This book marks the end of a long and serpentine journey. Versions of these chapters have been tested on audiences patient and inspirational in Atlanta, Berkeley, Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Dublin, Exeter, Fresno, Geneva, Groningen, Leuven, Ljubljana, Lisbon, Liverpool, Los Angeles, Manchester, Michigan, Milan, Nottingham, Oxford, Paris, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Stanford, St Andrews, Swansea, Uppsala and Utrecht; I have also benefited immeasurably from the Welsh KYKNOS group (particularly meetings at Gregynog), the Cretan RICAN team led by Michael Paschalis, and participants in my own Romance between Greece and the East workshops.

I have aimed to transliterate Greek names in their most familiar forms for ease of reading, accepting that no system of transliteration is perfect. Translations are mine, but I acknowledge my debt to other translators, especially those of Reardon (1989). For Achilles Tatius I have modified my own translations from Whitmarsh (2001b). For details of texts used please consult the appendix (divergences are noted throughout, where they occur). Iotas are printed adscript throughout; I have preferred bce/ce to bc/ad.

I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which (in its former life as a ‘Research Board’) awarded me research leave to allow me to complete a first version of this book. The Research Council also funded the Romance Between Greece and the East workshops alluded to above. Brill Academic Publishers generously allowed me to rework parts of Whitmarsh (2003) in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 contains material that originated in Whitmarsh (1998): thanks to the Cambridge Philological Society.