Editor's Note

As the incoming Editor of this venerable journal, I cannot help but notice that its title is at this point anachronistic: with the exception of the annual Presidential Address, TAPA no longer publishes the "transactions" of the American Philological Association in any technical sense (and the "proceedings" were dropped from the monicker, and the publication, as long ago as 1974). While we are very happy to consider the written versions of papers delivered at the Annual Meeting, such submissions are not given preferential treatment, and a large percentage of the articles that appear in the journal these days did not start off as fifteen-minute presentations in the conference rooms of fine hotels around the country. Of course, one does not need to be a member of the APA in order to publish in TAPA, and I am proud to report that the journal receives submissions from all over the world.

Despite the title's quaintness (and the fact that I have already had to endure a number of jokes involving Spanish antipasti), I would never dream of getting rid of Transactions of the American Philological Association—not only because the journal has been known by a version of this name for 140 years, but also because I believe that it still makes a lot of sense. Though no longer primarily a "record of its proceedings published by a learned society" (OED s.v. "transaction" 6), our periodical, as I understand it, is nevertheless very much a reflection of the "doings" and "dealings" (OED s.v. "transaction" 3) of the members of the American Philological Association and, indeed, of the profession as a whole. These transactions are as diverse as the field of classics, and TAPA strives to represent the field in the whole glory of its interdisciplinary multiformity. Even though there are certain types of articles that we do not as a rule publish—such as book reviews or short notes on single textual problems—it is our aim to present a forum for a wide variety of subfields and approaches, a marketplace for the traffic in ideas that keeps our discipline alive. So whether you deal in pots, priesthoods, or papyri and whether your modus operandi is intertextuality or exchange theory, historical linguistics or New Historicism, Lachmannian textual criticism or Lacanian psychoanalysis—whatever your subject and whatever your methodology, as long as your work involves the scholarly study of ancient Greece and Rome, please do consider TAPA the venue for your transactions. I look forward to receiving your papers and to learning more about the doings and dealings of classicists in America and beyond.

In conclusion, I offer my heartfelt thanks to all who have assisted me in the process of assuming the Editorship: the APA Publications Committee and its chair Jim O'Donnell; APA Director Adam Blistein; Web Editor Robin Mitchell-Boyask; and the Columbia Department of Classics under the chairmanship of Jim Zetzel. It has been a pleasure working with my Editorial Assistant, David Ratzan, for whose eagle eye and unflagging sense of style I am grateful. My greatest debt is to my predecessor, Paul Allen Miller, who not only has been extremely helpful in making the transition as smooth as possible, but also has shown outstanding leadership in directing the journal over the past four years, especially in opening up the dialogue between material and literary culture. Though my name appears on the title page of this issue, which I have been in charge of producing, the credit for selecting the papers you are about to read still goes to Allen.