Acknowledgements
The dedication of this work marks my thanks to those Hellenes who have enriched my life during the past six decades. Among them, I would mention some individuals whose collegiality, counsel, and camaraderie have been particularly rewarding during many visits to Greece for research projects and study tours. Not least among these was my talented and big-hearted friend, ὁ µακαρίτης Spyros Spyropoulos, long-time conservator of the Agora Excavations of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. My approximation in Chapter Three of the location of the Athenian sanctuary of Athena Itonia owes much to the scholarship of Anna Maria Theocharaki, manifest in her monograph, Τὰ Ἀρχαῖα Τείχη τῶν Ἀθηνῶν (Athens 2015) and in her knowledge, generously shared by way of plans, conversations, critiques, and visits to archaeological sites. In the same topographical quest, I am indebted to Leda Costaki for her major work on the streets and roads of ancient Athens. I am doubly grateful to Leda for her inestimable help in correcting proofs. I thank my fellow epigraphists, Angelos Matthaiou, Nikolaos Papazarkadas, and Georgia Malouchou, for their professional and personal collegiality. I take this occasion to thank Niamh Michalopoulou, Manager of Loring Hall and Events Manager of the American School, and her staff for their perennial service to the School and their generous hospitality to Dorothea Lalonde and me. For my stays at the Hostel of the British School at Athens I am beholden to Vicki Tzavara and her colleagues who welcomed me more as an honored µέτοικος than a πρόσφυγας. I owe great thanks to my longtime friends and associates, Themis and Eleni Zachariou, whose many years of professional service, guidance, knowledge and hospitality have brought enjoyment and intellectual reward to my colleagues, alumni, students, friends, family, and me, and whose lovely home on the Island of Aigina was so often a generous retreat for quiet study and recreation.
There are many other professional and personal creditors: James Wright and Jenifer Neils, former and current Directors of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and their staffs for the hospitality, privileges, and resources of the School, especially the use of the Blegen and Gennadius Libraries; Andrew Stewart for help in iconographic detective work; James Herbst for his rendering of the maps; Daniel Reynolds and Susan Ireland for proofreading titles in German and French respectively; Angela Winburn and Travis Renze for help in computer technology; Henry Wilhelm for sharing his great knowledge of digital imaging; Harry Baker for student research assistance; gratitude of a unique order is due to Dorothea Lalonde for being my chief editor and moral support.
I am grateful to the staff of Brill Academic Publishers, and especially Acquisitions Editor Mirjam Elbers, Editor of Religious Publications Tessa Schild, my chief scholarly reader Professor Frederick G. Naerebout of the University of Leiden, Production Editor of Books Thalien Colenbrander, Brill’s Editorial Board, and its anonymous referees and technicians for patient and efficient help in the production of this book. I hope that this work honors my considerable debt to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, whose generous award of an Emeritus Research Fellowship in the Humanities funded four years of study and writing at Grinnell College and in the libraries, archaeological sites, and museums of Greece. Finally, I am grateful for the support of trustees, benefactors, faculty, students, and administrators of Grinnell College, particularly President Emeritus Russell K. Osgood and other colleagues who have been my kindred spirits in the ancient and honorable traditions of humaniores litterae atque artes liberales.