Arnaldo Momigliano

Arnaldo Dante Momigliano, KBE, FBA (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 in the ancient world".

Momigliano was born on 5 September 1908 in Caraglio, Piedmont.

After 1930, Momigliano contributed a number of biographies to the Enciclopedia Italiana; in the 1940s and 1950s he contributed biographies to the Oxford Classical Dictionary and Encyclopædia Britannica.

In his retirement, he was made a distinguished visiting professor for life at the University of Chicago and held fellowships at All Souls College, Oxford and Peterhouse, Cambridge.

In the 1930s, Momigliano joined the National Fascist Party, swore loyalty to Benito Mussolini, and sought exemption from antisemitic Italian racial laws as a party member.

Momigliano believed that several classical works of European literature had contributed to the nationalism and warfare in Europe, and considered works such as Germania and the Iliad as "among the most dangerous books ever written".

Momigliano considered it wasteful and "comical" to spend much efforts at identifying and explaining the forces held responsible for the gradual disintegration of the Roman Empire.

In 1936, he became Professor of Roman History at the University of Turin, 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 taught Ancient History at the University of Bristol where he was made a lecturer in 1947.

He went to University College London and was elected Chair of Ancient History from 1951 to 1975.

He was a Fellow of the Warburg Institute and supervised the PhD of Wolf Liebeschuetz.

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.

He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1969 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1971.

In 1974 he was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE).

In the 1980s, Momigliano and fellow historian Carlo Ginzburg leveled heavy criticism against French philologist Georges Dumézil, whom they charged with being a fascist opposed to "Judeo-Christian" society.

Momigliano's attacks on Dumézil, who was then in very poor health, have been described as "unfair and vicious" by Edgar C. Polomé.

Momigliano died in London on 1 September 1987.

A number of his essays were collected into volumes published posthumously.

The University of Bristol also established an academic prize in his name, awarded for the best undergraduate performance in Ancient History.