ABSTRACT
This chapter presents approaches to the hyperfragmented, periodic boundaries both within antiquity and between antiquity and today. Just as transnational thinking involves questioning territorial borders, transhistorical thinking involves challenging temporal contours, periodic boundaries, and chronologies and even questioning the notion of “antiquity” itself. The chapter attempts to provide an account of the concept of transhistoricism that distinguishes it from diachrony and describes how it helps us to rethink periodization in and since antiquity. It discusses the fragmentation of the past into periods and ages and investigates the tension between the aspiration to represent and appreciate the diversity of historical outlooks and perspectives and the desire to integrate this diversity into larger, global narratives. The chapter examines two subfields of classical scholarship that put this modality to work.
