ABSTRACT
It is a great honour to be invited to contribute to a Festschrift for Peter Brown, who has done more than anyone else to change the contours of the late antique period. I first met Peter Brown in 1966, when he was invited by Arnaldo Momigliano to be one of the examiners for my PhD on Agathias at University College, London.2 We sat in an old-fashioned classroom, which even had desks like a schoolroom. Like myself, Peter was a student and admirer of Momigliano and looked beyond the confines of All Souls, Oxford for his intellectual nourishment. During the intervening years, we have found ourselves in the same institution only during the short period when he held a chair of history in the University of London at Royal Holloway College.3 But, like so many others, I have experienced his characteristic generosity and kindness over many years and it was a great pleasure to teach with him at a summer university course in 2004 at the Central European University, Budapest, and to spend a term in 2005 in the Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton under his Directorship.
