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Ancient History and the Antiquarian Author(S): Arnaldo Momigliano Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol

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Ancient History and the Antiquarian Author(S): Arnaldo Momigliano Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol Ancient History and the Antiquarian Author(s): Arnaldo Momigliano Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 13, No. 3/4 (1950), pp. 285-315 Published by: The Warburg Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/750215 . Accessed: 16/02/2015 11:06 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Warburg Institute is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.148.231.12 on Mon, 16 Feb 2015 11:06:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ANCIENT HISTORY AND THE ANTIQUARIAN By Arnaldo Momigliano Per gli ottant'anni del mio maestro Gaetano De Sanctis Introduction In the eighteenth century a new humanism competed with the traditional one. It was organized in learned societies instead of being centred in the universities; it was fostered by gentlemen rather than by schoolmasters. They p referred travel to the emendation of texts and altogether subordinated literary texts to coins, statues, vases and inscriptions. Addison discussed the relevance of coins to literary studies,' and Gibbon, who had taken leave of Oxford, renewed his education by spending twenty pounds on the twenty volumes of the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions. Italy was still the centre of attraction, both for the learned and the curious. But it was a more complex Italy, where Etruscan antiquities counted hardly less than Roman ruins, and where extraordinary discoveries began to be announced, from Herculaneum in 1736 and from Pompeii in 1748. Furthermore the antiquities of Greece were growing in significance both for the lucky few- chiefly Englishmen and Frenchmen-who could visit them,'and for the larger, but still restricted number who could afford to buy the splendid books in which they were illustrated: primarily the Antiquitiesof Athensby Stuart and Revett (1762). What is more important, men slowly became aware that they could find beauty and emotion of a new kind if they simply looked at their parish church or at the neighbouring castle-just as they could find poetry if they listened to the songs and stories of isolated farmers. The Grecian, the Celtic and the Gothic revivals, spreading from England to Europe, sealed the triumph of a leisured class which was indifferent to religious controversy, uninterested in grammatical niceties, and craved for strong emotions in art, to counter- balance the peace and security of its own existence.2 Such, if I am not mistaken, is the conventional view of the Age of the Anti- quaries: a view which, though it is incomplete, I have no reason to challenge. This is a very provisional map of a field Caen, 93 x ; K. Clark, The Gothic Revival, An that needs much detailed exploration. Essay in the History of Taste, 2nd ed., London, 1J. Addison, "Dialogues upon the useful- 1950; H. R. Steeves, Learned Societies and ness of Ancient Medals," Miscellaneous Works, English Scholarship, New York, 19 13 III, 1830, pp. 59-199. Essential documents: Comte de Caylus, 2 See, for instance, C. Justi, Winckelmann Recueil d'Antiquites, 1752-67; G. B. Piranesi, und seine Zeitgenossen, 3rd ed. 1923 (ist ed. Antichita romane, 1756; R. Wood, Ruins of 1866); L. Hautecoeur, Rome et la Renaissance Palmyra, 1753; Idem, Ruins of Baalbec, 1757; de l'Antiquitd a lajin du XVIII siecle, 1912 (Bibl. R. Chandler, Marmora Oxoniensia, 1763; A. t?coles Athhnes et Rome, 105); L. Cust and S. Gori, Symbolae litterariae, Florence and Rome, Colvin, History of the Society of Dilettanti, 1748-51. Baudelot de Dairval, De l'utilite' des second issue 1914 (1898), pp. i-xli; E. D. voyages et de l'avantage que la recherchedes anti- Snyder, The Celtic Revival in English Literature, quitez procure aux sfavans, I, 1686, pp. 1-70 is Cambridge, Mass., 1923; P. Yvon, Le an invaluable document for the "ethics" of Gothique et la Renaissance Gothiqueen Angleterre, the antiquarians. 285 This content downloaded from 128.148.231.12 on Mon, 16 Feb 2015 11:06:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 286 ARNALDO MOMIGLIANO But the Age of the Antiquaries meant not only a revolution in taste; it meant a revolution in historical method. Here perhaps i student of historiography can intervene. The Age of the Antiquaries set standards and posed problems of historical method which we can hardly call obsolete to-day. The whole modern method of historical research is founded upon the dis- tinction between original and derivative authorities. By original authorities we mean either statements by eye-witnesses, or documents, and other material remains, that are contemporary with the events which they attest. By deriva- tive authorities we mean historians or chroniclers who relate and discuss events which they have not witnessed but which they have heard of or inferred directly or indirectly from original authorities. We praise original authorities -or sources-for being reliable, but we praise non-contemporary historians -or derivative authorities-for displaying sound judgment in the interpre- tation and evaluation of the original sources. This distinction between original authorities and non-contemporary historians became the common patrimony of historical research only in the late seventeenth century. The distinction is of course to be found before that time, but it was not formulated with any degree of accuracy or generally considered to be a necessary pre- supposition of historical study. In the formation of the new historical method -and consequently in the creation of modern historical writing on the ancient world-the so-called antiquaries played a conspicuous part and posed essential problems. They showed how to use non-literary evidence, but they also made people reflect on the difference between collecting facts and interpreting facts. It is the purpose of this essay to explain, first, the origins of antiquarian research; secondly, why the antiquaries played such a part in the reform of historical method in the eighteenth century; and finally, why in the nineteenth century it became increasingly evident that there was no longer any justifi- cation for making a distinction between antiquarian and historical studies. I The Originsof AntiquarianResearch First of all we must ask ourselves who the antiquaries were. I wish I could simply refer to a History of Antiquarian Studies. But none exists.' All I can do here is to enumerate a few elementary facts. I assume that to many of us the word "antiquary" suggests the notion of a student of the past who is not quite a historian because: (I) historians write in a chronological order; antiquaries write in a systematic order: (2) historians produce those facts which serve to illustrate or explain a certain situation; antiquaries collect all the items that are connected with a certain subject, whether they help to solve a problem or not. The subject-matter contributes 1 The best is in C. B. Stark, Systematik und For England cf. H. B. Walters, The English Geschichte der Archdologie der Kunst, Leipzig, Antiquaries of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and I88o. Much information also in J. W. Eighteenth Centuries, London, 1934. For Thompson and B. J. Holm, A History of France, S. Reinach, "Esquisse d'une histoire Historical Writing, II, 1942, and of course in de l'archeologie gauloise," Revue Celtique, J. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship, XIX, 1898, pp. 101-17, 292-307 (see below, Cambridge, I-III, 1906-08; Ch.-V. Langlois, p. 314, note I). Manuel de Bibliographie Historique, Paris, 19o0. This content downloaded from 128.148.231.12 on Mon, 16 Feb 2015 11:06:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ANCIENT HISTORY AND THE ANTIQUARIAN 287 to the distinction between historians and antiquaries only in so far as certain subjects (such as political institutions, religion, private life) have traditionally been considered more suitable for systematic description than for a chrono- logical account. When a man writes in chronological order, but without explaining the facts, we call him a chronicler; when a man collects all the facts available to him but does not order them systematically, we set him aside as muddle-headed. I'f that is a correct expression of the prevailing feeling about antiquaries, the opinion that the predecessors of modern antiquaries are to be found in Greece during the second half of the fifth century B.C. must be somewhat qualified. From a famous passage in Plato's Hippiasmaior (285 d) we learn that the genealogies of heroes and men, the traditions on the foundations of cities and the lists of eponymous magistrates of a city were part of a science called "archaeology." The speaker is the sophist Hippias whom we know to have composed a list of the winners in the Olympic games. The word "archaeology," as Norden observed long ago, is one that a sophist could easily have invented.' There can be little doubt that Plato is transmitting to us a notion which was genuinely familiar to the sophists of the second half of the fifth century B.c.: the notion of a science called archaeologydealing with subjects which to-day we would call of antiquarian interest. But the form of the treatment may in certain cases have been that of the chronicle rather than that of the systematic hand-book.
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