Andrew Feldherr - After the Past

173 163

174 164

175 165

176 166

177 167

178 168

179 169

180 170

181 171

182 172

183 173

184 174

185 175

186 176

187 177

188 178

189 179

190 180

191 181

192 182

193 183

194 184

195 185

196 186

197 187

198 188

199 189

200 190

201 191

202 192

203 193

204 194

205 195

206 196

207 197

208 198

209 199

210 200

211 201

212 202

213 203

214 204

215 205

216 206

217 207

218 208

219 209

220 210

221 211

222 212

223 213

224 214

225 215

226 216

227 217

228 218

229 219

230 220

231 221

232 222

233 223

234 224

235 225

236 226

237 227

238 228

239 229

240 230

241 231

242 232

243 233

244 234

245 235

246 236

247 237

248 238

249 239

250 240

251 241

252 242

253 243

254 244

255 245

256 246

257 247

258 248

259 249

260 250

261 251

262 252

263 253

264 254

265 255

266 256

267 257

268 258

269 259

270 260

271 261

272 262

273 263

274 264

275 265

276 266

277 267

278 268

279 269

280 270

281 271

282 272

283 273

284 274

285 275

286 276

287 277

288 278

289 279

290 280

291 281

292 282

293 283

294 284

295 285

296 286

297 287

298 288

299 289

300 290

301 291

302 292

303 293

304 294

305 295

306 296

307 297

308 298

309 299

310 300

311 301

312 302

313 303

314 304

315 305

316 306

317 307

318 308

319 309

320 310

321 311

322 312

323 313

324 314

325 315

326 316

327 317

328 318

The opportunity to deliver the 2014 Bristol-Blackwell Lectures on which this book is based has been the highpoint of my professional life. The invitation gave me the chance to attempt a sustained reading of an author who has fascinated and frustrated me since I first encountered him. And the too brief weeks I spent in Bristol itself continue to delight and inspire me with memories of the warm hospitality I received, the generosity and responsiveness of the audiences for my lectures, and so many conversations with students and faculty that simply clicked, not to speak of the interest and beauty of the city, if not always of its weather. Among the many friends I made during that visit, I want to single out for particular thanks Bob Fowler, Laura Jansen, Kurt Lampe, Adam Lecznar, Genevieve Lively, and Edwin Shaw. Ellen O’Gorman and Shane Butler fall into a special category, for beyond the kindness of their welcome each also presented a formal response to one of my talks, as did Christopher Pelling and Christopher Whitton. Peter Wiseman generously read the script of my presentations and pointed out several places where, as he put it with even more generous understatement, “the premises of the argument may be vulnerable.” Should any of these have the stomach to revisit those lectures in written form, I hope they will recognize how much I have learned from them.

If Bristol counts as the Everest of my career, the Princeton of those years was its lofty cloud forest, a habitat it was my unbelievable good fortune to share with the sage pandas, shimmering snow leopards, and mobile langurs that made up its storied fauna. One of the great satisfactions of completing this project has been to recognize how profoundly it has been shaped by the work of so many of my Latinist colleagues. My use, and occasional abuse, of the scholarship of Yelena Baraz, Ted Champlin, Denis Feeney, Harriet Flower, Bob Kaster, Dan-el Padilla Peralta, and Brent Shaw throughout the chapters to follow shows but the traces of a much larger personal and intellectual debt. (And I hope that my old friend Andrew Riggsby, who visited Princeton during that period, will allow himself to be counted in this number.) Further thanks are due to Princeton’s Council of the Humanities, from whom I received an Old Dominion Fellowship, which provided me with leave to write my lectures and allowed me to share the weekly colloquia of its Society of Fellows. Support was also offered by the Loeb Classical Library Foundation.

The long time it has taken me to complete this book has cost me many of the readers with whom I had most looked forward to sharing it. What my dissertation adviser and friend Tom Habinek taught me about how to read Latin literature has sustained and enriched my entire career. And, like its predecessors, this book would have shown him only too clearly how much work remained for him to do. The tact, wisdom, and kindness with which my mother-in-law Zara Steiner nurtured my professional confidence over so many years are a debt I could never repay. And hearing her talk about her own work was a rare and irreplaceable joy.

During the year I began this project, each day started with a walk in the radiant company of my dog Clio. Her presence made every idea seem brilliant and every problem simple. The rest of those mornings was consumed in pushing her away from the computer as I struggled to reconstruct the fragments of what I thought I had figured out. I consoled myself, and I hope her, with the promise of the unclouded times we would spend together once the book was done. Clio died two months before I sent the manuscript out for review. In the face of all Sallust’s moral precepts, I would delete every word to have her back: nothing matters more than a dog’s happiness.

In addition to the lectures I gave at Bristol, I presented earlier versions of Chapter 4at Pomona College and of Chapter 5at Cambridge University, the College of Charleston, and at the 2017 Celtic Conference in Classics in Montreal. I am indebted to the questions and suggestions I received on those occasions.

The contributions of Christina Kraus and the other, anonymous, referee for the press have been beyond exemplary. I am so grateful to each both for seeing the potential of the project and for pointing out in such precise detail where I was falling short of realizing it. They gave me far too much to think about and will themselves know best where I have failed to profit from their advice, but copious thanks are due both from me and my readers for all the improvements and corrections they have made. It was a pleasure to work with my copy editor Helen Kemp. Her diligence and her cheerfulness were equally appreciated. I owe another huge debt to Dr. Emma Curran for preparing the Index of Passages and for catching more mistakes in the manuscript than I dare to count. Many thanks also to Todd Green and the other editors at Wiley Blackwell—over the years—for not losing faith that a manuscript would eventually appear, for their punctual and helpful assistance when it did, and, not least, for packing this dropsical endomorph into the black-sheathed chorus line of their series.

The most important modern treatment of the “revolution” that ended the last Roman Republic concludes as follows: “For power he [sc. Augustus] had sacrificed everything; he had achieved the height of all mortal ambition and in his ambition he had saved and regenerated the Roman People” (Syme 1939, 524). Sallust, the Roman historian whose first experiment in the genre zeroes in on a representative moment in that crisis, stands clearly in the background. The protagonist of Sallust’s work, Catiline, an aristocrat who unsuccessfully tried to seize power in 63 bce, was equally driven on by ambition. Indeed, Sallust identifies such ambition as, with avarice, the cause of revolution, moral and political. But the idea that individual ambition could be a salvific force for the Roman People is unimaginable in his writing, and so the recollection of his contemporary perspective highlights the profound historical irony of the story that Syme has told.