How do classicists manage to find new things and ideas in the same sets of texts/artifacts so many other people already went through?

Answer 1

It's usually a matter of reinterpreting old authors through a new theoretical lens. Each generation brings with it different questions and concerns, a new way of interrogating the texts. Ronald Syme, for instance, was very critical of Roman imperialism, primarily because he lived through the rise and fall of fascism, and Mussolini made no secret of drawing on figures like Julius Caesar and Augustus for inspiration. Similarly, ever since Peter Brown's "The Making of Late Antiquity," there has been a trend in classics to see the "fall" of the Roman Empire in different terms, as more of a peaceful transition to an equally sophisticated Christian medieval Europe. Does that make Ronald Syme or Peter Brown right? Maybe. Maybe not. You will always find someone who is willing and able to put forth a counter argument (see, for example, Bryan Ward Perkins' "The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization.") I find that in classics it's more about keeping the conversation going ... taking things from 90 to 91, rather than engaging in any type of foundational research. There are, of course, exceptions to this. If you have the privilege of working on a previously unexcavated archaeological site, or you specialize in something like fragmentary papyri, the work you are doing is more "original."