Editorial of Karanos 5 (2022)Editorial de Karanos 5 (2022

Antela Bernárdez, Borja

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Diposit Digital de Documents de la UAB

  Karanos 5 2022 5-7   eISSN: 2604-3521  https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/karanos.103 ISSN: 2604-6199     E D I T O R I A L       Πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει. Everything changes. This world of us, subdue to pandemics under two years, seems now to leave some fears behind, but just in order to fright us back with new threats. Of course, one can simply claim for the benefits of a challenging world and, avoiding seeing the harsh situation many human beings live nowadays both under terror, death, suffering or simple war, try just to feed the aims of scholarship with beautiful words exhorted to keep their minds in our sources and interpretations. As my colleagues Classicists, Historians, Archaeologists and many other disciplines to approach the Ancient World used to, I always defend the task we have to our human comrades, offering console and relief at the same time we try to collect ideas and worries from our own times, and build possible solutions (sometimes traced in similar situations from the past, sometimes not) that can be of help to those in need of that. And I am afraid I am almost sure we all need solutions and ideas to keep our hope alive.  Some months ago, I wrote some lines for an online conference in Brazil about Teaching History, concerning the human perception (at least, that of the human I know in my time and geographical and cultural context) of time and history, both in the personal and the collective perception (i.e., what History records). Then, I collect a lot of thoughts I had during the recent years on remembering and how we step back in the same dates of our life (or in the same dates of some historical commemorations), and how we deal with these cycles of time and life: years passing and their cycle, important dates for everyone during the year, birthdays and celebrations, mourning and death, memories of victories and sad moments, parties that we repeat or simply we miss… Then, one of my thoughts was for Kurt Vonnegut’s character Billy Pilgrim and his time travels. But reading Heraclitus’ metaphors of change and river flown, I wonder if the topic he wants to stress was not actually time as a changing dimension. The flux that never stops, always changes, and at the same time, it still seems just a flux to our eyes, like a river that flows.  To flow is also a usual metaphor for the act of leaving things go and try to walk into the present without the burden of the past. Of course, this does not mean oblivion, but consciousness about what we simply keep in conscious but also let leave from our lives. Likewise, oblivion is the base of amnesia, and also of amnesty, so to forget is also to forgive (maybe even to us), and by then, in these words of Heraclitus’ river, to let things (memories) flow is just to forgive. Not to forget, but just to avoid resentment.  Resentment is, of course, a thing of the corresponding related to identity and memory. Like Kant, who decided to try to forget a friend who disappointed him, or the Persian King who asked a slave to remember him about the Greeks, to remember and to forget can be, of course, elements in the construction of the self-relation with time. And time, if you allow me to say, is our business.  History is a matter of time. But despite the usual perception of History as the severe judge that will put everyone in the deserved place, History uses to change. What EDITORIAL   Karanos 5/2022 6  European people thought about Ancient Greece in the XIXth Century was different for what we guess we know now. On Ancient Macedonia, , a great change was done during the 70’s and 80’s of the XXth Century, but many more changes will be done in our knowledge of Argead Macedonia, if we consider carefully the many research our colleagues are doing in our fieldwork, and the clear influences other related fieldworks (like the deep innovation derived from the Achaemenid Studies in our perception and the treatment of the data about Ancient Persia, to quote what is to me the best example here).  Change is, then, one natural feature of History. Heraclitus could probably define the past (i.e., the Historical time) as a flux, in constant change (like Master Yoda’s description of the future, indeed!). Change and movement, forgiveness and oblivion, amnesty and remembering, the personal memories and the collective dates. Despite the brutal suffering of the whole Humanity during the last two years due to Covid-19, our future, in constant change as our perception of the past, is in a clear desire of hope. Even under the dark menace of a great war, hope is becoming one common feeling. And hope is a matter of change. And change, finally, is a question related with time. It possible to know the measure of change in a world in need of hope? I can hardly have an answer. A new hope is what this issue 5 of Karanos brings us, once again. I shall say, as on every previous Editorial I wrote since the first issue, this new volume seemed to be the hardest one, but I am sure I will feel the same when I write the text for next year’s issue. Again, a collection of papers brings us feed to our minds. I confess sometimes I read the papers in our journal while I whisper things and arguments, and somebody could guess I am discussing the author in person. A warm aim of re-reading and re-consider my positions, my beliefs, and interpretations, comes to me any time I face the pages someone gift us through our journal to argue about some of the endless themes of our research field. I confess now I feel just like an impostor every time I read other authors, while I realize I really know nothing, and many things are still open to be learned. Maybe, as the Ancient people teach us, nothing new lays under the sun, but this ‘nothing’ is clearly huge, and I still have to stop each time I face it and think about every of its infinite details. This impostor I feel I am is quite happy to be able to have the time and resources enough to feel such a task of understanding what I think as a great pleasure. Sometimes, even, I am afraid I revisit passages from the ancient sources I clearly know well, in order to play a little with the relationship between oblivion, remembering, and understanding. The authors that contribute to this new issue of our hope for pleasure and knowledge, remembering us the feel of being intellectually challenged in our own fieldwork of comfort, devote their attention mainly to Religion. Our first idea this time was to celebrate Karanos arrives to its Issue 5 with a change, launching a special number. But hope is not always fulfilled, and we finally decide to keep things in the current way and offer the readers a usual number of our journal. Of course, Ancient Macedonian Religion has a great place in this issue, as it also deserves to have in the study of Ancient Macedonia (mainly because we still have several lacks of knowledge in this field, with the interpretatio graeca ruling all our information on the rites and religious practices of the Macedonians, although we know more on the royal practices that on those of the rest of the people who lived in the realm). But although this volume counts with two papers from well-known, recognized scholars in Ancient Macedonian Studies, like Elizabeth D. Carney and Edward M. Anson, who offer two main articles on Macedonian Religion that can probably be works of reference for the future in our field, there is more than religion in the issue. The interesting paper by D. Chapinal on EDITORIAL   Karanos 5/2022 7  Archelaus or the brilliant survey of A. Coşkun on the new approaches to Seleukid Royal women complete the volume, although it is again Ancient Religion what the reader will find in our Flashback section, where we republish a classic paper by prof. Luisa Prandi (kindly reviewed and updated by the author for this new issue), who also answer the interview at the Main Voices in Ancient Macedonian Studies’ section. The present volume finishes, as usual, with a lot of interesting reviews of new books. Change is a common feature of life, and the main essence of life, in my opinion, is time. Despite fear, in these times of discouragement, changes thrill us all, once again. But I know at least one solution to this fear, and it is to keep enjoying life and work, and include my fears, worries and happiness within my job, and in my relationships with the people around my life and research. Of course, fear does not simply stop, but at least I can share it and embrace emotions with those human beings close to me.  So, in this thrilling and changing world of fear, 2023 opens a chance to celebrate. A commemoration of the ‘fake’ anniversary of Alexander’s death at 323 BC is the silly excuse we all need to meet and celebrate the multiple forms of reception on Alexander since his times, and an (still) online conference will take place in January 2023. Many other events will follow this meeting, from different centers worldwide, I hope, in a homage of our lives and what make us feel great, to have many chances of meeting and discussing with our colleagues during 2023. This ‘Year Alexander 2023’ will probably aim students and citizens alike to look at Alexander and his scholarship (us, in fact) with a new energy.  More changes will come, of course. One of them is already here, as far as I am no more the unique editor of Karanos. In fact, I never was. All issues of this journal were held due to the joint efforts of three persons: my dears Antonio Ignacio Molina Marín and Mario Agudo Villanueva, and myself. Now, we all three are co-editors, and I confess this is a very happy change, and a matter of justice. The brilliant and inspiring (always, to me) youngness of Marc Mendoza is still in the charge of the journal’s Secretary, as he has been done from the beginning.  Sometimes, changes shocked me. I feel I am growing older, while changes conquest my time and life, tyrannizing my reality. But then, more a pray that a paean, I appeal to the rhythm and lyrics of ancient songs, and with the kind voice Bowie or Violeta Parra, I embrace change, and fresh-breathing my gaze, I start to sing songs that help omens of change come and go, dancing (at Ariadna’s dance hall, in old-fashion, vintage Homeric style) like the waters of a river flowing, a river that, as Heraclitus warns us, is different, through familiar, each time we pass. That is maybe what we can call life. And, after Pandemics, Covid-19 and threats of death, a little bit of life and old songs to sing is quite a good place to start and look, while the world changes and we change with it.  BORJA ANTELA-BERNÁRDEZ Co-Director of Karanos    Bellaterra (Barcelona), December 14th 2022 

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