Posted on 06/05/2007 1:04:17 PM PDT by ConservativeDude
Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903), the greatest classical historian of the nineteenth century, was born in Garding, Schleswig, the son of a Protestant minister. He read law and classics at Kiel from 1838-43, and after a few years in France and Italy and a short career in journalism, he became a professor of law at the University of Leipzig. His involvement in the revolution of 1848-49 led to his dismissal in 1850. After holding academic positions at the universities of Zürich and Breslau he was appointed to the chair of Ancient History at the University of Berlin in 1858. He was permanent secretary of the Prussian Academy of Arts and Sciences. In the seventies he was an active and prominent member of the Prussian Parliament, first as a National Liberal and later as a Liberal.
Mommsen's many writings - a bibliography up to 1887 lists over 900 items - revolutionized the study of Roman history. He was the general editor of, and chief contributor to, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, the gigantic collection of Roman inscriptions published by the Berlin Academy (1867-1959). This work laid the foundations for a systematic study of Roman government, administration, economics, and finance. Mommsen's books on Roman coinage and on Roman constitutional and criminal law are still classics in their fields. But he was more than a brilliant scholar with a tremendous grasp of detail and a powerful talent of organization. He was a vivid and powerful writer. His passionate involvement in the revolution of 1848-49 deeply affected the point of view of his main work, the incomplete Römische Geschichte (1854-55, 1885) [History of Rome]. His contempt for the senatorial oligarchy and the «weakling» Cicero, as well as his boundless admiration for the energy and statesmanship of Julius Caesar, for a long time dominated the standard view of the history of that era. The work covers the history of the Roman Republic; a history of the Empire was planned but never written, except for a volume on provincial administration under the Empire.
From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969
This autobiography/biography was first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
If any freepers are aware of his work, "A History of Rome" and have comments (Especially comments about the original language version), I would be eager to hear them.
They still give to serious writers. Whatever else you can say about Coatzee and Pinter they’re serious.
I’ll take your word on that. I was under the impression that Pinter got it because he was so outspoken against the Iraq war. It does seem that many a great writer with no discernible leftist political outlook is nowadays overlooked in favor of writers with a very outspoken leftist perspective, though.
Pinter should have gotten it long before the Iraq War started.
What do you recommend reading by Pinter?
Or, should he only be watched? (He was mainly a dramatist, right?)
The early stuff is regarded as his peak. The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming. And the film scripts he wrote for Joseph Losey (The Servant, The Go-Between).
He thought of himself as progressively liberal, basically, and he goes through the late Republic and the transition to the empire, always looking at things from the side of the plebs, as a political faction. He admires the tribunate and the "social reforms" of the agrarian law etc.
He admires Caesar as a typical populist tyrant, and for destroying the senatorial order. Which to him is a dying, corrupt feudal nobility, greedy and grasping and scheming and perfectly willing to use violence to maintain its property and power.
What is novel about him is that most of the classic historians themselves, the sources for most of it, tended to side with the senate and the republic. Mommsen sees the passing of constitutional rule and of republican government as not something to be lamented too much, compared to the great good of the victory of the plebians as a class, through their strongmen.
Which was a perspective that appealed to both extreme right and extreme left at the time. There is "hero worship" of tyrants in German romanticism, in Carlyle, in reactions to Napoleon. He also foreshadows similar attitudes in Spengler, a similar progressivism in Toynbee, was looked upon as historically justifying "dictatorship of the prols" by communist parties. Caesarism as consciously embraced against backward socially conservative republicanism dominated by the rich also appealed to populist fascism. (Remember this is all before Mussolini or WW I).
I do not regard him as a particularly wholesome figure, his whole teaching taken straight. It is a useful corrective to doctrinaire pro-senate views one gets from the classic sources themselves, like reading the prols press office. The novel thing is that he does not deny prol populism was headed straight for Caesarist monarchy, but embraces it anyway, and argues it was historically inevitable.
Fundamentally, I think he is reading the late Roman republic as old regime France, and siding with both the revolution and Napoleon. And that he saw the German revolution of 1848 as an attempt to start the same process in Germany, and lamented that it had failed.
His scholarship is excellent, incidentally - up to full German 19th century standards, which were high indeed. (Whereas e.g. you will find a Toynbee or some of the Marxist historians playing fast and loose with the facts, he reports accurately, but with his signature "spin" on everything).
I hope this helps.
Fantastic post. Thank you.
On this point, “Fundamentally, I think he is reading the late Roman republic as old regime France, and siding with both the revolution and Napoleon.”
I understand that one of the minor criticisms of him is that he tended to project his world too much into his history. That criticism, however, doesn’t really resonate with me. History should be an interpretive matter, so long as the interpreter is above board and persuasive. History is, in fact, a guide for today (not the only one, but it is one). You can overuse it, but you can also neglect it and for the most part I think we make that latter mistake rather than the former.
I look forward to delving into Mommsen (alas, in English...I understand he was a brilliant stylist, also). Your post, again, was outstanding.
I can’t help this thought from going through my head, also: If Mommsen were alive today, he would probably write a delightfully contrarian piece about how Chancellor Palpatine brought order to the galaxy and how the Jedis were just troublemakers.....Of course, he wouldn’t justify the excess of the Emperor, but excess is a matter of perspective, perhaps?
A final point. The “Spengler” of today in the Asia Times, if you don’t read him, you ought to. He (she?) is quite brilliant.
However, apropos of our Dante discussion, I will point out that Caesar was generally the hero of the story in the Continental view - Dante placed Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus in the lowest rung of Hell, clenched in Satan's jaws along with Judas Iscariot.
Remember that the progressive monarch Mommsen happily lived under had the title of "Kaiser."
Also, I think Mommsen would have been a lot happier with a considerably more progressive Kaiser than he got. He wanted the popular party to win out over the nobility, and that was not the leading characteristic of Bismarck or Kaiser Bill. He had to settle for social democrats having some power in one house in a weak parliament, and modest welfare legislation. A far cry from a leveling tyrant handing out favors to the masses at the expense of a has-been nobility.
Dante was a White Guelph, not a Ghibelline.
He fought the Ghibellines at Arezzo and supported Carlo Martello, the Papal nominee for the Emperor.
He refused to support the Ghibellines even when they took action against the Black Guelphs of Florence who had forced him into exile.
Dante was far from alone on the Continent in idolizing Caesar and reviling Brutus and Cassius.
It was a commonplace in a continental Europe that looked back to Augustan and Carolingian times as peaceful and prosperous eras in which benevolent Emperors ruled absolutely.
I agree that a preference for monarchy rather than republicanism was hardly novel or exclusive on Dante's part.
Mommsen is not often mentioned among important historians. Prussia was once the model of the modern state, but that was when the rest of the country was Holy Roman, Free Cities, and Ritter. He was evidently the last to actually read Latin. Opinions vary on Cicero. He was a tedious attorney, but in person very confident.
Times, they do change, don’t they? It is certainly true that Mommsen is rarely mentioned today. It is also true that we don’t care to think about Rome as much as we used to....
Mommsen was by all accounts one of the most important intellectuals in Europe and indeed the whole world, in his day.
Like I said, times do change.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.