Theodor Mommsen, Historian of Rome, 1817-1903
Michael Grant introduces a nineteenth century historian of Rome whose work is still authoritative and valid.
The article in the Oxford Classical Dictionary on “Scholarship in modern Times”, by A. Souter, fails to mention Mommsen. This is astonishing. For “Roman history ... was put solidly on its feet a hundired years ago by Theodor Mommsen and nobody has yet succeeded in turning it upside down; it is still safe to assume that he who does not know Roman Law does not know Roman history.”1
That was said only last year: so durable is the power of Mommsen’s works, and particularly of what G.P. Gooch called “the greatest historical treatise on political institutions ever written,” his Roman Public Law, 1874-88.
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