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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: MOL-MOS |
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MOMMSEN, THEODOR (18171903) , German historian and archaeologist, was born on the 3oth of November 1817 at Garding, in Schleswig. After being educated at the university of Kiel he devoted himself to the study of Roman law and antiquities. In 1843 a grant from the Danish government enabled him to undertake 11 journey to Italy, which was to be decisive for his future career. There he began the study of Roman inscriptions , in association with other Italian and German scholars, especially Borghesi, de Rossi and Henzen. His first work was directed to the restoration of the old Italian dialects, and the French government, which at one time proposed to undertake the task of compiling a complete collection of all extant Roman inscriptions , asked for his co-operation. When they gave up the project it was taken up by the Berlin Academy, which had recently completed the collection of Greek inscriptions edited by Boeckh. They had already made a grant to Mommsen, and in 1844 Savigny proposed that he should be appointed to carry out the great work. Many years, however, passed before the plan was finally approved. Meanwhile Mommsen continued his work in Italy: he drew up a full memorandum explaining the principles on which a Corpus inscriptionum should be compiled, and on which alone he could undertake the editorship. As a specimen he collected the inscriptions of Samnium, and in 1852 published those of the kingdom of Naples. These works caused him to be recognized as the first authority in this field of learning. In 1847, however, he was obliged to return to Germany: he first went to Schleswig, where during the Revolution he edited a paper in which he supported the claims of the Elbe Duchies; at the end of 1848 he was appointed professor of civil law at Leipzig
Mommsen found an asylum in Switzerland, and became professor at Zurich: he repaid the hospitality of the Republic by writing exhaustive monographs on Roman Switzerland, His spare time was occupied with the Roman History, the three volumes of which appeared between 1854 and 1856. His name at once became known throughout Europe. In this work, with a true insight into the relative importance of things, he passed over with a few strong broad touches the antiquarian discussions on the origins of the city, on which previous historians had laboured so long; but in place of this he painted with astonishing vigour the great political struggle that accompanied the fall of the republic. It was, above all, his new reading of old characters which demanded attention, if not always approval: Cicero, the favourite of men of letters, was for him "a journalist in the worst sense of the word"; Pompey, the hero of Plutarch and the Moralists, was brushed aside as a mere drill
The three volumes ended with the dictatorship of Caesar. The book has never been continued, for the volume on the Roman Provinces under the Empire, which appeared in 1884, is in reality a separate work. Mommsen was henceforward fully occupied with work of a more technical nature. In 1854 the definite offer was made to him by the Academy that he should be chief
whole was executed under his immediate supervision and with the co-operation of scholars whom he had himself trained. Enormous as was the labour, this task occupied only a small part of his extraordinary intellectual energy. He found time to write two larger works, the History of the Roman Coinage and the Romisches Staatsrecht, a profound analysis of Roman constitutional law, and Romisches Strafrecht, on Roman criminal jurisdiction. His Roman Provinces already mentioned gives a singularly interesting picture of certain aspects of social life under the empire. His smaller papers amount to many hundreds in number, and there is no department of Roman life and learning, from the earliest records of the Roman law to the time of Jornandes, which he has not illuminated. As secretary to the Berlin Academy for over twenty years he took a leading part in their deliberations, and was their spokesman on great occasions. His interest
periodicals
It was, however, above all, German scholarship which remained his first interest
gift of clear and simple narrative, and he is more successful in discussing the connexion between events than in describing the events themselves. Though his History ends with the fall of the republic, his most enduring work has been that on the empire; and if he has not written the history of the empire, he has made it possible for others to do so.Mommsen died at Charlottenburg on the 1st of November 1903. His brothers, Carl Johann Tycho (1819-1900), a great authority on Pindar and Shakespeare, and August (b. 1821), who wrote chiefly on ancient chronology and Greek festivals, were also prominent among German scholars in their day. The History of Rome (including the volumes of the provinces) has been translated into English by W. P. Dickson (the Provinces, revised by F. Haverfield, 1909) ; there is a French edition of his work on Roman Coinage. Many of his pamphlets and articles have been collected under the title Romische Forschungen. Of his other works, the more important are the Roman Chronology to the Time of Caesar (1858), a work written in conjunction with his brother August; his editions of the Monumentum Ancyranum and of the Digest in the Corpus juris civilis, and of the Chronica of Cassiodorus in Monumenta Germaniae historica, the Auctores antiquissimi section of which was under his supervision. A great part of his work is to be found in the German learned publications such as Hermes, Rheinisches Museum, &c. His Reden and Aufsdtze and Gesammelte Schriften, i. ii., were published after his death. A full list
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