Friday, September 30, 2016
A Grave Mistake
Robert Renehan, "A New Commentary on Euripides," Classical Philology 80.2 (April, 1985) 143-175 (at 143):
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Serious commentaries are of fundamental importance for the understanding of Greek and Latin literature, perhaps more so for Greek drama than for any other genre, and it is no accident that so many great classical scholars have labored in this particular vineyard. The common practice of using commentaries as works of reference to be consulted desultorily for the odd passage is a grave mistake. A proper commentary is a book with a unity all its own, and should be read from cover to cover.
