Several additional features have been incorporated with the broad spectrum of the Companion’s projected readership in mind. First, each chapter ends with suggestions for ‘‘Further Reading,’’ so that the interested scholar or student can pursue particular themes, authors, and works beyond the necessarily limited scope of this single volume. Second, both those suggestions and the chapters themselves are keyed to a master bibliography that provides full citations for the telegraphic (author-date) in-text references. Third, in order to facilitate connections across traditions, topics, and individual authors and works, each chapter has been fully cross-referenced with other chapters in the volume. Fourth, I have fashioned a comprehensive and detailed index of poets, poems, salient historical and mythic figures and events, important terminology, and the like. In seeking materials on a particular theme, author, or work, then, readers can consult any or all of three complementary resources: the table of contents, the introduction, or the index.
Transliteration of names, titles, words, and phrases from ancient languages varies a great deal from one discipline and publication to the next, with many different solutions both available and viable. This volume presents a special challenge in that regard, ranging as widely as it does over ancient Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman epic. In general, I have tried to impose a limited, practical uniformity in two respects. First, vowels are rendered by using circumflex accents instead of macra (long marks) to indicate length; thus mimesis instead of mimlsis and Mahabharata instead of Mahabharata). Second, ancient Greek is transliterated phonetically (e. g., Patroklos instead of Patroclus) except when the Latinized form has become so familiar that it must take precedence on grounds of simple recogniz-ability (e. g., Telemachus instead of Telemakhos). Within this overall system individual authors have been permitted some idiosyncratic spellings, but I do not anticipate that any of the allowed variations will prove a genuine hindrance to the broad-spectrum readership of this Companion.
It is the collective hope of the 42-person comitatus assembled to create the Companion to Ancient Epic that it may faithfully serve the constituency for which it was intended: advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars in adjacent fields. As a single volume it of course cannot provide the last word, but it can aspire to help readers gain an initial acquaintance with ancient epic as well as chart the next few steps toward deepening the relationship. If it fulfills that mandate, then the undeniably epic efforts that went into its making these last few years will have been rewarded. And that will be kleos enough.
Near Makana, Kauai July, 2004
A Companion to Ancient Epic Edited by John Miles Foley Copyright © 2005 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
World History
