Laudator Temporis Acti

Eduard Fraenkel (1888-1970), Horace (1957; rpt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. vii:

Nowadays it has become almost impossible to approach one of Horace's poems with an unprejudiced mind. Expertus dico. How often did I think that I had completely disentangled myself from the snares of traditional exegesis, only to discover, after decades of intense study, that at some crucial point I was still interpreting not the words of Horace but the unwarranted opinion of some of his commentators. Even now it will probably happen more than once that the specious fallacy of a fable convenue defeats my attempts to free myself and others from certain current prejudices. But I may at least claim that what induced me to write this book was my desire to remove from the poems of Horace some of the crusts with which the industry of many centuries has overlaid them and to enable a sympathetic reader to listen as often as possible to the voice of the poet and as seldom as possible to the voices of his learned patrons.