Ancient Rome and Modern America

Ancient Rome and Modern America is a book by Guglielmo Ferrero, the Italian historian who lived from 1871 to 1942 and who was one of the most internationally famous historians of the early twentieth century. Ferrero produced a substantial body of writing on Roman history, on contemporary political and historical questions, and on the broader relationship between historical understanding and modern political and cultural life.

Ferrero’s major historical work was the five volume Greatness and Decline of Rome, published in Italian between 1902 and 1907 and translated into English and many other languages. The work attempted a substantial reinterpretation of late Republican and early Imperial Roman history, with particular attention to the social, economic, and cultural dimensions of the Roman transformation rather than the more narrowly political and military narrative that had dominated earlier Roman historiography. The work was widely read in its time, although later academic historians of Rome have substantially criticised aspects of Ferrero’s methodology and interpretation.

Ancient Rome and Modern America presents Ferrero’s reflections on the comparative historical and political situation of ancient Rome and the modern United States. The comparison between Rome and America has been a permanent feature of American political and cultural self understanding since the founding period, with American writers and politicians repeatedly drawing parallels between the Roman Republic and the American republican experiment. Ferrero brings to the comparison his substantial knowledge of the Roman historical material and his particular European perspective on early twentieth century American political and economic developments.

Ferrero spent substantial time in the United States during the years before and after the First World War, including lecture tours that introduced him to American political and academic circles. His observations of the United States during the period when American power was emerging as a major factor in international affairs gave him substantial material for reflection on what the Roman parallel might suggest for American political development.

The book belongs to the substantial body of early twentieth century European writing on the United States, which included works by writers as various as Hilaire Belloc, G K Chesterton, and various others who were attempting to make sense of the new American power for European audiences. Ferrero’s particular historical perspective gives his contribution a distinctive character.

The book is of interest to historians of early twentieth century European and American political thought, and to readers interested in the long tradition of Roman American historical comparison.