the verbiage and sophistries of Attic rhetoric and only too often by the venality and vulgarity, the sycophancy and the bitterness of the age.

Among the Romans as among the Greeks there was nothing but histories of cities or of tribes.

Polybius, a Peloponnesian, as has been justly remarked, and holding intellectually a position at least as far aloof from the Attics as from the Romans, first stepped beyond these miserable limits, treated the Roman materials with mature Hellenic criticism, and furnished a history, which was not indeed universal, but which was at any rate dissociated from the mere local states and laid hold of the Romano-Greek state in the course of formation.

Never perhaps has any historian united within himself all the advantages of an author drawing from original sources so completely as Polybius.
The compass of his task is completely clear and present to him at every moment; and his eye is fixed throughout on the real historical connection of events.

The legend, the anecdote, the mass of worthless chronicle-notices are thrown aside; the description of countries and peoples, the representation of political and mercantile relations--all the facts of so infinite importance, which escape the annalist because they do not admit of being nailed to a particular year--are put into possession of their long-suspended rights.