Reformy Mariusza, czyli długie trwanie historiograficznego mitu
Marian Reforms, or the Long Duration of Historiographic Myth

Summary/Abstract: Most authors writing about the so-called Marian reforms do not try to trace the process of shaping the discourse devoted to their course. Meanwhile, drawing attention to the way this issue was presented by nineteenth-century scholars provides additional arguments to support the belief that the traditional vision is misguided. Considering the fact that none of the ancient authors had mentioned the Marian reforms, the theory is based on the creative interpretation of several fragments of preserved ancient literary sources. After some years the suggestive vision had presented once by C. C. L. Lange was raised to the rank of dogma by his epigones (Wilhelm Rüstow, Hans Delbrück, Georg Veith) and recognized as fi nally proven, although he was fully aware of its speculative nature. The worsening knowledge of German language additionally contributed to the marginalization of views created by scholars from the turn of 19th and 20th centuries. After the end of World War II, deconstruction of the existence of Marian reforms was carried out, although the arguments presented by its critics seem to be incomplete without taking into account one of the most important arguments resulting from a historiographic analysis: how the conviction about the existence of Marian reforms became widely accepted by the authors of books devoted to the history of ancient Rome.

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