Acknowledgments
The seed of the idea for this book was planted in a room with a lovely view in St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, in lively discussions with Tim Rood on the dearth of studies connecting the Greek historians to their intellectual milieu. It blossomed into a dissertation at Princeton University under the careful mentorship of my advisor, Michael Flower, to whom I owe my sincerest thanks. Michael’s deep learning is complemented by tireless generosity in guiding and inspiring his students. The happiest and most enduring memories I have of my graduate experience there were our regular lunchtime conversations on Herodotus, conversations that sharpened this book immensely and that – as importantly – gave me a strong sense of academic belonging early in my career. I am also extremely grateful to my committee members, Christian Wildberg and Nino Luraghi, who read drafts of the dissertation and provided fine-grain readings full of constructive criticism and insight.
By some strange quirk of fate, I have often found that Herodotean scholars mirror their subject in finding enjoyment in conversation. I have greatly benefitted from chats with colleagues and friends who have read and discussed my work with me. I owe debts on this score to Elton Barker, B. A. Ellis, Jonas Grethlein, Carlo Scardino, and Andreas Schwab. Each of them has read and commented helpfully upon drafts of chapters within the book. I have also been the recipient of valuable questions and remarks in conferences and seminars on both sides of the Atlantic. Here, I must single out the participants in the Socratic and Euripidean Era Sophists and Public Intellectuals Network, and I am especially grateful to Rachel Barney and Christopher Moore for voicing critiques and offering encouragement. I would also like to express my gratitude to Chris Pelling and an anonymous reader for Cambridge University Press. These final, meticulous readers refined the manuscript immensely. Next, Tim Rood must come in for special mention: He has been instrumental throughout the process of writing this book. I am very fortunate that he was willing to read the full manuscript and to make many trenchant comments on it. Another reader to whom I am greatly indebted is my dear friend, John Marincola. I should acknowledge here that John is responsible at some deeper level of causation for this book, as the professor who fired my imagination as an undergraduate and suggested that I look to the ancient historians. If readers find anything useful in these pages, this can be attributed in large part to his early intervention and to steadfast mentorship since then. Hearty thanks too to Jonathan Griffiths, who compiled the indexes. I am much obliged to Cambridge University Press, and to Michael Sharp in particular, for support and guidance in bringing this book to the public.
In addition to these individuals, I have also been given generous support from institutions, grants, and fellowships. As a graduate student, I was awarded the Thomas Day Seymour fellowship to attend the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, where I wrote the first chapters of the dissertation. The book progressed significantly thanks to a Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship that I was awarded in 2019–20, which I spent in the near-utopian conditions of the University of Oxford as a visiting scholar in Corpus Christi College at The Centre for the Study of Greek and Roman Antiquity. My home institution, Agnes Scott College, has championed the book by awarding me multiple substantial research grants and a year-long pre-tenure sabbatical. Additionally, my colleague in the Department of Classics, Megan Drinkwater, has been a valued adviser since I arrived in Decatur in 2016.
I reserve final words for some dear friends and my family. In Princeton, I was inoculated against the potentially monastic nature of graduate study by friendship and rich intellectual exchange with Emilio Capettini, Katharine Huemoeller, and Gina White. Since my time as a student at the American School in Athens, Greece, I’ve enjoyed the close companionship and community of Mary Gilbert, Monica Park, and Erika Weiberg. And at Agnes Scott College, I’ve been fortunate to have truly superlative friends and colleagues in Reem Bailony, Roshan Iqbal, and Mona Tajali. Deepest thanks go to my family: to my mom, brothers and sisters, and to my foster parents and my foster siblings. They have all given me much patience, love, and encouragement as I was researching and writing. A last word of appreciation to my best and kindest reader, my partner, Nikolaos, and to the new addition to our family, Katerina. To put it simply, you two make it all worth it.
Open access