Hearsay, history, and heresy
Subtitle: collected essays on the Roman Republic by Richard E. Mitchell
By: edited with an introduction by Randall Howarth
Contributors: Howarth, Randall S.
Publisher: Gorgias Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Piscataway, NJ
Language: eng
Number of pages: 370
Description: This book features a selection of articles by Richard E. Mitchell concerning the origins and development of the ancient Roman state and the modern historiography that supports our understanding of that history. The introduction and commentary are provided by one of his PhD students, Randall S. Howarth, whose own work is very much concerned with the same topic. The publication of these articles in a single volume provides a comprehensive commentary on the assumptions governing modern reconstructions of the period and the problems informing those assumptions.

The social and institutional history of the Roman Republic, especially that of the earliest years, is one of the most problematic and convoluted areas of study in the ancient world. Modern scholars have tended to assume that we should take the broad outlines of the traditions handed to us by the Romans at face value, despite their invention hundreds of years after the fact. The inevitable result is that the dominant modern narrative contains a core of assumptions of dubious historicity. While some scholars have made significant attempts to correct portions of the obviously flawed narrative, virtually none have gone so far as to question its most fundamental elements. Mitchell's work has always done exactly this and when originally published, many of his arguments were regarded as radical. Nevertheless, over the last twenty years or so, scholarly consensus is inexorably moving toward Mitchell. This collection traces the development of Mitchell's thought processes and highlights all of the most important evidence. --Back Cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: "The assumption is..." : an introduction / by Randall S. Howarth; title: The fourth century origin of Roman didrachms; title: Roman-Carthaginian treaties : 306 and 279/8 B.C.; title: Hoard evidence and early Roman coinage; title: The aristocracy of the Roman Republic; title: Historical development in Livy; title: Roman history, Roman law, and Roman priests : the common ground; title: The historical and historiographical prominence of the Pyrrhic War; title: The "struggle of the orders" is a fiction; title: Demands for land redistribution and debt reduction in the Roman Republic; title: Ager publicus : public property and private wealth during the Roman Republic; title: What exactly is "tradition" in the context of Roman Republican history?; title: The role of maritime colonies in Roman expansion.