ing devices.^129 The process of making the systems mesh together was one that the
Romans and Greeks could never internalize as natural or overlook, and the work
they had to do to make the systems mesh was such that it provoked many other
kinds of work in addition to the merely chronological — although it is becoming
clear that we can never talk about the merelychronological.
The Romans had to begin their side of this synchronistic project by making
sense of the contours of the past through media that had been devised for Greek
cities and empires. Eventually the Romans forced themselves into a position where
they were partners in Greek time, sharers of a synchronized past history, one that
conferred status on them as the only other full player on the Mediterranean stage,
the only other culture that was really “like” Greece. Quite how they did this, how
the comparison worked to maintain difference as well as likeness, and what was at
stake for them at various stages in the developing story, will be the subject of the
next chapter.
- Synchronizing Times I: Greece and Rome