Having worked on this book for over thirty years I felt it should be dedicated to one of the very few people who were the first to listen to my inaugural course on anagnorisis at Rome Sapienza in 1985–86. There are, however, quite a number of persons to thank for suggestions, corrections, additions. My graduate students at Berkeley, Notre Dame, and Toronto come first to mind, followed by larger audiences all over Italy and the world. But individuals have been perhaps more important. I shall mention Jill Mann, John Kerrigan, Patrick Boyde, Jonathan Steinberg, and above all Peter Dronke in Cambridge; Cormac O’Cuilleanain, Corinna Salvadori Lonergan, and John Scattergood in Dublin; the late André Crépin in Paris; my German friends Jörg Fichte, Hans-Jürgen Diller, Friedhelm Marx, and the late Willi Erzgräber, Dieter Mehl, and Karl-Heinz Göller, who have helped me shape some of my ideas. Anita Weston read earlier drafts of these chapters and made many suggestions for improvement. Irene Montori and Marina Peri have helped with proofs and Index. Imponderable as they ultimately are, my greatest debts are to Michael P. Gallagher, Frank Kermode, Robert Alter, Morton Bloomfield, and Harold Fisch. I do not think I could have even conceived a project such as this without the encouragement and the phronesis of my best Roman friend, Francesco Calvo.
Piero Boitani Rome, October 2020