On 31 July, one of the most eminent Classical scholars of our time, the esteemed OUP author Alan Cameron, passed away. My colleagues at the press and I extend our sincere condolences to his wife Carla and his surviving family. In a career that spanned several decades, Alan published so many critically important articles and books, on such a diverse group of subjects—from the literature of the Hellenistic age to Late Antiquity—that one would be hard pressed to isolate any one of these works as representative of the man and the scholar. And yet, I will always associate the name of Alan Cameron with his formidable The Last Pagans of Rome, which I had the great fortune to publish in 2011. This book was truly formidable in every way: its sheer size was capable of stopping a vault door; its learning, amassed over a lifetime of scholarship, was graphically represented in a nearly 50-page (large trim, small font) bibliography. The book took aim, to devastating effect, at the persistent myths about the end of paganism in the West—devastating, yes, but not without Alan’s characteristic sense of humor, which was always on display whenever I had the chance to visit him in Morningside Heights. More surely will be written about Rome in the fourth and fifth centuries CE, but nothing will appear in that area without first taking into account The Last Pagans of Rome. This could be said about so many other subjects that attracted his attention and his pen, and it doubtless will be said for very many years to come.
For more information about Alan’s distinguished career, see the notice posted by the Department of Classics, Columbia University.
Featured image credit: “looking downtown” by Ilahbocaj, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.
R.I.P. Professor Alan Cameron.