Guglielmo Ferrero (July 21, 1871 - August 3, 1942) was an Italian historian, journalist and novelist, author of the Greatness and Decline of Rome (5 volumes, published after English translation 1907-1909). Ferrero devoted his writings to classical liberalism and he opposed any kind of dictatorship and Big Government. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature twenty times in six years.