Judith P. Hallett is Professor of Classics at the University of Maryland at College Park. She has published widely on Latin literature, women in Greek and Roman antiquity, and the study of classics in the United States. Thomas Van Nortwick is Professor of Classics at Oberlin College, where he has taught since 1974. He has published a number of autobiographical essays, as well as scholarly articles on Greek and Latin literature, and a book, Somewhere I Have Never Travelled: the Second Self and the Hero’s Journedy in Ancient Epic (1992).

• Introduction 1 Who do I think I am? 2 Reading and re-reading the helpful princess 3 Personal plurals 4 False things which seem like the truth 5 Proper voices: writing the writer 6 Getting personal about Euripides 7 Writing as an American in classical scholarship 8 A response 9 The authority of experience 10 Conclusion: what is classical scholarship for?