Arnaldo momigliano herodotus biography

Arnaldo Momigliano

Italian historian of classical antiquity (–)

Arnaldo Dante Momigliano (5 September – 1 September ) was an Italian historian of classical antiquity, known for his work in historiography, and characterised by Donald Kagan as "the world's leading student of the writing of history in the ancient world".^[1] He was a MacArthur Fellow in ^[2]

Biography

Momigliano was born on 5 September in Caraglio, Piedmont. In , he became Professor of Roman History at the University of Turin, but as a Jew, soon lost his position due to the anti-Jewish Racial Laws enacted by the Fascist regime in , and moved to England, where he remained. After a time at Oxford University, he taught Ancient History at the University of Bristol where he was made a lecturer in He went to University College London and was elected Chair of Ancient History from to He was a Fellow of the Warburg Institute and supervised the PhD of Wolf Liebeschuetz. Momigliano visited regularly at the University of Chicago where he was named Alexander White Professor in the Humanities, and at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. He wrote reviews for The New York Review of Books. In addition to studying the ancient Greek historians and their methods, he also took an interest in modern historians, such as Edward Gibbon, and wrote a number of studies of them.

After , Momigliano contributed a number of biographies to the Enciclopedia Italiana; in the s and s he contributed biographies to the Oxford Classical Dictionary and Encyclopædia Britannica. In his retirement, he was made a distinguished visiting professor for life at the University of Chicago and held fellowships at All Souls College, Oxford and Peterhouse, Cambridge. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in ^[4] and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in ^[5] In he was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE).

Momigliano died in London on 1 September A number of his essays were collected into volumes published posthumously. The University of Bristol also established an academic prize in his name, awarded for the best undergraduate performance in Ancient History.^[6]

Views

In the s, Momigliano joined the National Fascist Party, swore loyalty to Benito Mussolini, and sought exemption from antisemitic Italian racial laws as a party member.^[7] Momigliano believed that several classical works of European literature had contributed to the nationalism and warfare in Europe, and considered works such as Germania and the Iliad as "among the most dangerous books ever written".^[7]^[8] Momigliano considered it wasteful and "comical" to spend much efforts at identifying and explaining the forces held responsible for the gradual disintegration of the Roman Empire.^[9] In the s, Momigliano and fellow historian Carlo Ginzburg leveled heavy criticism against French philologist Georges Dumézil, whom they charged with being a fascist opposed to "Judeo-Christian" society. Momigliano's attacks on Dumézil, who was then in very poor health, have been described as "unfair and vicious" by Edgar C. Polomé.

Works

Claudius, the Emperor, and his achievement, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
George Grote and the Study of Greek History, London: Lewis,
The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, Clarendon Press,
Studies in Historiography, Garland Pub., , ISBN&#;
The Development of Greek Biography: Four Lectures, Harvard University Press, ; revised and expanded, Harvard University Press, , ISBN&#;
Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization, Cambridge University Press, ; reprint, Cambridge University Press, , , , ISBN&#;
Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography, Wesleyan University Press, , ISBN&#;
"History and Biography" and "Greek Culture and the Jews", in The Legacy of Greece, a new Appraisal, Moses I Finley (ed.), Clarendon Press, Oxford,
How to Reconcile Greeks and Trojans, North-Holland Pub. Co.,
"Premesse per una discussione su Georges Dumézil", Opus 2 (): –
- English translation: "Introduction to a Discussion of Georges Dumezil", in Studies on Modern Scholarship (see below), pp.&#;–
"Georges Dumézil and the Trifunctional Approach to Roman Civilization", History and Theory 23, no. 3 (): –
"Two Types of Universal History: The Cases of E. A. Freeman and Max Weber," The Journal of Modern History Vol. 58, No. 1, March
On Pagans, Jews and Christians, reprint, Wesleyan University Press, , ISBN&#;
The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography, University of California Press, , ISBN&#;
Essays on Ancient and Modern Judaism, Editor Silvia Berti, University of Chicago Press, ; ISBN&#;
Bowersock, G. W.; Cornell, T. J., eds. (). A. D. Momigliano: Studies on Modern Scholarship. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN&#;.
"The Rules of the Game in the Study of Ancient History", History and Theory 55, no. 1 (February ).

References

^Kagan, Donald (March ). "Arnaldo Momigliano and the human sources of history". The New Criterion. Vol.&#;10, no.&#;7.
^"Arnaldo Dante Momigliano — MacArthur Foundation".
^"APS Member History". . Retrieved 13 September
^"Arnaldo Dante Momigliano". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 13 September
^%20and%20Ancient%20History%20Handbook%%^{[bare URL PDF]}
^ ^a^bRose, Louis (). Psychology, Art, and Antifascism: Ernst Kris, E. H. Gombrich, and the Politics of Caricature. Yale University Press. p.&#; ISBN&#;.
^Anthony Birley, 'Introduction', in Tacitus, Agricola and Germany (Oxford University Press, ), p. xxxviii.
^"After Gibbon's Decline and Fall", in The Age of Spirituality: a Symposium, (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; Princeton University Press, ), 7–16, at "Historians, one must admit, were not created by God to search for causes. Any search for causes in history, if it is persistent, becomes comic—such is the abundance of causes discovered. What we want is to understand the change by analysing it and giving due consideration to conscious decisions, deep-seated urges, and the interplay of disparate events. But we must have a mental picture, a model of the whole situation as a term of reference, and here, I submit, is where Gibbon helps us."

Sources

Arvidsson, Stefan (). Jones, Lindsay (ed.). Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science. Translated by Wichmann, Sonia. University of Chicago Press. pp.&#;– ISBN&#;.
Todd, Robert B. (). The Dictionary of British Classicists. Vol.&#;2. Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum. p.&#; ISBN&#;. OCLC&#;

Arnaldo momigliano herodotus biography