1902: Theodor Mommsen - Römische Geschichte

"The greatest living master of the art of historical writing, with special reference to his monumental work, A history of Rome."

"A history of Rome" consists of eight volumes, so I'm going to update this post as I go along.
(Kudos to Gosia who said "it must available as audiobook!" which I didn't believe, but you never know with geeks and literature! librivox is a great public domain reading project by the way!!)

Mommsen was German and wrote in German as I will be when it comes to quotations. I'll probably quote a lot because he has a very ornate yet sharp-cut style, and even a good sense of humour - "Keine Kunde, ja nicht einmal eine Sage erzählt von der ersten Einwanderung des Menschengeschlechts in Italien; vielmehr war im Altertum der Glaube allgemein, daß dort wie überall die erste Bevölkerung dem Boden selbst entsprossen sei."

(I checked the dwds corpus about the word "entsprießen" - he's not the only one to use it, but the last entry I found for it is from the year my grandfather was born).

More to follow!