Sarah Harrell, Bob Kaster, Joshua Katz, Robert Knapp, Donald Mastronarde,
Lloyd Moote, Steve Miller, Astrid Möller, Kathryn Morgan, Tessa Rajak, and
Eviatar Zerubavel. The readers for the Press gave me helpful suggestions for
improvement. Donna Sanclemente gave priceless assistance in preparing the art-
work, figures, and final manuscript: I am greatly in her debt. Alessandro Barchiesi
and Peter Brown read versions of the lectures, and I am most grateful to them for
their responses and suggestions. I first tried some versions of these ideas on the
members of the Department of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of
Victoria, who invited me to give their Lansdowne Lectures in fall 1999; I must
thank in particular Keith Bradley for his kindness on that visit. Since my semester
at Berkeley other audiences have heard versions and given valuable reactions, at
Boston University, Bryn Mawr College, the University at Buffalo, UCLA, Oxford
University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Washington at
Seattle, and Yale University. I learned a lot from my colleagues in Princeton’s Old
Dominion Fellowship, who commented on a version of chapter 1, and from the
members of the time seminar organized here by Miles Gilburne and Tony Grafton:
this was a highly valuable experience as I began thinking about time in a concen-
trated way, and I thank Miles Gilburne for making it all possible. Of all the mem-
orable moments in the course of the time seminar, the most vivid for me is still the
silence that followed Jason Morgan’s remark that modern time-keeping instru-
ments were so acute they could measure the infinitesimal slowing-down in the
rotation of the earth caused by the rising of sap and growth of leaves in spring in
the Northern Hemisphere. Robert Hannah and Daryn Lehoux very generously
made it possible for me to read their books on calendars and parapegmata before
publication and responded patiently to my questions about these difficult topics.
My initial interest in the whole topic of Roman time was sparked by an inspira-
tional paper delivered at Edinburgh by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, which became
his 1987 article “Time for Augustus: Ovid, Augustus, and the Fasti.” At an impor-
tant transitional stage of my thinking, I benefited greatly from stimulating corre-
spondence with James Ker, and I look forward very much to the appearance of his
own work on Roman time. My editor at UC Press, Laura Cerruti, has been an ally
from the start and saved me when I was despairing of a title. I am deeply grateful
to my project editor, Cindy Fulton, and to my copy editor, Marian Rogers, for
their superb professionalism. Once again I am in the happy position of being able
to thank Stephen Hinds, who read the lectures, and Tony Woodman, who read
drafts of the chapters; as always, I am deeply in their debt for their frank and pen-
etrating comments. Chris Kraus has also generously read the book in draft, and Ipreface. xiii
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