''The Roman Revolution'' (1939) is a scholarly study of the final years of the ancient

Roman Republic The Roman Republic ( ) was the era of Ancient Rome, classical Roman civilisation beginning with Overthrow of the Roman monarchy, the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom (traditionally dated to 509 BC) and ending in 27 BC with the establis ...

and the creation of the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

Caesar Augustus Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian (), was the founder of the Roman Empire, who reigned as the first Roman emperor from 27 BC until his death in ...

. The book was the work of Sir

Ronald Syme Sir Ronald Syme, (11 March 1903 – 4 September 1989) was a New Zealand-born historian and classicist. He was regarded as the greatest historian of ancient Rome since Theodor Mommsen and the most brilliant exponent of the history of the Roma ...

(1903–1989), a noted Tacitean scholar, and was published by the

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

. It was immediately controversial. Its main conclusion was that the structure of the Republic and its Senate were inadequate to the needs of Roman rule, and that Augustus was merely doing what was necessary to restore order in public life. Syme relies on

prosopography Prosopography is an investigation of the common characteristics of a group of people, whose individual biographies may be largely untraceable. Research subjects are analysed by means of a collective study of their lives, in multiple career-line a ...

, especially the work of German scholars

Friedrich Münzer Friedrich Münzer (22 April 1868 – 20 October 1942) was a German classical scholar noted for the development of prosopography, particularly for his demonstrations of how family relationships in ancient Rome connected to political struggles. He d ...

and Matthias Gelzer, to show the extent to which Augustus achieved his unofficial but undisputed power by the development of personal relationships into a "Caesarian" party and used it to defeat and diminish the opposition one by one. The process was slow, with the young Octavian initially just using his position as a relative of

Julius Caesar Gaius Julius Caesar (12 or 13 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in Caesar's civil wa ...

to pursue Caesar's assassins, then over a period of years gradually accumulating personal power while nominally restoring the Republic. In addition, the portrait he paints of Augustus as a somewhat sinister autocratic figure has been immensely influential among subsequent generations of classicists.

Reception

Maurice Bowra Sir Cecil Maurice Bowra, (; 8 April 1898 – 4 July 1971) was an English classical scholar, literary critic and academic, known for his wit. He was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, from 1938 to 1970, and served as vice-chancellor of the Univer ...

said in 1939 of Syme's ''The Roman Revolution'': "His work is extraordinarily persuasive and interesting... the best book on Roman history that has appeared for many years". Syme's conclusion of inevitability is less strongly supported than his elucidation of the takeover process, since at each point we see that Augustus is exercising his free choice, albeit for what he sees as the good of his country. In '' The Last Generation of the Roman Republic'' (1974), Erich S. Gruen offered an opposing point of view, arguing that the traditional view of the Republic's decay is not actually supported by the objective evidence.

Editions

''The Roman Revolution'' has been reprinted regularly by OUP since its first appearance, most recently in 2002 (). (Corrections to the text were made by the author in 1952 and 1956.) A revised German translation was published by Klett-Cotta in 2003 (''Die römische Revolution''). The Italian edition was first published by Einaudi in 1962, with an introduction by

Arnaldo Momigliano Arnaldo Dante Momigliano (5 September 1908 – 1 September 1987) was an Italian historian of classical antiquity, known for his work in historiography, and characterised by Donald Kagan as "the world's leading student of the writing of history ...

. A new, revised edition was published in 2014, with an introduction by Giusto Traina (). A Korean translation in two volumes was published by Hangilsa Publishing Co. in 2006 (with the introduction by translators, Seung-il Hur and Duk-su Kim) (『로마혁명사 1』 and『로마혁명사 2』) A new English edition, with an introduction by G.W. Bowersock, was published by the

Folio Society The Folio Society is an independent London-based publisher, founded by Charles Ede in 1947 and incorporated in 1971. Formerly privately owned, it became an employee ownership trust in 2021. It produces illustrated hardback fine press edit ...

in June, 2009.''Folio Prospectus 2009'' (Folio Society, August 2008), p. 24 A Japanese translation in two volumes was published by Iwanami Shoten in 2013 (with the second edition's pagination printed in margin and the original index rendered in Japanese included) (『ローマ革命（上）』 and『ローマ革命（下）』).

Notes

References

, "Introduction to R. Syme, ''The Roman Revolution''", translated and reprinted in ''A. D. Momigliano: Studies on Modern Scholarship'' (University of California Press, 1994; )

External links

''The Roman Revolution''
(1960 edition) at the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Roman Revolution, The History books about ancient Rome Books about revolutions 1939 non-fiction books