Rostovtzeff was the son of a Latin teacher. Upon completing his studies at the universities ofKiev andSt. Petersburg, Rostovtsev served as an assistant and then as a full Professor of Latin at theUniversity of St. Petersburg 1898–1918.[8] In 1918, following theRussian Revolution, he emigrated first to Sweden, then to England, and finally in 1920 to the United States. There he accepted a chair at theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison before moving toYale University in 1925 where he taught until his retirement in 1944.[9] He oversaw all archaeological activities of the latter institution in general and the excavations ofDura-Europos in particular.[10] He is believed to have coined the term "caravan city".[11]
While working inRussia, Rostovtzeff became an authority on the ancient history of South Russia and Ukraine. He summed up his knowledge on the subject inIranians and Greeks in South Russia (1922) andSkythien und der Bosporus (1925). His most important archaeological findings at Yale were described inDura-Europos and Its Art (1938).
Glen Bowersock described Rostovtzeff's views as having been largely formed by the age of thirty, developing mainly only in the quality of execution in later life, and making him "the last of the nineteenth-century ancient historians".[12] Rostovtzeff was known as a proud and slightly overpowering man who did not fit in easily. In later life, he suffered from depression.
The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire
Rostovtzeff's notable theories, particularly onRoman Empire's collapse, were expounded inThe Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (1926).[13] Scarred by his experience of fleeing from the Russian Revolution, he attributed the collapse of the Roman Empire to an alliance between the rural proletariat and the military in the third century A.D. Despite not being a Marxist himself, Rostovtzeff used terms such asproletariat,bourgeoisie andcapitalism freely in his work and the importation of those terms into a description of the ancient world, where they did not necessarily apply, caused criticism.[12]
Rostovtzeff's theory was quickly understood as one based on the author's own experiences and equally quickly rejected by the academic community. Bowersock later described the book as "the marriage of pre-1918 scholarly training and taste with post-1918 personal experience and reflection." At the same time, however, the detailed scholarship involved in the production of the work impressed his contemporaries and he was one of the first to merge archaeological evidence with literary sources.
The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire. 1926. (Revised edition in German 1931, and further revised edition in Italian 1933) (Second edition, revised by P.M. Fraser, Oxford, 1957)
A History of the Ancient World: Volume I The Orient and Greece. Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1926.
A History of the Ancient World: Volume II Rome. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927.
Mystic Italy. New York: Henry Holt, 1927. (Brown University, the Colver lectures series)
Caravan Cities. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932. (First published in book form asO Blijnem Vostoke. Paris, 1931.)[a]
Dura-Europos and Its Art. 1938.
The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941. (2nd edition 1953)
^abBowersock, G.W. "The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire by Michael Ivanovitch Rostovtzef" inDaedalus, Vol. 103, No. 1, Twentieth-Century Classics Revisited (Winter, 1974), pp. 15–23.
Bongard-Levin, G.M.The great Russian historian M. Rostovtsev in the USA: The years of exile. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999 (in Russian,ISBN978-0-7734-3226-0).
Bowersock, G.W. "Rostovtzeff in Madison" inAmerican Scholar, Spring 1986, Vol. 55 Issue 3, pp. 391–400.
Fichtner, Nadezda (2020).Der Althistoriker Michail Rostovtzeff. Wissenschaft und Politik im vorrevolutionären und bolschewistischen Russland (1890–1918) [The Classical Historian Michael Rostovtzeff. Science and politics in pre-revolutionary and Bolshevik Russia (1890-1918)]. Philippika, vol. 142. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,ISBN978-3-447-11450-9.
Hopkins, Clark.The discovery of Dura-Europos. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979 (ISBN978-0-300-02288-9).
Momigliano, Arnaldo. "M.I. Rostovtzeff" inThe Cambridge Journal, 1954, 7,pp. 334–346.Studies in historiography (The Academy Library, TB 1288). New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1966,pp. 91–104.Studies on Modern Scholarship. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994 (paperback,ISBN978-0-520-08545-9), pp. 32–43.
Reinhold, Meyer. "Historian of the Classic World: A Critique of Rostovtzeff",Studies in Classical History and Society (American Classical Studies; 45). New York: Oxford University Press, 2002 (ISBN978-0-19-514543-4), pp. 82–100.
Shaw, Brent D. "Under Russian eyes: [Review article]",The Journal of Roman studies, Vol. 82. (1992), pp. 216–228.
Wes, Marinus A.Michael Rostovtzeff, historian in exile: Russian roots in an American context (Historia-Einzelschriften; 65). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1990 (ISBN978-3-515-05664-9).
Reviewed by Brent D. Shaw inThe Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 82. (1992), pp. 216–228.
Wes, Marinus A. "The Russian background of the young Rostovtzeff",Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Vol. 37, No. 2. (1988), pp. 207–221.
Wes, Marinus A. "The Correspondence between Rostovtzeff and Westermann. A Note onGaetano De Sanctis",Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Vol. 42, No. 1. (1993), pp. 125–128.
