I am most grateful to Open Book Publishers, in particular Rupert Gatti and Alessandra Tosi. They gave their enthusiastic support when I approached them with the idea for this project earlier this year and showed remarkable patience when the typescript took longer to materialize than initially anticipated. John Henderson read a draft version of the book with his unique speed and acumen and supplied me with a bounteous windfall of critical gems, comments, and corrections that enabled the volume to take a quantum leap forward. For decades, he has shown fellow classicists how to have a blast with Latin literature while using the texts to reflect on issues that matter. Working through his notes has been an exhilarating experience and it frequently seemed best to let him speak in his own inimitable voice—though readers ought not to assume that his co-authorship is limited to those places where I explicitly cite or acknowledge his feedback.
Finally, it gives me great pleasure to dedicate this volume to another inspiring critic, Alessandro Schiesaro, for now twenty years of friendship and support—as a surely inadequate, but perhaps not inappropriate, token of gratitude for someone who has pushed our understanding of Virgil’s Dido ‘further’ than anyone.