From this I conclude that the best education for the situations of actual life consists of the experience we acquire from the study of serious history. For it is history alone which without causing us harm enables us to judge what is the best course in any situation or circumstance.

In 182 BC he was given quite an honor when he was chosen to carry the funeral urn of Philopoemen one of the most eminent Achaean politicians of his generation. Five numbers were then aligned on the outside top of the square and five numbers on the left side of the square vertically. In Polybius' time the profession of a historian required political experience (which aided in differentiating between fact and fiction) and familiarity with the geography surrounding one's subject matter to supply an accurate version of events.

: /pəˈlɪbiəs/; c. Polybius's The Histories provides a detailed account of Rome's ascent to empire and included his eyewitness account of the Sack of Carthage in 146 BC. 200–118 BC) Greek Πολύβιος) was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic Period noted for his work The Histories which covered the period of 264–146 BC in detail.