The Romance of the Republic: Class Conflict and the Problem of Progress in Thomas Arnold's History of Rome (1838-42).

This article repositions Thomas Arnold as a major nineteenth-century historian through an analysis of his most important work, the History of Rome (1838-42). While scholars have focused primarily on Arnold's role as headmaster of Rugby School and Liberal Anglican theologian, I examine his historical contribution in the context of the Romantic movement. Building on the work of B. G. Niebuhr and Giambattista Vico, Arnold interpreted the contest between the patricians and plebeians at Rome as emblematic of a universal class struggle, in which failure to find a compromise between the rich and the poor would inevitably lead to disaster.