Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtzeff, or Rostovtsev (russian: Михаи́л Ива́нович Росто́вцев; – October 20, 1952), was a Russian historian whose career straddled the 19th and 20th centuries and who produced important works on

ancient Roman In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–50 ...

and

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

history. He was a member of the Russian Academy of Science.

Career

Rostovtzeff was the son of a Latin teacher. Upon completing his studies at the universities of

Kiev Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Ky ...

and , Rostovtsev served as an assistant and then as a full Professor of Latin at the 1898–1918. In 1918, following the

Russian Revolution The Russian Revolution was a period of political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of government ...

, he emigrated first to Sweden, then to England, and finally in 1920 to the United States. There he accepted a chair at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...

before moving to

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...

in 1925 where he taught until his retirement in 1944. He oversaw all archaeological activities of the latter institution in general and the excavations of Dura-Europos in particular. He is believed to have coined the term "

caravan city A caravan city is a city located on and deriving its prosperity from its location on a major trans-desert trade route. The term is believed to have been coined by the great scholar of antiquity, Michael Rostovtzeff, for his work ''O Blijnem Vos ...

". While working in

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

, Rostovtzeff became an authority on the ancient history of South Russia and Ukraine. He summed up his knowledge on the subject in ''Iranians and Greeks in South Russia'' (1922) and ''Skythien und der Bosporus'' (1925). His most important archaeological findings at Yale were described in ''Dura-Europos and Its Art'' (1938). Glen Bowersock described Rostovtzeff's views as having been largely formed by the age of thirty, developing mainly only in the quality of execution in later life, and making him "the last of the nineteenth-century ancient historians".Bowersock, G.W. "The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire by Michael Ivanovitch Rostovtzef" in ''Daedalus'', Vol. 103, No. 1, Twentieth-Century Classics Revisited (Winter, 1974), pp. 15–23. Rostovtzeff was known as a proud and slightly overpowering man who did not fit in easily. In later life, he suffered from depression.

''The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire''

Rostovtzeff was notable for his theories, notably, of the cause of the collapse of the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Roman Republic, Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings aro ...

, which he expounded in detail in his magisterial ''The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire'' (1926). Scarred by his experience of fleeing from the Russian Revolution, he attributed the collapse of the Roman Empire to an alliance between the rural proletariat and the military in the third century A.D. Despite not being a Marxist himself, Rostovtzeff used terms such as

proletariat The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philo ...

bourgeoisie The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. Th ...

and

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private ...

freely in his work and the importation of those terms into a description of the ancient world, where they did not necessarily apply, caused criticism. Rostovtzeff's theory was quickly understood as one based on the author's own experiences and equally quickly rejected by the academic community. Bowersock later described the book as "the marriage of pre-1918 scholarly training and taste with post-1918 personal experience and reflection." At the same time, however, the detailed scholarship involved in the production of the work impressed his contemporaries and he was one of the first to merge archaeological evidence with literary sources.

Selected publications

Articles

* * * *

Books

*''The Birth of the Roman Empire''. 1918. *
Iranians and Greeks in South Russia
'. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922. *
A large estate in Egypt in the third century B.C. A study in economic history
'. Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1922. *''Skythien und der Bosporus''. 1925. *''The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire''. 1926. (Revised edition in German 1931, and further revised edition in Italian 1933) (Second edition, revised by P.M. Fraser, Oxford, 1957) *''A History of the Ancient World: Volume I The Orient and Greece.'' Oxford:

Clarendon Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, 1926. *''A History of the Ancient World: Volume II Rome.'' Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927. *
Mystic Italy
'. New York: Henry Holt, 1927. (Brown University, the Colver lectures series) *'' Caravan Cities''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932. (First published in book form as ''O Blijnem Vostoke''. Paris, 1931.) *''Dura-Europos and Its Art''. 1938. *''The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941. (2nd edition 1953)

Notes

References

External links

* * * Michael Ivanovich Rostovtzeff Papers (MS 1133). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
Rostovtzeff Project
*Mansi, Gregory
''M.I. Rostovtzeff: An essay on his life and major works''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rostovtzeff Rostovtsev Rostovtsev Writers from Zhytomyr Russian classical scholars Russian archaeologists Russian economists Full Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1917–1925) Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Economic historians Rostovtzeff, Michael American people of Russian descent Rostovtsev Presidents of the American Historical Association Rostovtsev, Michael American historians White Russian emigrants to the United States Historians of antiquity Classical scholars of the University of Wisconsin–Madison Classical scholars of Yale University Yale Sterling Professors Scythologists Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy