Politics in the Roman Republic: Perspectives from Niebuhr to Gelzer

Abstract

Abstract This work provides historiographical surveys of four transformative historians: Barthold Niebuhr, Theodor Mommsen, Friedrich Münzer, and Matthias Gelzer. Close analysis of each author reveals their innovations – methodological, narrative, and philosophical – to be foundational to modern historical praxis, particularly within studies of the Roman Republic: these maestri rendered political history susceptible to ‘scientific’ inquiry, systematized available evidence, and crafted frameworks for reimagining premodernity. Likewise, their interventions on Republican political culture still define the discipline. Much, in other words, is owed to their efforts. Yet, the field has forgotten these scholars. Engagement, where it exists, consists of perfunctory review and repudiation. In response, this work advocates an alternative historiography balancing critical retrospection with pragmatic revitalization. Our four scholars are reevaluated. Standard critiques are refuted, and emphasis is placed on their texts’ utility: as exemplars, untapped fonts, but also cautionary models, whose establishment of conventional historicism demands scrutiny. In agreement with voices from related fields, the book calls for (re)considerations of ‘ideology’ and an ‘ontological turn’ in Roman studies.