Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Niebuhr, Barthold Georg

NIEBUHR, (1776-1831), the historian of ancient Rome, was the son of Karsten Niebuhr, noticed below, and was born at Copenhagen on August 27, 1776. His family was of Hanoverian extraction. In his infancy his father removed to Meldorf in South Ditmarsh, where he had received a Government appointment, and devoted his leisure to the instruction of his

son. From the earliest age young Niebuhr manifested extraordinary precocity, and especial interest in history and politics. From 1794 to 1796, being already a finished classical scholar and acquainted with several modern languages, he studied at the university of Kiel, applying himself to mathematics, logic, philosophy, and other studies previously neglected. He there formed the most important friendship of his life, that with Madame Hensler, the widowed daughter-in-law of one of the professors, and a woman of unusual strength of character, six years older than himself. He also made the acquaintance of her sister, Amelie Behrens, whom he subsequently married. After quitting the university he became private secretary to Count Schimmelmann, Danish minister of finance, but finding that the post did not allow him sufficient leisure for study, he quitted it for an appointment at the royal library. He shortly afterwards travelled in Great Britain, and spent a year at Edinburgh studying agriculture and physical science. His observations on England and Scotland, conveyed in letters to his betrothed, are exceedingly interesting; but he failed to obtain that confidence in the capacity of an educated community for self-government which residence in a free country might have been expected to bestow, and which would have saved him much sorrow, and most of his errors in practical politics. He says, nevertheless, &ldquo;my early residence in England gave me one important key to Roman history. It is necessary to know civil life by personal observation in order to understand such states as those of antiquity. I never could have understood a number of things in the history of Rome without having observed England.&rdquo; He also acquired in Scotland a feeling for nature, in which he had previously been remarkably deficient. In 1799 he returned to Denmark, where he was soon appointed assessor in the East India department of the Board of Trade, and secretary for the affairs of the Danish consulates in Barbary. In 1800 he married and settled at Copenhagen. In 1804 he became chief director of the National Bank, but in September 1806, after negotiations which had extended over more than a year, quitted this for a similar appointment in Prussia. The step was a false one as concerned his personal interests, and not highly creditable to his patriotism as a Danish subject; but it is not to be regretted, since, without the release from public life which it ultimately occasioned, we should not have possessed his Roman History.

He arrived in Prussia on the eve of the catastrophe of Jena, and shared to the full all the disasters and miseries which overwhelmed the monarchy. He accompanied the fugitive Government to Königsberg, where he rendered considerable service in the commissariat, and was afterwards still more useful as commissioner of the national debt, and by his opposition to ill-considered schemes of taxation. He was also for a short time Prussian minister in Holland, where he endeavoured without success to contract a loan. The extreme sensitiveness of his temperament, however, disqualified him for politics; he proved impracticable in his relations with Hardenberg and other ministers, and in 1810 retired for a time from public life, accepting the more congenial appointment of royal historiographer and professor at the university of Berlin. He commenced his lectures with a course on the history of Rome. The enthusiastic reception these experienced filled him with delight. He recognized that he had found his vocation, and henceforth regarded the history of Rome from the earliest age to Augustus as the task of his life. The first two volumes, based upon his lectures, were published in 1812, but attracted little attention at the time owing to the absorbing interest of political events. In 1813 Niebuhr's own attention was diverted from history by

the uprising of the German people against Napoleon; he entered the landwehr, and ineffectually sought admission into the regular army. He edited for a short time a patriotic journal, The Prussian Correspondent, joined the headquarters of the allied sovereigns, and witnessed the battle of Bautzen, and was subsequently employed in some minor negotiations. In 1815 he lost his father, whose life he subsequently wrote; and in July his beloved wife, whose health had long been declining, expired, enjoining him to finish his History. He next accepted the post of ambassador at Rome, which he probably thought would assist his historical labours, and departed to assume that office in July 1816. On his way he discovered in the cathedral library of Verona the long-lost Institutes of Gaius, afterwards edited by Savigny, to whom he communicated the discovery under the impression that he had found a portion of Ulpian. Before his departure for Rome he had married his wife's niece, an amiable young person, but inferior intellectually to his first wife, and almost equally delicate in constitution. Although devoted to him, she could in no way replace her predecessor. Nor was he happy in other respects. He disliked the Italians, and found himself unable to proceed as he wished with his History. These causes, acting upon a naturally querulous and despondent temper, produced a general dissatisfaction and discouragement which coloured all his views of human affairs, and deprived the world of the benefit that it might have received from the observations of one endowed with such profound insight and such noble sympathies. While his distrust made him ungenerous to those who were contending for a better order of things, his appreciation of the lessons of history withheld him equally from siding with the reactionary party. His position in his latter years was hence one of great isolation, not uncheered, however, by the sympathy of friends and disciples such as Savigny and Bunsen. During his residence in Rome he discovered and published fragments of Cicero and Livy, aided Cardinal Mai in his edition of Cicero De Republica, and shared in framing the plan of Bunsen and Platner's great work on the topography of ancient Rome, to which he contributed several chapters. He also, on a journey home from Italy, deciphered in a palimpsest at St Gall the fragments of Flavius Merobaudes, a Roman poet of the 5th century. In 1823 he resigned the embassy and established himself at Bonn, where the remainder of his life was spent, with the exception of some visits to Berlin as councillor of state. He here rewrote and republished (1827-28) the first two volumes of his History, and composed a third volume, bringing the narrative down to the end of the First Punic War, which he did not himself entirely complete, but which, with the help of a fragment written in 1811, was edited after his death by Professor Classen. He also assisted in Bekker's edition of the Byzantine historians, and delivered courses of lectures on ancient history, ethnography, and geography, and on the French Revolution, which were published from notes after his death. In February 1830 his house was burned down, but the greater part of his books and manuscripts were saved. The revolution of July in the same year was a terrible blow to him, and filled him with the most dismal anticipations of the future of Europe. He died on January 2, 1831, from a chill taken in coming home from a news-room where he had been eagerly studying the trial of the ministers of Charles X. His wife survived him only nine days. He left several children by her; his first marriage had been childless.