Editing Prosopography (section)

==History==
British historian [[Lawrence Stone]] (1919–1999) brought the term to general attention in an explanatory article in 1971, although it had been used as early as 1897 with the publication of the ''[[Prosopographia Imperii Romani]]'' by German scholars.<ref name="stone"/> The word is drawn from the figure of [[prosopopeia]] in classical [[rhetoric]], introduced by [[Quintilian]], in which an absent or imagined person is {{clarify-span|figured forth—the "face created" as the Greek suggests|date=April 2025}}—in words, as if present.

Stone noted two uses of prosopography as an historian's tool, in uncovering deeper interests and connections beneath the superficial rhetoric of politics, to examine the structure of the political machine and in analysing the changing roles in society of status groups—holders of offices, members of associations—and assessing social mobility through family origins and social connections of recruits to those offices or memberships. "Invented as a tool of political history", Stone observed, "it is now being increasingly employed by the social historians".<ref>Stone 1971, p. 47.</ref>