Acknowledgements

This book is a revised and expanded version of my PhD thesis, submitted to the University of Cambridge in 2018. Neither this book nor the original thesis would have been possible without the help and support of many individuals and institutions.

I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Golden Web Foundation for funding my doctoral work, and to the Classical Association, Trinity College, Cambridge and the Cambridge Classics Faculty for additional financial support during my graduate studies. My election to an early-career research fellowship at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge provided the time and resources to develop the project further, while a stipendiary lectureship at Wadham College, Oxford gave me the opportunity to see it to the finish line. I would like to thank Corpus, Wadham and the Classics Faculties of both Cambridge and Oxford for providing such enjoyable, rewarding and stimulating environments for teaching and research. For the provision of books and other material, I also owe a great deal to the excellent resources and staff of the Fondation Hardt in Geneva, the Bodleian and Sackler Libraries in Oxford and the University Library and the Faculty of Classics Library in Cambridge.

I have been very fortunate to benefit from the insights, guidance and generosity of many mentors. Foremost among them is Richard Hunter, my doctoral supervisor, to whom I owe more than any words could express. He has been unfailingly generous with his time, advice and assistance and is an inspiring exemplar of scholarship. I am also very grateful to Tim Whitmarsh, who has offered sound and valuable advice at many stages; during the PhD and beyond, his sharp questions have invariably helped me clarify my thinking. Felix Budelmann and Renaud Gagné, the examiners of the thesis, were also rigorous and generous readers; I am indebted to both of them for their suggestions and feedback, which were instrumental in my further development of the project. And I would also like to thank James Clackson, chief editor of Cambridge Classical Studies, who has been an extremely shrewd and humane mentor during my postdoctoral work; I will be forever grateful for his advice, kindness and generosity.

Over the years, I have also benefitted from the support of many other teachers, interlocutors and mentors who have influenced my thinking on classical literature and scholarship, often in foundational ways. They include Bill Allan, Justin Arft, Elton Barker, Jonathan Burgess, Bruno Currie, Olivia Elder, Alex Forte, Stephen Heyworth, Gregory Hutchinson, Talitha Kearey, Adrian Kelly, Max Leventhal, Jane Lightfoot, Neil McLynn, Henry Spelman, Matthew Ward and Alan Woolley. I would also like to make particular mention of two former teachers and mentors who passed away far too soon at the start of 2021: Neil Hopkinson, with whose Green and Yellow commentary I first read Callimachus, and Martin Drury, with whom I first read Homer. Both made a lasting impact on my approach to Greek poetry.

When it comes to this book specifically, a number of friends and colleagues generously read and improved specific sections, including Bernardo Ballesteros, Elton Barker, Olivia Elder, Talitha Kearey, Max Leventhal, Henry Tang, Matthew Ward and Alan Woolley. I am grateful to them all, alongside seminar and conference audiences in Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford and various Zoom ‘rooms’ for their improving feedback. I am also greatly indebted to the two readers for Cambridge Classical Studies, whose instructive suggestions and criticism have very much improved the final product. Of course, I remain solely responsible for any shortcomings that remain. I would also like to thank Michael Sharp and his team at Cambridge University Press for all their assistance throughout the editorial process. I am particularly grateful to my content manager, Bethany Johnson; production manager, Raghavi Govindane; and copy editor, Kathleen Fearn.

My thanks are also due to those who kindly shared unpublished work with me, including Péter Agócs, Justin Arft, Elton Barker, Giambattista D’Alessio, Anne Harreau (née Clerc), Stephen Heyworth, Regina Höschele, Richard Hunter, Adrian Kelly, Jason Nethercut, Évelyne Prioux, Alexandra Schultz, Henry Spelman, Laura Swift, Oliver Thomas, Gail Trimble, Matthew Ward, Chris Whitton and Philip Hardie (who lent me his copy of Séverine Clément-Tarantino’s 2006 thesis).

Two sections of the book are based on articles that I have published elsewhere. Elements of Chapter ii appear in epitomised form – alongside examples from Attic tragedy – in Nelson (forthcoming), ‘Talk and Text: The Pre-Alexandrian Footnote from Homer to Theodectes’, in A. Kelly and H. L. Spelman (eds.), Texts and Intertexts in Archaic and Classical Greece (Cambridge); and elements of §i.2.4 and §ii.2.4 draw on Nelson (2021), ‘Intertextual Agōnes in Archaic Greek Epic: Penelope vs. the Catalogue of Women’, YAGE 5, 25–57. I am grateful to the editors and readers of both pieces for their feedback, and to Cambridge University Press and Koninklijke Brill NV for permission to reuse the material here.

Much of the final work on this monograph was completed during the initial and uncertain stages of the Covid-19 pandemic – a strong reminder of the importance of friendship and community. I owe a great deal to my colleagues at both Corpus and Wadham for their camaraderie and support, particularly Christopher Kelly, James Warren and Jo Willmott at the former; and Sarah Cullinan Herring, Stephen Heyworth, Peter Thonemann and Juliane Zachhuber at the latter. I have also been very fortunate to share my academic journey with some brilliant friends who have enriched both my work and my life. In particular, I am immensely grateful to Olivia Elder, Talitha Kearey, Max Leventhal and Henry Tang, from whom I have learned and gained so much. I would also like to thank those friends beyond academia who have supported me in all sorts of ways during the long gestation of this book, including Caitlin Duschenes, Jeremy Judge, David Mallabone, Kirsty Mary Davies and, above all, Rebecca Lees.

My most heartfelt thanks of all go to my family for their unstinting love, support and encouragement: to my grandparents Colin and Margaret, ^†Derek and Linda; to my brother Matthew; and to my parents Jacky and Mark, to whom this book is dedicated with love.