I wish here simply to record my debts, which are many. I should like to thank Messrs R. G. G. Coleman and A. G. Lee, Dr A. J. Woodman, and Professors C. O. Brink and W. J. N. Rudd for their comments on parts or the whole of earlier drafts, Miss R. S. Padel for helpful suggestions about pruning at a later stage, Dr R. O. A. M. Lyne for reading the proofs, and, above all, Professor E. J. Kenney for his encouragement and patience as he was presented with this study in one amended version after another. A further debt to Professor Rudd is in respect of his – and his publishers' – permission to print an adapted version of his recent translation of Persius' first satire from The Satires of Horace and Persius (Penguin Books 1973). My gratitude is also due to the staff of the Cambridge University Press for the care and expertise applied by them to the process of publication. Finally, I wish to thank the Master and Fellows of Peter-house, Cambridge, for their award of a Stone Research Fellowship for the period 1967–70, during which time the ideas for this book were first formulated.