To Better Days
By: Andrew Tobolowsky
Tags: Writing, Academia, Public Scholarship, Byedolon, Classics

I am told, by my friends at Medium, that my first Eidolon post was published May 16th, 2016, a little more than a year after Eidolon was founded. I was, for a while, quite a regular contributor, especially from 2016 through 2018. I wrote, it seems, the lucky total of 13 posts for the blog — some serious, some assigned, some intended to be humorous, whether or not they met the goal. A historical oddity, courtesy largely of how relatively early I jumped on board, is that if you go to ye olde masthead, you will see that I am listed as a quite mysterious sort of fauna, a “contributing editor.” For the historical record: this is a misnomer. I did, as I say, contribute happily for many years. I edited no one. I deserve no credit for any of the wonderful things Eidolon has been, not that anyone thinks otherwise. Let it be a monument only of the long friendship that blossomed between Eidolon and myself, and the warmth it will ever have in my affections.

It is funny to think of how long five or so years can be, if they come at the right time in your life. I wrote my first column for Eidolon as an adjunct at two different universities in two different states, after spending the fall an adjunct somewhere else. Those were the worst taxes I’ve ever done. Later that year, I would move to Williamsburg, Virginia where I would take up a position as a Visiting Professor at William & Mary in the department of classics. I am, strange as it may seem, what we in the business call a “Hebrew Bible guy,” but always mixed in with the comparative study of classics, especially Greek mythology. I taught Greek Mythology and biblical Hebrew. Two years later, in September of 2018, my column “Goodbye, Classics” describes my perambulating thoughts around a success — I got a tenure-track job, also at William & Mary, but in the Religious Studies department, finding a more traditional fit for the more traditional aspects of my training.

There weren’t many columns after that, what with one thing in another, but perhaps one additional point for the historical record is worth making. I got married the year before I started with Eidolon, which was also the year I graduated with my Ph.D. But, like many academics that also started a period of extreme stress for my family — my wife and I would spend the next nearly five years wondering if we would ever find decent jobs in the same place. When I started in Virginia, she was still in Rhode Island, but eventually got a job at UNC, a three hour drive away. When I wrote my next column, after “Goodbye, Classics” — “A Historian Annotates the Horrific Speech Given at the Dedication of Silent Sam” — it was with a front row seat to the proceedings. Again, for the record: I am furious with UNC to this day.

Of course, it is also funny to think of how short five years can be. On April 6th, 2017, I published “A Tale of Two Kingdoms,” an account of American politics through the lens of a favorite Greek myth: the supposed-to-be-shared post-Oedipus kingship of Thebes, the implosion of which leads directly to the events of the Seven Against Thebes and then, immediately, those of Antigone. In the myth, Polynices and Eteocles agree that one will be king for a year, then the other, then back, and infinitum, an arrangement that ends with them killing each other in about five minutes. Here, in a nutshell, was my argument. It is possible for someone to have absolute power — many people have, in history! — and it is possible for two people, or groups, to share power. What is not possible is for two people to share absolute power in succession — back and forth, in this case — when they don’t have anything like the same vision for Thebes.

In other words if, say, Eteocles thinks there should be an eighth gate of Thebes, adding to the fabled seven, but Polynices thinks there should be six, and every year the monarchy rotates is spent building or destroying gates of Thebes ad infinitum, that is a state of affairs that cannot go on. Since the GOP remains committed to the position that no Dem victory is legitimate, and no Dem achievement should be allowed to stand — no matter how many tests it passes — we are still in ancient Thebes, as it were, and I’ve thought about it just about every day. When there are two parties, and one wants to eradicate the existence of the other, pass laws that prohibit its participation, and knock down anything it builds any time it comes to power, how can a nation survive? I have been wondering this from the beginning, and I will go on wondering, I know, for a long time to come.

So here we are, in a very different place from five years ago, and a very similar one, too. Throughout it all, Eidolon has been a place you could go to learn something — some fascinating classics fact, some new way of thinking about it all, some perspective that broadened your horizon. It was, best of all, a place you could go to read marginalized voices, and more than that — to read about marginalization, why it happens, the tremendous harm it causes, and how to go about redressing it. Now it leaves the scene. I am very sorry this is so, but I understand. Others can tell the story of Eidolon much better than I can, but I remember when it left the auspices of the Paideia Institute, and I remember why. It was, in part, at least, because the Institute insisted on an obeisance to a faux ideological diversity, rather than Eidolon’s deep and real commitment to genuine inclusivity — the only kind that matters. Eidolon wanted to give a platform to people whose voices we need but who rarely get the podium they deserve. Eidolon profited by it much more than any endeavor that requires the just-mentioned obeisances in sufficient quantity, and so did we all.

There is, however, a flip side to freedom, so reminiscent of everything else as to be almost a metaphor. Institutions restrict what is possible in the direction of true inclusion, and spaces outside of them are much more congenial — but whatever is made without institutional support is a labor of love, and labors of love are always on borrowed time. What is hardest to build and maintain is soonest knocked down. In an unending pandemic that we have stopped fighting, in a political moment that exhausts all energy, the burdens fall heaviest on those already carrying the load.

Yet it is the fundamental fact of the study of the ancient world that things are not gone just because they are done. Here is a monument to a different kind of classics, long may it stand, to be studied in years to come. From living reality, may it become an aspiration — to a world in which nobody wonders whether an Eidolon can survive and flourish, and it does not take so much to tend, to keep it blooming, to protect it from the elements. As for me, I leave with the deepest appreciation for all involved — Donna, Sarah, Tara, Yung In, and Tori, who invited me in and who, I believe I can say, have become my friends, or already were. I leave with that appreciation for the community Eidolon created, and all the wonderful things I learned from it. May we all meet again in better days.

Andrew Tobolowsky is an assistant professor at William & Mary, working on how we tell and retell stories, and what they say about us when we do.