#n.g.l. hammond

[jeannereames]

I see you talk a lot about historiography! What would you consider the most important development of Alexander’s historiography?

What the Hell is Historiography? (And why you should care)

This question and the next one in the queue are both going to be fun for me. 😊

First, some quick definitions for those who are new to me and/or new to reading history:

Historiography = “the history of the histories” (E.g., examination of the sources themselves rather than the subject of them…a topic that typically incites yawns among undergrads but really fires up the rest of us, ha.)

primary sources = the evidence itself—can be texts, art, records, or material evidence. For ancient history, this specifically means the evidence from the time being studied.

secondary sources = writings by historians using the primary evidence, whether meant for a “regular” audience (non-specialists) or academic discussions with citations, footnotes, and bibliography (sometimes referred to as “full scholarly apparatus”).

For ancient history, we also sometimes get a weird middle category…they’re not modern sources but also not from the time under discussion, might even be from centuries after the fact. Consider the medieval Byzantine “encyclopedia” called the Suda (sometimes Suidas), which contains information from now lost ancient sources, finalized c. 900s CE. To give a comparison, imagine some historian a thousand years from now studying Geoffry Chaucer from the 1300s, using an entry about him in some kid’s 1975 World Book Encyclopedia that contains information that had been lost by his day.

This middle category is especially important for Alexander, since even our primary sources all date hundreds of years after his death. Yes, those writers had access to contemporary accounts, but they didn’t just “cut-and-paste.” They editorialized and selected from an array of accounts. Worse, they rarely tell us who they used. FIVE surviving primary Alexander histories remain, but he’s mentioned in a wide (and I do mean wide) array of other surviving texts. Alas this represents maybe a quarter of what was actually written about him in antiquity.

OKAY, so …

The most important historiographic changes in Alexander studies!

I’m going to pick three, or really two-and-a-half, as the last is an extension of the second.

FIRST …decentering Arrian as the “good” source as opposed to the so-called “vulgate” of Diodoros-Curtius-Justin as “bad” sources.

Many earlier Alexander historians (with a few important exceptions [Fritz Schachermeyr]) considered Arrian to be trustworthy, Plutarch moderately trustworthy if short, and the rest varying degrees of junk. W. W. Tarn was especially guilty of this. The prevalence of his view over Schachermeyr’s more negative one owed to his popularity/ease of reading, and the fact he wrote on Alexander for volume 6 of the first edition (1927) of the Cambridge Ancient History, later republished in two volumes with additions (largely in vol. 2) in 1948 and 1956. Thus, and despite being a lawyer (barrister) not a professional historian, his view dominated Alexander studies in the first half of the 20th century (Burn, Rose, etc.)…and even after. Both Mary Renault and Robin Lane Fox (neither of whom were/are professional historians either), as well as N. G. L. Hammond (with qualifications), show Tarn’s more romantic impact well into the middle of the second half of the 20th century. But you could find it in high school and college textbooks into the 1980s.

The first really big shift (especially in English) came with a pair of articles in 1958 by Ernst Badian: “The Eunuch Bagoas,” Classical Quarterly 8, and “Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind,” Historia 7. Both demolished Tarn’s historiography. I’ve talked about especially the first before, but it really WAS that monumental, and ushered in a more source-critical approach to Alexander studies. This also happened to coincide with a shift to a more negative portrait of the conqueror in work from the aforementioned Schachermeyr (reissuing his earlier biography in 1973 as Alexander der Grosse: Das Problem seiner Persönlichtenkeit und seines Wirkens) to Peter Green’s original Alexander of Macedon from Praeger in 1970, reissued in 1991 from Univ. of California-Berkeley. J. R. Hamilton’s 1973 Alexander the Great wasn’t as hostile, but A. B. Bosworth’s 1988 Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great turned back towards a more negative, or at least ambivalent portrait, and his Alexander in the East: The Tragedy of Triumph (1996) was highly critical. I note the latter two, as Bosworth wrote the section on Alexander for the much-revised Cambridge Ancient History vol. 6, 1994, which really demonstrates how the narrative on Alexander had changed.

All this led to an unfortunate kick-back among Alexander fans who wanted their hero Alexander. They clung/still cling to Arrian (and Plutarch) as “good,” and the rest as varying degrees of bad. Some prefer Tarn’s view of the mighty conqueror/World unifier/Brotherhood-of-Mankind proponent, including that He Absolutely Could Not Have Been Queer. Conversely, others are all over the romance of him and Hephaistion, or Bagoas (often owing to Renault or Renault-via-Oliver Stone), but still like the squeaky-nice-chivalrous Alexander of Plutarch and Arrian.

They are very much still around. Quite a few of the former group freaked out over the recent Netflix thing, trotting out Plutarch (and Arrian) to Prove He Wasn’t Queer, and dismissing anything in, say, Curtius or Diodoros as “junk” history. But I also run into it on the other side, with those who get really caught up in all the romance and can’t stand the idea of a vicious Alexander.

It's not necessary to agree with Badian’s (or Green’s or Schachermeyr’s) highly negative Alexander to recognize the importance of looking at all the sources more carefully. Justin is unusually problematic, but each of the other four had a method, and a rationale. And weaknesses. Yes, even Arrian. Arrian clearly trusted Ptolemy to a degree Curtius didn’t. For both of them, it centered on the fact he was a king. I’m going to go with Curtius on this one, frankly.

Alexander is one of the most malleable famous figures in history. He’s portrayed more ways than you can shake a stick at—positive, negative, in-between—and used for political and moral messaging from even before his death in Babylon right up to modern Tik-Tok vids.

He might have been annoyed that Julius Caesar is better known than he is, in the West, but hands-down, he’s better known worldwide thanks to the Alexander Romance in its many permutations. And he, more than Caesar, gets replicated in other semi-mythical heroes. (Arthur, anybody?)

Alfred Heuss referred to him as a wineskin (or bottle)—schlauch, in German—into which subsequent generations poured their own ideas. (“Alexander  der  Große  und  die politische Ideologie  des Altertums,” Antike und Abendland 4, 1954.) If that might be overstating it a bit, he’s not wrong.

Who Alexander was thus depends heavily on who was (and is) writing about him.

And that’s why nuanced historiography with regard to the Alexander sources is so important. It’s also why there will never be a pop presentation that doesn’t infuriate at least a portion of his fanbase. That fanbase can’t agree on who he was because the sources that tell them about him couldn’t agree either.

SECOND …scholarship has moved away from an attempt to find the “real” Alexander towards understanding the stories inside our surviving histories and their themes. A biography of Alexander is next to impossible (although it doesn’t stop most of us from trying, ha). It’s more like a “search” for Alexander, and any decent history of his career will begin with the sources. And their problems.

This also extends to events. I find myself falling in the middle between some of my colleagues who genuinely believe we can get back to “what happened,” and those who sorta throw up their hands and settle on “what story the sources are telling us, and why.” Classic Libra. 😉

As frustrating as it may sound, I’m afraid “it depends” is the order of the day, or of the instance, at least. Some things are easier to get back to than others, and we must be ready to acknowledge that even things reported in several sources may not have happened at all. Or at least, were quite radically different from how it was later reported. (Thinking of proskynesis here.) Sometimes our sources are simply irreconcilable…and we should let them be. (Thinking of the Battle of Granikos here.)

THIRD/SECOND-AND-A-HALF …a growing awareness of just how much Roman-era attitudes overlay and muddy our sources, even those writing in Greek. It would be SO nice to have just one Hellenistic-era history. I’d even take Kleitarchos! But I’d love Marsyas, or Ptolemy. Why? Both were Macedonians. Even our surviving philhellenic authors such as Plutarch impose Greek readings and morals on Macedonian society.

So, let’s add Roman views on top of Greek views on top of Macedonian realities in a period of extremely fast mutation (Philip and Alexander both). What a muddle! In fact, one of the real advantages of a source such as Curtius is that his sources seem to have known a thing or three about both Achaemenid Persia and also Macedonian custom. He sometimes says something like, “Macedonian custom was….” We don’t know if he’s right, but it’s not something we find much in other histories—even Arrian who used Ptolemy. (Curtius may also have used Ptolemy, btw.)

In any case, as a result of more care given to the themes of the historians, a growing sensitivity to Roman milieu for all of them has altered our perceptions of our sources.

These are, to me, the major and most significant shifts in Alexander historiography from the late 1800s to the early 2100s.

[claradailey-viscom-blog]

Research; BIRMINGHAM LIBRARY

Brief History 

September 1865 - Birmingham's first public library opened to great acclaim January 1879 - Fire significantly damaged the building and contents. June 1882 - A rebuilt library reopened along with new donations. 1938 - The council approved the building of a new library but war postponed the plans. 1960 - The Birmingham Mail reported the library was struggling to look after 750,000 books in a building designed to hold 30,000. June 1970 - The foundation stone of a new library was laid on the same site as the old one. Mid 1973 - The new building, designed by Birmingham's John Madin, was ready and in use, January 1974 - The library was officially opened by the Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Early 2000 - The council identified major problems with the 1970s building. September 2006 - Centenary Square was revealed as the location for the new library. August 2008 - Architects Mecanoo were appointed. April 2009 - The new Library of Birmingham design was revealed. November 2009 - The Culture and Tourism Minister decided not to give the old Central Library listed status. December 2012 - Demolition of the old Central Library was agreed by the council. June 2013 - The library closes to readers with more than 400,000 books being transferred. September 2013 - The new £190m Library of Birmingham opened

Books Viewed

Atlas Of the Greek World; Peter Levi (1981)- Each volume is divided into three key sections; Geographical/ethnographic background, Cultural history and a tour of present-day regions.From its beginnings in the Minoan period to the impact of classical Hellenism in our world today, the book is a survey of the geography, history, society, culture, and heritage of ancient Greece. 

Atlas Of the Greek World; N.G.L Hammond (1986) - This new edition of a well-known history of ancient Greece presents a modern interpretation of Greek ideas, culture, and history. N.G.L. Hammond's work thoroughly documents its ancient sources, and directs readers to further studies in the field. It includes the spread of tumulus-burial in Albania and the Mycenaean world, the dating of early coinage, the decree of Themistocles, and on aspects of the rule of Alexander the Great. Wide-ranging in scope, yet rich in detail, this work adds a modern perspective to the study of a fascinating ancient culture.

Atlas Of the Greek World; Peter Levi (1981)

The Development Of Vase Painting;

The prime interest in the study of greek vases is their decoration rather than their shapes, and the way in which their figure decoration in particular develops in step with advances in other arts. The earliest Ion Age vases (10th-9th centuries) carry abstract patterns still and only with the fully geometric style (8th century) do figures appear, in a very stylised form. Near eastern arts introduced the animal frieze as a mojor decorative element and inspired the “black figure” technique, where the figures are in silhouette wuth incised detail and little added colour.

In about 530 BC Athens invented the red figure technique, where the figures are reserved in a black background and detail is painted in. The effect is far more realistic smf the white vases display a technique inspired by the appearance of classical murrals.

In the second half of the 5th century emigrant artists started important schools in south Italy and Sicily, where there was vigorous production on through to the 4th century. After this, the red figure style died out and in Hellenistic Greece printed vase decoration was uncommon and unimportant.

[jeannereames]

weird question but what do you think Alexander would’ve thought of Machiavellian philosophy toward ruling? i feel like he employed some aspects of it throughout his life / career

A Machiavellian Alexander?

Because he didn’t write anything on the topic (that survives), it’s hard to know what Alexander’s theories on kingship/rule were, although I suspect he had theories, having been a student of Aristotle. Yet if some of the anecdotes about his days as a student can be believed, he resisted letting theory eat pragmatics—frustrating his teacher. (Although his teacher was more pragmatic than his teacher, Plato.) He purported to believe in what we might call “situational decision making.” As his time as the buck-stops person increased, he grew even more creative and less wedded to theoretical scaffolding. There was a lot of throwing ideas against a wall to see what stuck.

Although The Prince is Machiavelli’s best-known work, it’s actually atypical of his other writings. Dedicated to Lorenzo de’Medici, it was intended to teach rulers how to maintain power successfully. As such, it’s amoral (rather than immoral). A practical guide that divorced philosophic ethics from political theory. (To what degree he really believed it himself is, I understand, a point of contention.)

The Prince is the opposite of Plato—or Aristotle, for that matter. Rulers had been utilizing many of the ideas Machiavelli suggested, but nobody writing about politics advised them. Philosophers and political theorists had been trying to teach kings, tyrants, emperors, and other rulers to exercise power in moral ways, not amoral ones: Neo-Pythagorean idealized societies or Plato and his “philosopher king.” Stoics later went in one direction, Epicureans in another, and Neoplatonists in yet another, etc. That pattern would continue down into the medieval world. Until Machiavelli. (And even after him.)

To theorists, politics should be bound up with ethical thinking in order to create the best, most just society.

That’s the tradition Alexander was raised in, so I think he’d have been somewhere between offended and impressed by The Prince. He’d recognize the soundness of the advice, while being astonished anybody would set it down AS advice to be followed. I think he’d regard it as “last-ditch policy,” certainly when younger. Age and experience sanded down the idealism, but I don’t think it ever entirely sanded it off.

It’s hard to know just how devoted to philosophy Alexader actually was. This owes to the narrative programs inserted by later writers. For instance, Plutarch wanted to portray him as a “philosopher in armor.” I think most serious Alexander scholars these days dismiss that as a fictional portrait that served Plutarch’s moralizing and elevation of Hellenic culture during the Roman imperial period. But how much did the historical Alexander pursue philosophy? And did he do so for personal reasons (preference), or as a “show” to impress the Greeks (and is that division an artificial one, in itself)?

Some scholars, including Ernst Badian, Ian Worthington, and Peter Green would, I believe argue that he was pragmatic with little patience for philosophy unless it served his purposes: e.g., very The Prince-like. Others, including N.G.L. Hammond and Robin Lane Fox would rather see him in more Plutarchian terms. Yet others, such as Sabine Müller and Yossi Roismann, would regard him as a gifted statesman and diplomat, but not somebody marching around with his head in the clouds. I probably come closer to that latter view.

Yet I do think we need to take more seriously than we sometimes do the fact that he was Aristotle’s student. If he did not adopt some of Aristotle’s specific views on, say, non-Greeks, he would still have been a different sort of (Macedonian) king as a result of his education, probably more inclined to think about what he was doing in terms of political theory. If you wanted to put it in modern terms, we might regard him as a “first-generation college student.” Ha. And an enthusiastic one, not simply someone there to get a degree in pursuit of a higher-paying job. By all accounts, he appears to have been a deep-thinker—as was his father, albeit without the formal training. Philip worked out a lot of things about successful rule on his own…then made sure his son was given the proper educational scaffolding to make him even better at it.

So, while we may not have a good idea of Alexander’s personal political philosophies, and if—as he aged—he appears to have grown more cynical, I think it would be a mistake to see him as intentionally amoral in approach. He wanted to be, and saw himself as, a “good” (i.e., just) king. When he did “bad” (immoral or cruel) things, he would have blamed situational necessity.

In that, he’s like most people. By-in-large, when the average person behaves badly, they don’t see themselves as “bad” people, but as people who want to be good stuck between a rock and a hard place. “The devil/[circumstance] made me do it.” Alexander was no different.

[jeannereames]

What made you interested in the life of Alexander in the first place (before you became an expert)? Like, what about his life hooked you?

Why Alexander?

First, I had a similar question, albeit about Hephaistion, see link below. In some ways, my answer to Why Alexander? hinges on Why Hephaistion? I walked into Penn State already knowing what I wanted my dissertation to be on (Hephaistion), and it remained only to convince my committee that sufficient ancient evidence existed to write it. So, I link to that to read at the outset, then will address the rest below.

I’ve told the story before, here and elsewhere, of how I first discovered Alexander, and that may also explain a little of what hooked me. I was in grad school, taking early church history; this guy, “Alexander the Great” kept getting referred to on a par with Julius Caesar, in terms of importance. I knew who Caesar was, but not really Alexander. I’d heard the name, sure, but knew nada about him. That’s because I’d managed to get through both high school and my undergraduate degree (in English/Creative Writing) with virtually NO history classes. (Something that, now, I consider a bad thing, mind.) History had bored me because my junior high teachers had largely been inept.

In any case, realizing I should probably find out something about this guy, I trotted over to the Emory Uni library and checked out two biographies, randomly selected—one because it had pictures! This was the summer of 1988.

Fatefully, these turned out to be N.G.L. Hammond’s Alexander the Great: King, Commander, and Statesman (1980) and Peter Green’s Alexander of Macedon (1973). The first was Hammond’s older, more measured bio, and the latter Green’s original Thames & Hudson edition (with images) that the Univ. of California Berkeley later republished in 1991 (with some, but surprisingly few, updates).

Anyway, the portrait of Alexander in these two biographies is WILDLY different. While I knew historians didn’t always agree on things, this seemed…excessive? So I became very curious about this fellow for three chief reasons:

His unsurpassed success…that unsurpassed success at such a young age…and how he could be regarded so very differently now (and then). I was also intrigued by the fact he seemed to have had a real best friend, not a suck-up, in Hephaistion. I’d been interested in King Arthur years previous, and found the Arthur-Lancelot parallels of interest, minus Guinevere. I didn’t realize until much later those parallels were based on Alexander and Hephaistion.

The more I found out, the more he seemed suitable to me for a novel. (Remember, I was a writer before I was an historian.) So I set out to write an historical about him. In December of ’88, I wrote the first chapter of Dancing, with a runaway boy (Hephaistion) showing up in Pella, and accidentally befriending the prince.

As a long-time fan of SFF, especially historical and anthropological fantasy and science fiction, sliding into mainstream history didn’t seem too hard…except I have this little problem. I want to get it right. In SFF, worldbuilding is based on reality, and the better worldbuilding really does the homework. But things can (and should) be invented too. I wasn’t prepared for the rigor required—or at least, that I required of myself—for a mainstream historical.

So down the rabbit hole I went.

I became interested not just in Alexander, and Hephaistion, but in the country that produced them. I still count myself as much an Argead Macedoniast as a specialist on Philip and Alexander the Great—which was required to write Dancing with the Lion. Alexander has yet to earn his reputation there, so the world of the novel(s) is Argead Macedonia, not Alexander’s empire.

Historical novelists sometimes have a problem figuring out when to stop researching and start writing. That wasn’t actually my problem. I had the first (too short) version of the novel done before I arrived at Penn State for the PhD. I’d always intended to get a PhD. I’d just assumed it would be in English, or in Religious Studies. But I’d already discovered how much I enjoyed ancient Macedonia, so one of my applications went to Penn State, even though I had no (useful) language nor background in history.

Ironically, Penn State offered me the graduate assistantship, so that’s where I wound up.

So, that’s a little bit about how I ended up studying Alexander and Macedonia, not just writing fiction about him. I feel that the two have dovetailed well. I suppose you could say it was a collection of happy accidents…or fate, whichever you prefer.  

[jeannereames]

hi if it's not a too personal question to ask how did you come to be interested in history/antiquity/alexander..? I mean did you always like it as a child? or how did it start?

It’s not too personal, and in fact, I LIKE to tell this story, as I’m the definition of coming in the back door, which might encourage others.

Understand, I’m a chick from the other side of the tracks. My generation was the first to get a college education, and I’m among the few to go on to grad school, especially not professional *(e.g., law or med school). I was lower middle-class growing up. My father is from one of the two poorest families in Jackson County, S. Illinois before (and after) WWII. My mother was better off, her father a successful farmer and carpenter, but the Brouillettes had been Catholic (even if he wasn’t), and (worse) they had Indian blood.

There was no silver spoon in my mouth. I had better: wonderful parents who cheer-leaded me all the way. So if you disbelieve a father as great as Amyntor could exist? That’s MY parents. Amyntor-Berenikē are real, and their names were Ed and Idalee. Rise is dedicated to my father. Some of us get that lucky, and I’m HUGELY aware of my fortune, especially as I aged and realized my fellows didn’t have parents like mine. So Hephaistion’s desire to share his father with Alexandros? That was me. All my friends came to my house to visit my mother.

My love of history owes entirely to HER. She loved history, and understood it was about the stories of people. But my elementary and junior high history teachers made it about “kings-n-things” with lots of dates, etc.

So I HATED history.

I hated it all through regular school, then my tenure at UF, where (despite being a humanities major) I AVOIDED all history classes except one, an elective on the history of the Early Church. I think it’s pretty much a crime that a humanities major anywhere can graduate without a history class. WTF?

Yet it’s all the fault of poorly taught history. Plus, yes, younger students are less inclined to understand why it matters. Not all, but a substantial portion regularly return surveys saying history doesn’t matter because it’s the past, not the future.

Back to my clever mother. Instead of teaching me history, she told me about my family: the story of my ancestors, my people, including my tribe (Miami-Peoria). I was routinely hauled around to cemeteries as a kid, shown where my people were buried, and then told stories about them. Respect for Elders and the ancestors is a native thing. Yet I became fascinated, constructed family trees, and tried to trace back their stories, as most of my mother’s family were French who came in the 1600s/early 1700s, or Native Americans. My father’s family were more recent immigrants, but it all made a wonderful puzzle.

The story of me.

That’s history. The story of us, more broadly.

And so my clever, sneaky mother taught me to love history by coming in the back door.

Yet as a teen and undergrad, my interest in other cultures were largely Celtic and Scandinavian. I was introduced to J.R.R. Tolkien as a teen and remain a HUGE fan. My “home” fiction genre, insofar as I have one, is SFF (science fiction and fantasy), where a number of my friends publish. So I resisted the whole “Classical” field until quite late. Latin was the most popular language at my HS (Lakeland Dreadnoughts), and had the most active student group… so of course I refused to join! Never was a follower. I took German instead. In college, I took RUSSIAN, just to be different.

My undergrad degree was a BA in English, with a concentration in creative writing and a minor in acting. My M.A. was in theology and early church history. While at the Candler School of Theology, Emory, I kept hearing about this dude, “Alexander the Great.” I had NO idea who that was. (That’s how bad my previous history education had been.) Yet as he seemed so pivotal in cultural transfer, east to west and west to east, I wandered over to the Emory library to check out a couple of bios.

By chance, they were N.G.L. Hammond’s King, Commander and Statesman, and Peter Green’s (original, Thames-on-Hudson, later re-released by U. Cal Press) Alexander of Macedon.

I literally couldn’t have picked two more different bio’s if I’d tried.

AND HE FASCINATED ME. Who was this KID, who conquered most of his known world by 32, but generated such different evaluations, positive to negative?

Like Alexander, I’m a bit inclined to … obsess?

So I kept reading, and reading, and reading (articles, not just books), and then got into Macedonia (which then in the 1980s, was mostly articles).

By the early 1990s, I’d decided I wanted to study him professionally, not just to write a novel about him, so on the urging of Judy Tarr, I called Gene Borza at Penn State. He was my #1 choice to study with (in the US) as I’d admired his honesty to reply to those who disagreed with him, not just ignore them. So Gene asked me what I’d read, and I started reciting my list, until he said, “Stop, stop! You’ve already read more than most of my current PhD students!” He encouraged me to apply.

Ergo, if my BA was in English, and my MA in Theological studies, and I’d originally intended to go on to a PhD in the latter, I sent off ONE application—to Penn State—for history.

Guess which one offered funding (e.g., a graduate assistantship).

I wound up at Penn State, studying Macedonian history with “Aristotle” (e.g, Gene Borza, whose resemblance to the philosopher is a wee bit uncanny). It was, I think, the best choice I could have made. I remain Gene’s “academic daughter,” and Book 1, Becoming, is dedicated to him due to Aristotle’s prominence, while book 2 is dedicated to my father, Ed Reames, because he’s the model for Amyntor.

So yes…there IS a backdoor for those of us determined enough. But be aware, the handicap never goes away. I face it every single day. My Latin and Greek wasn’t “good enough,” and I don’t have the extensive reading in Classics that someone with a BA in Classics would have. But I DO bring my diverse previous experience. I have a background in bereavement counselling and ER on-call duty that allows me to look at Alexander’s mourning and such events as the Philotas Affair with experience most of my colleagues (however good their Greek and Latin) don’t have.

So be prepared to justify your existence to your colleagues who had Latin in high school and pursued a BA in Classics or ancient history. Don’t apologize.

And those of you who DO have the above, remember, there are a couple of us out there, scrappy and “previously untrained” who loved the field enough to work our asses off to get a degree, and eventually, a job. So unlike some of my colleagues at Penn State, don’t snort and look down on your unusual fellows. Help them out.

I’ll also note that of the students I entered with? Only two of us received the PhD. Tim Howe, my academic brother who came with better prep, teaches today at St. Olaf’s in Minnesota. But dammit, I fought my way through. And I finished, and I’m at a uni that, with my colleagues, created an Ancient Mediterranean Studies Program at the BA/BS and MA level. I’m damn proud of that.

The field has changed since I applied to grad school in 1991, I won’t lie. Tenure-track jobs in the US, especially in ancient history and Classics, have turned into unicorns. Other countries are different.  But if you are determined enough, and damn stubborn enough, you might be able to carve your own path, as long as you keep an eye on the current state of the field. I won’t lie to anybody about how few ancient history and Classics jobs are out there on H-Net these days. BUT don’t let the afternoon-tea set make you feel less than them: “imposter’s syndrome” for pursuing a PhD in ancient history or Classics. Some of those Classics blue-bloods won’t get a job, at the end of the day.

I am THE definition of an “imposter’s syndrome” faculty member who succeeded. And I don’t give a good goddamn what anybody thinks of me. I excel at what I do, and I’m proud of it.