Author’s Prologue
to,begunsoonaftertheSecondWorldWar,andreachingitslastentry,
‘‘Zudius’’,involumeIIIB,publishedin.^28
Referenceworksinthefieldofprosopography,whetherstructuredalpha-
betically,personbyperson,oraslistsofoffice-holders,areanindispensable
tool, which we now almost take for granted. But they can of course lead
to an overestimate of the importance of the occupation of office, and can
at theworst embody unquestioned assumptions which tend to equate the
pursuit of office with the entire political process in the community con-
cerned.Thedangerisevengreaterwhenthestudyofwhichindividuals—or
ofwhichfamiliesoversuccessivegenerations—heldofficeisprojectedback
into a period from which there is no contemporary literaryordocumen-
taryevidence.InspiteofthesuperlativescholarshipdisplayedinFriedrich
Münzer’s great work of on Roman noble ‘‘parties’’ and families, now
translated for the first time into English,^29 and while doing honour to the
tragicpersonalhistoryof Münzerhimself intheNaziperiod,^30 itoughtin
myviewtobeacknowledgedthatthebookservedtostimulateacuriously
distorted mannerof ‘‘seeing’’ Roman republican history, and of interpret-
ingthenarrativesofitwhichwehave,whichwastodominatethestudyof
republicanhistoryforatleastthenexthalfcentury.
Of course the emphasis on competition for the consulship in Münzer’s
work was not gratuitous, for it followed the lead given by our narrative
sources themselves and, very notably, by the two great Augustan inscrip-
tions,theFastiConsularesandtheFastiTriumphales,whichliterallysetinstone
acertainviewoftheRomanpast,inlistingallthosewhohadheldtriumphs,
backtoRomulushimself,andallthepairsofconsulssincethefoundationof
theRepublic.Buttosaythatistosaythatas textstheseinscriptionsareevery
bitasmuchideologicalrepresentationsoftheRomanpastasLivy’sHistory,
orOvid’sFasti,orthelastpartofOvid’sMetamorphoses.Asatext,theall-too-
perfectlistingofthesupposedholdersoftheconsulateinthefifthcentury
..,eachequippedwiththepraenomenofbothhisfatherandhisgrandfather,
deservestobestudiedasaliteraryconstruct,notasadocumentaryrecord;
andas inscriptions,asMargaretaSteinby’sstudyoftheeastsideoftheForum
.A.H.M.Jones,J.R.Martindale,andJ.Morris(eds.),The Prosopography of the Later
Roman EmpireI:A.D. –();J.R.Martindale,ed.,II:A.D. –();IIIA–B:
A.D. –().
. F. Münzer,Römische Adelsparteien und Adelsfamilien(); translated by Thérèse
Ridley,Roman Aristocratic Parties and Families().
. SeetheverymovingaccountbyA.KneppeandJ.Wiesehöfer,Friedrich Münzer. Ein
Althistoriker zwischen Kaiserreich und Nationalsozialism().