Toynbee and the History of Rome

Abstract

TOYNBEE'S massive work, A Study of History, has particular interest for classicists since it takes its departure from and frequently returns to the history of Greece and Rome in its consideration of the rise and fall of other civilizations. Its pages are liberally sprinkled with single words, short phrases, and sometimes fairly lengthy quotations in Greek and Latin which the author grandly disdains to translate. The great classical authors are referred to with respect and their opinions are invested with a relevance and an immediacy very heart-warming after their comparative neglect in recent decades. Toynbee himself is first and foremost a classicist, the very core of whose thought is unmistakably Hellenic. The admiration and the affection with which he views the classics is bound to win for him, on such an occasion as this,' a considerable measure of fraternal indulgence, however startling may be his unexpected and quite untraditional views of many aspects of ancient history, particularly Roman history; and in spite of the severity of the criticisms shortly to be expressed, it is clearly appropriate in this case to exercise the amiable restraints of professional courtesy. Before points of difference are examined in closer detail it will be useful to recall in a general way the main thesis of A Study of History and the chief characteristics of Toynbee as a writer and an historian. The work itself is now substantially complete in ten volumes totalling just under 6300 pages and somewhat over three million words. For the sake of comparison this may be estimated as at least three times the length of Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. These volumes are not light and casual reading but on the contrary are tightly packed with precise historical details and with innumerable footnotes and appendices. In short, they are remarkably solid in texture, and their completion, even over a twenty year period, is an extraordinary personal achievement for Toynbee, to be reckoned as one of the most impressive academic performances of the twentieth century. In view of its considerable bulk there was little prospect that the work would be widely read or that its principal conclusions would be a matter of even general knowledge outside a limited circle of learned persons if it had not been for the enterprise of another English historian, D. C. Somerveil, who with great skill and excellent judgment neatly compressed the original ten volumes into two, and to such good effect that there are