This article takes off from a recent attempt by Walter Scheidel to “collect and analyze bibliometric evidence for the impact of published research in the field of Ancient History”; this, criticized by Nathan Pilkington; and Scheidel, answer­ing with revisions. The contributions of the two are here accepted in their metrics and in their focus on “impact”; but criticisms are advanced against their choices of focus and method. The aim here is to suggest the qualities of work that have earned frequent citation across a wider selection of the exemplary — much wider than the two quoted scholars attempt.

Dedicated to the memory of Voula Kotzia I first thought to write this essay while pondering how Late Antiquity could be studied in new and innovative ways, at universities. More specifically, the inspiration for this essay came to me when I was developing a proposal for a new course in the history of philosophy in the Late Antique period (roughly, from Philo to Philoponus). By the end of this essay it will hopefully be clearer what I mean by the title; I begin by explaining my concern in some preliminary way. Now, I know that my readers might not all exactly be enthusiasts for Late Antiquity, who already feel that the value of studying the post-classical periods all the way up until the Arab conquest is self-evident. But I hope here to convince even the uninitiated or unconverted that the project of studying Late Antiquity truly has weight and urgency, and thereby perhaps to increase the sense of the importance this particular historical period actually has. It would be odd if some of you in the room did not think that it is a better use of one's time to read Thucydides rather than Procopius, or Plato rather than Proclus. Not so long ago, I very much thought the same thing because I was the product of a common academic culture. When I was a graduate student in the 80s, I was one of a handful of budding scholars who took the risk of doing their doctoral research on the marginal fringes of ancient philosophy. The hot topic of the day was Hellenistic philosophy (Stoicism and skepticism in particular), closely followed by Plato and Aristotle. Cicero was of interest only insofar as he informed us about the Stoics or middle Platonists; even Lucretius was already an outlier, and beyond that, people had very little to say. You would not want to be caught with an open volume of Plotinus on your desk, much less one of the so-called fathers of

This survey of citation scores provides a rough measure of the relative impact of scholarship published by the most frequently cited active and retired ancient historians in the United States and Canada. The paper provides gross and annualized scores and briefly discusses representation by gender, race, and institutional affiliation.

This article takes off from a recent attempt by Walter Scheidel to "collect and analyze bibliometric evidence for the impact of published research in the field of Ancient History"; this, criticized by Nathan Pilkington; and Scheidel, answering with revisions. The contributions of the two are here accepted in their metrics and in their focus on "impact"; but criticisms are advanced against their choices of focus and method. The aim here is to suggest the qualities of work that have earned frequent citation across a wider selection of the exemplary-much wider than the two quoted scholars attempt.

DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195389661-0241 http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195389661/obo-9780195389661-0241.xml 1) Introduction 2) General Overviews 3) Lives of Statesmen Nepos, Foreign Generals Nicolaus of Damascus, Life of Augustus Plutarch, Lives Suetonius, Caesars Tacitus, Agricola Biographies of Roman Emperors 4) Lives of Intellectuals Lives of Poets and Prose Classics Lives of Philosophers Philostratus Lives of Scholars 5) Evolution of Ancient Biography The Origins of Greek Biography Classical Greece Hellenistic Biography Early Roman Biography 6) Profiling the Genre: Frames, Strategies, and Fault-Lines Biography vs. Historiography Autobiography Evaluation of Character Descriptions of Appearance Anecdotes Exemplarity and Moralism Intertextuality and Intertextual Role-Play Lives of Women Proems and Endings Inscriptions and Monuments

Call for Papers for the 14th encounter of young researchers in Ancient History (EJIHA) at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), in May 2015.

A Cronaca published in Bollettino di Studi Latini 45.2 (2015) 705-8.