Anachronism and Antiquity

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This book is a study both of anachronism in antiquity and of anachronism as a vehicle for understanding antiquity. It explores the post-classical origins and changing meanings of the term anachronism as well as the presence of anachronism in all its forms in classical literature, criticism and material objects. Contrary to the position taken by many modern philosophers of history, this book argues that classical antiquity had a rich and varied understanding of historical difference, which is reflected in sophisticated notions of anachronism. This central hypothesis is tested by an examination of attitudes to temporal errors in ancient literary texts and chronological writings and by analysing notions of anachronistic survival and multitemporality. Rather than seeing a sense of anachronism as something that separates modernity from antiquity, the book suggests that in both ancient writings and their modern receptions chronological rupture can be used as a way of creating a dialogue between past and present. With a selection of case-studies and theoretical discussions presented in a manner suitable for scholars and students both of classical antiquity and of modern history, anthropology, and visual culture, the books ambition is to offer a new conceptual map of antiquity through the notion of anachronism.

Reviews

A riveting, unapologetically intelligent read [The authors] display a thrilling sense of clarity, polymathy and rather exciting erudition, the interdisciplinarity of any true intellectual enterprise, all of which they share with true scholarly humility. * Bookanista *
A provocative and stimulating book. It offers a comprehensive study of the history of anachronism, but it goes far beyond that to explore the ways in which the Greeks and Romans and later generations which looked to classical antiquity for inspiration engaged with different modalities of time. Employing both texts and images, and ranging from Homer to Borges, this book shows how anachronism is inevitably and in many cases imaginatively inseparable from our understanding and appreciation of past and present. -- John Marincola, Leon Golden Professor of Classics, Florida State University, USA
A comprehensive, intellectually ambitious exploration of anachronism, which enriches our understanding of how we configure antiquity as a time period. -- Ellen O'Gorman, Senior Lecturer in Classics, University of Bristol, UK
This is a very timely publication, filling an important gap by showing convincingly and with an astonishingly wide range of reading from Homer to the twenty-first century that anachronisms, far from being alien to antiquity, on the contrary offer valuable insights into the historical thought of classical times, and also into Greek and Roman art and literature. * The Classical Review *

Author Bio

Tim Rood is Fellow and Tutor in Classics at St Hugh's College, University of Oxford, UK. He is the author of The Sea! The Sea! The Shout of the Ten Thousand in the Modern Imagination (Bloomsbury, 2004) and American Anabasis (Bloomsbury, 2010). Carol Atack is a Junior Research Fellow at St Hughs College, University of Oxford, UK. She is the author of The Discourse of Kingship in Classical Greece (2019) and is an Associate Editor of Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought. Tom Phillips is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Manchester, UK. His publications include Pindars Library: Performance Poetry and Material Texts (2016), and articles on Greek and Latin lyric poetry.