Hearsay, history, and heresy

This book features a selection of articles by Richard E. Mitchell concerning the origins and development of the ancient Roman state and the modern historiography that supports our understanding of that history. The introduction and commentary are provided by one of his PhD students, Randall S. Howarth, whose own work is very much concerned with the same topic. The publication of these articles in a single volume provides a comprehensive commentary on the assumptions governing modern reconstructions of the period and the problems informing those assumptions.

The social and institutional history of the Roman Republic, especially that of the earliest years, is one of the most problematic and convoluted areas of study in the ancient world. Modern scholars have tended to assume that we should take the broad outlines of the traditions handed to us by the Romans at face value, despite their invention hundreds of years after the fact. The inevitable result is that the dominant modern narrative contains a core of assumptions of dubious historicity. While some scholars have made significant attempts to correct portions of the obviously flawed narrative, virtually none have gone so far as to question its most fundamental elements. Mitchell's work has always done exactly this and when originally published, many of his arguments were regarded as radical. Nevertheless, over the last twenty years or so, scholarly consensus is inexorably moving toward Mitchell. This collection traces the development of Mitchell's thought processes and highlights all of the most important evidence. --Back Cover.