New Media (And Old)

The achievement of modernity in classical textual studies is the creation of the printed and seemingly reliable critical edition of the ancient text, the convenient book-in-hand that appears to relegate reference to the textual history and material substrate of literature to merely secondary importance. The new media that influence our modes of understanding of the ancient world are: media of transportation which bring together scholars and readers into physical communities, and that bring the books and articles produced in those communities to readers and scholars around the globe, with greater ease and diversity than ever known before; media of creation, storage, and dissemination of text; media of communication; and media of widespread representation of text, image, and other media. That we live in a moment in which the new media pose challenges to our ways of scholarship and to the future of Roman Studies cannot be denied.