Acknowledgements

I have had the privilege of working on this book at two of the most beautiful universities in the world: it began as my doctoral thesis, written in Oxford between 2017 and 2020, and developed into its final form as I started as a lecturer in Stellenbosch, South Africa. The germ, or αἰτία, of this project lay in my reading of two parts of Josephus: the prologue to the Antiquities, where Josephus almost immediately writes about Moses, and the latter part of the Against Apion (2.154), where we find the delightful phrase “Lycurguses and Solons”, as Josephus compares Moses favourably with those famous Greeks. It seemed to me that there was an invitation to comparison, and Plutarch, as a writer of such things as Lycurguses and Solons was an obvious choice.

Other comparisons are of course possible, but Plutarch had a particular value because he enabled me to do something which I hope is new. Rather than tracing possible direct literary connections, I use Plutarch as a tool to imagine the response of a Greek audience to Josephus’ Moses as he appears in the Antiquities. My hypothesis was that reading Josephus through Plutarch in this way would lead to the discovery of details, ambiguities, and omissions that otherwise would be hidden—and this would tell us something about the literary commwunity of which Josephus was a part.

This strategy has its dangers—and I am immensely grateful to my doctoral supervisor, Martin Goodman, for his patience with me as I grappled with them, and his unfailing ability to sort the wheat from the chaff in my writing. His kindness to me when I started as an extremely diffident masters student, his magisterial knowledge of the primary texts, and his gentle sense of humour have shaped me as an academic and, while I do not expect to reach anywhere near his heights as a historian, I hope to provide similar support to my students.

I have also benefited from the generosity of Hindy Najman, whose enthusiasm for my work provided encouragement on numerous occasions, and without whose prompting I am not sure the process of publication would have left the ground.

I owe thanks to my rigorous doctoral examiners, Tim Whitmarsh and Katherine Clarke, and to the generosity of Brill’s anonymous reviewers. The former helped me to articulate more clearly my methodology and approach, and the latter provided remarkably detailed comments on numerous issues, which were both incisive and invigorating, enabling me, I hope, to improve the work without completely rewriting it. René Bloch has been a meticulous and responsive editor—I am truly grateful to him for his help and patience throughout the process. All remaining errors are of course my own.

I must also express my thanks to the Clarendon Fund and the Littman Trust at Wolfson College, who provided the financial support for my doctoral studies, and to the Ertegun Graduate Scholarship Programme in the Humanities: being an Ertegun Scholar for my masters has enabled everything that I have done since. The friendship of my Ertegun colleagues continues to provide intellectual stimulation and emotional support across continents, and I will never cease to be grateful that I get to be a part of this transformational academic community.

My penultimate thanks go to my new colleagues in Stellenbosch, who welcomed me to the department with open arms, and helped me to settle into a new institution with remarkable ease—without which the revisions would have taken rather longer to complete.

Finally, to my parents, Jean and Tony, who never questioned my objectively questionable choice to pursue Latin and Greek instead of anything more obviously “useful”, and have supported me unstintingly ever since—thank you.