His bent for historical composition was fortunately encouraged by the circumstances of his life, which gave Polybius special opportunities of satisfying his curiosity and completing his knowledge. Not only was he the son of a man who had held the highest office in the league, and so must have heard the politics and history of Achaia discussed from his earliest youth; not only from early manhood was he himself in the thick of political business; but he knew the sovereigns of Egypt and Pergamus, of Macedonia and Syria, and the Roman generals who conquered the latter. He had visited a Roman camp and witnessed its practical arrangements and discipline. And his enforced residence of sixteen years in Italy and Rome was, by the good fortune of his introduction to Aemilius Paullus and his sons, turned into an opportunity of unrivalled advantage for studying the laws, military discipline, and character of the imperial people whose world conquest he chronicles. Unlike his fellow-exiles, he did not allow his depressing circumstances to numb his faculties, exasperate his temper, or deaden his curiosity. He won the confidence of the leading men at Rome; and seems, while pushing on his inquiries with untiring vigour, to have used his influence for the benefit of his countrymen, and of all Greek subjects of Rome. But, like so many of the writers of antiquity, he has had no one to perform for him the service he had done for others in rescuing their achievements and the particulars of their career from oblivion. Of the many _testimonia_ collected by Schweighaeuser and others from ancient writers, scarcely one gives us any details or anecdotes of the writer, whose work they briefly describe or praise. We are reduced as usual to pick out from his own writings the scattered allusions or statements which help us to picture his character and career. [Sidenote: Birth of Polybius.]