Polybius, a Greek from the Achaean league in southern Greece, wrote The Histories to show how Rome came to dominate the Mediterranean. This is Book 5. Book 4 had already left Hannibal in Italy to follow Greece’s Social War of 220: the Aetolian and Achaean leagues tearing at each other while Philip V of Macedon was still a young king.

Here the same year that Rome meets disaster at Cannae in Italy is also a year in the East. Philip learns kingship by campaign, by the counsel of Aratus of Sicyon, and by advisers who want him reckless. Antiochus III, the Seleucid king of Syria and the lands beyond, and Ptolemy IV of Egypt fight at Raphia with elephants on the sand near Gaza; Egypt keeps Coele-Syria, the strip toward Lebanon and Palestine, for a while. Cleomenes of Sparta dies in Alexandria trying to break out of a gilded cage. Molon rebels in the upper satrapies, the eastern provinces. The peace of Naupactus tries to freeze Greece while the west burns. Polybius’s point is that these courts and Rome’s war are already one story.