Bret Devereaux

Historically and today structurally, 'Classics' is organized around the Greek and Latin language traditions first, and thus around Greece and Rome (as societies) mostly by consequence of the first thing. 2/15

But as our understanding of the past has improved, we've come increasingly to understand that, contrary to the 19th century notion of Greece and Rome as singular pillars alone in an empty field, they existed as part of an interconnected system. 3/15

I see that system - defined by connection to the geographic Mediterranean Sea - as my field of study. Greece and Rome, sure, but equally (and I mean 'equally' not 'as junior partners') Carthage, N. Africa, Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Persia... 4/15

...and also non-state peoples in Spain, Gaul, etc. I think we can identify a more-or-less interconnected region, including much of Europe, the Near East, and North Africa, as a functional, useful unit of study (ofc with connections outside to other places!) 5/15

And that's what I mean when I say I study the 'Broader Mediterranean.' I've tried to express in my scholarship, where I aim to treat the different component societies (state and non-state) of this Broader Mediterranean with equal weight, in so far as the evidence allows. 6/15

So my diss./book project is pointedly comparative discussing military costs and systems. Likewise, "Strategy and Cost" (https://doi.org/10.25162/historia-2020-0020 …) is trying to get us to think at the First Punic War in a more equal way that allows Carthage more agency. 7/15

I can imagine in my mind what a Classics department aiming to embody that approach might look like; rather than dismantling existing institutions, it might seek to widen them to include more fully new texts and new languages. 8/15

At the graduate level, maybe rather than mandating Greek and Latin, it might present a number of languages (Greek, Latin, Egyptian, Akkadian, etc) and base requirements on a 'choose two' system. No less linguistic rigor, necessarily, but a broader base of languages. 9/15