I would like to thank all the people who have contributed to this book in the various phases of its development. Special thanks are due to my dissertation advisor Suzanne Saïd, who guided me not just through the dissertation itself, but through all the projects that led up to it, and to the members of my dissertation committee, James Coulter, James Zetzel, David Sider, and Lowell Edmunds, for their many helpful observations and criticisms. I would also like to thank all my colleagues at the University of Chicago for their advice and encouragement.

My fellow graduate students at Columbia University, Francisco Barrenechea, Jackie Elliot, and Sarah Nooter, helped me tremendously as I was getting started with this work, and the participants in my Theocritus and Hellenistic poetry seminars at the University of Chicago contributed just as much as I was nearing the end of it. Thomas Pavel was kind enough to read an early version of the Introduction, and Marco Fantuzzi, in a remarkable act of generosity, to read the entire work in about a week. I am very grateful to them both, and to the two anonymous readers for this Press, who also offered many invaluable suggestions.

Finally, I would like to thank my wife Laura, for everything, and for reminding me why we read fiction in the first place.