The Roman nobility

Abstract

Introductionthis book unites under its ad hoc title translations of two works: Die Nobilitat der romischen Republik and the essay Die Nobilitat der Kaiserzeit.It was only with the appearance in 1962 of the first volume of Matthias Gelzer's Kleine Schriften that Die Nobilitat der romischen Republik, first published precisely half a century before, was made universally available. By the time that this welcome reprint was produced, the status of Nobilitat a masterpiece had for many years been secure; it was hailed by reviewers of the Kleine Schriften as the 'joint foundation ... of nearly all the best work on Roman republican history which has been done in the last forty years' and as 'the key that unlocked the door from the 19th to the 20th century in historical research in the Roman Republic'.In fifty years Nobilitat has indeed brought about a revolution, but the process has been a slow one. The door which was unlocked in 1912 stood for a long time barely ajar, while historians did little more than peer timidly through the crack. No doubt the First World War must bear much of the blame for the total lack of notice with which, outside Germany, Nobilitat was greeted. But at first, even in the country of its origin, the book attracted little attention and less understanding. A reviewer in 1913 summed it up as 'interesting and instructive', but he seems to have had no inkling that he had in his hands a work which was to change the entire shape of Roman historiography. It was not until 1938 that Nobilitat , or rather one section of it, received a serious review, in the form of an important article by Afzelius.n n

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