Laudator Temporis Acti

Bernard Knox (1914-2010), "Preface to the New Edition," Oedipus at Thebes: Sophocles' Tragic Hero and His Time (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), pp. ix-xiv (at ix-x):

The polemical tone of the original Preface, for example, seemed to suggest (though it was not my intention) that I was accusing my fellow classicists of "exclusive technicality" (I had been dismayed by the appearance of an article, extended over two successive issues of a periodical, entitled "The Carrot in Classical Antiquity").

I suspect, although I cannot be certain, that Knox's memory was slightly at fault, and that he was actually referring to the following two articles by Alfred C. Andrews, which appeared in successive issues of Classical Philology:

• Alfred C. Andrews, "Celery and Parsley as Foods in the Greco-Roman Period," Classical Philology 44.2 (April, 1949) 91-99
• Alfred C. Andrews, "The Carrot as a Food in the Classical Era," Classical Philology 44.3 (July, 1949) 182-196

It is a mark of how eccentric my interests are that, in an old notebook from graduate school, I jotted down references to these two articles. They don't dismay me. I'm more apt to read articles of this sort than any article or book with the words "gender" or "intertextuality" in the title.

Alfred C. Andrews was probably Alfred Carleton Andrews (1904-1970), about whom I can find very little information. He was Assistant Professor of Latin at the University of Vermont and later taught in the Department of Classics at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. He isn't listed in Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists, ed. Ward W. Briggs, Jr. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994), despite the fact that he received a Ph.D. (University of Pennsylvania, 1931).