Thanks to the wisdom of Oxford’s academic calendar, there were three long vacations every year. And so it happened that John and I (often with other friends) undertook several impecunious equivalents of the European Grand Tour: prolonged picaresque escapades in France, Austria, Italy, and other then-inexpensive hinterlands.

In the spring of 1957, we went to Naples, and had our first glimpse of its glittering bay. Then, afterward, on to Pompeii and Paestum, eating pasta and reading Pliny or Plautus along the way—while John insisted on tasting every trattoria’s 50-lira carafe of red table wine before he would definitively commit to ordering his 50-lira plate of spaghettini, linguine, or rigatoni.

I remember, especially, one day at Paestum, under a cerulean sky, walking—in sunshine and shadow—through and about and around the great main temple, with its elemental strength, as well as its iconic simplicity and rugged grace. By the time John and I were ready to leave, it was too late to find any lodging for the night. Strategic planning was not precisely our strongest suit in those days. John suggested that we should simply unroll our sleeping bags, and make ourselves at home on the nearby Mediterranean sandy shoreline—something that, in 1957, one could actually do, because there were no tourists, no fences, and no obvious traces of government guardians in sight.

Despite my deep suspicion of the sea and all that therein lies, I agreed—only to be awakened rather later, at 2 or 3 a.m., by the sound of rolling and apparently encroaching waves, which seemed to me as if they had moved—in the last few hours—at least 10 or 20 yards closer to us.

"John," I said, prodding him, "John, the tide’s coming in, and it’s about to wash right over us." John woke up, sat up, surveyed the scene for a moment, then turned and said: "Rudenstine, there is no tide in the Mediterranean."

This D’Armsian declaration of undisputed fact resolved the issue. After all, who was I to argue with the companion of Odysseus, and the first oarsman of the Argonauts? Nonetheless, I kept my own uneasy eyes open, watching the waves until dawn, when it became clear that we were (of course) still as dry (and about as far from the sea) as we had been since the previous evening.

These images and episodes re-surfaced recently, as I thought about John’s vital and rich life of learning. Because the vivacity of that life, the energy and appetite with which he engaged so many aspects of experience, and the variegated range (along with the strict exactitude) of his learning, were all of a piece—and were already apparent in our early Neapolitan wanderings, stretching not only to Pompeii and Paestum, but to Cumae, Lake Avernus, Potueoli, Ostia and Rome.

These and other nearby haunts became, over the years, John’s scholarly habitat: visited by him time and time again, studied, explored, scrutinized in fine detail, re-imagined, affectionately foraged, and increasingly, steadily loved.

So it was, that John’s scholarship and learning—blossoming over the years in two major books, and a fecundity of articles, papers, and reviews—never lost touch with those first dramatic, transfixing encounters, nearly half a century ago: encounters which at the time took the form of stunning revelations that John experienced, then absorbed, and then sustained for a lifetime afterward, with so much of their original force and freshness still intact, providing generative power for what he later wrote about, talked about, and taught to his students, as well as to his friends.

His passion for those Roman and Italian places, for the aesthetic of their landscapes and seascapes, for their villas, lakes, temples, trattorias, towns, inhabitants, and social mores—whether ancient or modern—was always (at the very least) equal to his developing passion for epigraphy, for elusive historical fact, taut argumentation, archaeological excavation, and treasured, crafted footnotes. All were inseparable parts of a single larger encompassing whole, which was simply John himself: John energetically, wittily, seriously, omnivorously becoming ever more John, as Oxford followed Princeton, Harvard followed Oxford, Ann Arbor followed Harvard, and the ACLS followed everything that preceded.

Not quite a year ago, John sent me an off-print of his most recent published article. Its subject was a substantial philanthropic donation made by a particular citizen in a modest-sized ancient Roman town. The only evidence for what proved to be an unusually illuminating episode in Roman social history, was a set of inscriptions, carved in stone pedestals found by chance about three decades ago. Since the carved lettering was seriously abraded, de-coding the inscriptions was immensely complicated. Indeed, the only previous attempts were, as John tactfully showed, hopelessly inaccurate and misleading. John cracked the code, and elucidated the entire tale surrounding the gift in question, showing how it was almost certainly part of a complex, subtle process of larger social change. The achievement of the article, however, was not purely the description of a "process." It depended in addition upon John’s capacity to evoke so much of the human texture of the situation. The donor, he concluded, must have been someone "obsessively concerned to perpetuate his own memory." Moreover, he was also a person determined to improve—as benignly as possible—his rather indeterminate social standing, and that of his family. John expressed some concern, however, that one stipulation in this ancient deed of gift might, unfortunately, not last nearly as long as our donor hoped: to wit, the stipulation that this generous act of philanthropy (and of course the philanthropist himself) should be celebrated every year, in perpetuity, with a smashing multi-course dinner at which a rather special brew of "honeyed wine" —a detail that John was careful not to overlook—would be served and presumably drunk. As matters turned out, John’s sympathetic concern was not misplaced. As far as we know, the annual dinners have long since ceased to be served, and not even a single litre of the original eccentric wine has survived.

This scholarly performance was, alas, John’s final one—and it was written amidst the multiplicity of his duties as President of the ACLS. In its intellectual elegance, incisiveness, versatility, and charm, it embodied many of John’s personal qualities, as well as his qualities as a scholar, humanist, and man of learning.

For some people in his field, the basic task of de-coding—accurately—those nearly illegible inscriptions, would have been sufficiently satisfying. For others, providing some intelligent speculation concerning the social context of the recorded gift would have added a perfectly adequate grace-note. But for John, it was essential to know about (and therefore to be able to adumbrate) all the social nuances and implications of what was taking place in this episode, not only microscopically, but also in terms of the larger "macro" processes at work. Finally, it was essential, insofar as the evidence allowed, to make the donor come to life—to be seen as human, with the kinds of hopes, concerns, foibles, ambitions and pleasures that other people in other societies might also have: because history and learning simply had to be, in John’s view, human and humane in this absolutely fundamental way.

To say that John’s work was intrinsically and compellingly inter-disciplinary, or that it was in the advance-guard of ancient Roman social history, or that it was as imaginative as it was precise, is helpful, and important for us to know. But what these characterizations do not of course convey was John’s instinctive desire to know and master everything from topography to gastronomy, psychology, archaeology, numismatics, metrics, aesthetics, literary theory, historiography, and the Cumean equivalent of anthropological kinship patterns. These energies and benign conquistadorial impulses were obvious in the variety of John’s achievements—scholarly and otherwise—throughout his career. If I can add anything to this portrait, it would simply be to confirm that virtually all of these characteristics were already abundantly in evidence many decades ago.

It was clearly no accident that, at Oxford, John unhesitatingly chose to read the "Greats," rather than the myrmidons. And if there were nothing more challenging to do in a diminutive Italian borgo, why not pass the time in testing the vintage of the next carafe of plainly undrinkable table wine? And if one had to decide, abruptly, where to spend a random night, why not lead one’s tiny brigade straight to the Mediterranean shore-line, come what may?

So it was that the faultless taste and fine discrimination of the convivial future ACLS President was trained in obscure Calabrian trattorias.

The impressive decision-making powers of the future Michigan Dean and Vice-Provost were practiced and partly perfected—à la King Canute—through bold assertions that the waves of the sea would undoubtedly remain at bay, as indeed they did.

What did not require training or practice, however, were John’s natural generosity and special charisma, his many talents to amuse, and his capacity to buoy and sustain so many people who were fortunate enough to be a part of his life. He possessed—happily, for all of us—a plentitude of those vital spirits that enable learning to blossom, institutions to flower, and life itself to flourish. He was a devoted friend and affectionate companion, and I feel deeply privileged to be able to celebrate him today, as part of your learned company.