Arnaldo Momigliano

Who was Arnaldo Momigliano?

Arnaldo Dante Momigliano, KBE was an Italian historian known for his work in historiography, characterized by Donald Kagan as "the world’s leading student of the writing of history in the ancient world."

He became Professor of Roman history at the University of Turin in 1936, but as a Jew soon lost his position due to the anti-Jewish Racial Laws enacted by the Fascist regime in 1938, and moved to England, where he remained. After a time at Oxford University, he went to University College London, where he was Professor from 1951 to 1975. 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.

With respect to identifying and explaining the forces held responsible for the gradual disintegration of the Roman Empire, Momigliano stressed the wasteful futility of that endeavor while redirecting his students' focus: