Eidolon Is Dead. Long Live Eidolon.
Within minutes of the news of Eidolon’s demise, social media flooded with testimony to the life it breathed into classics. Who could have imagined that in five short years, this scrappy, upstart, woman-led magazine could revolutionize a field that for centuries has been a byword for conservatism? Eidolon amplified voices and sparked conversations we’d never before imagined. And now we can’t imagine how we’ll go without.
I’ll leave it to others to give Eidolon the public laudatio it deserves. I just want to offer my personal thanks to a them that’s also an us and you. To me, Eidolon has never been an abstract noun so much as a group of people engaged in conversations that were alternately difficult, angry, funny, and necessary. Writers who placed their histories and humanity at the fore of their classics, and in doing so, changed how authority looks and how scholarship sounds. Above all, readers of all ages, races, and gender identities, spanning institutions and continents, who felt that finally someone was speaking for us.
I’m proud to have been part of this community. And I’m a better classicist for it. Sarah Scullin and team helped me unlearn the hedging, posturing, and self-whitewashing I’d internalized in grad school. I’m a clearer thinker as a result. It was here that I learned how hard it is, and how invigorating, to communicate complex ideas without condescension to a wider public. And it was here that I learned to write from my whole self, and not just a scholarly persona; to recognize how my experience as a human in this world has shaped and enriched my classics.
It was on Eidolon, too, that I and many others first felt the dignity of being a writer — of crafting voices that transcend hierarchies and traditional reward structures. It’s been a while since I accepted writer’s fees, because I always felt I should be paying Eidolon. Tens of thousands more people have read my articles here than will ever pick up my book. Throughout it all, you, dear readers, have been my therapists and confidantes, my light during the darkness of the past four years.
Eidolon has given me so much more than I gave. And I’m not the only one hoping to pay it forward. Lest we forget, it was Helen’s eidolon, not Helen herself, who kept the battle going. We, the people of Eidolon, have always been more than the banner. And the work we continue in its name has only just begun. It’s on us to keep expanding who gets a voice in our field and a place at the table. It’s on us to recognize and reward public-facing, socially conscious scholarship. It’s on us to be the change we want to see.
Thank you, Eidolon, for giving us not a possession for all time, but inspiration without end.
Eidolon is dead; long live Eidolon.
Nandini Pandey still can’t quite believe it.
