Emilio Gabba, a 1955 Fulbright scholar at the American Academy in Rome and based for most of his career in Pavia and Pisa, died on 12 August 2013.
Gabba was one of the great historians to emerge in the latter half of the twentieth century, and his work on the history of the Roman republic, the Roman army, and in the field of historiography remains important. His interests, learning, and acumen were broad and deep, but he will fittingly be remembered for his first book, Appiano e la storia delle guerre civili (1956), a bahnbrechende study of the most historically significant part of the second-century CE author Appian's history of Rome's rise. This watershed work arose in part from the time he spent as a Fulbright at the Academy, reflected in his thanks to Lily Ross Taylor in the preface.
Initially seeking to better understand the history of the late Republic, Gabba's sensitive and phenomenally well informed study of Appian revolutionized our understanding of this author, whose Civil Wars is crucial to understanding that period. It is not too much to say that all subsequent work on Appian is indebted to Gabba's Appiano, and his presence can be felt in all scholarship using Appian as a source since. His commentaries on the first (1958, 21967) and fifth (1970) books of Appian's Civil Wars are to this day the indispensable standard reference works on their subjects.