Niebuhr and Bachofen: New Forms of Evidence on Roman History

Abstract

In 1816, B.G. Niebuhr, having already published his important History of Rome, was appointed by his king to be the Prussian ambassador in Rome, where he remained for some years in that office. In that period he had the opportunity to acquire a good knowledge of the Roman Campagna. With reference to the Roman (and Greek) archaeological remains which he came across in his journeys, he proposed the hypothesis that the remains of ancient centuriatio could be found in that part of Italy. Some years later, in his Italienische Reise, J.J. Bachofen, for the first time, began to consider the symbolic elements in the Roman tombs as the evidence of a stadium of ancient civilisations older than that of Roman and Greek patriarchal societies in classical times. Some years later he published his famous Mutterrecht, one of the first important works of modern anthropology.