Friedrich Münzer and his Roman Aristocratic Parties and Families

As author of 5000+ articles on individuals and families in the Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Friedrich Münzer must be considered the doyen of Republican prosopography. In his opus magnum, he proposed to reconstruct the formation and development of aristocratic ‹parties› or ‹factions›, based on ties of kinship, marriage and friendship between aristocratic families and incessantly contending with each other for ‹power› in the shape of the consulship. Though this model of ‹factional politics› was very influential until the 1960s, it was criticised in the latter half of the 20th century and is now generally considered obsolete.