Theodor Mommsen

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) was a German historian, classical scholar and jurist, the leading authority of his time on ancient Rome. Born in Schleswig, he studied law and spent years in Italy collecting Latin inscriptions. Dismissed from his chair at Leipzig for his part in the revolution of 1848, he taught at Zurich and Breslau before settling in Berlin. His History of Rome (1854–1856) won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902. He directed the great Corpus of Latin Inscriptions, wrote a monumental study of Roman constitutional law, and sat as a liberal opponent of Bismarck in the Prussian and imperial parliaments.