Polybius followed the road from the harbour to the acropolis. It was a road now —not a mere street, for on the consul's orders the legionaries had left no stone unturned in the city. Corinth, which had stood for a thousand years, was torn down in a single day.
To be sure, there was still the whitestone wall of the Acrocorinth, because a wall that is 70 stadia long (The wall round the Acrocorinth was 12 kilometres long) could not be torn down in just a day or two Legionaries had climbed to the top of the wall, and went at it with crowbars whik others rested a few dozen steps away.
 Polybius walked trying to see and hear as much as possible.
The first pair of legionaries was sitting on a painting that lay upside down on the ground. One of them, a puny little man, had untied his bag and was pulling out a piece of lard. The other, red-headed and big-eared, pretended to be slumbering, then suddenly, snatched the lard out of the other's hand and put it instantly in his mouth. 
The puny one sat unmoved, his eyes staring at the other in amazement. 
Voracious, that's what you are," he breathed. "Didn't take you long to swallow it."
 "We say at home, it's a short way from the teeth to the throat." 
"Where's your home?" 
"In Picenum, we're called big-mouths by our neighbours." 
Another pair of legionaries was sitting on a painting that lay on the ground with the right side up. They were playing dice, and shouted loudly after each throw. 
Polybius stopped to look at the painting. He recognised it with a pang of pain: it was "The Trial of Midas" from the Temple of Apollo in Corinth. People went to the city specially to see that fine work of art by Eulompius. The artist had portrayed Apollo as a Greek athlete, and Midas, the Phrygian king, as a richly-clothed barbarian. It was a colourful tale portraying the supremacy of the Greek spirit and Greek harmony over barbarian ostentation. 
Thinking that the passer-by had been attracted by their game of dice, one of the legionaries cried out: 
"Come join us, old man." 
Polybius found the consul resting in his tent. Mummius met him with a joyous exclamation: 
"Well, at last! You've parted with Scipio, I see. (Before arriving in Corinth, Polybius and his disciple and friend Seipio had been in Carthage, and had witnessed the sack of that city.) We have it just as good here in Corinth. Look at all these heads!" 
Polybius looked where Mummius had pointed to, and saw a pile of bronze busts. Some were facing him, others had their backs turned. That was how the heads of beheaded men would have looked if piled one atop the other. The busts of men who were endowed with high honours among the Achaeans, had fallen into Roman hands. 
What was that? Polybius went to the pile and picked up one of the bronze heads. His fingers trembled. Holding it before him, he looked closely at the features of his father. "So that's how we meet again," he thought. "It is seventeen years since we parted. The last time you saw me, I was a hostage among hundreds of others aboard a ship that took me to the Cave of Cyclops. No, I did not leave it as Odysseus had done. It did not take cunning. I wrote a history, and became a friend of the Romans." 
"Like it?" Mummius asked, without any inkling of what had attracted the 
Greek's attention. "Take it if you like it. I have enough of them." Polybius took a step back. His cheeks burned, as though someone had slapped him. All these years, he had tried to understand the Romans, forgiving them their rudeness, which he put down to their lack of education. In his History he had gone out of his way to emphasise the Romans' better qualities, their straightforwardness, and the way they kept their word. He had hoped to reconcile the Greeks with their conquerors. But at that moment he realised that the straightforwardness was mere lack of feeling, and fidelity to promises was indifference and cruelty. "True," he thought, "this Roman may not know that my father, Lycortas, was the Achaean strategist. But he does know I am Achaean. Doesn't he realise the feelings of a man who sees his country defeated?"
 Polybius put his father's bronze bust carefully back on to the pile, and stood motionless for a few moments, paying homage to his memory. Mummius asked: "How much do you think they will pay for each head in Rome?" 
Polybius said Corinth bronze had always been valuable. "But the paintings," he added, "those your men are sitting on, cost a lot more." 
"Those boards?" Mummius asked in surprise. "What's so valuable about them? Is it the drawings on them?"
 "Yes, the drawings are by distinguished artists. I know that one of the paint- ings was sold to the temple for five talents." 
"You're not joking?" "Most assuredly not. And its price today is higher still." Mummius jumped to his feet and ran out of the tent. Polubius heard him cry: 
"Those boards you're sitting on! Isn't there any other place? I'll have the lie- tors over with the fasces. 1 They'll polish your backsides! Like this — like this!" 
On hearing Mummius shouting, the legionaries jumped to their feet, wondering why he was so furious. Now they stood on the paintings with both their feet. 
"You brainless fools!" Mummius shouted at the top of his voice. 
Seeing the trumpeter, he called to him: 
"Play the assembly!" 
When the men heard the trumpet, they dropped whatever they were doing and lined up m front of the consul's tent. Seeing how quickly his command had been obeyed Mummius calmed down. Walking up and down before his men, he reasoned with them: 
"What were you told? You were told not to damage anything valuable, and to gather m a p.le The boards you were sitting on are more valuable than bronze heads. Centurions! Five steps forward!" 
The centurions carried out the command, and stood motionless.
 "Collect all the boards," Mummius ordered. "Count them, and take them to the ships. Let me know how many there are. If there's one short when we come to Rome, I'll make you paint it over again!" 
Polybius walked out of the tent. Mummius's last words resounded in his cars: "...paint it over again!" They could be taken as an empty threat or a jest by anyone else. But he who had spent seventeen years in Rome knew the Romans. "What do they know of art?" he thought. "They have the word artist in their language, but no idea of an artist's brush. Gnaeus Naevius (a Roman poet, at author of the epic on about the First Punic War), who knew the ways of the Romans, had described an artist at work as follows: 'Our Theodorus used the end of a cow's tail to portray the lively Laras making merry.'" Small wonder the Roman consul thought legionaries who lost an expensive painting could make up for that loss. But what was worse, the Romans took him, Polybius, for one of their own. And he had to bear it.For Clio's sake (Clio, the muse of history). Clio, his mistress, was stern and demanding. She did not care what a son might feel on seeing his father's bronze likeness in a pile of booty or watching his compatriots being driven to market for sale like cattle. Clio said to him: Open your eyes, Polybius, and wipe them. They must be as dry as the string of a ballista or else the shell of your thought, which you will send across the ages, will fly into emptiness. Forget all personal matters. Your remote descendants will not be interested in your suffering—their interest will lie with your times. They will want to know why cities of a great and ancient culture had fallen, and why brute force had triumphed.They will want to know if this could have been avoided, and will try to draw lessons from your history if they land in similar circumstances. 

Alexander Nemirovsky, "Tales Of The Ancient World"

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