Thanks to the generosity of the A. G. Leventis Foundation, the Classics Department at the University of Edinburgh is host to a conference on some aspect of ancient Greek civilisation in the spring of every other year. The Foundation has endowed a chair for a biennial Visiting Research Professorship in Greek, whose responsibilities include arranging a conference during the period of residency.

The first holder of the Visiting Chair, Professor Brian A. Sparkes, organised a conference in March 1999 on the subject, ‘Word and Image in Ancient Greece’. The papers presented at that conference have now been published as Edinburgh Leventis Studies 1, edited by N. N. Keith Rutter and Brian A. Sparkes (Edinburgh University Press, 2000).

In March of 2001, David Konstan, the John Rowe Workman Distinguished Professor of Classics and Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island (USA), and second holder of the Leventis Chair, organised in turn a conference on the subject, ‘Envy, Spite and Jealousy: The Rivalrous Emotions in Ancient Greece’. Like the first Leventis conference, this topic crosses disciplinary boundaries, with participating scholars representing such diverse fields as ancient philosophy, Greek and Roman history, classical literary criticism and the modern psychology of the emotions. The present volume, the second in the Edinburgh Leventis Studies series, comprises the revised papers delivered at the conference, with the addition of one paper specially solicited to fill what was perceived to be a gap in the conference's coverage of the theme. For the papers delivered at the conference and the order in which they were given, see the programme at the end of this volume; the arrangement has been altered for publication.