Ancient history in the eighteenth century

2011 ◽  
pp. 301-306
Author(s):  
Oswyn Murray
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ancient History

‘Beyond the Vallum’: English interpretations of Scottish history

2020 ◽  
pp. 71-89
Author(s):  
Alan Montgomery
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
Scottish History

Chapter four examines English attitudes towards Roman Scotland. It introduces the writings of William Stukeley, one of the most influential antiquarians working in England during the first half of the eighteenth century, looking in particular at the content of his 1720 essay An Account of a Roman Temple. While Stukeley was convinced, like Sir Robert Sibbald before him, that the Romans had conquered and civilised much of Scotland, fellow English antiquarian John Horsley took the view that they had in fact decided against colonising such a barren and inhospitable land. Horsley’s posthumously published 1732 work, Britannia Romana, sets out his pragmatic approach to Scotland’s ancient history and reveals an antiquarian who was far less influenced by patriotism and Romanism than many of his contemporaries.

The Quest for Civic Virtue

2020 ◽  
pp. 120-198
Author(s):  
Floris Verhaart
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civic Virtue ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Marcus Tullius Cicero ◽  
The Social ◽  
Classical Models ◽  
History Of ◽  
Classical Culture ◽  
Intellectual Elites

This chapter focuses on those eighteenth-century students of ancient history and literature who were mainly interested in Latin and Greek writings as moral edification. Recent decades have witnessed a growing awareness of the role played by models drawn from classical antiquity in the advancement of the concept of politeness in the eighteenth century. Much less attention has been paid to the connection between the popularizing works on antiquity that were read by the social and intellectual elites to form a conception of these classical models and contemporary scholarly debates. In order to tackle this question, I will discuss two eighteenth-century bestsellers. The first of these was the History of the Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero by Conyers Middleton (1683–1750) and the second was the Histoire Romaine (1738–48) by the Jansenist Charles Rollin (1661–1741). Although these men had vastly different religious outlooks—Middleton was a deist and Rollin a Jansenist—they each made an important contribution to the popularization of classical culture in the eighteenth century. It will be demonstrated that the life and work of both men was deeply influenced by the moralizing and popularizing approach to classical texts (philosophia), and that they created a conception of antiquity that found its way into the works of some of the foremost philosophes of the eighteenth century, such as Voltaire and Montesquieu.

What is Ancient History?

Daedalus ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 145 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-121
Author(s):  
Ian Morris ◽  
Walter Scheidel
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Classical Model ◽  
World History ◽  
Turning Points ◽  
Evolutionary Model ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Ancient Times

Every society has told stories about ancient times, but contemporary ancient history was the product of two main developments. The first was the invention of writing, which made scholarly study of the past possible, and the second was the explosion of knowledge about the world from the eighteenth century onward. Europeans responded to this explosion by inventing two main versions of antiquity: the first, an evolutionary model, was global and went back to the origins of humanity; and the second, a classical model, treated Greece and Rome as turning points in world history. These two views of antiquity have competed for two hundred and fifty years, but in the twenty-first century, the evidence and methods available to ancient historians are changing faster than at any other time since the debate began. We should therefore expect the balance between the two theories to shift dramatically. We close by considering some possible areas of engagement.

Classical Caledonia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Montgomery
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Hadrian's Wall ◽  
The Impact ◽  
North And South ◽  
Widespread Interest

Classical Caledonia explores eighteenth-century attitudes towards Scotland’s ancient history and heritage, looking in particular at how Roman Scotland was interpreted at this time. It discusses the research of early modern antiquarians and historians both north and south of the border and looks at how Scotland’s ancient past was often misinterpreted and manipulated in attempts to create a new national identity for a country undergoing rapid and dramatic change. The book uncovers the political, patriotic and intellectual influences which fuelled the heated eighteenth-century debates surrounding the success or failure of the Roman conquests of Scotland, a place sometimes referred to in ancient sources as ‘Caledonia’, and the disagreements regarding the impact of Roman invasion on the evolution of the modern nation. Analysing the period’s historiography, antiquarianism, political propaganda and literature, Classical Caledonia investigates the widespread interest in Scotland’s Roman past during the eighteenth century and reveals the influence of folklore, myth and tradition on the accounts of Scotland’s ancient tribes and their supposed resistance to conquest by the Roman Empire. It also examines the fading interest in the subject of Roman Scotland in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as the Scottish Enlightenment and the rise of Romanticism and associated notions of the nation’s origins overtook the desire to establish a classical heritage in the region north of Hadrian’s Wall.

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