The Image of the Roman Empire in the Works of Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtzeff

Abstract

The article examines the features of the image of the Roman Empire created by the outstanding historian M. I. Rostovtzeff, primarily in his “Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire”. This image is contradictory and ambiguous. It involves a lot of genuine innovative ideas, bright colours, but there are also a number of obvious exaggerations and aberrations, a certain “contemporization” of economic and social realities. Paradoxically, Rostovtzeff ’s Roman Empire turns out to be an empire without imperialism. Its very “empireness”, i. e., specific ties between the center and provincial and “barbaric” periphery; the organization of space; the modes of relations between the “imperial nation” and the subordinate peoples; the unity of diversity as well as geographical (geopolitical) and economic determination of Roman imperial expansion, remains outside the historian’s scope. At the same time, Rostovtzeff perspicaciously grasps the deep drama of Roman history, irreducible either to the tyranny and extravagance of individual rulers or to the merciless struggle of social classes. A significant role in creating such a comprehensive image of the Roman Empire was ensured not only by Rostovtzeff ’s political preferences and life experience, but also by his personality and style of scholarship. This gives the “Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire” a special dimension, making it not only a fact of historiography per se but the substantial evidence of the indissoluble relationship between the personality of the historian, his ideas and the time in which he happened to live and work.