12

Preface

all made visiting Freiburg a wonderful experience and offered help in various
ways.
Portions of the commentary were revised in the Penrose Library of the
British School at Athens, and I am grateful to the staff of both the library
and the British School in general; I can imagine few places more welcoming
and more congenial for research. The bulk of the revision was done far from
a research library, and thus I am sure to have missed much that might have
profitably been included. At a late stage after my move to Niedersachsen,
Heinz-Gunther Nesselrath very kindly facilitated my use of the seminar
library and central library at the University of Gottingen, and his efforts have
proved invaluable to my work.
A note about bibliography. For each fragment, I have endeavoured to offer
as complete a bibliography as possible, although I am sure to have missed
much. My rationale is twofold. For anyone interested, there is little point in
duplicating work that I have already done; more important, this enables one to
form an impression of the critical history of any given fragment at a glance. I
do not necessarily think all the references I have given are equally worthwhile,
but anyone who bothers to peruse them might avoid unknowingly repeating
the suggestion of an earlier scholar, a phenomenon I found shockingly com-
mon in reading through several centuries of scholarship. Conjectures and
suggestions of four scholars occasionally appear in the commentary without
a bibliographic reference. Those of David Sansone and Douglas Olson were
made in reference to the original dissertation or, in the case of Olson, some-
times subsequently. A dozen years ago I briefly thought of publishing the
commentary elsewhere; James Diggle and the late Eric Handley were the
readers on that occasion and both made a number of worthwhile suggestions.
To all of the above, I find it difficult to adequately express my gratitude.
While it is invidious to single out anyone in particular, I should note that it is
unlikely that the commentary would have ever been published were it not for
the constant support of Douglas Olson; his friendship, scholarship and help
in every way have been invaluable. The only people to whom I owe a greater
debt are my family: my wife Sara Strack, who in addition to much else showed
uncommon patience during the final revision of the book, our sons James and
Thomas, who endured the loss of much playtime and think it normal to inform
the neighbours that their father has gone to Gottingen to look at a book, and
our son George, who was born as the book was going to press.
10 August 2015
Elze / Hann.