Politics in the Roman Republic: Perspectives from Niebuhr to Gelzer

Cary M. Barber, Ph.D. (2016), The Ohio State University, is Assistant Professor of History at California State University San Bernardino. He has written on political culture in the Roman Middle Republic, ancient demography, and Late Antique administration and culture.

• Editors’ NoteAcknowledgmentsPolitics in the Roman Republic: Perspectives from Niebuhr to GelzerCary M. BarberAbstractKeywords1 The ‘Long Nineteenth Century’ of Historiography2 Prelude to Niebuhr’s ‘Historiography of the Future’3 Barthold Georg Niebuhr’s ‘Revolution’4 In the Shadow of Mommsen5 Münzer, Gelzer, and the ‘Social Scientific’ Tradition6 Perspectives on Roman Politics, Past and PresentBibliography Index

"Cary Barber’s Politics in the Roman Republic: Perspectives from Niebuhr to Gelzer is a tour de force of intellectual history. In this slim volume consisting of six chapters, Barber offers historiographical surveys of the works of Bartold Niebuhr, Theodor Mommsen, Friedrich Münzer, and Matthias Gelzer, with particular attention to their study of Republican politics. Given the prominence of these figures in the study of Roman history, it may come as a surprise that their views need further explication. But Barber has an epistemological goal at the heart of his analysis, and it is one that is worth hearing out.(...) Barber ends his book with a plea for new work (...) a call for new ways of looking atRoman political structures. (...) Barber’s thesis: European intellectual traditions from the 18th and 19th centuries still heavily influence how we think about ancient Roman politics."Dominic Machado in Polis: Journal of Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought, 41.2 (2024)