What makes somebody a classicist? A graduate degree awarded after intensive study of classical languages, literature, and civilization? A deep and sustained intellectual interest in Mediterranean antiquity, regardless of professional credentials? Or is it, as Friedrich Nietzsche might have agreed, the actual embodiment of Greek or Roman identity and ideals in one’s manner of living, as opposed to “we philologists” who merely examine these cultures with cold detachment? Perhaps these three criteria are not mutually exclusive, and the title ‘classicist’ is not as important as what one actually does with interest in and knowledge of the ancient world. The epigraph of the introduction to Quentin J. Broughall’s Gore Vidal and Antiquity, “I am a Stoic, a Roman, a classicist,” is unequivocal that Vidal (1925–2012) opted for a variant of the third definition. The biographical sketch that immediately follows makes clear that Vidal also meets the second, although not the first: his profound interest in classical literature and civilization extended neither to the advanced study of Greek or Latin language, nor to enthusiasm for education or academia as either a student or potential scholar. Broughall’s monograph validates those who, like Vidal, claim the classicist label despite a lack of either language training or university diplomas, and demonstrates what a wide influence and cultural force, for good or ill, can be exerted by a non-academic, or alt-academic, classicist.