Another gem from my research into Rostovtzeff’s life is this remark of his, in a 1938 letter to his friend Pitrim Sorokin (a fellow Russian émigré the founder of Harvard’s Department of Sociology), recalling his initial difficulty in attracting students at Wisconsin and Yale,
“In spite of all the comic aspects of my personality, which I understand more than you think: a curious external appearance, exotic manners, a strong accent, and a large number of mistakes in my English. All this remains and grows even more rather than less.”
Rostovtzeff’s students in Madison came to like him and even called him ‘Rough Stuff’ (in part because of the difficulty of pronouncing his name). And evidently he was successful at Yale too, where the university retained him even after his retirement as a professor. But this letter seems to reveal a combination of wit and sadness that seem characteristic of Rostovtzeff and it provides (for me, anyway) a telling insight onto his personality.
(This letter is courtesy of G. Bongard-Levin and G. W. Bowersock, “Rostovtzeff and Harvard,” Philologus 140 [1996], 340-4; they also provide Sorokin’s reply at 344-5.)