It has been a busy decade. Approximately a hundred essays on Greek and Roman literature, from Homer to Nonnus, from Plautus to Claudian, a monograph on Euripides, thematic issues on Ancient Pastoral and Virgil's Georgics, work informed by a vigorous — and one hopes invigorating — sense of the humane value of classical literature and its analysis, but exhibiting in discussion of the ancient texts themselves considerable diversity of approach, emphasis, method. It would be obvious to the most casual reader that Ramus has eschewed the sterile path of the construction of its own methodological orthodoxy. The formal parameters for inclusion have been far more demanding — and important — than methodological consonance: substantiality of subject-matter and treatment; stringency, relevancy and coherence of argumentation; centrality and concentration of critical focus; significant and significantly original illumination of text; soundness of philological and historical scholarship; judiciousness of critical eye. The issue of critical focus, that is to say, of discrimination, merits emphasis. It is a truism to say that relegation of the peripheral to the peripheral, of the ancillary to the ancillary, are necessary conditions for the elucidation of any literary work. But it is a truism often ignored.