Peter Brown, “Sexuality and Society in the Fifth Century A.D.: Augustine and Julian of Eclanum,” in Emilio Gabba, ed., Tria Corda: scritti in onore di Arnaldo Momigliano (Como: New Press, 1983), 49–70 (original) (raw)

To offer a tribute couched in comprehensive terms to a scholar of the range and stature of Arnaldo, Momigli, ano 'Would be pretentious and, in any case, superficial. For those who have come to enjoy the de light and comfort of his friendship must. be 1 aware of a further, almost measureless dimension of Momigliano's effect upon us -an infec tious creativity. His vivid mind, his unstinting openness and his deep respect for the particularity of others have been the direct source, for so many sc)iolars, in so many fields, of that courage, of that sense of purpose and of that respect for truth from which new historical enter prises have continued to spring, throughout the past decades, at the touch of his presence.· As a hesitant y�ung student at Oxford, shamefully underequipped with the skills _ needed to perform the tasks of an ancient historian, Ar naldo Momigliano's presence, in London; gave me, quite simply, the heart to persevere. It also gave me the goal towards which I continue to persevere. His work at that time thrilled me. With Cassiodorus, with the Anicii, with.the historiography of the barbarian kingdoms in Italy, in the fifth-and sixth centuries A.D., I learned to live among tho se great lords and ladifs, who move( d) with relative security in a world so far from secu re (1). Behind this immediate preoccupation, I soon came to sense and to embrace wholeheartedly-his magnificently untrivial perspective on the significance of the later Roman Empire as a whole. As Mopligliano had written, as early as 1936, in the Enciclopedia italiana, the rise of (') Review of Arthur E.R. Boak, Manpower Shortage and the Fall of the Roman Empire, Ann Arbor 1955 in «Riv. stor. ital.» 69, (1957), p. 282. .:.._50_