Two sources of funding gave me the time I needed to complete the manuscript of this book, one a Regents’ Research grant from Louisiana State University and the other an Award to Louisiana Artists and Scholars. My deep gratitude goes to two people who read the manuscript in its entirety and offered excellent suggestions for revision: Gordon Braden, whose rare combination of talents shed light on many nooks and crannies of the manuscript, and Patrick Coby, whose sharp and perceptive mind guided me through some of the intricacies of my argument, particularly in political theory. I am fortunate to have had numerous colleagues and friends who offered expert comments on particular authors and texts or who shared conversations that meant a great deal to me: Robert McMahon, Kim Orr, Eduardo Velasquez, Tom Martin, Mark Yellin, John McCormick, Judith Mossman, Anthony Long, Rex Stemm, James Stoner, Elisabeth Oliver, Mary Sirridge, and Lillian Bridwell-Bowles. They saved me from bloopers, pressed me toward greater clarity, and steered me away from cliffs. So did my excellent editor, Beatrice Rehl, and my copy editor, Karen Verde, to whom I am grateful for seeing the manuscript through production. My student assistant, Johanna Collier, helped me in the final stages with indexing. I take responsibility for whatever errors remain.

While writing the manuscript, I was sustained by two very dear friends, Anne Coldiron and Sonny Cranch. They were there to nurture, listen, and laugh. In addition, I owe an immeasurable debt to Tom Rosenmeyer. His spirit as a classicist and comparatist are at the heart of this book. In different ways, so is that of my late and greatly missed father. His intense moral commitments and my own skepticism somehow ended up hand in hand. He provided, as did my large, beautiful family, the devotion without which I could never have seen this project to completion. Finally, I thank my mother and my two daughters, to whom this book is dedicated. They taught me about doubt in ways one does not learn from books. Their courage and endurance testify to the capacity of the human soul to survive adversity with grace.

A version of Part One appeared as “Modalities of Tragic Doubt in Homer’s Iliad, Sophocles’ Philoctetes, and Shakespeare’s Othello,” Comparative Literature 61 (2009): 1–25. © University of Oregon.

Part Two contains a substantially revised version of “What Penelope Knew: Doubt and Skepticism in Homer’s Odyssey,” Classical Quarterly 59 (2009): 295–316. © 2009 Cambridge University Press. Reprinted with permission.

Some of the ideas in Part Three appeared in “The Frauds of Humanism: Cicero, Machiavelli, and the Rhetoric of Imposture,” Rhetorica 22 (2004): 215–40. © 2004 The International Society for the History of Rhetoric.

Portions of the chapter on Cicero appeared in “Love, Envy, and Pantomimic Morality in Cicero’s De Oratore,” Classical Philology 98 (2003): 299–321. © 2002 University of Chicago.