Bibliography
| Title: Polybius' Conception of Tyche Secondary Title: Classical Review Volume: 17 Pages: 445-449 Type: Journal Article Year: 1903 Abstract: Fowler follows up his discussion of Fortuna in the works of Caesar (Classical Review, April 1903) by considering the concept of Tyche in the Histories of Polybius. He focuses his study under two basic observations: first, that Tyche is not regarded as a deity, either Greek or Roman, which is itself reflective of Polybius' general lack of interest in local cults and the practices of the various poleis in his day; and second, although Polybius may reflect closely certain Stoic ideas, as well as the concepts of other philosophical schools of his day, his general philosophic outlook does not adhere to any of these strictly and can only be arrived at through a close study of his own writings. Under the first point, Fowler observes that Tyche does not resemble Chance in our understanding of the word (whatever that may be!), particularly in the lack of caprice. Instead, the use of Tyche more closely resembles Polybius' later employment of the term physis (Book VI), namely the natural process of events, something akin to the Stoic concept of Fate but not identical. He emphasizes also the possibility of human involvement within this conception of Tyche, using Scipio as example. On the other hand, Fowler observes that Polybius uses a more popular notion of Tyche as well, that is as a divine interposition into the world. Most of the time, however, this use is restricted to Polybius' placing this idea in the characters of his narrative or to explain those situations that cannot be understood by scientific deduction. In the end, Fowler concludes that both the popular and quasi-philosophical sides of Polybius' concept of Tyche have their root in his acknowledgement of the limits to our knowledge of causation. Keywords: Polybius, tyche, physis, philosophy |