Guglielmo Ferrero

Born in Portici, Italy, in 1871, Guglielmo Ferrero built a wide-ranging career as a historian, journalist, novelist, and public intellectual. He is especially remembered for The Greatness and Decline of Rome, a major multivolume history that brought him an international readership through its dramatic, readable account of the Roman world.

Ferrero wrote not only about antiquity but also about political life, revolution, and the fragile idea of legitimacy in government. His work often tried to explain how states gain authority, why they lose it, and how fear, ambition, and public belief shape history.

A liberal opponent of Mussolini, he left Italy and spent his later years in Switzerland, where he continued writing until his death in 1942. That experience of exile gave extra force to his interest in tyranny, freedom, and the moral problems of power.