This book is not an attempt to apply to classical literature the habits of modem literary criticism, but as it might be supposed to be just that, I may as well forestall the supposition at the outset. Despite intermittent efforts in recent times, it is still comparatively rare for practising classicists to attempt such ’applications’ and, if anything, especially rare for Hellenists. But the present work represents something much less fashionable altogether: an attempt by a practising classicist to extend the ’theory’ of an aspect of literature in general in the practical context of the literature of antiquity. But in case the claim should seem unduly immodest, it can be said at once that the ’aspect of literature’ in question is, in itself, a small aspect, although not a trivial one. And by way of glossing the claim, let it be said also that the ’habits of modem literary criticism’ and the theoretical apparatus (if any) that accompanies them are not simply separable from their ’traditional’ counterparts. There is rather, as anyone familiar with the ancestry of modern criticism will know, a developing tradition, complex and many-sided, but continuous, which, in its development, sometimes modifies, sometimes innovates entirely and sometimes reconstitutes, in effect, earlier modes.