Editor's Note

It has been one of the great privileges of my life to have edited Transactions of the American Philological Association for the last four years. This final issue in many ways reflects the vibrancy and diversity that characterizes American philology at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In addition to Kurt Raaflaub's timely presidential address on concepts of peace in ancient Greece, we have Renaud Gagné on the figure of the wolf in Archilochus, Stephen Fineberg's analysis of the iconography of Hephaestus in sixth- and fifth-century Athens, Joshua Reynolds on the epistemology of Thucydides, Joshua Sosin's reading of the epigraphic evidence for "Magnesian Inviolability," William Altman on gender and humanitas in Cicero, and Timothy O'Sullivan on sons dying before their fathers in the Aeneid. Temporally we stretch from the archaic to the Augustan period, generically from subliterary inscriptions to self-conscious poetry, and methodologically from the empirical precisions of epigraphy to the speculations of psychoanalysis and cultural anthropology. To have served as editor in such a time of plenty, variety, and vigor has been a rare pleasure.

Many thanks are to owed many people, more than can possibly be named. In the first instance, I wish to thank the astonishing generosity of my colleagues, who time and again have produced prompt, thorough, and professional readers' reports for no more compensation than the privilege of serving to advance the field. I wish to thank Cynthia Damon and Marilyn Skinner, my two immediate predecessors, who provided crucial and timely advice whenever they were called upon. Adam Blistein and the entire staff at the APA office have been a delight to work with. My editorial assistants over the years, Yanina Arnold, Matthew Kenney, Brittany Powell, John Havard, Chayah Stoneberg-Cooper, and Casey Moore, have been lifesavers. Finally, my editorship would not have been possible without the continuous material and moral support of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina and Dean Mary Anne Fitzpatrick.

I look very much forward to seeing volume 140 under the editorship of Katharina Volk. She will do an outstanding job. I wish Katharina a happy, invigorating, and joyous term as editor.