Introduction: A Brief History of Antichthon to Mark its 50th Anniversary

Abstract

In the first half of the 1960s there were several groups putting forward proposals to establish a wider-based, academic organisation to promote Classics and Ancient World Studies. There had been in existence for many years state Classical Associations, based on the model of, and affiliated to, the U.K. Classical Association, but these were, and still are, comprised of a different range of members – academics, schoolteachers, and interested persons from the general public – and, being located primarily in the state capital cities, they had a local orientation. What the new groups were looking for was a more ‘professional’ organisation which would be attractive to academics, and in particular they focussed on the desire to set up a national academic journal to promote their disciplines of Classics and Ancient World Studies. To some extent university Classics staff had been offered support from a body called AULLA (‘Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association’), which had been formed in 1957 and which, as its name implied, covered both Australia and New Zealand. AULLA met in Congress every 18 months to two years in either Australia or New Zealand. The Congresses regularly had a Classics Section, with a local convenor who arranged for the giving of papers by university staff offering them. AULLA also published a journal, AUMLA, which arose out of the Australasian Universities Modern Languages Association (the forerunner of AULLA); the name implies its orientation, and the journal was not seen as an entirely congenial location for articles on Greek and Roman topics, though such did appear from time to time. Ancient Historians had been partially catered for by the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (ANZAAS). It was a more powerful organisation – it did have the word ‘Science’ in it, after all – because it had the ear of government. It met in Congress every year or so at a host university; occasionally there would be a section for Archaeology (mainly Australian) or for Ancient World Studies, but it would depend on someone from the host university taking on the role of organising such a section. There was no publication to which staff in universities could submit articles, though abstracts of papers presented at ANZAAS Congresses could be collectively published afterwards. One of the groups which met in the 1960s to create a new organisation was convened on the initiative of the enthusiastic but eccentric Godfrey Tanner, from Classics in the (then) University College of Newcastle. Under his guidance an organisation called ‘The N.S.W and A.C.T. Joint Committee’