The teaching of ancient history has its seductive charms. It also presents a special challenge. I consider it vital to engage students directly with the problems and difficulties imbedded in the study of classical antiquity, the frustrations in dealing with fragmentary evidence, the uncertainties in interpreting ambiguous texts, the hazards in extracting truth from biased or fraudulent testimony. The historian of Greece and Rome faces the stiff task of exposing pitfalls without dampening enthusiasm. I believe, in fact, that an unblinking confrontation with the rigors of the subject ought to intensify rather than to wilt enthusiasm.

My lectures endeavor not so much to deliver results as to recount the agonies required to reach them. They dwell on the complexities of the topic, evaluate the reliability of our informants, alert listeners to traps and deceptions, set forth the most troublesome problems, assess a variety of proposed solutions, and offer an approach to alternative answers—together with the interpretation of evidence that allows for them and the process of reasoning that led to them. I do not subscribe to the idea that teaching students how to think mandates a withholding of one's opinions. I trust that the critical analysis of other theories invites criticism of my own—and I usually get it.

Lectures can convey the struggle to reconstruct the past; seminars present that struggle at first hand. I take great pride in the polish of a lecture, but even greater pleasure in the rough-and-tumble of a seminar. Mine promote, even demand, vigorous participation, freewheeling exchanges, argument, and reciprocal criticism. I encourage inventive ideas, but subject them to severe tests of consistency and verifiability. My own ideas are usually on the table together with those of students, and they undergo similar dissection. The best seminars generate more questions than answers, a source of frustration but the beginnings of wisdom. They commonly conclude by trailing loose ends rather than by tying up neat packages. Indeed I emphasize suspicion of the package—though I try to stimulate a continuing search for it. The seminars afford a major source of satisfaction.

No less satisfying is supervision or midwifing of Ph.D. dissertations. I take the job very seriously—sometimes to the consternation of students. I have occasionally made a shambles of "normative time" by insisting on extensive rethinking and rewriting. But the results justify the expenditure of energy. I have a growing shelf of books by former students—from which I derive some of my deepest gratification.

I do not consider myself a bold innovator in teaching technique or the development of experimental materials. I strive to keep the process vital through a variety of means: a range of teaching assignments that runs from a large interdepartmental freshman class in Western civilization to highly specialized doctoral seminars, repeated revision of lectures, the regular creation of new topics for undergraduate and graduate seminars, team-teaching at both the beginning and advanced levels, and an insistence upon exposing my own ideas to scrutiny and reaction. Those methods enable me to stress the intimate bonds between the hazards and the delights of reconstituting the ancient past.