¹ A first attempt at this paper was presented to a departmental research seminar in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter. I would like to thank my colleagues for their comments and encouragement, especially Professor T. P. Wiseman, who read a draft and made a number of invaluable suggestions. I would also like to thank the University of Exeter for funding a study-trip to Greece, and the British School of Archaeology at Athens for allowing me full access to their facilities. I would also like to thank my travelling companion on this trip, Catherine Brunskill, for bearing with patience and good humour the trials and tribulations of Io and her wanderings.

The following abbreviations will be used: T. W. Allen, The Homeric Catalogue of Ships (Oxford, 1921) = Allen, Homeric Catalogue of Ships; S. Dakaris, Dodona (Athens, 1993) = Dakaris, Dodona; K. Dowden, Death and the Maiden. Girls’ Initiation Rites in Greek Mythology (London, 1989) = Dowden, Death and the Maiden; R. Fowler, ‘Genealogical thinking, Hesiod’s Catalogue, and the creation of the Hellenes’, PCPhS 44 (1998/9), 1–19 = Fowler, ‘Genealogical thinking’; J. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge, 1997) = Hall, Ethnic Identity; N. G. L. Hammond, Epirus (Oxford, 1967) = Hammond, Epirus; I. Malkin, The Returns of Odysseus. Colonization and Ethnicity (Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1998) = Malkin, Returns of Odysseus; H. W. Parke, The Oracles of Zeus: Dodona, Olympia, Ammon (Oxford, 1967) = Parke, Oracles of Zeus; F. de Polignac, Cult, Territory, and the Origins of the Greek City State (trans. J. Lloyd) (Chicago, 1995; published in English as a revised translation of Naissance de la cité grecque [Paris, 1984]) = de Polignac, Cult, Territory, and the Origins of the Greek City-State; M. L. West, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Oxford, 1985) = West, Catalogue.