Acknowledgments

To begin, I would like to thank Stefan Vranka, Senior Editor for Classics at Oxford University Press USA, who commissioned me to edit the OHLA in 2007 and who, from first to last, has encouraged and supported our work in preparing this book. He believes in the inherent value of Late Antiquity and in its fundamental importance for the future of Classics and the Humanities in general. It has been a pleasure to work with him over the past four years. I am appreciative of the favorable comments from two anonymous reviewers of the proposal, who were instrumental in getting the OHLA off the ground at the earliest stage. I would also like to thank the staff at OUP USA, not least the Classics editorial assistants Deirdre Brady, Brian Hurley, and Sarah Pirovitz. Sarah, in particular, played a critical role in my visualizing the finish line and crossing it in one piece. The production team of Ryan Sarver and Joellyn Ausanka at OUP and Joy Matkowski and Jay Boggis, our two copy editors, helped achieve the seemingly impossible task of finalizing the text and getting it ready for publication. Kate Mertes prepared a professional index which adds real value to the book. And Leslie MacCoull proofread the entire manuscript and made innumerable corrections and improvements with a charm and grace that enlivened the final stages.

This book was supported by a generous research grant and subvention (2006–2007) from the William F. Milton Fund at Harvard University. For this project, I also received a Glenn Grant (2008) and Lenfest Grant (2009) from Washington and Lee University. The OHLA was conceived while I was in my last year as a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows (2006–2007), it gestated during two years of teaching in the Classics Department at Washington and Lee University (2007–2009), it began to take definitive shape as I was a Fellow in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks (2009–2010), and it found its final form while I was a Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress (2010–2011). I am immeasurably grateful to these institutions for sponsoring my research—even when the OHLA was not what I was supposed to be working on! I would like to express my appreciation to individuals at all four institutions (and elsewhere) who contributed, through direct advice or general support, to the completion of this long project: Rebecca Benefiel, Monica Blanchard, Carolyn Brown, Sarah Burke, Miriam Carlisle, Chris Chekuri, Ed Cook, Kevin Crotty, Jenny Davis, Jan Willem Drijvers, David Elmer, Jaś Elsner, Maria Evangelatou, Polly Evans, Doug Frame, Sidney Griffith, Sarah Insley, Noel Lenski, Florin Leonte, Ruth Macrides, Meaghan McEvoy, Diana Morse, Lenny Muellner, Margaret Mullett, Greg Nagy, Eric Nelson, Mary Lou Reker, Christina Ricci, Alex Riehle, Philip Rousseau, Toni Stephens, Columba Stewart, Deb Brown Stewart, Alice-Mary Talbot, Shawqi Talia, Elizabeth Teaff, Janet Timbie, Martin Walraff, Jennifer Westerfeld, and Jan Ziolkowski. I would also like to thank my new colleagues at Georgetown University, who have warmly welcomed both myself and Late Antiquity into their thriving Classics department.

In the summers of 2008 and 2009, I was fortunate to have two excellent student assistants: Lain Wilson and Erik Ball, both budding scholars in their own right, without whom this book would have been a much more difficult prospect. I am particularly grateful to Erik Ball for his preliminary translation of a draft French version of Hervé Inglebert’s chapter and for his keen proofreading of several other draft chapters. I am grateful also to Arietta Papaconstantinou for her two translations of draft French versions of the chapters by Anne Boud’hors and Christian Julien Robin. Additionally, Aaron Johnson, David Michelson, Dan Schwartz, and Jack Tannous were crucial sounding boards during the initial phases when I was commissioning chapters and formulating the overall vision. Jack was indefatigable in his help with the Syriac and Arabic transliteration. Kyle Harper and Greg Smith were constant dialogue partners throughout the whole process and helped me especially with the organization of the table of contents and the grouping of chapters. Michael Maas provided inspiration for the preface and also helped with the shape of the volume.

I would be remiss as the privileged editor of such a vanguard publication not to thank the contributors for their hard work in producing so many groundbreaking chapters on Late Antiquity. The best reward of an exceedingly long collaborative book comes when you get to read, hot off the press, the cutting-edge research of your colleagues, who have put their trust in your guardianship of their ideas and writing. I am grateful for their faith in my leadership and for strengthening my resolve to complete the project through their inspiring scholarship. I am very proud of our work together.

My parents, Tom and Jan Linder, and my grandparents, Charles and Geneva Mullinax, continue to be unflagging in their (much-treasured) championing of my work. My wife, Carol, and my children—Susanna, Daniel, and Thomas—are the most delightful, loving, and supportive family I could ever imagine. I am indebted to their patience during the editing of this volume, though they would never think of it as a debt or a burden. Carol, in particular, has been unspeakably gracious during this busy, itinerant stage of our lives. It is impossible to acknowledge the full worth of her love and loyalty.

Finally, during the last year of editing this volume (2010–2011), my two mentors in Late Antiquity retired from full-time teaching. Averil Cameron (Oxford) and Peter Brown (Princeton) are two pillars of our field, who continue to push it forward through new research and writing. I feel privileged beyond expression to have been able to study closely with both of them during a formative stage in my life. Since that time, I have been associated with their larger family of students and have seen how, through their scholarly insight and their pastoral instincts, they have together forged a remarkable, enduring legacy for the study of Late Antiquity. Out of gratitude for their support and in celebration of their academic careers, I dedicate this volume to Averil and Peter.

Scott Fitzgerald Johnson

May 2011

Washington, DC