Woven History, Woven Lives

Chapter 6 concludes the analysis by addressing the discrepancies revealed between the image of Philip V in Polybius’ narrative and the image of the king in his digressional passages during Chapters 3 and 5. It argues that these conflicting portraits are the result of Polybius’ use of a biographical means of presenting key individuals in the context of a historical account (implemented for the political education of his readers), and the different levels of unity in character and comprehensiveness of information that these two genres require. The second section observes how Polybius integrates these biographical presentations into the larger, interweaving framework of the Histories and how each leader and their actions are prevented from standing too large in the progress of history. The analysis of Philip V is repositioned in this wider context and his uniqueness questioned. The last section offers a comparative study of Polybius’ portrait of the Macedonian king with that of other key rulers in his work (his predecessors: Philip II and Alexander, Antigonus Doson; contemporaries: Ptolemy IV, Antiochus, and Hannibal; and successors: Perseus and Eumenes), exploring how, for Polybius, Philip is both similar to other monarchs, contributing equally to the declining picture of kingship in the Histories, yet also exceptional for his political, structural and didactic importance.