Mommsen

Mommsen, Theodor, German scholar and historian, was born in 1817 in Schleswig, and studied at Kiel. He then went to France and Italy to make a special study of Roman inscriptions, being sent for that purpose by the Academy of Berlin. After his return he edited a newspaper for a time, and was in 1848 appointed to a chair of jurisprudence at Leipzig, a position which he lost by reason of his politics. From 1852-58 he professed Roman law successively at Zurich and Breslau, and in 1858 was appointed professor of ancient history at Berlin, and here he edited Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum for the Berlin Academy. But the work by which he is best known in England is his History of Rome, published in three volumes (1854-56), with an additional volume in 1885 giving the history of the Roman provinces from Ca?sar to Diocletian. This work, which has been translated into English, is a monument of scholarship and almost universal learning, though the political views taken in it have been called in question. Many other works he has published on Roman law, coins, inscriptions, history, etc. The esteem in which he was held by English students was shown upon the occasion of the burning of his library in 1880, when English students subscribed to make good in so far as possible his loss. His two brothers, Tycho and August, have also made themselves names, the former as classical scholar, the latter in the region of Greek and Roman chronology.