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Rostovtzeff and the Yale Diaspora: How Personalities and Communities Influenced the Development of North American Papyrology

Gabrielle Stewart

Presented to the Committee on Degrees in Classical Studies

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the A.B. in Classical Languages with Distinction.

Duke University

April 12, 2018

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Preface

I find myself in awe of the timeliness of this project. In tracing the stories that I

cover throughout the thesis, I have turned to a variety of archival, unpublished, and other

unconventional sources. A lucky coalescence of time and place has made my

investigation of these sources possible. I briefly introduce these sources and then

acknowledge my gratitude to those who aided me in navigating them.

Archival records have played a key role in my investigation. Two collections of

papers were central to my research: the Michael I. Rostovtzeff papers and the American

Society of Papyrologists records, both archived in the Rubenstein Library. The insights I

have drawn from the correspondence, unpublished autobiographies, and even the driest of

financial records in these collections has informed the bulk of my analysis in my first and

third chapters. As my readers will soon learn, moreover, there is a fascinating story to

how these collections wound up in Durham, North Carolina. To acquaint myself with the

1960s Yale Classics Department (the subject of my second chapter), I also made

extensive use of the Eric A. Havelock papers, housed at the Sterling Memorial Library at

Yale University.

Adding depth to my archival research are interviews I have conducted with North

American papyrologists, most of whom who are now retired and have far more exciting

things to do than talk to an undergraduate about trends in papyrological scholarship. I am

ecstatic that I have had the opportunity to learn from elders in the discipline now, during

this critical moment when those who witnessed the early development of North American

papyrology first hand are still with us. The observations of Roger Bagnall in particular,

with whom I conducted an oral history (available upon request), have deepened my

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understanding of not only papyrology, but how papyrologists interact with one another.

Dr. Bagnall was so kind as to share with me an unpublished autobiography of his, “A

Half-life of Learning,” for my research, and that too has figured significantly in my

analysis.

I ran my manuscript through a text analysis program, and I found that one of my

most frequently used words is “community,” which appears 35 times over the course of

the paper, three times more than another favorite, Altertumswissenschaft. This makes

good sense for multiple reasons. One of the dominant themes weaving through this thesis

is how vital community is to papyrological work. While conducting my research, I was

able to experience the closeness of this community for myself. When I asked Roger

Bagnall and Ann Hanson to interview, both offered to let me stay with them so I could do

so in person. The warmth they extended to me—from the donut breakfasts at Roger’s

apartment to my late-night prosecco-fueled chats with Ann—has made me feel like I

have a place in the amicitia papyrologorum. I cannot thank them enough for their

contributions to my project.

Now, for the “thank you”s, which are doomed to be but an abridged list of the

countless people who have offered me advice and encouragement over these past eight

months. I want to express my gratitude to everyone who interviewed with me: Roger

Bagnall, Ann Hanson, Kent Rigsby, Peter van Minnen, and Deborah Hobson. I am also

indebted to the Duke Classical Studies Department and Sarah Russell and the Duke

Undergraduate Research Support Office for funding my trips to New York and New

Haven, respectively. I would not have been able to engage with archives in a meaningful

way, moreover, if it were not for library staff at Duke and at Yale. I would particularly

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like to thank the Rubenstein’s head curator Andy Armacost for graciously giving me a

tour through Duke’s papyrus acquisition records. Lucy Vanderkamp and Trudi Abel

deserve huge “thank yous” for being so helpful (and patient) as I requested boxes upon

boxes of records to sift through at the Rubenstein library. To the brilliant budding

classicist Kelsey Stewart (who also happens to be my sister), I want to extend an

enormous “gratias tibi ago” for taking on the intrepid task of transcribing over three

hours of interviews.

Finally, I would never have conceived of writing a thesis on North American

papyrology at all if it were not for my advisor and current Secretary-Treasurer of the

American Society of Papyrologists, William A. Johnson. His knowledge, guidance,

and—above all—patience and encouragement have made this process deeply rewarding

(and fun!). With his support, I have become far more confident in myself as a researcher

and writer. It was during one of Professor Johnson’s many “linguistic hocus pocus”

lectures at the end of his Greek 101 class when I promised myself I would major in

Classical Languages, and each step of this project has affirmed that that was one of the

best choices I have ever made.

Gabrielle Stewart Duke University

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Introduction

“Like many products of Yale in that era..., Alan Samuel had a strong sense of the Rostovtzeff tradition and his place in it. As Welles had become a kind of son to the childless Rostovtzeff, Samuel saw himself as one of Welles’ scholarly offspring. He cherished the charcoal sketch of Michael Rostovtzeff made in Paris in 1933, which

Sophie Rostovtzeff had given to him, and when he passed it on to me a few years ago, his sense of transmission of the tradition was manifest.”1

Roger Bagnall penned the above remark in his obituary for Alan Samuel,

published in the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists. Both Samuel and

Bagnall were instrumental in the development of the American Society of Papyrologists,

and Bagnall continues to be a leading figure in the field of papyrology. Both were also

trained as historians. The term “historian,” however, does not encompass the breadth of

Samuel’s and Bagnall’s intellectual pursuits in its traditional sense. The “Rostovtzeff

tradition” of which Bagnall speaks is a lineage of historians who consider documents and

material culture the most valuable form of evidence for studying the ancient world. This

thesis chronicles the story of the Rostovtzeff tradition and how its disciples came to have

a profound impact on the development of papyrology in North America.

Per its name, the lineage traces back to Russian émigré historian Michael I.

Rostovtzeff. Rostovtzeff was an “intellectual titan” in the field of history, according to

respected historian Glen W. Bowersock.2 His greatest works—two thick tomes—focus on

the social and economic histories of the Roman Empire and the Hellenistic world,

respectively. Over a long, prolific career spanning from 1892-1952, Rostovtzeff

1 Bagnall, Roger S. "Alan Edouard Samuel (1932-2008)." Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 46 (2009), 9. 2 Bowersock, G.W., “The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire” Daedalus 103, no. 1 (1974), 15.

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developed a revolutionary method for studying antiquity. He conducted his historical

investigations via a minute study of documents, the “original sources… which reflect life

directly.”3 Accordingly, he devoted much of his life to mastering the various

documentary disciplines and made substantial contributions to the fields of archaeology,

epigraphy, and—most notable for our purposes—papyrology. To make sense of the

cosmos of antiquity, Rostovtzeff turned to its atoms and quarks, seeking truths in its

fundamental, unalterable building blocks.

To reduce Rostovtzeff to his method would not, however, paint an adequate

picture of the scholar. Rostovtzeff’s contributions and influence are due equally to his

unique approach and experiences as an exile. A native of Kiev, Russia, the Bolshevik

Revolution forced Rostovtzeff to flee his homeland, and his scholarly home at the

University of St. Petersburg, in 1918. Before he found a new scholarly home in Yale,

Rostovtzeff drifted through numerous institutions as a transient, bereft of a scholarly

network, friends, and family. Deep depression resulting from isolation temporarily

stunted his work. The only remedy for this debilitation was a support system, a

community that could nourish him both intellectually and emotionally.

Rostovtzeff found such a community at Yale. The institution was an intellectual

match for Rostovtzeff; his approach to history resonated there, and members of the Yale

Classics Department were quick to incorporate elements of it into their own studies.

Scholars of literature and philology begun dabbling in documentary studies, and the

department collectively moved to deepen its involvement in archaeology and papyrology.

3 Rostovtzeff, Michael I. "The Academic Career of M.I. Rostovtzeff." David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library (Subseries 2, Box 3, Autobiographical Writings, 1940; undated): Duke University, 1940, 4, 5.

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During this time, Yale started its papyrological shop, one of the first in North America.

Moreover, the Classics faculty readily received Rostovtzeff as a friend as well as a

colleague. Bonded by deep personal connections as well as an intellectual kinship,

Rostovtzeff and his colleagues and students built a Yale Classics Department on two

foundations: an ancient history wing dedicated to the study of documents, and a strong

sense of interpersonal closeness. Thus, the Rostovtzeff tradition not only refers to the

Rostovtzeffian approach for studying history, but also to the web of deep—nearly

familial—personal connections—that undergird it. As we will come to find, it was this

group of scholars that largely defined the character of North American papyrology.

A Brief Exploration and History of Papyrology

To situate our analysis of the Rostovtzeff tradition’s impact on papyrology, we

briefly survey the discipline’s early history and its beginnings in North America. A

definition of terms is in order. Papyrology, in the strict sense of the term, is the practice

of editing and presenting papyrological texts. The criteria for determining whether a text

is papyrological, however, are somewhat nebulous. Papyrology has historically

concerned itself not only with texts inked onto papyrus, but on the broader “recovery and

exploitation of ancient artifacts bearing writing and of the textual material preserved on

such artifacts.”4 Under this definition, ostraca, parchment, vellum, wooden boards, and

other materials that can carry ink are also papyrological. The word “papyri,” in the

context of papyrology, is thus better understood as a term of convenience rather than

specification.

4 Bagnall, Roger S. "Introduction." In The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology, edited by Roger S. Bagnall: Oxford University Press, (2009), xvii.

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Papyrological texts have been divided—though not unproblematically5—into two

primary categories: literary and documentary papyri.6 Literary papyri contain Greek

literature; they are home to the hallowed words of Homer and Hesiod, tragedians,

philosophers, and historiographers. Documentary papyri, conversely, provide records of

the more pedestrian aspects of ancient life. They can be public records: edicts, petitions,

and proclamations. Writings that offer glimpses into private life—letters, financial

accounts, and various contracts—also fall under the “documentary” category. The

overwhelming majority of extant papyri are documentary in character.7

Though such a choice is contestable, most papyrologists date the birth of their

discipline to 1892, when enough papyri were published for a papyrological journal to be

founded. This renders papyrology a young science compared to the other documentary

disciplines.8 The discipline, however, has a long proto-history. Expeditions to uncover

antiquities have occurred consistently since the time of Napoleon, and these expeditions

have placed papyri at the disposal of classicists for centuries. Such papyri have been

scrutinized and published sporadically, but not with enough consistency nor continued

interest to justify the creation of a discipline.9 The chasm between papyrology’s proto-

5 As Turner writes, it can be argued that such a dichotomy is false: “There is not one kind of paleography that applies to literature and one that applies to documents. Some of the most precious texts of Greek literature survive only in copies made by scribes whose normal employment was copying documents.” See Turner, Eric G. Greek Papyri: An Introduction. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968, vii. 6 A third category—sub-literary papyri—exists as well. Sub-literary papyri are papyri that contain neither literature nor documentary text, but often have a fictional element to them. Examples include magical papyri and scholia. As they do not enter our discussion specifically, we group them with literary papyri due to their fictional content. 7 According to the Duke Database of Documentary Papyri, we know of about 70,000 documentary papyri. In contrast, the Leuven Database of Ancient Books lists about 4,000 extant literary papyri. 8 The first epigraphical collection, for example, was assembled in the 14th century. Epigraphical activity had increased substantially by the 18th century. By 1815, a comprehensive corpus, the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, was published. See “Epigraphy,” Encyclopedia Britannica, www.britannica.com/topic/epigraphy. 9 The first papyri published were a set of incinerated rolls buried by Vesuvius that were uncovered in 1752. See Keenan, “History of the Discipline.” In The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology ed. Bagnall (2009), 59.

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history and its emergence as a bona fide sub-discipline of the Classics is the result of the

disparate reception of literary and documentary papyri. While literary papyri have been

warmly received by the classical scholars of all specialties, the common attitude among

classists until quite recently has been, in Turner’s words, that “documentary papyri may

be left to a humbler kind of investigator.”10 The papyrologists upon whom this paper

focuses were primarily interested in documentary papyri and were thus subjected to this

bias.

Literary papyri have always been deemed worthy of the classist’s attention for a

number of reasons. With the assistance of a paleographer, the study of papyri can aid

greatly in the dating of classical texts. The text contained in a papyrus that was written in

a handwriting style from the third century BCE, for example, cannot be dated after the

third century. Papyri can offer novel readings, places where the text on the papyrus

improves upon the text as passed down from the Middle Ages. Papyri also expose

philologists to previously unseen words and have been immensely beneficial to our

understanding of ancient writing culture.11

Classicists have been most elated, however, when literary papyri are discovered

that contain lost texts of classical authors. From papyri, classicists have recovered unseen

works of Bacchylides, Herodas, Menander, and Aristotle, to name a few examples.12 As

more excavation expeditions were held over the 18th and 19th centuries, the Classics

community anxiously awaited the recovery of such papyri. William Wordsworth,

captured the sentiment among classicists best while writing in reference to the

10 Turner, E.G, The Greek Papyri, vi. 11 Ibid., 99. 12 Ibid., 98.

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Herculaneum excavation,13 which produced literary papyri, but, disappointingly, mostly

of writings by the obscure Epicurean, Philodemus.

“O ye, who patiently explore The wreck of Herculanean lore,

What rapture, could you seize Some Theban fragment, or unroll one precious, tender-hearted, scroll of pure Simonides, That were, indeed, a genuine birth Of poesy; a bursting forth Of genius from the dust: What Horace gloried to behold, What Maro loved, shall we enfold? Can haughty Time be just!”14

With a few exceptions, however, the majority of papyri that were uncovered over

the 18th and 19th centuries were documentary. Though they too could offer insights about

ancient life and language, documentary papyri were not romanticized in the same way as

literary papyri. Their mundane content was not enticing enough for classicists, who, at

the time, were preoccupied with gleaning moral guidance from antique text.15 Beer

receipts and accounting records, as it were, could contribute few ethical insights. In

Turner’s words:

“Those who require writing about everyday experience to be touched and transfigured by art regard non-literary papyri as humdrum, if not downright rubbish.”16 Prior to the tail-end of the 19th century, documentary papyri were indeed regarded

as “downright rubbish.” The first Greek documentary papyrus was published in 1788

13 Which produced a substantial amount of literary papyri. 14 Found in van Minnen, Peter, “The Century of Papyrology” in Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 30 Issue 2 (1992), 7, 8. 15 Welles, C. Bradford. "Michael I. Rostovtzeff." In Architects and Craftsmen in History, edited by Joseph Thistle Lambie. Tübingen: Mohr, 1956, 55. 16 Turner, The Greek Papyri, 127.

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when Danish classicist Niels Iversen Schow edited a fragment written in 193 CE. The

papyrus documented receipts for work on irrigation dykes in the Fayyum, a district of

Egypt. The papyrus had been purchased by an anonymous merchant from a larger

collection of 50 similar papyri. Legend has it that the remaining 49 were bought by a

group of “Turks” who desired the papyri not for their academic value, but for the

delightful aroma they would emit when burned. Though most likely apocryphal, this tale

is illustrative of how documentary papyri were treated in the 18th century. Schow himself

anticipated the reception of publishing a documentary papyrus:

“Non dubito, Vir Doctissime, quin multi primo adspectu diligentiam meam vituperent, meamque in apertis scribendi ac erroribus enotandis operam supervacaneam esse existiment; spero, autem, ut sententiam mutent.”17 “I do not doubt, most learned man, that many will disparage my work upon first glance and with the obvious flaws in my writing and errors that must be noted,18 they will regard my project as superfluous. I hope, however, that they will change their opinion.”19 Schow’s hope was partially realized with the birth of papyrology in 1892. As the

nineteenth century grew to a close, groups of pioneer classicists scattered across Europe

began taking interest in documentary evidence. They were driven to do so largely in the

pursuit of Altertumswissenschaft, an approach for studying antiquity that aims at

sketching a holistic picture of ancient life in all its components. In the context of

Altertumswissenschaft, documents are not useless scraps of rubbish but valuable “pictures

of life,”20 as Rostovtzeff put it. In 1891, as part of the pursuit of Altertumswissenschaft,

papyrology experienced an annus mirabilis, a miracle year. That year, scholars across

17 Schow, Nicolaus I. Epistolae Criticae Una Ad Cg Heynium Altera Ad Th. Chr. Tychsenium. A. Fulgonius, 1790, 11. 18 Due to its novelty, Schow seemed insecure about the accuracy of his work. 19 I am indebted to Dr. Shirley Werner for her aid in translating this passage. 20 Rostovtzeff, Michael I. "The Academic Career of M.I. Rostovtzeff," 4.

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Europe published editions, and whole volumes, of both documentary and literary papyri.

In 1892, the first fascicle of a Greek documentary papyrus was published in Germany

and, most significantly, the Berliner griechische Urkunden—the longest ongoing

publication of papyri—was inaugurated. In response to these advances, German classical

scholar and historian Theodore Mommsen reportedly dubbed 1892 the beginning of “the

century of papyrology.”21 Mommsen’s prophecy began materializing nearly immediately.

During its first decades, papyrology proliferated at a rapid pace. This growth is owed to a

positive feedback loop of sorts between excavations and scholarship. The 1890s saw a

boom in excavations that provided papyrologists with more material to study. Most

significantly, the Oxyrhynchus expeditions, led by Oxford classicists Grenfell and Hunt,

added about half a million fragments to papyrologists’ repertoire from 1896 to 1907.22 In

turn, the eagerness with which the growing cohort of papyrologists received these papyri

fueled more excavation expeditions.

Though separated by geography and scholarly interests, Europe’s leading

papyrologists came together in the Archiv für Papyrusforschung, the first academic

journal dedicated exclusively to papyrology. The journal’s founder was Ulrich Wilcken.

A student of Mommsen, Wilcken embodied the essence of 19th-century

Altertumswissenschaft.23 Like Rostovtzeff, Wilcken saw the value in all forms of

evidence and all methodologies and detested the arbitrary lines drawn between the

various sub-disciplines of Classics. Accordingly, his intention for the Archiv was for it to

be inclusive of all studies related to papyrology—not for it to focus exclusively on

21 Minnen, Peter van. "The Century of Papyrology (1892-1992)." Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 30 (1993), 1. 22 Keenan, “The History of the Discipline,” 61, 62. 23 See Schubart’s obituary for Wilcken in Gnomon 21, 89, 90.

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papyrology in the strictest sense (i.e., the editing of papyrological texts). In his words, the

ultimate goal of the Archiv was to “grasp ancient culture in all its manifestations in the

liveliest possible way.”24 Articles in the Archiv’s early volumes demonstrate Wilcken’s

intentions clearly: in addition to editions of papyri, they featured contributions from

eminent philologists and ancient historians that situated papyrological evidence within

broader explorations of ancient language and life.

Wilcken’s Altertumswissenschaft-inspired approach to papyrology, however, was

not met with universal acceptance. As the discipline developed and its set of practitioners

grew more diverse, many came to privilege a narrower approach to papyrological

research, one more or less exclusively focused on editing papyri. In a 1973 lecture,

premier papyrologist Herbert Youtie drew a distinction between the so-called “private”

papyrologists, who comprise a small circle of editors, and “public” papyrologists,

scholars of history, theology, literature, and other disciplines that make use of papyri in

their scholarship.25

Nowhere is the tension between “private” and “public” papyrology more manifest

than in North America. Though there was some papyrological activity on the continent

before the 1920s,26 North America’s first “papyrological shop” was established at the

University of Michigan in 1920, when the university acquired its first papyri. Michigan’s

collection grew rapidly over the decade, containing roughly 2,800 pieces by 1928. The

force behind these acquisitions was Professor of Latin and archaeologist, Francis W.

Kelsey. Kelsey’s approach for studying the ancient world echoed the tenets of

24 Translated by Keenan in Keenan, “The History of the Discipline,” 64. 25 Youtie, Herbert C. "The Papyrologist: Artificer of Fact." Michigan Quarterly Review 1, no. 3 (1962), 22. 26 A notable example of this is the work of Edgar J. Goodspeed in the early 20th century. See "About the Collection," Goodspeed Manuscript Collection, http://goodspeed.lib.uchicago.edu/collection.php.

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Altertumswissenschaft. He wrote extensively on the relationship between literature,

documents, and material remains, arguing for the importance of all.27 A collector of

antiquities himself, he believed that students of the ancient world needed to experience it

in a tangible way, by interacting with its physical remains. In addition to leading the

university’s acquisition of papyri, Kelsey spearheaded its archaeological excavations in

Egypt.28

Though Kelsey would fall under the “public” papyrologist category, his

successor, Herbert Youtie, epitomized what it meant to be a papyrologist in the most

precise sense. Youtie joined the Michigan faculty as a research assistant in papyrology in

1929.29 It was under Youtie that Michigan earned its international rapport as a

papyrological institution. Under Youtie, moreover, Michigan gained the reputation of

being an institution focused on editing and publishing texts. Michigan, in effect, has

become the American bastion of “private” papyrology.

The Yale shop, built by Rostovtzeff and his successors, came to be the North

American representative of a form of “public” papyrology. Concerned with teasing

insights about ancient life from documents, Rostovtzeffian papyrology transcends text-

editing. In his history of papyrology, Keenan remarks that a history of the tension

between the Michigan and Yale traditions has yet to be written, mainly because

“papyrologists are too busy ‘doing papyrology’ to reflect upon their disciplinary past.”30

The aim of this paper is to provide half of this history. In tracing the history of the

27 Pedley, John Griffiths. The Life and Work of Francis Willey Kelsey : Archaeology, Antiquity, and the Arts. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011, 87. 28 Verhoogt, Arthur. Discarded, Discovered, Collected : The University of Michigan Papyrus Collection. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017, 9. 29 Michigan is the only American institution that has a formal “Professor of Papyrology” among its Classics faculty. 30 Keenan, “The History of the Discipline,” 74.

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Rostovtzeff tradition and its influence on North American papyrology, I set out to make

two primary arguments. First, that, while the influence of Michigan and other editing-

centered institutions on North American papyrology is significant, it is the Rostovtzeffian

approach that has given North American papyrology a distinct identity among the world’s

papyrological enterprises. Second, that an exploration of Rostovtzeffian papyrology

would be incomplete without a thorough consideration of how interpersonal connections

and conflicts influenced the scholarly activities of its members. In the context of the

Rostovtzeff tradition, the intellectual and the interpersonal are inextricable.

My chapters are arranged as follows. The first chapter traces the biography of

Rostovtzeff and how he came to be the father of Yale’s papyrological enterprise. The

second focuses exclusively on the complex interaction of intellectual, departmental,

political, and interpersonal tensions that spelled the demise of the Rostovtzeff tradition at

Yale. This discussion sets the stage for the third chapter, which explores how the fallout

of the conflicts at Yale allowed the Rostovtzeff approach to spread across North America.

A picture of a charcoal sketch made of Rostovtzeff in Paris in 1933. The original was passed down from Rostovtzeff to C. Bradford Welles, who passed it on to his student, Alan Samuel. Samuel gifted it to Bagnall a few years before he died. This photograph resides in the Rubenstein Rare Book library at Duke University, Series 2, Subseries 3: Pictures Subseries, 1909-1941 and undated, Box 3.

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Chapter 1 Reliving Rostovtzeff: Papyrology’s Beginnings in North America

The project of this chapter is to examine how Russian émigré Michael Ivanovitch

Rostovtzeff came to be the patriarch of North American papyrology. North American

papyrology’s story thus begins ironically: its progenitor was not himself a papyrologist—

at least in the strictest sense of the term.1 Though Rostovtzeff made substantive,

occasionally revolutionary, contributions to a plethora of fields that shed light on the

ancient world, he was fundamentally a historian: as his most influential and extensive

works—his Social and Economic Histories of the Roman Empire and Hellenistic

World—attest, the major projects to which he dedicated his intellectual energies were

historical in nature. This disciplinary orientation notwithstanding, the massive

papyrological contributions Rostovtzeff made in the Yale Classics Department led his

colleague Austin Harmon to name Rostovtzeff the fons et origo2 of the study of

papyrology at the university.3 Due to Rostovtzeff’s industry and innovation in papyrology

at Yale and his successors’ commitment to continuing the traditions he inaugurated, Yale

swiftly became one of papyrology’s first homes in North America, which it steadfastly

remained for over three decades. Over this chapter, we will trace papyrology’s

beginnings at Yale by acquainting ourselves with the industrious, complicated man who

cultivated them.

The Necessity of “Reliving” Rostovtzeff

1 See Capasso, M., “Rostovtzeff e la Papirologia” for a detailed sketch of Rostovtzeff’s papyrological activity. 2 “Fountain and source.” 3 Harmon, Austin M. "Egyptian Property Returns." Yale Classical Studies 4 (1934), 135.

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To gain a sense of Rostovtzeff and his influence, it is necessary to approach

Rostovtzeff using the same method he utilized for studying the ancient world. In an

unpublished sketch of his academic career, Rostovtzeff defines history as a “piece of

life,” and, in light of this, exhorts that “each phenomenon studied by a historian must be

visualized by him, that is to say, appear before him as a picture of life, not as a theoretical

abstraction.”4 C. Bradford Welles, Rostovtzeff’s successor and most dedicated mentee,

alludes to how Rostovtzeff fulfilled this mandate while sketching his influence in a

Festschrift for historian Abbot Payson Usher. According to Welles, Rostovtzeff “felt that

[historical] problems… required… not only understanding, but a kind of reliving—a

Nachempfinden—of Antiquity.”5 Though a loose construal of the German, this rendering

of Nachempfinden captures the methodological thread uniting Rostovtzeff’s enormous

breadth of scholarly endeavors. Rostovtzeff indeed relived antiquity with every means

available to him. One hallmark of his scholarship was how he took pains to encounter the

societies he studied in a tangible, material way through travel. As Glen Bowersock

comments in his review on The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire:

Rostovtzeff was an indefatigable traveler… He knew from the start that a historian of the ancient world had to learn topography through his feet and to sense climate through his pores. He never lost his fascination with the stones of the past, whether they were inscribed or not, whether they belonged to shops, temples, theaters, or military camps… Rostovtzeff was a historian who was never content simply to work in a library.6 Later in his review, Bowersock illustrates how Rostovtzeff’s immersion in

antiquity transcended the physical. Rostovtzeff not only inserted himself in antiquity but

imposed his own experiences upon his perception of it. That Rostovtzeff’s personal

4 Rostovtzeff, Michael I. "The Academic Career of M.I. Rostovtzeff." 1940, 4, 5. 5 Welles, "Michael I. Rostovtzeff," 56. A more typical translation would be “sympathy.” 6 Bowersock, “The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire,” 16.

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experiences permeated—and often clouded—his analysis of the ancient world is

Bowersock’s primary critique of Rostovtzeff. A refugee who fled Bolsheveki Russia in

1918, Rostovtzeff saw the world—present and past—through the lens of the cataclysmic

events that cast him out of his homeland. To Bowersock, this vantage point rendered

Rostovtzeff’s analysis of the Roman Empire an inappropriate “marriage of pre-1918

scholarly training and post-1918 personal experience and reflections,” and its accuracy

suffered immensely as a result.7 Rostovtzeff biographer Marinus Wes is indeed right to

characterize Rostovtzeff as an “historian in exile”: Rostovtzeff’s exile status and the

combination of personal, interpersonal, and political obstacles it entailed are inextricable

from his intellectual development.

Thus, to understand the scholar and his influence, we must understand the exile

and the series of events that shaped him and eventually transported him to Phelps Hall in

1926. We must, in effect, “relive” Rostovtzeff. Only by examining the crucible of

complicated—and often grueling—conditions under which he soared to eminence can we

gauge his long-lasting impact on papyrology in North America.

Inception: 19th Century Intellectual Currents and Rostovtzeff’s Early Training

Bowersock correctly bifurcated Rostovtzeff’s life into two distinct eras: the pre-

1918 and post-1918 stages. We begin with the former by surveying the changing

intellectual currents into which Rostovtzeff entered when he started his classical training

at the classical gymnasium in Kiev in 1888. We then briefly recount Rostovtzeff’s

intellectual development during this first era of his life, paying particular attention to how

7 Ibid., 19.

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papyrology figured into his evolution as a historian and trailblazer in the study of the

ancient world.

Advances made throughout the 19th century set the stage for Rostovtzeff to

revolutionize the study of ancient history through marrying historical inquiry with the

documentary disciplines. As we have discussed, in the late 19th century, a new swell in

scholarship was steadily engulfing the study of Classics throughout Europe. In Germany

specifically, the direction in the age-old debate between two approaches in Classics—

Classicism and Altertumswissenschaft—had shifted in favor of the latter.8 Classicism, the

approach that had dominated scholarship for a millennium, limits its purview to the

traditional canon of classical texts: texts like Plato’s Republic, Sophocles’ plays, and

Cicero’s orations that embodied the highest intellectual, literary, and political legacies of

ancient society and culture. Altertumswissenschaft, alternatively, seeks to study ancient

cultures in all their aspects by incorporating all extant evidences—including documents

and other physical artifacts—into its exploration. Throughout the 19th century, crucial

advances had been made that enabled Altertumswissenschaft to flourish not only in

Germany, but to breathe new dimensions into the study of Classics across the continent.9

We limit our discussion to considering briefly how advances in documentary studies and

archaeology influenced how Classicists treat documents, as they are most relevant to

Rostovtzeff’s scholarship.

Over the 19th century, new technologies and improved techniques for excavation

were developed, equipping cohorts of excavators to illuminate lost corners of the ancient

8 See van Minnen, P, “The Century of Papyrology” for a fuller discussion of Altertumswissenschaft, especially as it relates to papyrology. 9 Welles, “Michael I. Rostovtzeff,” 56.

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world. Turning their shovels to the Mediterranean and, especially, the parched terrain of

Egypt, they unearthed thousands upon thousands of material remnants from antiquity—

including Greek and Latin inscriptions, coinage, papyri, and other inscribed objects from

antiquity.10 As we previously discussed in the introduction, the late 1800s saw a

particularly massive boom in the excavation of papyrological texts. Most significantly, by

the close of the century, Grenfell and Hunt had commenced their Oxyrhynchus

expedition, which introduced over 500,000 fragments of papyri to the corpus of remnants

uncovered from the ancient world.11

The discovery of such artifacts engendered new questions about the classical

world and its inhabitants; and these questions challenged the deeply entrenched modes of

inquiry that had long governed the way that Classicists handled documents. Before the

surge in excavations, the study of material artifacts was predominately antiquarian.12 As

we have seen, classicists at the time were preoccupied with gleaning moral guidance from

the canonical texts. As a result, they gave documents a flatly factual treatment, venturing

no further than simply documenting their existence without any effort to situate them

within a broader societal context. Only when these documents lent direct insight into

scholars’ understanding of the canonical texts—such in the case of literary papyri—did

they receive proper consideration.13 This began to change in the second half of the 19th

century. With thousands of new documents available to study, pioneer classicists14 saw

their potential to answer questions about social life and culture in antiquity, questions

10 Ibid. 11 Keenan, “The History of The Discipline,” 61, 62. 12 Welles, “Michael I. Rostovtzeff,” 56. 13 van Minnen, “The Century of Papyrology,” 7. 14 Namely, Theodore Mommsen and Ulrich Wilcken, among many others. See the introduction.

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which the newfound popularity of social sciences, namely sociology and economics, had

inspired.15

When he began his training in philology the University of St. Petersburg,

Rostovtzeff immediately embraced this growing trend in the study of Classics. As he

mused in his academic autobiography, the intellectual influence of his parents predestined

him to pursue an Altertumswissenschaft-inspired course of study. While he credits his

interest in the classical world to his father, a prominent Latinist and teacher at one of

Russia’s principal classical gymnasia, he ascribes his insatiable curiosity and intellectual

development to his mother’s innate curiosity.16 He cultivated both parental lines of

influence during his time at St. Petersburg. He excelled in his philological training under

eminent Hellenists and Latinists, honing a linguistic meticulousness in Greek and Latin

reminiscent of his father’s.17 A broader fascination, however, with aspects of ancient life

and the material documents that illuminate them overtook him early in his studies, and he

learned to explore it through the lens of art and archaeology under the direction of

esteemed art historian N. Kondakov.18 A brief stint abroad in Vienna, moreover, exposed

him to the documentary world via courses in Latin epigraphy and archaeology. His

undergraduate thesis, “Pompeii in the Light of the New Excavations,” incorporated all his

varied interests and inspirations into an extensive historical analysis of the region. In

Rostovtzeff’s own words, the paper “forecasted” the direction of his future scholarly

activity in that it

15Welles, “Michael I. Rostovtzeff,” 56.16 Rostovtzeff, “The Academic Career of Professor M.I. Rostovtzeff,” 2. 17 Among his teachers were Sokolov, Jernstedt, Nikitin, Zielinski, and Kondakov. For a comprehensive analysis of Rostovtzeff’s intellectual development, see Welles, “Michael I. Rostovtzeff.” 18 Ibid., 57.

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“[represented] ancient history with the emphasis on constitutional matters, on social and economic life, and on archaeology, all viewed in the light of their bearing on ancient history. In my subsequent work I have paid as much attention to the one as the other.”19 The scope of this paper and the variety of its sources were impressive, so much so

that its findings recognized were published in the Russian Journal of the Ministry of

Public Education.20 Over his time at St. Petersburg, Rostovtzeff indeed managed to

sketch a blueprint for a new strand of scholarship he later developed throughout his

career: a study of ancient history with an emphasis on ancient life and the original

sources that reflect it. This revolutionary mode for studying history, which Rostovtzeff

perfected in his Social and Economic Histories in the twentieth century, synthesized the

various methodologies of Altertumswissenschaft that had been blossoming throughout the

nineteenth century. Although Rostovtzeff recognized he owed much of this development

to the guidance of his professors, it was his interactions with a diverse set of peers21 at

Petersburg and students he met abroad that inspired him to approach history from such a

comprehensive angle.22 These early experiences with intellectual exchange and scholarly

congeniality started a thread he maintained throughout the remainder of his career, one

that ultimately inspired him to remodel the Classics Department at Yale into a center of

interdisciplinary unity and collaboration.

Papyrology entered Rostovtzeff’s world when he journeyed outside of his

homeland. After spending three years teaching secondary school at a state gymnasium in

19 Rostovtzeff, “The Academic Career of Professor M.I. Rostovtzeff,” 3. 20 Welles, “Michael I. Rostovtzeff,” 58. 21 At St. Petersburg, Rostovtzeff became close with Archaeologist Pharmakovski, Byzantinist Vasiliev, historian Zhebelov, Medievalist Smirnov, and papyrologist Zeretelli. See Welles, “Michael I. Rostovtzeff,” 57. 22 Rostovtzeff, “The Academic Career of Professor M.I. Rostovtzeff,” 3.

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Zarskoe-Selo, Rostovtzeff undertook a campaign to travel throughout the “classical

lands” of three continents from 1895-1898. During these years in Turkey, Greece,

Vienna, Spain, France, North Africa, Italy, and England, Rostovtzeff devoted himself not

only to taking in each region’s ancient remains with his senses, but also to learning from

an array of experts in the documentary disciplines.23 It was during this particular trip to

England when Rostovtzeff’s interest in papyrology was kindled. As Capasso outlines,

papyrology—in comparison to other modes of Altertumswissenschaft—was not

incorporated into Russian scholarship until the final decade of the 19th century, when

pioneer V. Jernsted began evaluating Greek papyri that were bought from Egypt several

decades prior.24 In England, however, papyrological study was rapidly gaining traction,

largely due to the work of classicist Bernard Pyne Grenfell, who spearheaded the

Oxyrhynchus expeditions. While in England, Rostovtzeff made contact both with

Grenfell, who became one of his dearest friends, and Ulrich Wilcken, another torchbearer

in the field. 25

Rostovtzeff returned to Russia in the Fall of 1898 to defend his master’s thesis,

entitled “A History of the State Lease in the Roman Empire.” His subsequent

publications between the years of 1896 and 1918—including his aforementioned study of

the tesserae, and a brief paper, “Staatspacht,” for which he used documentary papyri as

his main source to assess Roman tax systems—retained this focus on economic and

social life.26 By 1918, scores of diverse, provocative publications had proven Rostovtzeff

23 Welles, “Michael I. Rostovtzeff,” 58, 59. 24 Capasso, Mario. "Rostovtzeff e la Papirologia." In Rostovtzeff e la Italia edited by Arnaldo Marcone. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 1995, 374. 25 Welles, “Michael I. Rostovtzeff,” 58. 26 Litvinenko, Yuri. "Travels of M.I. Rostovtzeff in Egypt." In Michel Ivanovitch Rostovtzeff, edited by Wladimir Bérélowitch and Jean Andreau. Bari: Edipuglia, 2008, 116.

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a formidable scholar of ancient society. His demonstrated acumen in the field of history

prompted esteemed German historians Wilamowitz and Eduard Meyer to commission

him in 1914 to undertake the mammoth task of writing social and economic histories of

both the Roman Empire and the Hellenistic World, a request he gladly accepted.27

In the process of making a name for himself as a scholar, moreover, Rostovtzeff

began collecting the antiquities that inspired his work, papyri in particular. Enthralled by

the sheer mass of papyri and other documents preserved in its arid sands, Rostovtzeff

traveled to Egypt in 1908 to examine and purchase Ptolemaic papyri. As Litvinenko

comments on his “iterology” of Rostovtzeff’s travels in Egypt, the purpose of this

expedition was two-fold. He sojourned to Egypt both to “relive” yet another classical

land and, in Litvinenko’s words, to “lay bridges” between his beloved homeland and the

ancient world, namely by importing papyri to Russia to encourage papyrological

scholarship.28 Later letters between Rostovtzeff and Russian colleagues reveal that he had

his heart set on creating a papyrological center in Saint Petersburg, with the goal of

adding Russia to the “chorus of European cultural nations in the field of papyrology.”29

In the second decade of the 20th century, he took action to achieve this goal: he started a

papyrology seminar at Saint Petersburg University in 1914, and members of the seminar

began collaborating with Russian museums and collections to edit all papyri scattered

throughout the country.30 Indeed, by 1918, papyrology had become part and parcel of

Rostovtzeff’s exhaustive model of Altertumswissenschaft.

27 Welles, “Michael I. Rostovtzeff, 62. 28 Litvinenko, “Travels of M.I. Rostovtzeff in Egypt,” 118. 29 Ibid., 119. 30 Ibid.

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Also by 1918, however, the Bolshevik uprising had seized hold of the Russian

government and was launching a frenzied campaign to purge imperial loyalists. Though

he had been holding out hope for the revolution to dissipate, Rostovtzeff realized its

inevitability with the murder of two hospitalized democrats in 1918. Realizing his arrest

was imminent, he sought ways to escape. In June of 1918, the opportunity to seek asylum

in Sweden arose and he seized it without any hesitation.31 With his escape from Russia,

Rostovtzeff entered the second phase of his life in which his existence would be defined

by exile.

Rupture: Exile and its Implications

Among the many photographs of Rostovtzeff preserved in the Duke Library, not a

single picture taken after 1918 depicts him smiling. Even when embarking on a long-

anticipated voyage to Syria or when posing with his beloved wife Sophie, an overcast

melancholy seems to cloud the face of the émigré, sharpening his already piercing blue

eyes. In a short autobiography that the Yale Daily News requested he write, Rostovtzeff

conceded that, though a careful historian, he could not bring himself to write a “historical

sketch of the events” of his lifetime. Rather, he could only offer “impressions” of the

events that had the most profound impact on his life; and the totality of these impressions

are memories of the trauma he endured when he fled his country. He concluded the piece

by vividly relaying the moment that forever changed the trajectory of his life:

My last vision. A bright day in June 1918. I am boarding a steamer bound for Sweden. Last trial. Search of my luggage and of my body. Few friends on the landing place who came to see me off. Last whistle. I left my country, never to see it again.32

31 Rostovtzeff, Michael I. "Adventures of a College Professor." David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library (Subseries 2, Box 3, Autobiographical Writings, 1940; undated): Duke University, ca. 1930 (no date listed). 32 Ibid., 9.

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Though Rostovtzeff’s exile expectedly took an immense toll on his mental health and

ultimately enveloped him in a deep depression that had been escalating since childhood,

it invigorated him as a scholar. Its implications on the quantity, quality, and scope of his

scholarship were sweeping, leading both critics and admirers to the consensus that the

toils of exile made him the “intellectual titan” he is remembered as.33 Enraged over how

many ongoing projects in Russia he was forced to abandon, Rostovtzeff increased his

scholarly output, writing with a fresh sense of urgency and, perhaps, fury. Indeed, in the

immediate decade following his exile he produced his greatest contributions to the field

of ancient history—namely, his two Social and Economic Histories—as well as a litany

of other books, articles, and other publications touching on subjects as diverse as the

Zenon papyri to current events in revolutionary Russia. The rapidity of his production

naturally made his work vulnerable to imprecision, as Momigliano comments:

Whoever goes through the gigantic output of Rostovtzeff in the period 1918-26 has some idea of the crisis through which he passed. It was a feverish production, lacking formal perfection, often marred by vulgar mistakes in detail, but exceptional in originality… The giant had been hit, but was hitting back.34 Its blow to his accuracy was exile’s least consequential impact on Rostovtzeff’s

scholarship. Exile laid siege on every corner of his mind, including his analytical

faculties. He began viewing everything, the ancient world included, in terms of the

personal and political turmoil produced by the Second Russian Revolution. Written less

than a decade after he fled Russia, his Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire

33 Bowersock, “The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire,” 15. 34 Momigliano, Arnaldo. A. D. Momigliano: Studies on Modern Scholarship. Studies on Modern Scholarship. Edited by G. W. Bowersock and Tim Cornell Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994, 38.

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is the foremost example of the extent to which his grueling experiences inflected upon his

perception of historical phenomena. Bowersock underlines this in his review of the tome:

The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire took up the grand theme of Edward Gibbon: decline and fall. Rostovtzeff, however, ascribed the ruin of Rome neither to barbarians at the gates nor to Christianity within. In his view, an alliance of the rural proletariat with the military in the third century A.D. destroyed the beneficent rule of an urban bourgeoisie. This explanation of the end of the Roman Empire is so obviously unsatisfactory that one may well wonder why an acute scholar like Rostovtzeff took it seriously. Clearly he did so because of what he had seen; his own life had convinced him that what he described could actually happen.35 While exile’s ramifications on Rostovtzeff’s academic work are manifest and

have been adequately discussed among experts on his scholarship, exile also had a

formative impact on Rostovtzeff as an academic—as a figure who moves through and

influences the academe. This impact merits consideration, because it fundamentally

shaped how Rostovtzeff understood the role scholars play in scholarship and greatly

influenced how he ultimately shaped the Yale Classics Department. After being torn

away from his homeland, Rostovtzeff looked to the various institutions with which he

was affiliated as sources of sanctuary and community, conflating personal with

professional belonging. He was, in short, in search of a new home. Before he ultimately

discovered an adopted, academic home at Yale, Rostovtzeff held positions for a short

time at two universities, Oxford and University of Wisconsin at Madison, wherein he had

nearly antithetical experiences adjusting to the academic and cultural atmospheres of the

institutions. It is worth briefly considering Rostovtzeff’s time at Oxford and Wisconsin,

as they set the stage for Rostovtzeff’s activities at Yale.

35 Bowersock, “The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire,” 18.

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Wandering: Rostovtzeff in Oxford and Wisconsin

In the preface to the first volume of History of the Ancient World, Rostovtzeff

refers to the two years he spent at Oxford as a fellow at Corpus Christi College as “the

darkest hour of [his life].”36 Though partially attributable to the fact that his fellowship

immediately proceeded his escape from Russia, his disdain for his time at Oxford stems

from a fundamental incompatibility between Rostovtzeff and the institution. This

incompatibility was largely cultural. The stiff, “gentlemanly” cordiality of 20th century

Oxbridge culture was not hospitable to Rostovtzeff’s assertive, occasionally boisterous

manner, which he had difficulty modulating in a foreign language and foreign

circumstances. Oxonians extended little mercy to Rostovtzeff as he navigated his new

surroundings. Hugh Last, one of Rostovtzeff’s Oxford colleagues and eventual Camden

Professor of Ancient History, rather harshly remarked that “like other unfortunates in

exile, remembering that his knowledge was his main claim to consideration he was apt to

force it on his listeners in conversation with a vigour that was sometimes thought

excessive.”37 Oxford’s characteristically English appreciation for precision and perfection

did not mesh with Rostovtzeff’s broad interests, either. To scholars who valued narrow

specialization, the gall Rostovtzeff displayed when he chose to focus his first lecture

series on “The Social and Economic History of Eastern and Western Hellenism, the

Roman Republic, and the Roman Empire” was highly off-putting; the occasional lapses

in precision he made as he lectured on this topic, moreover, did not help matters.38 As a

36 Rostovtzeff, Michael I. History of the Ancient World. Translated by J.D. Duff. Oxford: Clarendon Press, xvii. 37 Bowersock, “The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire,” 17, 18. 38 Ibid.

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result, Rostovtzeff inadvertently alienated himself from the majority of leading scholars

at Oxford, which gave way to an isolated existence.

Isolation took a toll on all aspects of Rostovtzeff’s life. He plummeted into a

debilitating depression, and his scholarly production was momentarily paralyzed. Though

depression presumably hampered his work, it was the isolation itself that posed the most

significant barrier. At its best, Rostovtzeff’s scholarship before exile was markedly

collaborative; his most notable work was the product of sharing ideas or the outcome of

sweltering days exploring with diverse groups of historians, archaeologists, and

papyrologists.39 Intercourse with colleagues constantly refreshed the “picture of life”

Rostovtzeff sought to capture, introducing new angles from which he could “relive” the

past. The lack of congeniality Rostovtzeff faced at Oxford all but halted this

Nachempfinden process. As a result, he wrote little during his two years at Oxford, and

when he did write, he generally limited himself to musing on contemporary events in

Russia. He seldom engaged with the ancient world and made little progress in

undertaking the great project of writing the social and economic histories of Greece and

Rome. The pain this disengagement inflicted felt visceral; in a letter to a friend, he

described it as a gnawing “hunger.”40 He ended the same letter with on an existential note

that succinctly describes his experiences at Oxford: “Life is difficult… I am very tired.”41

Thus, when Rostovtzeff unexpectedly received a letter from a stranger extending

an offer for a one-year position in the history department of the University of Wisconsin,

39 A prime example of this was the work on Pompeii he conducted for his undergraduate thesis. See Welles, “Michael I Rostovtzeff,” 57. 40 Wes, Marinus Antony. Michael Rostovtzeff, Historian in Exile : Russian Roots in an American Context. Historia. Einzelschriften ; Heft 65. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1990, 51. 41 Ibid.

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Madison, neither the instability of the position—nor the fact that, according to rumors, he

had never heard of Madison, Wisconsin—seemed not to have crossed his mind.42 He

accepted the position immediately, and after what Bowersock describes as a “comic-

opera”-esque debacle with US immigration bureaucracy, Rostovtzeff finally sailed to

America, beginning the chapter of his career in which he ascended from notoriety to

greatness.43

Rostovtzeff had low expectations for Wisconsin. The impending task of restarting

his career yet again in another foreign, potentially hostile environment felt

insurmountable.44 Within the first 24 hours of arriving in Madison, however, his outlook

drastically changed. Wisconsin received him with instant respect and warmth. The

brusqueness and formidability that made him a pariah at Oxford were met with

admiration, eventually earning him the endearing nickname “Rough Stuff.”45 Students

adored him, and colleagues and administration venerated him, which was promptly

manifested as an offer for permanent position at the end of his first year. His insatiably

wide research interests, too, were supported institutionally. Though significantly less

resourced than other Classics departments across the country, Wisconsin made itself

amenable to nearly all of Rostovtzeff’s requests for aid. This was particularly true for his

papyrological studies; in addition to offering him its own growing collection, Wisconsin

presented Rostovtzeff ample opportunities to travel and continue his study of the Fayum

papyri.46 Over his five years at Wisconsin, moreover, Rostovtzeff learned how to

42 Bowersock, G. W. "Historiography: Rostovtzeff in Madison." The American Scholar 55, no. 3 (1986), 392. 43 Ibid., 394. 44 Wes, Historian in Exile, 51. 45 Bowersock, “Rostovtzeff in Madison,” 395. 46 Ibid., 396.

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navigate the oddities of American university politics and leverage policies to advance his

work. After convincing Wisconsin to grant him multiple leaves of absence for projects,

he realized he could use them as “bargaining chips” in negotiations with Wisconsin and

other institutions.47 He became quite good at negotiating for salary raises, project

funding, and even for the appointment of friends, a skill which he called upon regularly at

Yale.48

The congenial atmosphere of Wisconsin, moreover, reinvigorated Rostovtzeff to

resume his projects on the ancient world. At Wisconsin, he felt both the freedom and

impetus to write. He comments on this in his preface to the first volume of History of the

Ancient World:

I dedicate the book to the University of Wisconsin. In the darkest hour of my life, Wisconsin made it possible for me to resume my learned studies and carry them on without interruption. During five years which I spent there, I met with constant kindness from my colleagues and unvarying consideration on the part of the University authorities for my requests and my scientific occupations. Nor can I recall without a feeling of gratitude the sympathy of the students. Such an atmosphere lightened the toil of writing this book, and it was addressed in the first instance to the students of Wisconsin.49 Here Rostovtzeff highlights how he found in Wisconsin what he direly lacked at

Oxford: a community. Though undergraduate students and administrators could not

engage in the discourse of Nachempfinden with him, they could provide him the kind,

supportive environment that enabled him to carry out his solitary work. Their support was

fruitful: during his tenure at Wisconsin, Rostovtzeff produced the bulk of his massive

magnum opus, The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire. For this reason,

Bowersock considers Wisconsin the place where “the scholar we recognize in Michael I.

47 Ibid., 397. 48 Ibid. 49 Rostovtzeff, M.I., History of the Ancient World, xvii.

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Rostovtzeff came into being—archaeologist and creative interpreter of the ancient

world.”50 Moreover, Wisconsin was where Rostovtzeff felt a sense of belonging and

community for the first time since the traumatic events of the Bolsheveki Revolution. In a

short note that he sent to a Russian colleague updating her after he moved to Wisconsin,

he solely wrote:

“Here at Madison I almost feel like at home.”51

Homecoming: Rostovtzeff’s Move to Yale

Home, however, was elsewhere. Though Wisconsin provided him with an

amiable community, its structures and, to an extent, its people were not sufficiently

interconnected nor visionary to support Rostovtzeff and all his endeavors. Wisconsin’s

History Department—where he held his appointment—was endlessly accommodating,

but its Classics Department made few attempts to engage with him. Its four leading

members largely kept to themselves as they conducted work that Bowersock generously

describes as “appreciative” as opposed to “research-oriented.”52 Rostovtzeff could not

thrive in an environment where different modes of Altertumswissenschaft were sectioned

off in such a way and where scholars refused to collaborate, especially given that he had

begun making plans for extensive excavation projects that mandated interdisciplinary

contributors.53 Exacerbating matters was the university’s strong emphasis on

undergraduate teaching, which further confined Rostovtzeff to the History Department’s

corner of the university. Rostovtzeff made his resentment over these restrictions manifest

while writing to Italian colleague Leandro Polverini: “Sono uno dei professori americani,

50 Bowersock, “Rostovtzeff in Madison,” 400. 51 Wes, Historian in Exile, 51. 52 Bowersock, “Rostovtzeff in Madison” 395. 53 Ibid., 397

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una macchina per insegnare o meglio per stampare certi individui che vogliono aver la

stampa dell’Università” (“I am one of the American professors, a teaching machine, or

better, a machine for printing certain individuals who want to have a University

imprimatur”).54

To house his lofty goals and yearning for interdisciplinary exchange, Rostovtzeff

needed an institution that both had the resources to bring his plans to fruition and was

willing to offer him the flexibility to focus on his scholarly endeavors. He found such an

institution in Yale. Rostovtzeff finally made his long-awaited homecoming when he

accepted the Sterling Professorship in Ancient History and Archaeology in 1925, where

he remained for the rest of his career.55 By the time he arrived at Yale, Rostovtzeff had

proven himself a pioneer in the field of history, and, in awe of his accomplishments, the

members of Yale’s Classics and History departments opened themselves to adopting his

unique approach to scholarship. Also harboring deep respect for Rostovtzeff, the

university administration granted him essentially unlimited access to the university’s

financial resources, which he relied upon extensively to fund extensive acquisitions and

excavations.56 Thus, at Yale, Rostovtzeff was able transform a somewhat disengaged

Classics department into a deeply interconnected scholarly community that displayed

levels of congeniality and loyalty resembling those of a family. Clarence W. Mendell,

Chairman of the Department during much of Rostovtzeff’s tenure at Yale, reflected on

the invigoration that took place under Rostovtzeff:

It soon became apparent that the somewhat sleepy atmosphere of the Department of Classical Studies was destined for a rude awakening. Hendrickson taught Latin

54 von Staden, Heinrich. "Rostovtzeff a Yale." In Rostovtzeff e La Italia, edited by Arnaldo Marcone. Napoli; Perugia: Edizioni scientifiche italiane; Università degli studi di Perugia, 1999, 79. 55 Ibid., 66. 56 Ibid., 71.

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with a firm and traditional method and had published a continuous series of definitive scientific articles; Harmon had reconstituted Lucian’s text and was responsible for the course of study on the Greek side; the course of Classical Civilization, recently established to form the new generation that did not know Greek or Latin, was entrusted to younger professors. Everything proceeded in a serene, respectable and very peaceful way. The arrival of Rostovtzeff brought an explosion of new energy and vitality. He infused his vigorous interpretation of history into his Classical Civilization course. Each member of the faculty rediscovered new energy. The Yale Classical Studies experienced a new flowering and was soon overwhelmed by articles proposed for publication. Philology professors were encouraged to keep up with the news in the field of archaeology and history. And, in a few years, the excavation project at Dura-Europos began to unravel the pivot around which the rest revolved.57 Rostovtzeff managed to foster this energy and unify the department successfully

across specialties by rallying colleagues and mentees under the common cause of

Altertumswissenschaft. By nature of its holism, Altertumswissenschaft not only supports,

but connects the pursuits of every discipline pertaining to study of the ancient world. As

it will become clear over the next few pages, it was this emphasis on inclusion that

created a space for papyrology to blossom at Yale.

Awakening: Rostovtzeff’s Influence on Yale and Yale Papyrology

From his innovative undergraduate teaching strategies to his organizing of

prestigious research expeditions to his transformative influence on colleagues and

mentees, Rostovtzeff seemingly revitalized every component of the Yale’s Classics (and

History) Department. For our purposes, an exploration of one seminal project that

Rostovtzeff led—the Dura-Europos expedition—will be illustrative of how Rostovtzeff

became the fons et origo of papyrology at Yale. More significantly, I seek in this analysis

to demonstrate how Rostovtzeff integrated papyrology into his collaboration-focused,

57 Quote from Clarence W. Mendell originally in “Michael I. Rostovtzeff” pp. 337-388. I could not locate the original source, so I re-translated it from the Italian translation of it in von Staden, “Rostovtzeff a Yale,” 68.

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Altertumswissenschaft-based model to so great an extent that the two became

inextricable. The significance of this linking to papyrology will become apparent in our

discussion of the rupture of Yale’s papyrological enterprise and in the formation of the

American Society of Papyrologists.

The Dura-Europos expedition, like many of Rostovtzeff’s projects, was not

papyrological in nature, but it incorporated papyri along with other forms of documentary

evidence. On the banks of the Euphrates River in the Syrian Desert, Dura-Europos was an

outpost town of the Roman empire at the crossroads of a major East-West trade route. It

has especial significance as an archaeological site because nothing was built over its

remains after it was destroyed by Persians in 256 C.E., which left its architectonic

structure uncompromised.58 Among the findings from the series of expeditions led by

Rostovtzeff’s Yale team and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters are a rich

collection of documents on papyrus and parchment, a synagogue, Mithraeum, and a

wholly intact Christian building, considered by some to be “the world’s oldest church.”59

The artifacts illuminated much about life in a culturally complex city in the third-century

Roman empire and today command nearly an entire floor of the Yale Art Gallery.60

Largely at Rostovtzeff’s insistence did Yale agree to spearhead the series of Dura-

Europos expeditions, which spanned from 1928-1937.61 It thus bears many signature

features of Rostovtzeff’s work. Rostovtzeff, for example, made the petition for the

58 “Historical Background.” in Dura-Europos: Excavating Antiquity." Yale University Art Gallery. http://media.artgallery.yale.edu/duraeuropos/dura.html. 59 In my short study of Dura-Europos, Dr. Ann Hanson referred me to Michael Peppard’s The World’s Oldest Church. It provides a comprehensive study of Dura artifacts, and I highly recommend it. 60 “Historical Background.” in Dura-Europos: Excavating Antiquity." Yale University Art Gallery, . http://media.artgallery.yale.edu/duraeuropos/dura.html. 61 S. Emmel, “Antiquity in Fragments: A Hundred Years of Collecting Papyri at Yale,” The Yale University Gazette, 64, no. 1/2 (October 1990), 48.

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excavations to be conducted in partnership with the French Academy, yet another

demonstration of his desire to pursue Nachempfinden in collaboration with diverse

groups. Under the aegis of the Dura-Europos project, he imported a collaboration-based

model of scholarly work to Yale. Rostovtzeff took pains to make Dura-Europos a

community-wide endeavor. He made students excited about Dura-Europos by giving

vibrant lectures on the fieldwork that highlighted the significance of the expedition both

to archaeology and the study of antiquity in general. The excitement that Rostovtzeff

roused over Dura-Europos garnered national attention, with the Philadelphia Public

Ledger deeming the discoveries “Treasure of Untold Value Found in Lost City.”62

Among his colleagues, moreover, Rostovtzeff insured every faculty member had

a stake in Dura-Europos, urging those who were not actively working on the project to

keep up with its progress as well as advances in the field of archaeology.63 He banded

together teams of faculty and graduate students in the History, Classics, and Near Eastern

Studies departments to chip away at publishing findings, a colossal task. Many involved

in this effort did not consider themselves papyrologists, and some, like Austin Harmon,

had never had interest in documentary studies until Rostovtzeff’s arrival. Harmon,

Lampson Professor of Greek Literature, was a committed philologist before he met

Rostovtzeff. Rostovtzeff convinced him, however, of the merits of documentary studies,

which compelled Harmon to become an “opsimath”64 of papyrology. He dedicated an

article on Egyptian property returns to Rostovtzeff, saying:

62 “Excavation History.” in Dura-Europos: Excavating Antiquity." Yale University Art Gallery, . http://media.artgallery.yale.edu/duraeuropos/dura.html. 63 Von Staden, “Rostovtzeff a Yale,” 68. 64 Opsimath, from the Greek ὀψέ (late) and µανθάνω (to learn), meaning one who begin to study something late in life.

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“I dedicate this report to Michael Rostovtzeff, fons et origo of papyrological study at Yale and creator of the collection, now far from insignificant ... It was at his insistence that I pledged myself to get away from my field, being an opsimath in papyrology, and to do with these documents something more than publishers of papyrus usually do. The digression, once begun, had to be completed, although it was long and arduous.65 Through efforts like Dura-Europos, Rostovtzeff indeed managed to awaken a

lively, ongoing campus conversation about—and investment in—the ancient world,

inaugurating a new culture of Nachempfinden at Yale. Papyrology, as Harmon’s

testimony illustrates, was introduced to Yale as part and parcel of this culture. In addition

to excavating hundreds of papyri at the Dura-Europos site, Rostovtzeff and mentee C.

Bradford Welles made multiple papyri acquisitions during their travels to and from Syria.

In 1931, Rostovtzeff negotiated Yale’s largest single acquisition to date, which brought

the institution nearly 700 new pieces of papyri. 85 of these papyri were ultimately

published in first volume of the Yale Papyri publications.66 With seemingly unfettered

access to Yale’s purse strings, Rostovtzeff conducted many papyri “shopping trips”

throughout his time there, multiplying the size of the university’s collection many-fold.

Until the arrival of Rostovtzeff, Yale never thought of itself as an institution involved in

papyrology. It did occasionally acquire papyri and was an on-and-off member of the

Egypt Exploration Fund, but these efforts were driven by a largely antiquarian impetus.

Accordingly, the documents Yale historically obtained were those with obvious intrinsic

value, predominately Greek literary papyri.67

The arrival of Rostovtzeff spelled the demise of antiquarianism at Yale. Over his

time at the institution, he integrated papyrology into his Altertumswissenschaft enterprise,

65 Harmon, “Egyptian Property Returns,” 135. 66 Emmel, “Antiquity in Fragments,” 49. 67 Ibid., 46.

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which was based in the Yale Classics Department. This integration was physical. Until

1930, all of Yale’s papyri were under the care of the university library. When the Sterling

Memorial Library was finished, however, and the old library’s contents were migrated

there, the papyri were moved to Phelps Hall and put entirely under the care of the

Department of Classics.68 Practically, the shift made the Classics Department the sole

administrator of the papyrus collection and, thus, the university’s papyrological activity.

This shift had enormous implications on papyrology’s place at Yale, representing

papyrology’s assimilation into the broader pursuits of the Yale Classics Department

under Rostovtzeff.69

The department itself, moreover, was governed by Rostovtzeff’s version of

Altertumswissenschaft. In addition to shaping a department defined by collaboration and

Nachempfinden, Rostovtzeff made interpersonal relationships its foundation. Motivating

this choice was undoubtedly his exile status and the odyssey for a new home that it

created. In an ode he wrote for Rostovtzeff’s birthday, his colleague G.L. Hendrickson

keenly identifies how Rostovtzeff forged a family-like community for himself at Yale:

“Was he really a stranger once? We vow It really seems preposterous For it is so apparent now That he was always one of us.

Here is Saint Michael’s home at last And shall be for a long time yet. New friends become old friends so fast And qui transtulit sustinet!”70

68 Ibid., 49. 69 This is markedly different from how papyrology came to be treated at Michigan, where the papyrus collection was handled by an independent entity: The Department of Manuscripts and Papyri. 70 “He who has brought him here nurtures us!” This phrase is the state motto of Connecticut. In Von Staden, “Rostovtzeff a Yale,” 90.

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Friendship amongst colleagues and pupils was perhaps the most significant

component of Rostovtzeff’s activity at Yale. Only with the leverage of interpersonal

connection could Rostovtzeff influence the department in any way, as he never held any

formal chair or directorship through which he could officially change department policy.

As a result, most of Rostovtzeff’s changes were informal, sustained by the continued

interest of those they involved. Papyrology was no exception. While Rostovtzeff

purchased papyri as an official representative of the university, editing projects,

papyrological training, and the continued growth of the collection were entirely

dependent upon the willingness of members of the Classics department to contribute to

Rostovtzeff’s efforts.

Fortunately for Rostovtzeff, his students and colleagues were fiercely loyal to

him. Among Rostovtzeff’s students were William H. Willis, J. Frank Gilliam, and Robert

O. Fink, whose careers in papyrology and history honored his legacy. We will consider

their contributions to North American papyrology in the third chapter. No student felt

more loyalty towards Rostovtzeff and his Altertumswissenschaft-centered cause than his

mentee C. Bradford Welles. A doctoral student when Rostovtzeff joined the Yale faculty,

Welles would have made a fine philologist. He was working on a dissertation under

Harmon on Hellenistic royal letters, but after being exposed to Rostovtzeff’s method of

conducting historical study, he shifted the direction of the thesis substantially, focusing

on providing historical commentary on the letters.71 After graduating, Welles stayed at

Yale as an instructor and later became a full professor. Throughout Rostovtzeff’s career

at Yale, Welles remained a resilient contributor to all of his projects—from the

71 Bagnall, Roger S. "Charles Bradford Welles." In Hermae: Scholars and Scholarship in Papyrology edited by Mario Capasso. Pisa/Roma: Giardini Editori e Stampatori, 2007, 283.

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excavating and publishing of Dura-Europos to the series of papyri acquisitions.72 Welles,

moreover, became a surrogate son of sorts to the childless Rostovtzeffs. The volume of

correspondence between Welles and the Rostovtzeffs stored in Duke’s Rubenstein library

makes it manifest that Welles regarded Rostovtzeff and Sophie as his second parents.

After Sophie’s death, in fact, Welles became the executor of her estate.73 When

Rostovtzeff died a decade before his wife on 20 October 1952, Welles resolved to “keep

the flame” of Rostovtzeff’s activity at Yale, committing himself to uphold—and

expand—the cause of Altertumswissenschaft that Rostovtzeff imported to Yale.74

It is clear that Rostovtzeff, through the sheer volume of papyri he acquired and

the papyrological activities he started, surely deserves the title of fons et origo of

papyrology at Yale. Papyrology thrived under the unofficial Rostovtzeff regime,

moreover, because of its place in the pursuit of Altertumswissenschaft. How the

papyrological activity Rostovtzeff inaugurated at Yale, however, warrants my claim that

he was the father of North American papyrology has not yet been addressed. Over the

next chapter, we will examine how Yale Classics Department’s fate over the decades

following Rostovtzeff’s death launched papyrology’s spread across the continent. We

shall discover that, ironically, it was the death—or murder, perhaps—of papyrology at

Yale that breathed life of unprecedented proportions into the discipline.

72 Ibid., 284. 73 Bagnall, Roger S. "Welles, Charles Bradford." American National Biography 23 (1999), 4. 74 Bagnall, Roger S. "Oral History." By Gabrielle Stewart (October 1 2017).

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Chapter 2 “Men Acting Like Toddlers”: The Demise of Papyrology at Yale

Dated March 4th, 1966, a headline from the Yale Daily News reads “Classics:

Disputes, Resignations, Suspicion.” The article depicts a deeply divided Yale Classics

Department, wherein an “ancient philology-history debate” had escalated into a full-

blown war between the two approaches. Leading the “philology”1 side was literary

scholar and newly appointed department Chairman Eric Havelock, whom university

administration had recruited in 1963 to reform the then-failing department. C. Bradford

Welles, Rostovtzeff’s successor and the leader of Yale ancient history community,

represented the “history” side.2 The conflict eventually climaxed with the resignation or

expulsion of several junior professors of history and the documentary disciplines, Welles’

exile from the Classics department, and the effective dissolution of the

Altertumswissenschaft enterprise Rostovtzeff had built at Yale. Yale’s leading role in

papyrology, part and parcel of this enterprise, died with it.

This chapter chronicles how the Yale Classics department, once thriving under

Rostovtzeff, deteriorated a mere decade after his death. This discussion might seem like a

digression from the overall aim of my project. Although the crisis itself did not directly

involve papyrology, its fallout determined where and why papyrology spread across

North America in subsequent decades. Accordingly, the crisis looms large in the memory

1 The term “philology” derives from the Greek philos (“love”) and logos (“word”). In the context of Classics, it specifically refers to the study of Classics through the mastery of the classical languages, comparative linguistics, and literary criticism. See Kelsey, F.W., “Is There a Science of Classical Philology?” in Classical Philology Vol .3 No .4 (1907), esp. 373-375 for a thorough exploration. 2 “History” henceforth refers specifically to the Rostovtzeffian model of history discussed in the previous chapter.

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of many papyrologists. In his autobiography, Roger Bagnall, who was an undergraduate

at Yale during the time, reflects:

The destruction of the Yale department was certainly the bitterest experience I have had in forty years of the academic world, and I am quite without power to convey its full horror in words, especially at this distance.3 When I interviewed Bagnall, he passionately explained how Havelock and his

“lackeys” were intent on destroying the Rostovtzeff enterprise through “wiping out the

junior cohort” of historians, archaeologists, and papyrologists.4 Bagnall’s interpretation—

that Havelock intentionally decimated Rostovtzeff’s legacy at Yale—has become canon,

and it indeed has merit. Those who follow this debate, moreover, generally assume that

Havelock’s motivation for undermining history was his preference for his own specialty;

that is, that his actions were motivated by an intellectual conviction.

The central claim I make in this chapter challenges—or resituates, perhaps—this

assumption. While Havelock’s literary focus indeed played a role in his destruction of the

historical arm of the Yale Classics Department, the centrality of the “ancient literature-

history debate” in the Yale conflicts has been exaggerated. Rather, the crisis was caused

by something far more complex than intellectual or administrative differences; its causes

were largely personal. We spend this chapter considering the Yale conflicts because those

involved went on to spread Rostovtzeff’s brand of papyrology across North America;

their future work in the field was profoundly influenced by the events that ensued at Yale,