The Year of Read­ing Rome (a resolution)

1. YES, Dennis! If you set the pace, I will be able to keep up for most of the time I imagine… anyway, I am glad to give it a try. I have prowled through GoogleBooks and found all volumes of Mommsen, Gibbons and Merivale, although the Mommsen and Gibbons are not in the editions you have, so I would need chapter numbers to follow along, rather than page numbers. This sounds like a great way to get (finally) a good education in Roman history.
   Here are the GoogleBooks listings for anyone who is interested:
   http://ilovegooglebooks.blogspot.com/search/label/RomanHistory
   (I like using GoogleBooks because I can put the PDFs on my iPad – I have sometimes run into problems with the Internet Archive PDFs because they won’t show up properly on the iPad).

2. I’d be interested in a readalong for the Gibbon, or any one of the others; I’m not sure that I can commit to a yearlong thing at this point, though.

3. Dennis, this is super. Let me take a stab at making a GoogleCalendar with a reading schedule, which will be a good way to let people see where things stand at any point if they want to join in. More in a bit.

4. Hi Dennis, I used a spreadsheet and Google Calendar to see if the 30 pages/day estimate works, and it does!
   Here’s what I came up with:
   Roman History Reading Schedule
   The only place where I ran into some difficulty is with the relationship between Mommsen’s history and the provinces book. The book numbering in the Provinces book leaves a gap which I think (????) is the gap for the portion of Mommsen that was unfinished when he died. I read at Wikipedia that a “reconstructed” volume has been published that fills the gaps, based on papers Mommsen left, his students’ notes, etc. But at the same time, I am not sure.
   Here is where the gap happens:
   Dickson ends the history with Book 5 – Chapter 12 (fall of the Republic)
   Dickson begins provinces with Book 8 (but he was anticipating the missing volume to be filled in by Mommsen, so I think the missing book 6 and book 7 reflect Mommsen’s unpublished “fourth volume”)
   This is all something quite far afield from my usual field of study, so please let me know if that is correct, or if there is indeed some Mommsen we need to include that I have not included! :-)

5. Hi Laura,

   I almost included a note about the Provinces as optional or to be read alongside Merivale. Mommsen himself said that the ‘missing’ books were not going to be written, and didn’t need to be:

   “That the present portion does not attach itself immediately to the preceding, is a matter of little moment …. … I am of opinion that, for the purposes of the cultured public, in whose minds this History is intended to promote an intelligent conception of Roman antiquity, other works may take the place of the Two Books, which are still wanting between this (the Eighth) and the earlier ones, more readily than a substitute can be found for that now issued.”

   Book 6 would have covered the death throes of republicanism and the establishment of the principate, but Mommsen didn’t feel it was needed:

   “The struggle of the Republicans in opposition to the monarchy erected by Caesar, and the definitive establishment of the latter, are so well presented in the accounts handed down to us from antiquity that every delineation amounts essentially to a reproduction of their narrative.”

   Book 7 would have been a biographical history of Rome through the emperors, which, again, he found unnecessary:

   “The distinctive character of the monarchical rule and the fluctuations of the monarchy, as well as the general relations of government influenced by the personality of the individual rulers, which the Seventh Book is destined to exhibit, have been at least subjected to frequent handling.”

   And he justified book 8 as necessary to clear up misperceptions commonly held about the imperial period.

   “Of what is here furnished—the history of the several provinces from the time of Caesar to that of Diocletian,—there is, if I am not mistaken, no comprehensive survey anywhere accessible to the public to which this work addresses itself ; and it is owing, as it seems to me, to the want of such a survey that the judgment of that public as to the Roman imperial period is frequently incorrect and unfair.”

   Merivale seems to fill the gap nicely, but perhaps Mommsen’s note about the importance of such a work as the Provinces should keep it on the list.

   Now do we fit it in? Should it follow Merivale?

6. I would vote for reading Mommsen all together, rather than trying to read two different authors at once. I’m guessing we are going to see all of these books infused with a lot of the personal passions and prejudices of each author. It sounds like reading the provinces book would be a good way to expand our understanding of Mommsen’s thinking about Rome before moving on to Merivale.

7. I’ll start it with you, although if I am physically well enough to make it out to my local community college, I want to take trigonometry this winter, and I may have to fall away to get my math homework done. I have read six of the seven volumes of Colleen McCulleough’s historical novels on the family of Caesar, but that, of course deals only with the end of The Republic to the death of Ceasar.

8. Hello Harlan! That is one of my motivations in reading through these histories also – I have read Roman historical fiction (I recently got very interested in the novels of Robert Harris, both his Roman novels and his modern historical fiction, and I also like Colleen McCullough’s books very much) – now I am ready to read some history, too! :-)

9. Five years after your most interesting post, is anyone still reading this comment column? We’ll see.

   I love this sentence of yours: “I want good, classic accounts of Roman history told in a satisfying way without all the pretense to neutrality and disinterestedness, or the overt theoretical baggage that makes so much modern writing unbearable.”

   Me, too. Exactly.

   So, I have tried Merivale on your advice. Unfortunately, I find that, next to Mommsen’s and Gibbon’s writing, Merivale’s writing is not very good. It is pretentious in its own, peculiar, 19th-century way, particularly in its early volumes. Also, for what it is, Merivale’s work is just too long. (Grote’s work on classical Greece is too long, too; but Grote can be excused since he knows his subject better than Merivale seems to know his.) Moreover, though pretentious objectivity can be unbearable, as you observe, pretentious *subjectivity* is not much better. Gibbon’s robust opinions are his own. Merivale’s opinions? It’s like he were trying to impress some 19th-century authority by some weird version of 19th-century political correctness. I can’t put my finger on it, but something in Merivale is just off.

   Niebuhr seems more promising. His formal work on Roman history reaches only down to the first Punic war, but separately published are edited lectures of his in three volumes, the third of which bridges the gap between Mommsen and Gibbon. Moreover, Niebuhr was more nearly a contemporary of Gibbon than Mommsen was, which (I suspect) is something you may care about. Of course, it’s a translation from the German, but as you know, German translates well into English, so that’s not so bad.

   I have also tried J. B. Bury’s treatment, late 19th century. Competent. Dry. Told in a detached, commentary manner that almost seems to assume that you already knew the history, but it actually gives enough information that you can follow even if you do not already know it. So far, I tend toward Niebuhr, but Bury is not bad — though Bury may not be quite what you seek.

   None of these, even Mommsen, is as good as Gibbon, of course; but who is?

   As a sample, here is an arbitrarily selected passage from Niebuhr’s lecture C (100), shortly after the murder of Caesar: “Antony, by forced decrees of the senate, had caused the province of Macedonia to be given to his brother Caius Antonius, and that of Syria to Dolabella, who had been appointed with him to the consulship after Caesar’s death. For himself, Antony had reserved Cisalpine Gaul; but he, nevertheless, now turned round, and declared himself in favour of the optimates. He seemed all at once to have become a different man: he was quite willing to bring about a reconciliation, and carried several laws which breathed that spirit. Everyone who knew him was struck with amazement. Cicero, who was informed of the change, was urgently requested by his friends to return and become reconciled with Antony. But here he was influenced by an unfortunate timidity….”

   See? Niebuhr is not as good as Mommsen, but Niebuhr is also less concerned that the reader constantly respect the writer’s dignity than Mommsen is. Not that Mommsen is self-centered, but Niebuhr is even less so. There is something to be said for that.

   Anyway, Niebuhr is older and seems better than Merivale. Merivale somewhat apes the complex, anti-Hemingway style so naturally written by a Gibbon or a Burke. There is much to be said for either a Hemingway or a Gibbon, at either of their opposite poles, but aping is never pleasing. Merivale should have tried for a middle, neutral style — as he himself gradually seems to realize as his series of volumes progresses.

   I said that Merivale was too long, but this comment is becoming too long, too. In short, I prefer Niebuhr.

   So, one way or another, we have filled the gap between Mommsen and Gibbon. What about the gap *after* Gibbon? Does Bryce’s Holy Roman Empire suit? I have not read it.

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