The research related to this monograph was funded by the European Commission through a Marie Curie Outgoing International Fellowship (MOIF-CT 8030 “Pragmatics of Archaic Greek Literature,” 2005–2008). This grant gave me the wonderful opportunity to work at the Widener Library of Harvard University, and at the Center for Cognitive Science of the University of Turin. I am enormously indebted to the Professors of the two institutions who kindly hosted me, Gregory Nagy and Bruno Bara, for their unfailing support, and for being direct and indirect sources of inspiration. At a later stage of the research I greatly profited from the libraries of the University of Tübingen, for which I very much thank Irmgard Männlein-Robert.

I have tested the main ideas contained in this book through papers presented at different Universities, such as Duke, Columbia, Yale, Groningen, Marburg, Cagliari, Belgrade, and Auckland. I am extremely grateful to all the colleagues I met in those occasions; the interaction with them significantly contributed to the shaping and reworking of my arguments. Very warm thanks to Antonio Aloni and Claude Calame for their feedback on parts of the manuscript, as well as to David Elmer and Natasha Bershadsky for several stimulating conversations at Harvard.

I wish to express my profound gratitude to the Editorial Board of the CHS for accepting the monograph as part of the Hellenic Studies Series, and to those who have been closely involved in the editorial process: Lenny Muellner, for his wisdom; Ivy Livingston, for her precision and patience; Bruce King, for his extraordinary copyediting; Jill Curry Robbins for her energetic shepherding of the manuscript throughout.

Special thanks go to Annemieke Drummen and Mark de Kreij for their help with the index locorum.

Many life events accompanied my work on this project, some joyful, some sad. I deeply thank the people with whom I shared the most challenging moments, in particular my husband Tommaso, my children Rita and Filippo, and one of my sisters, Maria, whose hard time showed me the mysterious vitality of toils. The book is dedicated to her memory.