Beloch, Karl Julius

Beloch, Karl Julius 

Born Jan. 21, 1854, in Petschkendorf, Silesia; died Feb. 1, 1929, in Rome. German historian of antiquity. University professor in Rome (1879).

Beloch studied socioeconomic relationships and was the first to make broad use of statistical methods in studying the economy of antiquity. He developed population statistics for the ancient world and for medieval and modern Italy. As a representative of the cyclical theory, he modernized knowledge of antiquity. In Beloch’s opinion, after the primitive period in ancient Greece came a period of feudalism, the “Greek Middle Ages,” which in the sixth century B.C. began to be replaced by capitalism; capitalism in turn developed in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. and especially during the era of Hellenism and Roman domination. Beloch equated the actual situation of the slaves with that of workers in capitalist society and equated artisans’ workshops with capitalist factories. Beloch represented the hypercritical trend in the critique of sources.

WORKS

Der italische Bund unter Roms Hegemonie: Staatsrechtliche und statistische Forschungen. Leipzig, 1880.
Die attische Politik seit Perikles. Leipzig, 1884.
Die Bevölkerung der griechisch-römischen Welt. Leipzig, 1886.
Griechische Geschichte, 2nd ed., vols. 1–4. Berlin, 1912–27. In Russian translation: Grecheskaia istoriia, 2nd ed., vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1905.
R̈mische Geschichte bis zum Beginn der punischen Kriege. Berlin-Leipzig, 1926.
Bevölkerungsgeschichte Italiens, vols. 1–3. Berlin-Leipzig, 1937—61.

N. N. PIKUS