This volume commemorates the life and work of Alan Cameron (1938–2017), a unique figure in the scholarship of Late Antiquity whose loss is deeply felt by very wide circles of scholars and friends of all ages in the United States, the UK and elsewhere. The reader of this book will encounter many allusions to Alan’s acumen, energy and originality, and also to his generosity and good humor. Averil Cameron provides an invaluable account of his scholarly progress. For a particularly sympathetic memoir the reader can turn to what Glen Bowersock wrote in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 162 (3) (2018), 1–8.
Columbia University’s Classics Department sponsored a conference on October 27 and 28, 2018, in Alan’s honor, and twelve of the scholars published here gave papers on that occasion (very different papers, in some cases, from those we are publishing). Edward Watts could not be present, and W. V. Harris’s paper on the hospitals was written later.
There is no pretense of thematic unity here beyond the fact that the whole collection centers on Late Antiquity. In fact, we are happy to have avoided any more specific unity of theme, since Alan himself ranged over very many themes as well as over many centuries. He went wherever insatiable curiosity led him. It seems likely therefore that a commemorative conference and a subsequent book that reflected all of Alan’s interests would have been considered by many people to be impossibly incoherent; so there is nothing here about Callimachus or about the literature of the high Roman Empire.
But there is a rich table at this commemorative feast, with new texts as well as commentaries on more familiar ones, with political and social and cultural history, with numismatics, papyrology, paleography, and a little epigraphy, with some old favorites of Alan’s—circus factions and the Historia Augusta—and finally two chapters—one about Ambrose and slavery, the other about the history of the hospital—that we hope would have piqued his interest.
It is our remaining privilege to thank everyone who has helped with this project, and in particular and above all Professor Dame Averil Cameron, who has generously advised us throughout.
W. V. Harris
Anne Hunnell Chen
New York, December 2019