Introduction
During my first year as an undergraduate, I remember having a meeting with my personal tutor in the Classics department. The sixth-form education I had received prior to this meeting had taught me a fairly two-tiered approach to history: this source says this; another differs; make compromise with the two sources, and you have the "historical truth".
While this may sound like a flippant dismissal of my college education - truth be told that the courses I took during this time forged the backbone of much of my historical understanding - historical context was something that was not high up on my academic agenda. Consequently, when asked by my tutor to express an opinion on the study of history, I projected a belief, which at the time I felt to be gospel truth, whereby I thought that historical censuses existed because the events to which they allude certainly happened. In other words, I believed that, through perusing this middle ground of source analysis, common, and more importantly, correct forms of the "historical truth" would emerge; anything that deviated from this middle ground, I dismissed as "trendy revisionism", written for the sake of either titillating the past, or tying it in with current affairs - the sole purpose for both being to sell books.
To some extent, I have not fully dispensed with this view. One need only walk into a high-street bookshop to see that the manner in which the past is being treated as a playground for the here and now. Boris Johnson's (2006) The Dream of Rome, for instance, is a work that shamelessly rides the train of comparison between Rome and the European Union; through which he uses Rome as a means to lament on his own grievances with the E.U. And although the product of highly stylised narrative History, Tom Holland makes it explicitly clear in his preface in Rubicon (2003) that his account of the fall of the Roman Republic was tailored to fit the Rome-USA superpower analogy - likewise, in his Persian Fire (2005), Holland does not even attempt to disguise that his impetus behind his work stemmed from the recent ruminations on the concept of "East versus West".
Since studying history at a university level, my views on history are generally not as static. No longer do I fully endorse the view that reinterpretations of the past are done solely for the sake of populist controversy; nor do I now believe that using the "here and now" to decipher the past is an entirely defunct historical methodology. The reason behind this being that my studies have brought to my attention "well-established" works of historical writing, written before "my time", which but by no means conformed to my initial perception of the "historical consensus". What also struck me as quite interesting is that each successive interpretation that I came across differed depending the time period in which they written. It seemed to me that each successive culture generation tried to steer away from the tissue of discourse and perceptions of the previous ones. In other words, every generation of historical writing reconstructs the past with their own perceptions of reality, firmly rooted in the time that produced them (Terrenato, 2001, 71-2).
Ancient Rome was not, and, to the same extent, is not exempt from such a process. In fact, Rome is something - at least in western scholarship (Hingley, 2001b) - which embraced this process with open arms. For many, Rome as a concept never really fell and continues to exist, quite prominently, within the spheres of education, law and politics, as "the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof." (Thomas Hobbs, 1651, in reference to the papacy, quoted in Vance, 1997, 5). This lingering persistence of the Eternal City, coupled with the anachronisms of the historical process, has made Rome a fertile paradigm for "making sense of - and also for destabilising - history, politics, identity, memory and desire." (Edwards, 1999b, 7).
Before I unravel the aims of the paper, it is, at this point, necessary to resolve any ambiguities surrounding the title of this paper: "Intrusive ideology: how pre-Modern ideologies have coloured our perceptions on Roman History." The term "pre-Modern" is not intended to be synonymous with the historical term "early modern" (nominally associated with the medieval period's many forms); instead, it is used as an inclusive, but general, term for a period starting from the beginnings of the Enlightenment (c.1700) up until the start of "twentieth-century" history - which, to confuse the situation even more, traditionally starts at 1918. The primary function of this paper is to use the "pre-Modern" period as a means of exploring how historical writing is never exempt from its own anachronisms. To reflect this truism, I have selected the authors of two works of history, and one work of archaeological research as case studies. These take the form of the following: Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-88), Theodor Mommsen's Römische Geschichte (1854-56) and Francis Haverfield's Romanization of Roman Britian (1923 - 4th ed.).
It is not the aim of this paper to examine the explicit, and, at times, I have to say shameless, explications of Rome for the sake political capital, neither is it the aim of this paper to wave away Rome as a smokescreen for hidden agendas - indeed the scholarly sophistication of the three historians prevents this from occurring in full bloom. It is more an exploration of how attitudes towards ancient Rome, being banded about at any given time, have influenced notable figures in the development of Roman history and archaeology.
Nor it is not my intention to focus on how doctrines of philosophy were fundamental in forging the opinions and historical analysis of these three writers. Instead, the focal point of this paper is to critically assess the manner in which both the cultural mores and, just as importantly, the events of the times of Gibbon, Mommsen and Haverfield resonate throughout their prose. Although influential in the forging of any historian's work - indeed, for Gibbon especially, philosophy and history were inseparable entities - philosophy, I feel, is something complicated enough to be treated as the subject for a different paper. For instance, were I to focus on Gibbon's, shall I say, unsympathetic, views towards early Christianity (D&F, XV-XVI) and other extremities of faith, my analysis would fall into a quagmire, distorting my overall aim. I have thus attempted to keep things simple by using each historian as an example of a certain theme. Chapter One largely deals with Gibbon's Decline and Fall.
It is an attempts to explain his shift of emphasis in his subject matter when he make the transition from volume I to volumes II & III. In assessing the reason behind this, I shall draw upon how Gibbon's role in the British government, under the North administration, and events surrounding this, such as American Revolution (1776-1783), coloured the historian's work while he was writing the second and third volumes of the Decline and Fall. Chapter Two examines Mommsen's sentiment of pan-German unification, and the manner in which the revolutionary spirit of 1848 left their imprint on the Römische Geschichte - in doing this, I shall also explore the extent to which the omission of his forth volume on the principate was a reflection of this. And, in Chapter Three, rather than exploring the effects of a specific event on the writing of Haverfield, I examine how the changing perception of the British Empire - in the form of "New Imperialism" - from the 1870s until the early twentieth century, was a profound influence on the theory of Romanisation.
The three chapters, and the three respective authors upon which they focus, should not, however, be viewed as isolated case studies, drawing upon a particular theme and minor facets of the historical context of each author's work. This study also, as already stated, assesses the extent to which the cultural climates of "pre-Modern" Europe influenced the macroscopic aims the three historians: Chapters One focuses on the role of the "Classical education" and the "grand tour" on the historian; Chapter Two looks at how pan-German notions of nationalism, traditionally associated with early Germanic resistance to Rome, medieval Germany and Ancient Greece, still found themselves paradoxically transferred to Ancient Rome; Chapter Three explores how of Roman imperialism was transferred to that of the British Empire and how, in turn, these ideas were transferred to the study of Rome. It is in chapter three that I It is also in chapter three that I examine recent reassessment and deconstruction of Haverfield's theory of "Romanisation" (cf Hingley, 2000; Freeman 2007; Mattingly, 1997). In doing so, I shall highlight the extent to which deconstructionist studies are as anachronistic to us as Romanisation was to Haverfield. This is done not so much to humble the, I have to say groundbreaking, recent research in this area of academia; it is done more to highlight the fact that, regardless of time, the historian's prose is never exempt from his cultural norms and events of his time.
Although one may detect a changing chronology of attitudes towards Rome, this is not a chronicle of the historical writing of Rome during this period; it is more a study of how the magna opera of these three authors fit into their respective socio-historical contexts.
Finally, I must note that Chapter One on Gibbon is roughly thirty percent larger than the other two. This is not a reflection on the availability of source material; it is more a reflection of where my interests lie.
Chapter I
Gibbon and the Pessimism of Empire
"Every man of genius who writes History infuses it, perhaps unconsciously, the character of his own spirit. His characters, despite their extensive variety of passion and situation, seem to have one manner of thinking and feeling, and that is the manner of the author." (Edward Gibbon, Mémoire sur la monarchie des Mèdes, quoted and trans. by Porter, 1988, 9).
Tackling the work of Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) is a task that often grows beyond his merits as a historian; interpretations of his work, which have been approached from a great multitude of angles, range from sociological models to the psycho-biographical - and I have to say absurd - Freudian elucidations: Buck (1980, 477-98), for instance, even goes as far to dub Rome a metaphor for Gibbon's own unresolved Oedipal conflicts. Gibbon's merits, as he himself puts it, "...have already been so frequently, so aptly, and so successful discussed, that it is now grown familiar to the reader, and difficult to the writer" (D&F, IX, 201 - referring to the subject of Germania). With Gibbon being the focus of such colourful speculation, it is easy to lose sight of basic concerns such as a) his overall aim as a historian, and b) the how he can be placed into his own age. While both of these issues could indeed be the basis of extensive study, it is the aim of this paper to at least touch upon both: accordingly, issues surrounding "a" shall allude to exploring how, in writing the Decline and Fall, Gibbon's macroscopic pen-portrait of Rome's demise changed when he made the transition from volume I (first published in 1776) to volumes II and III (published in 1781 - dates taken from Pocock, 1985b, 143), and how this subtle metamorphosis can be, in many respects, attributed to the highly significant historical events - with particular emphasis on the American Revolution - experienced by Gibbon himself during this transitional period; issues relating to "b" shall be drawn upon by looking at the manner in which both the perceptions of Rome, as well as the socio-political theory of his age forged Gibbon's interpretation of his history. In other words, in writing The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire could Gibbon really divorce himself from his "here and now"?
Before embarking on this, however, one thing that has to be noted about the Decline and Fall is its sheer density. With six volumes, a million and a half words and countless footnotes, this work was no small feat (Radice, 1983, 2). Drawing upon the sheer size of Gibbon's colossal work is not in itself an astute observation; how this affects our consumption of his prose is, however, a different matter. From volume I-VI, the Decline and Fall spreads itself over a time span of almost a millennium and a half. Over the course of this time, it leads the reader across the Russian steppes, plunges him down the Nile and explores a world - albeit, at times, briefly - reaching as far as the Orient, New Zealand and the New World (Porter, 1988, 80). Gibbon thus has at his disposal a framework of time and space worthy of that bestowed upon Aeneas (Virgil Aeneid, I.278-80); a framework in which he could enlighten, entertain and reflect with his own panoramic narrative of causation. It is a framework to which Gibbon certainly adds colour, and in doing so, Gibbon's causation is mixed-up in a narrative of the notable, but inconsequential. Despite being highly effective means of captivating the reader, the level of detail into which Gibbon divulges can often convolute his overall aim as a historian: its size, as Syme puts it (1977, 53), "[places Gibbon] in trouble from time to time."
With this in mind, the task of extracting Gibbon's over-arching aim as a historian is a complicated task indeed - not least, as we shall see, because of the shifting emphases of later volumes. But what of Gibbon's initial aim in volume I? Gibbon certainly took into account the "metanarration" and historical theorising of his day - a fine example being Montesquieu's Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence (published 1731). This was one of the first works of history to steer away from the view, exemplified by monastic chroniclers, that human history adheres to a divine plan; instead Montesquieu attributes the principles governing the fall of Rome to sociological causes, both physical and moral (Grimsley et al, 1979, 43-4; Porter, 1988, 79). Nevertheless, Gibbon acknowledged this debt with a sense of aloofness, choosing instead to distance himself from abstract generalised theory. In fact, Gibbon, with inter-digressional breaks for the interesting but insignificant, distanced himself from his narrative, letting it flow before him, and in doing so, he lets history explain itself through history and by its interconnectedness of events (Porter, 1988, 80; Womersley, 1988, 46). To Gibbon, causation was a domino effect, which could only be explained by looking at the very beginning. Upon an initial viewing, therefore, both the sheer size of Gibbon's magnum opus, as well as his generally "pragmatic" approach to historical writing, present themselves as obstacles, standing in the way of the work's cultural-historical context. This fairly detached view that Gibbon adopts is, however, merely superficial. In order to highlight this actuality, it is probably easiest to start from the beginnings of the Decline and Fall.
We thus enter the first volume of the Decline and Fall at a time of idealised virtue:
"During a happy period (A.D. 98-180) of more than fourscore years, the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines."
This was to be the bedrock upon which he would set out the decline of Rome:
"It is the design of this, and of the two succeeding chapters, to describe the prosperous condition of their empire; and afterwards, from the death of Marcus Antoninus, to deduce the most important circumstances of its decline and fall; a revolution which will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth." (Decline & Fall, I, 31)
Why Rome was idealised in such a way is perhaps grounds for assessing the manner in which Rome was perceived at the dawn of the Decline and Fall's publication. This period, loosely going by many names - the Late Enlightenment, Georgian England and the Baroque Period - was very much a period in which the "classical education" (the study of Latin and Greek) held prominence within the education of the "English gentleman" (Porter, 1988, 30); through this, they rationalised morals, manners and, more importantly, the contemporary status quo. In the process of doing so, it was Rome, not Greece that gained more prominence within the psyche of the elite - a subject to be discussed later in Chapter 2. For the Latin language had remained with England, in one form or another, since Rome's departure from Britain. Although somewhat stunted as the country's religious language after the Reformation, Latin continued to be the language of education for so time. In fact, submission of doctoral theses in Latin was still considered to commonplace in many educational institutions as late as the eighteenth century (Vance, 1997, 16).
Since the Renaissance, Rome had also secured a position of prominence in English life and politics (Vance, 1997, 11), and consequently, Latin was something that filtered through into the day-to-day activities of men of Gibbon's class: despite being an age in which Shakespeare verse was superseding that of the Ancients (Vance, 1997, 28), Latin's resonance throughout the House of Commons was still felt with profound effect; parliamentary giants could often be assimilated with the hero's of the Classical World - a later example would be the wrangling between the Premier "Achilles" Pitt and his rival James "Hector" Fox (Porter, 1988, 31). Further, it was by no means considered pompous for MPs refer to themselves as "senators" - indeed Gibbon himself referred to his time in parliament as his "senatorial life" (Memoirs, 155). The perception of Rome in the English political sphere, as we shall see, was fundamental in Gibbon's sculpting of Rome.
As with classical education, the so-called Grand Tour was another staple for the privileged. Ever since Edward Augustus, the Duke of York, became the first member of the English Royal Family to visit Italy as a tourist in 1763, travel to the old seats of the Ancients had reached a new epoch (Wilton et al, 1997, 33). And much in the same manner as the classical education, it was a fundamental driving force behind the English perception of the Roman Empire. Indeed, the early life of Gibbon was by no means exempt from such a frivolous tour; for it was during his time on his Grand Tour that Gibbon allegedly took it upon himself the task of writing the Decline and Fall:
"It was at Rome on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capital, while the barefooted fryars [sic] were singing Vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city started to my mind." (Memoirs, 124)
In being physically close to Rome during these visits, the English elite had their attachment to the Eternal City reinforced.
Paradoxically, however, the age of Enlightenment was a time during which the merits of the Ancients were being put into question. Stemming from the famous "ancient versus modern" argument taking place in France during the turn of the seventeenth century, the science, philosophy and politics of the Classical world were being place in a position which was making them less infallible (Vance, 1997, 3-23). Accordingly, direct parallels between Rome and the Europe of Gibbon's age were sparser than they had been. Indeed European monarchs were still, and without shame, aligning their image in the direction of Rome - following Britain's victory in the Seven Year's War (1763), for instance, her monarchs were still being baptised in the fire of Rome; George II was christened George Augustus, and he and his successor were duly sculpted in the guise of the same princeps (Vance, 1997, 12) - yet direct parallels were employed with less frequency.
Despite this, the mystique that was Rome was still an alluring concept. As we have seen, its lingering ghost in society was certainly still felt in literature, politics, education and leisure. The manner in which Rome was utilised to rationalise the status quo could also be exploited to forge a different form of analogy, one which operated in a more subtle, if not just as anachronistic-sphere as that of the parallels of the previous years: that is, that Rome was also used as a means of projecting the concerns of the age. It is within this sphere that Gibbon certainly falls.
How exactly does Gibbon fall into this sphere? Certainly, the title of his work reflects the concerns of his time. From the early eighteenth century onwards, Enlightenment ideas, as discussed above, had secured the belief that civilisation was progressing beyond the achievements of the Classical World: a train of progress set into motion after the collapse of Antiquity, rising up through the Dark Ages and culminating in the Enlightenment (Trevor-Roper, 2005, 664). The belief that the Enlightenment was peak of human achievement was, however, a double-edged sword: surely if civilisation had reached the pinnacle of its development, the age could only be followed only by decline? Consequently the subject of Gibbon's Decline and Fall not only falls into the notion of Rome's lingering spirit in Enlightenment Europe, but is a reflection of a genuine concern of his time. For, although the overall aim of the Decline and Fall is convoluted by the size and scale of its undertaking, it can certainly be agreed that the theme of Decline is the thread that stitches together his narrative. In fact, in his "General Observations" (D&F, XXXVIII) - which, according to Gibbon, was written before the publication of the first volume (memoirs, 129) - Gibbon contemplates whether or not Enlightenment Europe could fall into a political and cultural nadir. It must be noted that Gibbon concludes that the Europe of his time was less susceptible to the notion of decline than the Europe of the late Roman Empire, but this in itself, still highlights the contemporary notion of decline.
The issues with which Gibbon dealt in his great undertaking were intensely relevant to the political climate of eighteenth-century Britain - particularly those relating to the centralisation of government and autocracy. This is very much apparent in the opening chapters of Volume I (I-III) of the Decline and Fall. As we have seen, Gibbon painted this so-called "age of the Antonines" with an idealised brush of "wisdom and virtue" (D&F, III, 93). Yet this seems to only be skin-deep utopia; for behind this smokescreen lay the beginning of Gibbon's historical causation of decline: namely the loss of Rome's virtù (public spirit) - a process, in Gibbon's mind, set into motion by the autocracy of the principate (Trevor-Roper, 2005, 669). For although Gibbon's golden age of the Antonines is testament to his belief that unrestricted power in the hands of one individual could, in many circumstances, allow a good prince to display his virtue, Gibbon believed that despotism ultimately stagnated a society; without responsibility of a more inclusive forms of government, virtù could not exist; and without this, any sense of duty, which may have previously existed within a society, would be lost.
Gibbon's rumination on the limits of autocracy can, in many ways, be attributed to contemporary musings surrounding the same subject. With its origins in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and set in full motion by King George II's cultivation of the office of Prime Minister, the Britain of the Enlightenment was rife with terms such as "tyranny" and "despotism". For many, the rise of the British Premier seemed like an un-checked extension of centralised executive power and accordingly, questions on legitimacy and the curtailing of power often stalked the issue - questions often thought to be embodied in works of the highly influential late seventeenth-century writer James Harrington (Porter, 1988, 24). As is apparent with Gibbon, Rome was used as a rostrum for these concerns, but this was also patent, with particular emphasis on the transition from republic to principate, in other capacities: through Harrington, political writers, ranging from controversialists (John Toland) to Whig politicians (John Trenchard), aimed to clinch their doctrines and analyses. As a popular journal of the time puts it:
"...comparisons may be drawn between the Roman state and our own: the fatal errors of party zeal, public corruption and popular licentiousness?we can thus find a means of remedying these problems." (from the Monthly Review Journal, 1764, quoted in Porter, 1988, 25).
We can thus see that in its subject matter, the Decline and Fall observes Rome's lingering presence through the lens of the Enlightenment. Another key influence, at least in my opinion, was the impact of historical "events". What is interesting to observe is that, when Gibbon makes the transition from volume I to volumes II and III, his work is subject to a shift in emphasis; for when Gibbon makes the jump to the volumes II and III (1781), the role of civil disturbances seem to play a greater role in his prose. In his first volume (1776), Gibbon sidelines - even omits - any form of civil upheaval:
"Excepting only this short, though violent eruption of military license [AD 69], the two centuries from Augustus to Commodus passed away unstained with civil blood, and un-distilled by revolution." (D&F, III).
It seems interesting that Gibbon should write this because in assessing the "two centuries from Augustus to Commodus", Gibbon would have had many civil disturbances from which to choose (Bowersock, 1976, 64; cf Appendix 1.). Later on in volume I (D&F, X), Gibbon marginalizes the third-century political fragmentation imposed on the Empire by means of the ceding of both the Western (the so-called Gallic Empire) and Eastern states (under the rule of Zenobia of Palmyra).
Despite the frequency at which Gibbon's interpretations are subject to scrutiny, he is a man rarely criticised for his factual inaccuracies (Bowersock, 1976, 63); consequently it seems rather curious that his work should be subject to such errors in the areas outlined above. An explanation for this, in my view, is quite simple: written before 1776, Gibbon's judgement had not been clouded by any first-hand experience of civil disturbance. From 1776 onwards, however, Gibbon had a change of career. While he was still first and foremost a scholar, during the period between the publications of volume I and volumes II and III (1776-81), Gibbon was active under the North administration in the Board of Trade (Porter, 1988, 101). It was while he was operating in this capacity that Thirteen Colonies of America ceded from the British Empire, culminating in the humiliating British defeat at Yorktown (1781). The extent to which Gibbon's dual role as a historian and MP operated in the same sphere is, considered by many, a debatable topic (Pocock, 1985b, 149). What is clear is the impact that the American Revolution left on Gibbon's prose.
One need only look at the lingering presence of the "American issue" in his letters to be presented with a picture of Gibbon's own concerns. In at least forty percent of his formal letters from 1775-1783, Gibbon mentions the American conflict. In the same way, the prose of his third and second volumes have been coloured by the experience; in his narrative of Rome's demise, civil disturbances were to now play a greater role. To take the most explicit example, the language and imagery used in his account of the fifth-century revolt of Armorica in modern day Bretton, can, as the region's name rather conveniently suggests, be used as a parallel with America: "And so we hear of the Armoricans in a state of disorderly independence" (D&F, XXXV); "...the slight foundations of the Armorican republic" (D&F, XXXVIII). Gibbon even ties the disturbance with the Armoicans refusal to send customary tribute (D&F, XXXV). For many scholars, the coincidental iconography conjured up by Gibbon can often be written off as his irony (Clive, 1976, 30; Porter, 1988, 163); others have played down the impact of the American Revolution on Gibbon - Pocock (1985b, 149), for instance, seems to confuse the vast psychological blow, which hit Britain after Yorktown (cf Judd, 1996, 27-8), with the minimal long-term financial consequences of Great Britain's loss of the Colonies (Judd, 1996, 6).
Whether or not the loss of America was a vehicle for Gibbon's humour, or just a mere fleeting reference, is irrelevant: the very fact that Gibbon makes such explicit reference to America is, in itself, a clear indication that his own personal experiences infiltrated his own prose.
While, as we have seen, Gibbon's fairly sterile and detached framework for historical writing allows him to present the Decline and Fall as an immovable fortress. This notion can, however, can be quite easily dismantled. The above survey of the cultural, political and historical context of Gibbon's magnum opus is testament to the fact that the notion of "past" cannot escape the "present".
Chapter II
Mommsen, Pan-German Unity and the Römische Geschichte
"Those who have lived through historical events, as I have, begin to see that history is neither written nor made without love or hate." (Mommsen, quoted in Gooch, 1928, 458)
In 1851 Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903) took it upon himself to write his Römische Geschichte. This was originally intended to be a work of historical writing, encompassing the story on Rome in its entirety - that is, from her beginnings up until the time of Diocletian. Mommsen aimed to encapsulate this intension in three volumes: two devoted to the Roman Republic and the other to the principate (Gooch, 1928, 456). However, the Römische Geschichte, in what is traditionally seen as finalised form, very much deviated from Mommsen original intent; for when Mommsen had published his third volume in 1856, the principate had yet to be covered, and, in the end, never was. Mommsen eventually compensated for his neglect of this period by writing a fifth volume in 1885, entitled Die Provinzen von Caesar bis Diokletian (The Provinces from Caesar to Diocletian), which was an in-depth cultural survey of the provinces of the Empire - with particular emphasis on those in the West - and the manner in which legal and administrative institutions spread and flourished (Freeman, 1997, 31). It is a study that generally places Rome's institutions in a positive light. But even with this later addition, the weighting of Mommsen's work was still weighted more in favour of Republican history than that of the Empire; in fact, the absence of a fourth volume - and thus any form of historical narrative on the principate - made gap between the two areas of Roman history even more apparent.
If we take into account other works in Mommsen's vast canon of work, the Römische Geschichte also stands out as something of paradox; his scholarship, it seems, is something that has a much greater affinity with the principate (Freeman, 1997, 29-30). Why there is such a discrepancy between the Römische Geschichte and the rest of Mommsen's body of work is very much the subject of this chapter. Its aim is also to deduce why, when set against his great anthology of specialist studies - his Römisches Staatsrecht (1871-88), Römische Forschungen (1864-79) and his contribution to the Italian volumes of Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (1849) are but a few (Gooch, 1928, 454-60) - the Römische Geschichte stands alone as Mommsen's only major work of narrative history: is there an inseparable link between Mommsen's almost unique decision to write narrative history and his selection of the Roman Republic as his subject? It seems that, as we shall see, the answer to this is almost certainly yes. Because, for Mommsen, as was the case with Gibbon, the composition of narrative history was a medium through which the author can highlight both his own concerns and political standpoints. In his omission of a narrative on the principate, he achieves the same aim, and at the heart of both these choices are events and embodiments of one year: 1848. However, in order to get to grips with how and, more importantly, why this momentous year coloured both Mommsen's narrative and his selection of material, it is first necessary to explore the socio-historical context of his time.
With the beginnings of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1789-1815) Europe was plunged into a new era, setting into motion a great flood of nationalism and revolutionary fervour across Europe. Because the French Revolution is not the subject of this paper, it should suffice to say that during this period, events surrounding the later Republican Rome - for example the tyrannicide of Julius Caesar - were fundamentally exploited in the development of the "national consciousness" (cf Vance, 1997, 24-27; Huet, 1999, 53-69). These defining concepts of the age were, however, only really applicable to peoples of unified states, such France, Spain and Britain. In the German states political fragmentation meant that national consciousness of state never really came into fruition, and thus Rome as a point of nationalistic and revolutionary reference did not really develop (Struck, 2001, 98). It was not until the Congress of Vienna (June, 1815), which organised German states under the banner of the "German Confederation", that nationalist sentiment became a more of a reality. For many nationalists, the Congress was a great disappointment. While Germany's great litter of kingdoms, principalities and electorates were banded together, this was no more than a loose federation of thirty-five states and four free cities, and Germany continued to exist only as a geographical expression (Struck, 2001, 99). Thus, by means of dangling the carrot of unification in front of the eyes of the German peoples, while at the same time keeping in place the anciens régimes, notions of pan-German unification were set into motion - notions which were to eventually find their seat with liberal scholars like Mommsen. This nationalist sentiment was to not so much to culminate in - indeed the high point of the strive towards unification was the unification itself in 1871 - but certainly peaked with pan-German Revolutions of March 1848, the impetus for which, among other things, being a desire for greater German unity (Lerman, 2003, 28).
Like many liberal German academics of the age, Mommsen strove to involve himself deeply in the Revolution: while taking part in protests in Hamburg, he sustained a head wound in a street riot; and later in his native Kiel, then part of predominantly German-speaking dukedom of Schleswig under Danish rule, he was an editor of the Schleswig-Holstein Zeitung, a pamphlet of the region's provisional revolutionary government (Gooch, 1928, 455). Before discussing how Mommsen's involvement in 1848 coloured his Geschichte, it would be wise to assess how German nationalism was voiced on the road to 1848 in both in German culture and in other works of Historical writing.
With the disappointments of the Congress of Vienna, many pan-German unionists found solace turning to periods of German history in which their "nation" was "unified". This took its form in a number of allusions. Medieval Germany's Holy Roman Empire (Heiliges Römische Reich Deutscher Nation), for instance, was a medium through which nationalism was expressed: young men alluded to this time by donning the attire of this period as well as hosting patriotic symposia of a similar theme (Bühner, 1978, 2-3). Particular attention was also paid to the tribes of ancient Germania, through which the cult of Hermann (Arminius), one of Rome's greatest adversaries, was cultivated as a national hero (Struck, 2001, 99; King 2001, 113). Further, while Rome played a comparatively subsidiary role in the development of nationalism, the influence of Classics - particularly in architecture - still infiltrated the German psyche in the form of Ancient Greece (cf Butler, 1935). Thus, in the erection of Ernst Bandel's famous Hermann monument on the Rhine, we are presented with a union of "Germanic" iconography in the guise of Classical statuary (Bühner, 1978, 6-7).
However, despite its affinity with both Classical Greece and Germanic figures of resistance against Rome, the sentiment of nationalism was, paradoxically, transferable in the German historical writing on Ancient Rome. In its early form, Barthold Niebuhr's (1776-1831) lectures on modern and Roman statecraft is testament to this (cf Niebuhr, 1853; Gooch, 1928, 21), but was not until Mommsen's Römische Geschichte that nationalistic infiltration reached its most sophisticated form.
While there are many areas of his Geschichte in which his pan-German nationalist sentiments surface, in no part of Mommsen's magnum opus is it more apparent than his account of Italian unification, culminating in the Social War (91-88 BC), and its issues surrounding the notion of nation (RG, III, 483-526). What is interesting in this account is the extent to which Mommsen explicitly parrots Appian's interpretation of the Social War as the struggle of Rome's Italian allies, warring with Rome as a means of receiving Roman citizenship (App. I. 38; RG, III, 492). Although his academic sophistication prevents him from fully steering towards the Appianic explanation - indeed he does give reference to Diodorus' emphasis on the Italian allies' eventual intention to destroy Rome as power - but these notions are more entertained than accepted (Mouritsen, 1998, 28-29).
In his analysis of this period, Mommsen essentially ties it with his own doctrine on the evolution of nationhood, very much rooted in the politics of his own time, and very much believed to be a timeless concept (Heuss, 1956, 132-33); and in linking this with contemporary issues, Mommsen mars the manner in which the Italian allies were perceived by Rome. Indeed, it could be argued that, in order to legitimise the call for Roman citizenship requested by Rome's Italian allies, Mommsen, earlier on in his narrative, makes reference to the cultural unification between the Italian people and Rome: a unification through which the Italian Peninsula was conquered (RG, I, 452-54). Mommsen thus states in his opening chapter that the story of Rome could not be told without reference to the Italian states (RG, I, 7-8) - and in saying this, he even goes as far to describe Roman imperialism as Italischen Weltherrschaft (Italian world domination) (Mouritsen, 1998, 26). These suggestions, however, seem to go beyond the realms of actual evidence; early references to Romo-Italian cultural, and, to a lesser extent, political unity are ruminated upon, but are not, by and large, sustained with epigraphical or textual references.
Another element of Mommsen's Geschichte that ties him down to 1848 is the manner in which the concept of revolution shapes his narrative. This in itself was by no means a novel concept; between 1830-80, for instance, German readers were presented with a great wealth of narrative histories of revolution - that is, revolution existing in both the conventional Marxist sense, as well as in the social-economic definition (McGlew, 1986, 424) - and it was no great coincidence that the majority of these were written by liberal scholars. In these works, the high concerns of their age were discussed. Issues surrounding liberty and limits of power formed a basis of analysis. Most importantly, however, these narratives of revolution enabled historians to single out, as well to secure a position against, conservative factions, which, in their collective view, was a hindrance to any form of political progress (McGlew, 1986, 425).
Throughout the Römische Geschichte, revolution has a prominent role to play, both as an explanation for the metamorphoses of the Roman state, but also as an exemplar for contemporary concerns. For Mommsen, revolution was spread across Roman history in its entirety, even those often deemed to be "ahistorical". He interprets, for example, early tension between the patrician and plebeian orders within the Republic as "progressive" forces, who had hitherto be disenfranchised by the constitution, coming into conflict with the conservative faction (cf. RG, I, 341-412). In the fires of these conflicts, this disenfranchisement is resolved, and the Roman constitution adapted.
In many respects, Mommsen's history of the Roman Republic was a history of its malleable constitution in the face of progressive forces (McGlaw, 1986, 431). However, Mommsen believed that Rome's Republican constitution could only be stretched so far; if it were bent past a certain fixed political point, it would become ineffectual. And as the Römische Geschichte takes us into the late Republic, we begin to see the Republican constitution becoming ever more defunct, culminating in Mommsen's affinity with progressive revolutionary forces manifesting itself in the form of Julius Caesar (McGaw, 1987, 435), who to Mommsen was the "sole creative genius created by Rome" (RG, IV, 450).
When set against his liberal beliefs, Mommsen's praise of Caesar - and what can only be called his autocracy - is somewhat paradoxical. Many British critics, often harbouring anti-German sentiment, often dismissed his portrait of Caesar as "Bismarckian" (Vance, 1997, 77; Freeman, 1997, 33). Truth be told, Mommsen's liberalism later inclined him towards opposition against Bismarck's domestic policies - in fact, in 1882, Bismarck unsuccessfully tried to prosecute Mommsen, resulting in the latter withdrawing from public life (Vance, 1997, 78). It thus seems that Mommsen's praise of Caesar is rooted more in his view that he was an exponent of change. Caesar was a man, who replaced an ineffectual government with one of stronger substance; and although the politics were somewhat different, this was also the key aim of 1848.
With this mind, an explanation for the absence of the forth volume of the Römische Geschichte becomes more apparent. Having lauded the merits of Julius Caesar's progressive action, a narrative of the principate would have taken the form of an assessment of its consequences, which, for Mommsen, would have been lurid account of debauchery and decline (Freeman, 1997, 31).
With no desire to draw attention to the rotten fruits of Caesar revolution - which, in turn, would mar any positive feeling towards the merits of modern revolution - Mommsen did not publish a fourth volume. Instead, the merits of Caesar's action are stressed in the form of the fifth, for it is in this assessment of the Roman provinces that the intrinsic worth of Caesar's revolution become apparent.
Chapter III
Francis Haverfield, Roman Historian
"Our civilization seems firmly set in many lands; our task is rather to spread it further and develop its good qualities than to defend its life. If war destroys it in one continent, it has other homes. But the Roman Empire was the civilized world; the safety of Rome was the safety of all civilization." (Francis Haverfield, 1915, 11).
So far, the emphasis of this paper has been weighted more towards narrative history than archaeological theory. In the course of this, it has become apparent that, through emphasis and omission of their subject matter, both Gibbon and Mommsen use Rome as a peg on which to hang their own experiences and interpretations. What I would like to do now, however, is something different. Instead of using the research of Francis Haverfield (1860-1919) as a means reiterating the material above, I would like to use the tide of recent research studies on his work to illustrate how, even in our own age, we are not exempt from viewing the past from the perspective of the "here and now"; this shall be achieved by investigating the extent to which these recent studies are heavily linked with the interrelated fields of "postcolonialism" and "deconstructionist theory". Nevertheless, before these issues are tackled, Haverfield, Romanisation and it cultural-historical context must first be surveyed.
Widely considered to be one of the most, if not the most, influential figure in forging the theory of "Romanisation", Francis Haverfield was a giant of his field. His work, which has been subjected to much longevity, has had much application to the word of Romano-British archaeology. The term Romanisation itself is subject to a variety "loaded" definitions and spellings, but in order to avoid confusion, I need only state that it was for Haverfield - among other things - a process whereby the native society of Roman Britain were transformed, both culturally and socially, by means of Rome herself (Hingley, 2000, 111). By its very nature, the cultural baggage placed alongside Haverfield and Romanisation is, to say the least, a complicated assortment of discourses and perceptions. For the sake of simplicity, however, I have singled out three topics that were fundamental in the development of Haverfield's work: New Imperialism, assimilation with the "other" in the British Empire, and the concept of "progress".
The concept of imperialism in nineteenth-century Britain was by no means a static concept. While historians have generally agreed that Britain had been an "imperial" nation since the fifteenth century (Webster, 1996, 2), the concept was not widely embraced by the national consciousness until the 1870s (Judd, 1996, 139). Prior to this, imperialism was used as a derogatory term, in reference to the imperial expansionist policies of France's Napoleon III - it was a term which embodied both despotism and ostentatious displays of power (Hingley, 2000, 19). Through his emulation of Caesar, Rome was often equated with the same forms of despotism as Napoleon (Gouch, 1928, 463). However, with Queen Victoria being crowned Empress of India in 1876 (the reasons for which cf Judd, 1996, 130-53), and with her Golden and Diamond Jubilees in 1887 and 1897 respectively, positive, or New Imperialism, began to permeate into the psyche of Britain, and remained an active concept until the 1930s (Hingley, 2000, 22). For it is around this point that the British Empire largely viewed itself as a civilising entity. It is also during this period that Ancient Rome became a popular analogy for issues relating to the British Empire: these found their home in historical writing (Hingley, 2000, 14) and the British Empire's civil service (cf Majeed, 1999). Critically, the parallels drawn between Britain and Rome were highly selective (Webester, 1996, 4), and the adoption of the Rome-Britain parallels was not always uniform (Hingley, 2000, 23). However, with Britain beginning to identify with Rome from 1870s, it is easy to place Haverfield's Romanization of Roman Britain within its socio-historical context.
Among fulfilling a number of other roles within the Victorian and Edwardian positive imperial discourse, the concept of Romanisation linked itself with the concept of assimilation. That is, by means of Romanisation, it was believed that the conquered inhabitants of Roman Britain would become integrated with the Roman way of life (Hingley, 2000, 115). One could argue that behind this staple element of Romanisation lies a parallel with British India. For the issue of assimilation between native Indians and the English was an oft-express concern: in fact, Haverfield himself argued that the study of Romanisation had application to British Imperialism (Hingley, 2000, 129).
Among the final set of cultural baggage associated with the theory of Romanisation is the notion of progress and social development. It must be noted that Haverfield's contribution to the theory of Romanisation was made in an age when simple models of social development were dominant, and it was through these models that many theorist believed that man made the transition from primitive savage to civilised being (Johnson, 1999, 135-37). Haverfield's theory was by no means an exception to this (Hingley, 2000, 145).
While these are but just three facets which embody the complex cultural-historical context behind Haverfield and Romanisation, they illustrate only a few examples of the manner in which the works of Francis Haverfield have been deconstructed. But as already mentioned above, it is the purpose of this chapter to highlight the simple truism that recent studies on both Haverfield and Romanisation are as imbued with the author's own cultural zeitgeists as the nineteenth-century architect of Romanisation.
In recent years, much research has been carried out on the cultural context in which Haverfield conceived the notion of Romanisation (Freeman, 1996; Freeman 1997; Hingley, 1997; Hingley 2000; Hingley 2001) - the above account of Haverfield essentially summarises this. Alongside this, much has also been written on the deconstruction of Romanisation itself (Woolf, 1998; Mattingly, 1996). It is in these studies that role of the so-called "imperial discourse" of Romanisation has been questioned by means of another, namely the colonial discourse. With the fall of the European empires from the mid-twentieth century onwards, newly sanctioned ideas from newly independent countries emerged in the form of colonial discourse, whereby texts written by Westerners about colonised countries were subject to scrutiny (Webster, 1996, 6) - no other study embodies this notion more than Edward Said's (1978) Orientalism. Increasingly, many, including Said, have suggested that Western imperialism has developed a chronic state of under-development in their former provinces (Hingley, 2000, 153).
But how has this colonial discourse affected stories of Roman archaeology? Firstly, the notion of progress, as the case is in many other areas of archaeology (cf Johnson, 1999), has been called into question. The idea that Rome is the high epoch of human development is being increasingly queried. Accordingly, studies have emerged that either dub Romanisation as a two-way process between Roman and native (cf Millet, 1990, 1-3), or question the adequacies of the theory in general (cf Clarke, 1996). Either way, there is certainly some form of divorce being enacted in the theorising surrounding Roman Britain. In the same vein as this, issues around native exploitation has also been recently explored. For instance, David Mattingly's An Imperial Possession (2006), among other things, creates a picture of Roman Britain that is very much from the perspective from the native Britons.
Another anachronistic trait that is often present to critical assessments of concepts such as Romanisation (this one included) is the use of deconstructivist theory - the theory that all forms of knowledge are firmly rooted in the time and culture which produced them (Terrenato, 2001, 71-2). Deconstructivist theory is largely connected with postmodernism, and by its very nature, postmodernism is one of, if not the, defining "ism" of our time (cf Johnson, 1999, 162-75).
We can thus see an almost sardonic irony hanging over the highlighting deconstructing the anachronism of the past; in trying to highlight the cultural-historical context of both Haverfield's research and the cultural context of Romanisation, many scholars have turned to defining concepts of our time. Should we despair at this entrapment of our own age? The answer to this has to be no; the past has too many benefits and lessons to teach us. Ultimately, however, it acts as a rostrum for our own concerns - the debatable benefits for which are not the subject of this paper.
Conclusions
This study has presented me with a number of issues. First and foremost, though, one question remains to be asked: what exactly is the thread connecting these three authors? To this I would have to reply that the answer is deceptively simple: they are connected by the straightforward notion that all works of history have their roots in the present. This, I feel, has been made quite explicit. But in the process of pursuing this over-arching objective, my analysis has inevitably encountered many of its minor facets.
Using the past to rationalise the present, as we have seen in Chapter Two in the form of pan-Germanic nationalism and its affiliation with medieval Germany (cf pp 16), is something that frequently exists outside of Ancient Rome. One need only glimpse at the great multitudinous range of nineteenth-century historical writing surround the concept of revolution (cf pp. 17) to see that, providing at least a tenuous link is forged, all areas of history can be used as a rostrum for the "here and now". In this capacity, Rome falls into the rank and file of historiography. Ancient Rome is, however, something I feel to be far more ubiquitous a concept. As explored in the chapters on Gibbon and Haverfield, Rome was used a cultural compass for the educated. Through the classical education, law, politics and, to a lesser extent, religion, Rome was not just a reflexive medium for the now - it was the now.
In my scrutiny of the Decline and Fall and the Römische Geschichte, I have encountered many stylistic methods in which contemporary concerns have infiltrated them. With Gibbon, the significance of the American Revolution was stressed by means of emphasis: as we have seen, when Gibbon makes his transition from volume I to volumes II and III, his presence on the political scene led to him laying greater stress on the significance of civil turmoil. Mommsen, however, achieves this in his omission; in not having published his fourth volume of Roman history, Mommsen does not provide us with a history of Imperial Rome, and thus, the consequences of the principate's despotism were not stressed. In doing this, Mommsen severs the link between his endorsement of Caesar - effected solely to highlight and applaud his destruction of, what Mommsen deemed, a defunct government - and the eventual repercussions of Caesarism.
To some extent, Rome's "special status" has waned. As Catherine Edwards (1999, 18) has quite astutely observed, Auschwitz and Hiroshima, for which Rome cannot provide an analogy, has marred Rome's modern significance. However, as I have outlined in Chapter Three, Rome exists as a paradigm for modern theorising. In doing this, I have highlighted that this study is by no means exempt from this.
Depending on one's viewpoint, one may interpret this as an "insurance policy", by which I have been enabled to scrutinise the works of Gibbon, Mommsen and Haverfield, secure in my position of self-awareness; or as a means through which I can stress that Rome is, and always will be, a storehouse of the here and now. I would like to think that I have achieved the latter.
Appendix
A list of civil wars and rebellions from Augustus to the death of Commodus
- Teutoburg forest (9 AD)
- The Boudican Revolt (60-61 AD)
- The First Jewish Rebellion (66-73 AD)
- Revolt of Venutius (Britain) (69-71 AD)
- The Year of the Four Emperors (Civil War) (68-69 AD)
- Revolt of Anicetus (69 AD)
- The Batavian Revolt (69-70 AD)
- The Second Jewish Rebellion (Kitos War) (115-117 AD)
- The Third Jewish Rebellion (Bar Kokhba's Revolt) (132-135 AD) Source: Scarre,2004